{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_3589/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_3589","id":"gutenberg_3589","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3589","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Classics of Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: French Literature","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","French essays -- Translations into English"],"text":"Produced by David Widger\n\n\n\n\n\nESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE\n\nTranslated by Charles Cotton\n\nEdited by William Carew Hazilitt\n\n1877\n\n\n\nCONTENTS OF VOLUME 9.\n\nI.        Of the inconstancy of our actions.\nII.       Of drunkenness.\nIII.      A custom of the Isle of Cea.\nIV.       To-morrow's a new day.\nV.        Of conscience.\nVI.       Use makes perfect.\n\n\n\nESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE\n\nBOOK THE SECOND\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nOF THE INCONSTANCY OF OUR ACTIONS\n\nSuch as make it their business to oversee human actions, do not find\nthemselves in anything so much perplexed as to reconcile them and bring\nthem into the world's eye with the same lustre and reputation; for they\ncommonly so strangely contradict one another that it seems impossible\nthey should proceed from one and the same person.  We find the younger\nMarius one while a son of Mars and another a son of Venus.  Pope Boniface\nVIII. entered, it is said, into his Papacy like a fox, behaved himself in\nit like a lion, and died like a dog; and who could believe it to be the\nsame Nero, the perfect image of all cruelty, who, having the sentence of\na condemned man brought to him to sign, as was the custom, cried out,\n\"O that I had never been taught to write!\" so much it went to his heart\nto condemn a man to death.  All story is full of such examples, and every\nman is able to produce so many to himself, or out of his own practice or\nobservation, that I sometimes wonder to see men of understanding give\nthemselves the trouble of sorting these pieces, considering that\nirresolution appears to me to be the most common and manifest vice of our\nnature witness the famous verse of the player Publius:\n\n          \"Malum consilium est, quod mutari non potest.\"\n\n          [\"'Tis evil counsel that will admit no change.\"\n          --Pub.  Mim., ex Aul. Gell., xvii. 14.]\n\nThere seems some reason in forming a judgment of a man from the most\nusual methods of his life; but, considering the natural instability of\nour manners and opinions, I have often thought even the best authors a\nlittle out in so obstinately endeavouring to make of us any constant and\nsolid contexture; they choose a general air of a man, and according to\nthat interpret all his actions, of which, if they cannot bend some to a\nuniformity with the rest, they are presently imputed to dissimulation.\nAugustus has escaped them, for there was in him so apparent, sudden, and\ncontinual variety of actions all the whole course of his life, that he\nhas slipped away clear and undecided from the most daring critics.  I can\nmore hardly believe a man's constancy than any other virtue, and believe\nnothing sooner than the contrary.  He that would judge of a man in detail\nand distinctly, bit by bit, would oftener be able to speak the truth.  It\nis a hard matter, from all antiquity, to pick out a dozen men who have\nformed their lives to one certain and constant course, which is the\nprincipal design of wisdom; for to comprise it all in one word, says one\nof the ancients, and to contract all the rules of human life into one,\n\"it is to will, and not to will, always one and the same thing: I will\nnot vouchsafe,\" says he, \"to add, provided the will be just, for if it be\nnot just, it is impossible it should be always one.\"  I have indeed\nformerly learned that vice is nothing but irregularity, and want of\nmeasure, and therefore 'tis impossible to fix constancy to it.  'Tis a\nsaying of.  Demosthenes, \"that the beginning oh all virtue is\nconsultation and deliberation; the end and perfection, constancy.\"  If we\nwould resolve on any certain course by reason, we should pitch upon the\nbest, but nobody has thought on't:\n\n          \"Quod petit, spernit; repetit, quod nuper omisit;\n          AEstuat, et vitae disconvenit ordine toto.\"\n\n     [\"That which he sought he despises; what he lately lost, he seeks\n     again.  He fluctuates, and is inconsistent in the whole order of\n     life.\"--Horace, Ep., i. I, 98.]\n\nOur ordinary practice is to follow the inclinations of our appetite, be\nit to the left or right, upwards or downwards, according as we are wafted\nby the breath of occasion.  We never meditate what we would have till the\ninstant we have a mind to have it; and change like that little creature\nwhich receives its colour from what it is laid upon.  What we but just\nnow proposed to ourselves we immediately alter, and presently return\nagain to it; 'tis nothing but shifting and inconsistency:\n\n               \"Ducimur, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum.\"\n\n     [\"We are turned about like the top with the thong of others.\"\n     --Idem, Sat., ii. 7, 82.]\n\nWe do not go, we are driven; like things that float, now leisurely, then\nwith violence, according to the gentleness or rapidity of the current:\n\n                         \"Nonne videmus,\n          Quid sibi quisque velit, nescire, et quaerere semper\n          Commutare locum, quasi onus deponere possit?\"\n\n     [\"Do we not see them, uncertain what they want, and always asking\n     for something new, as if they could get rid of the burthen.\"\n     --Lucretius, iii. 1070.]\n\nEvery day a new whimsy, and our humours keep motion with the time.\n\n         \"Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse\n          Juppiter auctificas lustravit lumine terras.\"\n\n     [\"Such are the minds of men, that they change as the light with\n     which father Jupiter himself has illumined the increasing earth.\"\n     --Cicero, Frag.  Poet, lib. x.]\n\nWe fluctuate betwixt various inclinations; we will nothing freely,\nnothing absolutely, nothing constantly.  In any one who had prescribed\nand established determinate laws and rules in his head for his own\nconduct, we should perceive an equality of manners, an order and an\ninfallible relation of one thing or action to another, shine through his\nwhole life; Empedocles observed this discrepancy in the Agrigentines,\nthat they gave themselves up to delights, as if every day was their last,\nand built as if they had been to live for ever.  The judgment would not\nbe hard to make, as is very evident in the younger Cato; he who therein\nhas found one step, it will lead him to all the rest; 'tis a harmony of\nvery according sounds, that cannot jar.  But with us 't is quite\ncontrary; every particular action requires a particular judgment.  The\nsurest way to steer, in my opinion, would be to take our measures from\nthe nearest allied circumstances, without engaging in a longer\ninquisition, or without concluding any other consequence.  I was told,\nduring the civil disorders of our poor kingdom, that a maid, hard by the\nplace where I then was, had thrown herself out of a window to avoid being\nforced by a common soldier who was quartered in the house; she was not\nkilled by the fall, and therefore, repeating her attempt would have cut\nher own throat, had she not been prevented; but having, nevertheless,\nwounded herself to some show of danger, she voluntarily confessed that\nthe soldier had not as yet importuned her otherwise; than by courtship,\nearnest solicitation, and presents; but that she was afraid that in the\nend he would have proceeded to violence, all which she delivered with\nsuch a countenance and accent, and withal embrued in her own blood, the\nhighest testimony of her virtue, that she appeared another Lucretia; and\nyet I have since been very well assured that both before and after she\nwas not so difficult a piece.  And, according to my host's tale in\nAriosto, be as handsome a man and as worthy a gentleman as you will, do\nnot conclude too much upon your mistress's inviolable chastity for having\nbeen repulsed; you do not know but she may have a better stomach to your\nmuleteer.\n\nAntigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favour\nand esteem for his valour, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him\nof a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished,\nand observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than\nbefore, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: \"Yourself, sir,\"\nreplied the other, \"by having eased me of the pains that made me weary of\nmy life.\"  Lucullus's soldier having been rifled by the enemy, performed\nupon them in revenge a brave exploit, by which having made himself a\ngainer, Lucullus, who had conceived a good opinion of him from that\naction, went about to engage him in some enterprise of very great danger,\nwith all the plausible persuasions and promises he could think of;\n\n          \"Verbis, quae timido quoque possent addere mentem\"\n\n          [\"Words which might add courage to any timid man.\"\n          --Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 1, 2.]\n\n\"Pray employ,\" answered he, \"some miserable plundered soldier in that\naffair\":\n\n                         \"Quantumvis rusticus, ibit,\n               Ibit eo, quo vis, qui zonam perdidit, inquit;\"\n\n     [\"Some poor fellow, who has lost his purse, will go whither you\n     wish, said he.\"--Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 39.]\n\nand flatly refused to go.  When we read that Mahomet having furiously\nrated Chasan, Bassa of the Janissaries, because he had seen the\nHungarians break into his squadrons, and himself behave very ill in the\nbusiness, and that Chasan, instead of any other answer, rushed furiously\nalone, scimitar in hand, into the first body of the enemy, where he was\npresently cut to pieces, we are not to look upon that action,\nperadventure, so much as vindication as a turn of mind, not so much\nnatural valour as a sudden despite.  The man you saw yesterday so\nadventurous and brave, you must not think it strange to see him as great\na poltroon the next: anger, necessity, company, wine, or the sound of the\ntrumpet had roused his spirits; this is no valour formed and established\nby reason, but accidentally created by such circumstances, and therefore\nit is no wonder if by contrary circumstances it appear quite another\nthing.\n\nThese supple variations and contradictions so manifest in us, have given\noccasion to some to believe that man has two souls; other two distinct\npowers that always accompany and incline us, the one towards good and the\nother towards ill, according to their own nature and propension; so\nabrupt a variety not being imaginable to flow from one and the same\nsource.\n\nFor my part, the puff of every accident not only carries me along with it\naccording to its own proclivity, but moreover I discompose and trouble\nmyself by the instability of my own posture; and whoever will look\nnarrowly into his own bosom, will hardly find himself twice in the same\ncondition.  I give to my soul sometimes one face and sometimes another,\naccording to the side I turn her to.  If I speak variously of myself, it\nis because I consider myself variously; all the contrarieties are there\nto be found in one corner or another; after one fashion or another:\nbashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; prating, silent; laborious, delicate;\ningenious, heavy; melancholic, pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant;\nliberal, covetous, and prodigal: I find all this in myself, more or less,\naccording as I turn myself about; and whoever will sift himself to the\nbottom, will find in himself, and even in his own judgment, this\nvolubility and discordance.  I have nothing to say of myself entirely,\nsimply, and solidly without mixture and confusion.  'Distinguo' is the\nmost universal member of my logic.  Though I always intend to speak well\nof good things, and rather to interpret such things as fall out in the\nbest sense than otherwise, yet such is the strangeness of our condition,\nthat we are often pushed on to do well even by vice itself, if well-doing\nwere not judged by the intention only.  One gallant action, therefore,\nought not to conclude a man valiant; if a man were brave indeed, he would\nbe always so, and upon all occasions.  If it were a habit of valour and\nnot a sally, it would render a man equally resolute in all accidents; the\nsame alone as in company; the same in lists as in a battle: for, let them\nsay what they will, there is not one valour for the pavement and another\nfor the field; he would bear a sickness in his bed as bravely as a wound\nin the field, and no more fear death in his own house than at an assault.\nWe should not then see the same man charge into a breach with a brave\nassurance, and afterwards torment himself like a woman for the loss of a\ntrial at law or the death of a child; when, being an infamous coward, he\nis firm in the necessities of poverty; when he shrinks at the sight of a\nbarber's razor, and rushes fearless upon the swords of the enemy, the\naction is commendable, not the man.\n\nMany of the Greeks, says Cicero,--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 27.]--\ncannot endure the sight of an enemy, and yet are courageous in sickness;\nthe Cimbrians and Celtiberians quite contrary;\n\n              \"Nihil enim potest esse aequabile,\n               quod non a certa ratione proficiscatur.\"\n\n     [\"Nothing can be regular that does not proceed from a fixed ground\n     of reason.\"--Idem, ibid., c. 26.]\n\nNo valour can be more extreme in its kind than that of Alexander: but it\nis of but one kind, nor full enough throughout, nor universal.\nIncomparable as it is, it has yet some blemishes; of which his being so\noften at his wits' end upon every light suspicion of his captains\nconspiring against his life, and the carrying himself in that inquisition\nwith so much vehemence and indiscreet injustice, and with a fear that\nsubverted his natural reason, is one pregnant instance.  The\nsuperstition, also, with which he was so much tainted, carries along with\nit some image of pusillanimity; and the excess of his penitence for the\nmurder of Clytus is also a testimony of the unevenness of his courage.\nAll we perform is no other than a cento, as a man may say, of several\npieces, and we would acquire honour by a false title.  Virtue cannot be\nfollowed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some\nother purpose, she presently pulls it away again.  'Tis a vivid and\nstrong tincture which, when the soul has once thoroughly imbibed it, will\nnot out but with the piece.  And, therefore, to make a right judgment of\na man, we are long and very observingly to follow his trace: if constancy\ndoes not there stand firm upon her own proper base,\n\n               \"Cui vivendi via considerata atque provisa est,\"\n\n     [\"If the way of his life is thoroughly considered and traced out.\"\n     --Cicero, Paradox, v. 1.]\n\nif the variety of occurrences makes him alter his pace (his path, I mean,\nfor the pace may be faster or slower) let him go; such an one runs before\nthe wind, \"Avau le dent,\" as the motto of our Talebot has it.\n\n'Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a\ndominion over us, since it is by chance we live.  It is not possible for\nany one who has not designed his life for some certain end, it is\nimpossible for any one to arrange the pieces, who has not the whole form\nalready contrived in his imagination.  Of what use are colours to him\nthat knows not what he is to paint?  No one lays down a certain design\nfor his life, and we only deliberate thereof by pieces.  The archer ought\nfirst to know at what he is to aim, and then accommodate his arm, bow,\nstring, shaft, and motion to it; our counsels deviate and wander, because\nnot levelled to any determinate end.  No wind serves him who addresses\nhis voyage to no certain, port.  I cannot acquiesce in the judgment given\nby one in the behalf of Sophocles,  who concluded him capable of the\nmanagement of domestic affairs, against the accusation of his son, from\nhaving read one of his tragedies.\n\nNeither do I allow of the conjecture of the Parians, sent to regulate the\nMilesians sufficient for such a consequence as they from thence derived\ncoming to visit the island, they took notice of such grounds as were best\nhusbanded, and such country-houses as were best governed; and having\ntaken the names of the owners, when they had assembled the citizens, they\nappointed these farmers for new governors and magistrates; concluding\nthat they, who had been so provident in their own private concerns, would\nbe so of the public too.  We are all lumps, and of so various and inform\na contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and\nthere is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and\nothers:\n\n               \"Magnam rem puta, unum hominem agere.\"\n\n     [\"Esteem it a great thing always to act as one and the same\n     man.\"--Seneca, Ep., 150.]\n\nSince ambition can teach man valour, temperance, and liberality, and even\njustice too; seeing that avarice can inspire the courage of a shop-boy,\nbred and nursed up in obscurity and ease, with the assurance to expose\nhimself so far from the fireside to the mercy of the waves and angry\nNeptune in a frail boat; that she further teaches discretion and\nprudence; and that even Venus can inflate boys under the discipline of\nthe rod with boldness and resolution, and infuse masculine courage into\nthe heart of tender virgins in their mothers' arms:\n\n         \"Hac duce, custodes furtim transgressa jacentes,\n          Ad juvenem tenebris sola puella venit:\"\n\n     [\"She leading, the maiden, furtively passing by the recumbent\n     guards, goes alone in the darkness to the youth.\"\n     --Tibullus, ii. 2, 75.]\n\n'tis not all the understanding has to do, simply to judge us by our\noutward actions; it must penetrate the very soul, and there discover by\nwhat springs the motion is guided.  But that being a high and hazardous\nundertaking, I could wish that fewer would attempt it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nOF DRUNKENNESS\n\nThe world is nothing but variety and disemblance, vices are all alike, as\nthey are vices, and peradventure the Stoics understand them so; but\nalthough they are equally vices, yet they are not all equal vices; and he\nwho has transgressed the ordinary bounds a hundred paces:\n\n          \"Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum,\"\n\n          [\"Beyond or within which the right cannot exist.\"\n          --Horace, Sat., i, 1, 107.]\n\nshould not be in a worse condition than he that has advanced but ten, is\nnot to be believed; or that sacrilege is not worse than stealing a\ncabbage:\n\n         \"Nec vincet ratio hoc, tantumdem ut peccet, idemque,\n          Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti,\n          Et qui nocturnus divum sacra legerit.\"\n\nThere is in this as great diversity as in anything whatever.  The\nconfounding of the order and measure of sins is dangerous: murderers,\ntraitors, and tyrants get too much by it, and it is not reasonable they\nshould flatter their consciences, because another man is idle,\nlascivious, or not assiduous at his devotion.  Every one overrates the\noffence of his companions, but extenuates his own.  Our very instructors\nthemselves rank them sometimes, in my opinion, very ill.  As Socrates\nsaid that the principal office of wisdom was to distinguish good from\nevil, we, the best of whom are vicious, ought also to say the same of the\nscience of distinguishing betwixt vice and vice, without which, and that\nvery exactly performed, the virtuous and the wicked will remain\nconfounded and unrecognised.\n\nNow, amongst the rest, drunkenness seems to me to be a gross and brutish\nvice.  The soul has greater part in the rest, and there are some vices\nthat have something, if a man may so say, of generous in them; there are\nvices wherein there is a mixture of knowledge, diligence, valour,\nprudence, dexterity, and address; this one is totally corporeal and\nearthly.  And the rudest nation this day in Europe is that alone where it\nis in fashion.  Other vices discompose the understanding: this totally\noverthrows it and renders the body stupid:\n\n              \"Cum vini vis penetravit .  .  .\n               Consequitur gravitas membrorum, praepediuntur\n               Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens,\n               Nant oculi; clamor, singultus, jurgia, gliscunt.\"\n\n     [\"When the power of wine has penetrated us, a heaviness of the limbs\n     follows, the legs of the tottering person are impeded; the tongue\n     grows torpid, the mind is dimmed, the eyes swim; noise, hiccup, and\n     quarrels arise.--\"Lucretius, i. 3, 475.]\n\nThe worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge and\ngovernment of himself.  And 'tis said amongst other things upon this\nsubject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top\nwhatever it has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyond\nmeasure, vents the most inward secrets:\n\n                   \"Tu sapientum\n                    Curas et arcanum jocoso\n                    Consilium retegis Lyaeo.\"\n\n     [\"Thou disclosest to the merry Lyacus the cares and secret\n     counsel of the wise.\"--Horace, Od., xxi. 1, 114.]\n\n     [Lyacus, a name given to Bacchus.]\n\nJosephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to him\nhis full dose of liquor, he wormed out his secrets.  And yet, Augustus,\ncommitting the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who\nconquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than\nTiberias did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though we\nknow they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain to\ncarry both the one and the other drunk out of the Senate:\n\n          \"Hesterno inflatum venas ut semper, Lyaeo.\"\n\n     [\"Their veins full, as usual, of yesterday's wine.\"\n     --Virgil, Egl., vi.  15.]\n\nAnd the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to Cimber,\nthough he would often be drunk, as to Cassius, who drank nothing but\nwater.\n\n     [As to which Cassius pleasantly said: \"What, shall I bear\n     a tyrant, I who cannot bear wine?\"]\n\nWe see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post, remember\nthe word, and keep to their ranks:\n\n               \"Nec facilis victoria de madidis, et\n               Blaesis, atque mero titubantibus.\"\n\n     [\"Nor is a victory easily obtained over men so drunk, they can\n     scarce speak or stand.\"--Juvenal, Sat., xv.  47.]\n\nI could not have believed there had been so profound, senseless, and dead\na degree of drunkenness had I not read in history that Attalus having,\nto put a notable affront upon him, invited to supper the same Pausanias,\nwho upon the very same occasion afterwards killed Philip of Macedon,\na king who by his excellent qualities gave sufficient testimony of his\neducation in the house and company of Epaminondas, made him drink to such\na pitch that he could after abandon his beauty, as of a hedge strumpet,\nto the muleteers and servants of the basest office in the house.  And I\nhave been further told by a lady whom I highly honour and esteem, that\nnear Bordeaux and about Castres  where she lives, a country woman, a\nwidow of chaste repute, perceiving in herself the first symptoms of\nbreeding, innocently told her neighbours that if she had a husband she\nshould think herself with child; but the causes of suspicion every day\nmore and more increasing, and at last growing up to a manifest proof, the\npoor woman was reduced to the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed in\nher parish church, that whoever had done that deed and would frankly\nconfess it, she did not only promise to forgive, but moreover to marry\nhim, if he liked the motion; whereupon a young fellow that served her in\nthe quality of a labourer, encouraged by this proclamation, declared that\nhe had one holiday found her, having taken too much of the bottle, so\nfast asleep by the chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he could\nconveniently do his business without waking her; and they yet live\ntogether man and wife.\n\nIt is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice; the writings\neven of several philosophers speak very tenderly of it, and even amongst\nthe Stoics there are some who advise folks to give themselves sometimes\nthe liberty to drink, nay, to drunkenness, to refresh the soul:\n\n          \"Hoc quoque virtutum quondam certamine, magnum\n          Socratem palmam promeruisse ferunt.\"\n\n     [\"In this trial of power formerly they relate that the great\n     Socrates deserved the palm.\"--Cornet. Gallus, Ep., i. 47.]\n\nThat censor and reprover of others, Cato, was reproached that he was a\nhard drinker:\n\n                    \"Narratur et prisci Catonis\n                    Saepe mero caluisse virtus.\"\n\n     [\"And of old Cato it is said, that his courage was often warmed with\n     wine.\"--Horace, Od., xxi. 3, 11.--Cato the Elder.]\n\nCyrus, that so renowned king, amongst the other qualities by which he\nclaimed to be preferred before his brother Artaxerxes, urged this\nexcellence, that he could drink a great deal more than he.  And in the\nbest governed nations this trial of skill in drinking is very much in\nuse.  I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that\nlest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not\namiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest\nthey should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the\nPersians used to consult about their most important affairs after being\nwell warmed with wine.\n\nMy taste and constitution are greater enemies to this vice than my\ndiscourse; for besides that I easily submit my belief to the authority of\nancient opinions, I look upon it indeed as an unmanly and stupid vice,\nbut less malicious and hurtful than the others, which, almost all, more\ndirectly jostle public society.  And if we cannot please ourselves but it\nmust cost us something, as they hold, I find this vice costs a man's\nconscience less than the others, besides that it is of no difficult\npreparation, nor hard to be found, a consideration not altogether to be\ndespised.  A man well advanced both in dignity and age, amongst three\nprincipal commodities that he said remained to him of life, reckoned to\nme this for one, and where would a man more justly find it than amongst\nthe natural conveniences?  But he did not take it right, for delicacy and\nthe curious choice of wines is therein to be avoided.  If you found your\npleasure upon drinking of the best, you condemn yourself to the penance\nof drinking of the worst.  Your taste must be more indifferent and free;\nso delicate a palate is not required to make a good toper.  The Germans\ndrink almost indifferently of all wines with delight; their business is\nto pour down and not to taste; and it's so much the better for them:\ntheir pleasure is so much the more plentiful and nearer at hand.\n\nSecondly, to drink, after the French fashion, but at two meals, and then\nvery moderately, is to be too sparing of the favours of the god.  There\nis more time and constancy required than so.  The ancients spent whole\nnights in this exercise, and ofttimes added the day following to eke it\nout, and therefore we are to take greater liberty and stick closer to our\nwork.  I have seen a great lord of my time, a man of high enterprise and\nfamous success, that without setting himself to't, and after his ordinary\nrate of drinking at meals, drank not much less than five quarts of wine,\nand at his going away appeared but too wise and discreet, to the\ndetriment of our affairs.  The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course\nof our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it;\nwe should, like shopboys and labourers, refuse no occasion nor omit any\nopportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.  Methinks we\nevery day abridge and curtail the use of wine, and that the after\nbreakfasts, dinner snatches, and collations I used to see in my father's\nhouse, when I was a boy, were more usual and frequent then than now.\n\nIs it that we pretend to a reformation?  Truly, no: but it may be we are\nmore addicted to Venus than our fathers were.  They are two exercises\nthat thwart and hinder one another in their vigour.  Lechery weakens our\nstomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce\nand amorous for the exercise of love.\n\n'Tis wonderful what strange stories I have heard my father tell of the\nchastity of that age wherein he lived.  It was for him to say it, being\nboth by art and nature cut out and finished for the service of ladies.\nHe spoke well and little: ever mixing his language with some illustration\nout of authors most in use, especially in Spanish, and among the Spanish\nhe whom they called Marcus Aurelius--[ Guevara's Golden Book of Marcus\nAurelius Antoninus.]--was ordinarily in his mouth.  His behaviour was\ngently grave, humble, and very modest; he was very solicitous of neatness\nand propriety both in his person and clothes, whether on horseback or\nafoot, he was monstrously punctual in his word; and of a conscience and\nreligion generally tending rather towards superstition than otherwise.\nFor a man of little stature, very strong, well proportioned, and well\nknit; of a pleasing countenance inclining to brown, and very adroit in\nall noble exercises.  I have yet in the house to be seen canes poured\nfull of lead, with which they say he exercised his arms for throwing the\nbar or the stone, or in fencing; and shoes with leaden soles to make him\nlighter for running or leaping.  Of his vaulting he has left little\nmiracles behind him: I have seen him when past three score laugh at our\nexercises, and throw himself in his furred gown into the saddle, make the\ntour of a table upon his thumbs and scarce ever mount the stairs into his\nchamber without taking three or four steps at a time.  But as to what I\nwas speaking of before; he said there was scarce one woman of quality of\nill fame in the whole province: he would tell of strange confidences, and\nsome of them his own, with virtuous women, free from any manner of\nsuspicion of ill, and for his own part solemnly swore he was a virgin at\nhis marriage; and yet it was after a long practice of arms beyond the\nmountains, of which wars he left us a journal under his own hand, wherein\nhe has given a precise account from point to point of all passages, both\nrelating to the public and to himself.  And he was, moreover, married at\na well advanced maturity, in the year 1528, the three-and-thirtieth year\nof his age, upon his way home from Italy.  But let us return to our\nbottles.\n\nThe incommodities of old age, that stand in need of some refreshment and\nsupport, might with reason beget in me a desire of this faculty, it being\nas it were the last pleasure the course of years deprives us of.  The\nnatural heat, say the good-fellows, first seats itself in the feet: that\nconcerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middle region, where it makes\na long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of\nhuman life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end,\nlike a vapour that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where\nit makes its final residence, and concludes the progress.  I do not,\nnevertheless, understand how a man can extend the pleasure of drinking\nbeyond thirst, and forge in his imagination an appetite artificial and\nagainst nature; my stomach would not proceed so far; it has enough to do\nto deal with what it takes in for its necessity.  My constitution is not\nto care for drink but as following eating and washing down my meat, and\nfor that reason my last draught is always the greatest.  And seeing that\nin old age we have our palate furred with phlegms or depraved by some\nother ill constitution, the wine tastes better to us as the pores are\ncleaner washed and laid more open.  At least, I seldom taste the first\nglass well.  Anacharsis wondered that the Greeks drank in greater glasses\ntowards the end of a meal than at the beginning; which was, I suppose,\nfor the same reason the Germans do the same, who then begin the battle of\ndrink.\n\nPlato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk\ntill forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and\nto mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that\ngood deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their\nyouth; who mollifies the passions of the soul, as iron is softened by\nfire; and in his Lazes allows such merry meetings, provided they have a\ndiscreet chief to govern and keep them in order, as good and of great\nutility; drunkenness being, he says, a true and certain trial of every\none's nature, and, withal, fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert\nthemselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare\nnot attempt when sober.  He, moreover, says that wine is able to supply\nthe soul with temperance and the body with health.  Nevertheless, these\nrestrictions, in part borrowed from the Carthaginians, please him: that\nmen forbear excesses in the expeditions of war; that every judge and\nmagistrate abstain from it when about the administrations of his place or\nthe consultations of the public affairs; that the day is not to be\nemployed with it, that being a time due to other occupations, nor the\nnight on which a man intends to get children.\n\n'Tis said that the philosopher Stilpo, when oppressed with age, purposely\nhastened his end by drinking pure wine.  The same thing, but not designed\nby him, despatched also the philosopher Arcesilaus.\n\nBut 'tis an old and pleasant question, whether the soul of a wise man can\nbe overcome by the strength of wine?\n\n               \"Si munitae adhibet vim sapientiae.\"\n\nTo what vanity does the good opinion we have of ourselves push us?  The\nmost regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to\nkeep itself upright, and from being overthrown by its own weakness.\nThere is not one of a thousand that is right and settled so much as one\nminute in a whole life, and that may not very well doubt, whether\naccording to her natural condition she ever can be; but to join constancy\nto it is her utmost perfection; I mean when nothing should jostle and\ndiscompose her, which a thousand accidents may do.  'Tis to much purpose\nthat the great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy,\nwhen, behold!  he goes mad with a love philtre.  Is it to be imagined\nthat an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as a porter?  Some men\nhave forgotten their own names by the violence of a disease; and a slight\nwound has turned the judgment of others topsy-turvy.  Let him be as wise\nas he will, after all he is but a man; and than that what is there more\nfrail, more miserable, or more nothing?  Wisdom does not force our\nnatural dispositions,\n\n               \"Sudores itaque, et pallorem exsistere toto\n               Corpore, et infringi linguam, vocemque aboriri,\n               Caligare oculos, sonere aures, succidere artus,\n               Demque concidere, ex animi terrore, videmus.\"\n\n     [\"Sweat and paleness come over the whole body, the tongue is\n     rendered powerless, the voice dies away, the eyes are darkened,\n     there is ringing in the ears, the limbs sink under us by the\n     influence of fear.\"--Lucretius, iii. 155.]\n\nhe must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he must\ntremble upon the margin of a precipice, like a child; nature having\nreserved these light marks of her authority, not to be forced by our\nreason and the stoic virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness;\nhe turns pale with fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, if\nnot with desperate outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice:\n\n               \"Humani a se nihil alienum putet.\"\n\n     [\"Let him not think himself exempt from that which is incidental to\n     men in general.\"--Terence, Heauton, i. 1, 25.]\n\nThe poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their\ngreatest heroes of tears:\n\n          \"Sic fatur lacrymans, classique immittit habenas.\"\n\n     [\"Thus he speaks, weeping, and then sets sail with his fleet.\"\n     --Aeneid, vi. i.]\n\n'Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for\ntotally to suppress them is not in him to do.  Even our great Plutarch,\nthat excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when he sees Brutus\nand Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could\nproceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not rather been\nstimulated by some other passion.--[Plutarch, Life of Publicola, c.  3.]\n--All actions exceeding the ordinary bounds are liable to sinister\ninterpretation, for as much as our liking no more holds with what is\nabove than with what is below it.\n\nLet us leave that other sect, that sets up an express profession of\nscornful superiority--[The Stoics.]--: but when even in that sect,\nreputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades of\nMetrodorus:\n\n          \"Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos\n          interclusi ut ad me aspirare non posses;\"\n\n     [\"Fortune, I have got the better of thee, and have made all the\n     avenues so sure thou canst not come at me.\"\n     --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 9.]\n\nwhen Anaxarchus, by command of Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, was put\ninto a stone mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not to say,\n\"Strike, batter, break; 'tis not Anaxarchus, 'tis but his sheath that you\npound and bray so\"; when we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant from\nthe middle of the flame, \"This side is roasted enough, fall to and eat,\nit is enough done; fall to work with the other;\" when we hear the child\nin Josephus' torn piece-meal with pincers, defying Antiochus, and crying\nout with a constant and assured voice: \"Tyrant, thou losest thy labour,\nI am still at ease; where is the pain, where are the torments with which\nthou didst so threaten me?  Is this all thou canst do?  My constancy\ntorments thee more than thy cruelty does me.  O pitiful coward, thou\nfaintest, and I grow stronger; make me complain, make me bend, make me\nyield if thou canst; encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners;\nsee, see they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spur\nthem up\"; truly, a man must confess that there is some phrenzy, some\nfury, how holy soever, that at that time possesses those souls.  When we\ncome to these Stoical sallies: \"I had rather be mad than voluptuous,\" a\nsaying of Antisthenes.  When Sextius tells us, \"he had rather be fettered\nwith affliction than pleasure\": when Epicurus takes upon him to play with\nhis gout, and, refusing health and ease, defies all torments, and\ndespising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets\nand calls out for others sharper, more violent, and more worthy of him;\n\n          \"Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votis\n          Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem:\"\n\n     [\"And instead of timid beasts, wishes the foaming boar or tawny lion\n     would come from the mountain.\"--AEneid, iv. 158.]\n\nwho but must conclude that these are wild sallies pushed on by a courage\nthat has broken loose from its place?  Our soul cannot from her own seat\nreach so high; 'tis necessary she must leave it, raise herself up, and,\ntaking the bridle in her teeth, transport her man so far that he shall\nafterwards himself be astonished at what he has done; as, in war, the\nheat of battle impels generous soldiers to perform things of so infinite\ndanger, as afterwards, recollecting them, they themselves are the first\nto wonder at; as it also fares with the poets, who are often rapt with\nadmiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the\ntrack through which they performed so fine a Career; which also is in\nthem called fury and rapture.  And as Plato says, 'tis to no purpose for\na sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy: so Aristotle says, that\nno excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness; and he has reason\nto call all transports, how commendable soever, that surpass our own\njudgment and understanding, madness; forasmuch as wisdom is a regular\ngovernment of the soul, which is carried on with measure and proportion,\nand for which she is to herself responsible.  Plato argues thus, that the\nfaculty of prophesying is so far above us, that we must be out of\nourselves when we meddle with it, and our prudence must either be\nobstructed by sleep or sickness, or lifted from her place by some\ncelestial rapture.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nA CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA\n\n          [Cos.  Cea is the form of the name given by Pliny]\n\nIf to philosophise be, as 'tis defined, to doubt, much more to write at\nrandom and play the fool, as I do, ought to be reputed doubting, for it\nis for novices and freshmen to inquire and to dispute, and for the\nchairman to moderate and determine.\n\nMy moderator is the authority of the divine will, that governs us without\ncontradiction, and that is seated above these human and vain\ncontestations.\n\nPhilip having forcibly entered into Peloponnesus, and some one saying to\nDamidas that the Lacedaemonians were likely very much to suffer if they\ndid not in time reconcile themselves to his favour:  \"Why, you pitiful\nfellow,\" replied he, \"what can they suffer who do not fear to die?\"  It\nbeing also asked of Agis, which way a man might live free?  \"Why,\" said\nhe, \"by despising death.\"  These, and a thousand other sayings to the\nsame purpose, distinctly sound of something more than the patient\nattending the stroke of death when it shall come; for there are several\naccidents in life far worse to suffer than death itself.  Witness the\nLacedaemonian boy taken by Antigonus, and sold for a slave, who being by\nhis master commanded to some base employment: \"Thou shalt see,\" says the\nboy, \"whom thou hast bought; it would be a shame for me to serve, being\nso near the reach of liberty,\" and having so said, threw himself from the\ntop of the house.  Antipater severely threatening the Lacedaemonians,\nthat he might the better incline them to acquiesce in a certain demand of\nhis: \"If thou threatenest us with more than death,\" replied they, \"we\nshall the more willingly die\"; and to Philip, having written them word\nthat he would frustrate all their enterprises: \"What, wilt thou also\nhinder us from dying?\"  This is the meaning of the sentence, \"That the\nwise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can; and that the\nmost obliging present Nature has made us, and which takes from us all\ncolour of complaint of our condition, is to have delivered into our own\ncustody the keys of life; she has only ordered, one door into life, but a\nhundred thousand ways out.  We may be straitened for earth to live upon,\nbut earth sufficient to die upon can never be wanting, as Boiocalus\nanswered the Romans.\"--[Tacitus, Annal., xiii.  56.]--Why dost thou\ncomplain of this world?  it detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the\ncause, if thou livest in pain.  There needs no more to die but to will to\ndie:\n\n               \"Ubique mors est; optime hoc cavit deus.\n               Eripere vitam nemo non homini potest;\n               At nemo mortem; mille ad hanc aditus patent.\"\n\n     [\"Death is everywhere: heaven has well provided for that.  Any one\n     may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death.  To death\n     there are a thousand avenues.\"--Seneca, Theb:, i, I, 151.]\n\nNeither is it a recipe for one disease only; death is the infallible cure\nof all; 'tis a most assured port that is never to be feared, and very\noften to be sought.  It comes all to one, whether a man give himself his\nend, or stays to receive it by some other means; whether he pays before\nhis day, or stay till his day of payment come; from whencesoever it\ncomes, it is still his; in what part soever the thread breaks, there's\nthe end of the clue.  The most voluntary death is the finest.  Life\ndepends upon the pleasure of others; death upon our own.  We ought not to\naccommodate ourselves to our own humour in anything so much as in this.\nReputation is not concerned in such an enterprise; 'tis folly to be\nconcerned by any such apprehension. Living is slavery if the liberty of\ndying be wanting.  The ordinary method of cure is carried on at the\nexpense of life; they torment us with caustics, incisions, and\namputations of limbs; they interdict aliment and exhaust our blood; one\nstep farther and we are cured indeed and effectually.  Why is not the\njugular vein as much at our disposal as the median vein?  For a desperate\ndisease a desperate cure.  Servius the grammarian, being tormented with\nthe gout, could think of no better remedy than to apply poison to his\nlegs, to deprive them of their sense; let them be gouty at their will, so\nthey were insensible of pain.  God gives us leave enough to go when He is\npleased to reduce us to such a condition that to live is far worse than\nto die.  'Tis weakness to truckle under infirmities, but it's madness to\nnourish them.  The Stoics say, that it is living according to nature in a\nwise man to, take his leave of life, even in the height of prosperity,\nif he do it opportunely; and in a fool to prolong it, though he be\nmiserable, provided he be not indigent of those things which they repute\nto be according to nature.  As I do not offend the law against thieves\nwhen I embezzle my own money and cut my own purse; nor that against\nincendiaries when I burn my own wood; so am I not under the lash of those\nmade against murderers for having deprived myself of my own life.\nHegesias said, that as the condition of life did, so the condition of\ndeath ought to depend upon our own choice.  And Diogenes meeting the\nphilosopher Speusippus, so blown up with an inveterate dropsy that he was\nfain to be carried in a litter, and by him saluted with the compliment,\n\"I wish you good health.\"  \"No health to thee,\" replied the other,\n\"who art content to live in such a condition.\"\n\nAnd in fact, not long after, Speusippus, weary of so languishing a state\nof life, found a means to die.\n\nBut this does not pass without admitting a dispute: for many are of\nopinion that we cannot quit this garrison of the world without the\nexpress command of Him who has placed us in it; and that it appertains to\nGod who has placed us here, not for ourselves only but for His Glory and\nthe service of others, to dismiss us when it shall best please Him, and\nnot for us to depart without His licence: that we are not born for\nourselves only, but for our country also, the laws of which require an\naccount from us upon the score of their own interest, and have an action\nof manslaughter good against us; and if these fail to take cognisance of\nthe fact, we are punished in the other world as deserters of our duty:\n\n         \"Proxima deinde tenent maesti loca, qui sibi letum\n          Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi\n          Proiecere animas.\"\n\n     [\"Thence the sad ones occupy the next abodes, who, though free\n     from guilt, were by their own hands slain, and, hating light,\n     sought death.\"--AEneid, vi. 434.]\n\nThere is more constancy in suffering the chain we are tied to than in\nbreaking it, and more pregnant evidence of fortitude in Regulus than in\nCato; 'tis indiscretion and impatience that push us on to these\nprecipices: no accidents can make true virtue turn her back; she seeks\nand requires evils, pains, and grief, as the things by which she is\nnourished and supported; the menaces of tyrants, racks, and tortures\nserve only to animate and rouse her:\n\n              \"Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus\n               Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido,\n               Per damma, percmdes, ab ipso\n               Ducit opes, animumque ferro.\"\n\n     [\"As in Mount Algidus, the sturdy oak even from the axe itself\n     derives new vigour and life.\"--Horace, Od., iv. 4, 57.]\n\nAnd as another says:\n\n              \"Non est, ut putas, virtus, pater,\n               Timere vitam; sed malis ingentibus\n               Obstare, nec se vertere, ac retro dare.\"\n\n     [\"Father, 'tis no virtue to fear life, but to withstand great\n     misfortunes, nor turn back from them.\"--Seneca, Theb., i. 190.]\n\nOr as this:\n\n          \"Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere mortem\n          Fortius ille facit, qui miser esse potest.\"\n\n     [\"It is easy in adversity to despise death; but he acts more\n     bravely, who can live wretched.\"--Martial, xi. 56, 15.]\n\n'Tis cowardice, not virtue, to lie squat in a furrow, under a tomb, to\nevade the blows of fortune; virtue never stops nor goes out of her path,\nfor the greatest storm that blows:\n\n                    \"Si fractus illabatur orbis,\n                    Impavidum ferient ruinae.\"\n\n     [\"Should the world's axis crack, the ruins will but crush\n      a fearless head.\"--Horace, Od., iii. 3, 7.]\n\nFor the most part, the flying from other inconveniences brings us to\nthis; nay, endeavouring to evade death, we often run into its very mouth:\n\n          \"Hic, rogo, non furor est, ne moriare, mori?\"\n\n     [\"Tell me, is it not madness, that one should die for fear\n     of dying?\"--Martial, ii. 80, 2.]\n\nlike those who, from fear of a precipice, throw themselves headlong into\nit;\n\n              \"Multos in summa pericula misfit\n               Venturi timor ipse mali: fortissimus ille est,\n               Qui promptus metuenda pati, si cominus instent,\n               Et differre potest.\"\n\n     [\"The fear of future ills often makes men run into extreme danger;\n     he is truly brave who boldly dares withstand the mischiefs he\n     apprehends, when they confront him and can be deferred.\"\n     --Lucan, vii. 104.]\n\n               \"Usque adeo, mortis formidine, vitae\n               Percipit humanos odium, lucisque videndae,\n               Ut sibi consciscant moerenti pectore lethum\n               Obliti fontem curarum hunc esse timorem.\"\n\n     [\"Death to that degree so frightens some men, that causing them to\n     hate both life and light, they kill themselves, miserably forgetting\n     that this same fear is the fountain of their cares.\"\n     --Lucretius, iii. 79.]\n\nPlato, in his Laws, assigns an ignominious sepulture to him who has\ndeprived his nearest and best friend, namely himself, of life and his\ndestined course, being neither compelled so to do by public judgment,\nby any sad and inevitable accident of fortune, nor by any insupportable\ndisgrace, but merely pushed on by cowardice and the imbecility of a\ntimorous soul.  And the opinion that makes so little of life, is\nridiculous; for it is our being, 'tis all we have.  Things of a nobler\nand more elevated being may, indeed, reproach ours; but it is against\nnature for us to contemn and make little account of ourselves; 'tis a\ndisease particular to man, and not discerned in any other creatures, to\nhate and despise itself.  And it is a vanity of the same stamp to desire\nto be something else than what we are; the effect of such a desire does\nnot at all touch us, forasmuch as it is contradicted and hindered in\nitself.  He that desires of a man to be made an angel, does nothing for\nhimself; he would be never the better for it; for, being no more, who\nshall rejoice or be sensible of this benefit for him.\n\n         \"Debet enim, misere cui forti, aegreque futurum est,\n          Ipse quoque esse in eo turn tempore, cum male possit\n          Accidere.\"\n\n     [\"For he to whom misery and pain are to be in the future, must\n     himself then exist, when these ills befall him.\"\n     --Idem, ibid., 874.]\n\nSecurity, indolence, impassability, the privation of the evils of this\nlife, which we pretend to purchase at the price of dying, are of no\nmanner of advantage to us: that man evades war to very little purpose who\ncan have no fruition of peace; and as little to the purpose does he avoid\ntrouble who cannot enjoy repose.\n\nAmongst those of the first of these two opinions, there has been great\ndebate, what occasions are sufficient to justify the meditation of\nself-murder, which they call \"A reasonable exit.\"--[ Diogenes Laertius,\nLife of Zeno.]--For though they say that men must often die for trivial\ncauses, seeing those that detain us in life are of no very great weight,\nyet there is to be some limit.  There are fantastic and senseless humours\nthat have prompted not only individual men, but whole nations to destroy\nthemselves, of which I have elsewhere given some examples; and we further\nread of the Milesian virgins, that by a frantic compact they hanged\nthemselves one after another till the magistrate took order in it,\nenacting that the bodies of such as should be found so hanged should be\ndrawn by the same halter stark naked through the city.  When Therykion\ntried to persuade Cleomenes to despatch himself, by reason of the ill\nposture of his affairs, and, having missed a death of more honour in the\nbattle he had lost, to accept of this the second in honour to it, and not\nto give the conquerors leisure to make him undergo either an ignominious\ndeath or an infamous life; Cleomenes, with a courage truly Stoic and\nLacedaemonian, rejected his counsel as unmanly and mean; \"that,\" said he,\n\"is a remedy that can never be wanting, but which a man is never to make\nuse of, whilst there is an inch of hope remaining\": telling him, \"that\nit was sometimes constancy and valour to live; that he would that even\nhis death should be of use to his country, and would make of it an act of\nhonour and virtue.\"  Therykion, notwithstanding, thought himself in the\nright, and did his own business; and Cleomenes afterwards did the same,\nbut not till he had first tried the utmost malevolence of fortune.  All\nthe inconveniences in the world are not considerable enough that a man\nshould die to evade them; and, besides, there being so many, so sudden\nand unexpected changes in human things, it is hard rightly to judge when\nwe are at the end of our hope:\n\n              \"Sperat et in saeva victus gladiator arena,\n               Sit licet infesto pollice turba minax.\"\n\n     [\"The gladiator conquered in the lists hopes on, though the\n     menacing spectators, turning their thumb, order him to die.\"\n     --Pentadius, De Spe, ap. Virgilii Catadecta.]\n\nAll things, says an old adage, are to be hoped for by a man whilst he\nlives; ay, but, replies Seneca, why should this rather be always running\nin a man's head that fortune can do all things for the living man, than\nthis, that fortune has no power over him that knows how to die?\nJosephus, when engaged in so near and apparent danger, a whole people\nbeing violently bent against him, that there was no visible means of\nescape, nevertheless, being, as he himself says, in this extremity\ncounselled by one of his friends to despatch himself, it was well for him\nthat he yet maintained himself in hope, for fortune diverted the accident\nbeyond all human expectation, so that he saw himself delivered without\nany manner of inconvenience.  Whereas Brutus and Cassius, on the\ncontrary, threw away the remains of the Roman liberty, of which they were\nthe sole protectors, by the precipitation and temerity wherewith they\nkilled themselves before the due time and a just occasion.  Monsieur\nd'Anguien, at the battle of Serisolles, twice attempted to run himself\nthrough, despairing of the fortune of the day, which went indeed very\nuntowardly on that side of the field where he was engaged, and by that\nprecipitation was very near depriving himself of the enjoyment of so\nbrave a victory.  I have seen a hundred hares escape out of the very\nteeth of the greyhounds:\n\n               \"Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit.\"\n\n     [\"Some have survived their executioners.\"--Seneca, Ep., 13.]\n\n              \"Multa dies, variusque labor mutabilis nevi\n               Rettulit in melius; multos alterna revisens\n               Lusit, et in solido rursus fortuna locavit.\"\n\n     [\"Length of days, and the various labour of changeful time, have\n     brought things to a better state; fortune turning, shews a reverse\n     face, and again restores men to prosperity.\"--AEneid, xi. 425.]\n\nPiny says there are but three sorts of diseases, to escape which a man\nhas good title to destroy himself; the worst of which is the stone in the\nbladder, when the urine is suppressed.\n\n     [\"In the quarto edition of these essays, in 1588, Pliny is said to\n     mention two more, viz., a pain in the stomach and a headache, which,\n     he says (lib. xxv. c. 9.), were the only three distempers almost\n     for which men killed themselves.\"]\n\nSeneca says those only which for a long time are discomposing the\nfunctions of the soul.  And some there have been who, to avoid a worse\ndeath, have chosen one to their own liking.  Democritus, general of the\nAEtolians, being brought prisoner to Rome, found means to make his escape\nby night: but close pursued by his keepers, rather than suffer himself to\nbe retaken, he fell upon his own sword and died.  Antinous and Theodotus,\ntheir city of Epirus being reduced by the Romans to the last extremity,\ngave the people counsel universally to kill themselves; but, these\npreferring to give themselves up to the enemy, the two chiefs went to\nseek the death they desired, rushing furiously upon the enemy, with\nintention to strike home but not to ward a blow.  The Island of Gozzo\nbeing taken some years ago by the Turks, a Sicilian, who had two\nbeautiful daughters marriageable, killed them both with his own hand, and\ntheir mother, running in to save them, to boot, which having done,\nsallying out of the house with a cross-bow and harquebus, with two shots\nhe killed two of the Turks nearest to his door, and drawing his sword,\ncharged furiously in amongst the rest, where he was suddenly enclosed and\ncut to pieces, by that means delivering his family and himself from\nslavery and dishonour.  The Jewish women, after having circumcised their\nchildren, threw them and themselves down a precipice to avoid the cruelty\nof Antigonus.  I have been told of a person of condition in one of our\nprisons, that his friends, being informed that he would certainly be\ncondemned, to avoid the ignominy of such a death suborned a priest to\ntell him that the only means of his deliverance was to recommend himself\nto such a saint, under such and such vows, and to fast eight days\ntogether without taking any manner of nourishment, what weakness or\nfaintness soever he might find in himself during the time; he followed\ntheir advice, and by that means destroyed himself before he was aware,\nnot dreaming of death or any danger in the experiment.  Scribonia\nadvising her nephew Libo to kill himself rather than await the stroke of\njustice, told him that it was to do other people's business to preserve\nhis life to put it after into the hands of those who within three or four\ndays would fetch him to execution, and that it was to serve his enemies\nto keep his blood to gratify their malice.\n\nWe read in the Bible that Nicanor, the persecutor of the law of God,\nhaving sent his soldiers to seize upon the good old man Razis, surnamed\nin honour of his virtue the father of the Jews: the good man, seeing no\nother remedy, his gates burned down, and the enemies ready to seize him,\nchoosing rather to die nobly than to fall into the hands of his wicked\nadversaries and suffer himself to be cruelly butchered by them, contrary\nto the honour of his rank and quality, stabbed himself with his own\nsword, but the blow, for haste, not having been given home, he ran and\nthrew himself from the top of a wall headlong among them, who separating\nthemselves and making room, he pitched directly upon his head;\nnotwithstanding which, feeling yet in himself some remains of life, he\nrenewed his courage, and starting up upon his feet all bloody and wounded\nas he was, and making his way through the crowd to a precipitous rock,\nthere, through one of his wounds, drew out his bowels, which, tearing and\npulling to pieces with both his hands, he threw amongst his pursuers, all\nthe while attesting and invoking the Divine vengeance upon them for their\ncruelty and injustice.\n\nOf violences offered to the conscience, that against the chastity of\nwoman is, in my opinion, most to be avoided, forasmuch as there is a\ncertain pleasure naturally mixed with it, and for that reason the dissent\ntherein cannot be sufficiently perfect and entire, so that the violence\nseems to be mixed with a little consent of the forced party.  The\necclesiastical history has several examples of devout persons who have\nembraced death to secure them from the outrages prepared by tyrants\nagainst their religion and honour.  Pelagia and Sophronia, both\ncanonised, the first of these precipitated herself with her mother and\nsisters into the river to avoid being forced by some soldiers, and the\nlast also killed herself to avoid being ravished by the Emperor\nMaxentius.\n\nIt may, peradventure, be an honour to us in future ages, that a learned\nauthor of this present time, and a Parisian, takes a great deal of pains\nto persuade the ladies of our age rather to take any other course than to\nenter into the horrid meditation of such a despair.  I am sorry he had\nnever heard, that he might have inserted it amongst his other stories,\nthe saying of a woman, which was told me at Toulouse, who had passed\nthrough the handling of some soldiers: \"God be praised,\" said she, \"that\nonce at least in my life I have had my fill without sin.\"  In truth,\nthese cruelties are very unworthy the French good nature, and also, God\nbe thanked, our air is very well purged of them since this good advice:\n'tis enough that they say \"no\" in doing it, according to the rule of the\ngood Marot.\n\n              \"Un doulx nenny, avec un doulx sourire\n               Est tant honneste.\"--Marot.\n\nHistory is everywhere full of those who by a thousand ways have exchanged\na painful and irksome life for death.  Lucius Aruntius killed himself, to\nfly, he said, both the future and the past.  Granius Silvanus and Statius\nProximus, after having been pardoned by Nero, killed themselves; either\ndisdaining to live by the favour of so wicked a man, or that they might\nnot be troubled, at some other time, to obtain a second pardon,\nconsidering the proclivity of his nature to suspect and credit\naccusations against worthy men.  Spargapises, son of Queen Tomyris, being\na prisoner of war to Cyrus, made use of the first favour Cyrus shewed\nhim, in commanding him to be unbound, to kill himself, having pretended\nto no other benefit of liberty, but only to be revenged of himself for\nthe disgrace of being taken.  Boges, governor in Eion for King Xerxes,\nbeing besieged by the Athenian army under the conduct of Cimon, refused\nthe conditions offered, that he might safe return into Asia with all his\nwealth, impatient to survive the loss of a place his master had given him\nto keep; wherefore, having defended the city to the last extremity,\nnothing being left to eat, he first threw all the gold and whatever else\nthe enemy could make booty of into the river Strymon, and then causing a\ngreat pile to be set on fire, and the throats of all the women, children,\nconcubines, and servants to be cut, he threw their bodies into the fire,\nand at last leaped into it himself.\n\nNinachetuen, an Indian lord, so soon as he heard the first whisper of the\nPortuguese Viceroy's determination to dispossess him, without any\napparent cause, of his command in Malacca, to transfer it to the King of\nCampar, he took this resolution with himself: he caused a scaffold, more\nlong than broad, to be erected, supported by columns royally adorned with\ntapestry and strewed with flowers and abundance of perfumes; all which\nbeing prepared, in a robe of cloth of gold, set full of jewels of great\nvalue, he came out into the street, and mounted the steps to the\nscaffold, at one corner of which he had a pile lighted of aromatic wood.\nEverybody ran to see to what end these unusual preparations were made;\nwhen Ninachetuen, with a manly but displeased countenance, set forth how\nmuch he had obliged the Portuguese nation, and with how unspotted\nfidelity he had carried himself in his charge; that having so often,\nsword in hand, manifested in the behalf of others, that honour was much\nmore dear to him than life, he was not to abandon the concern of it for\nhimself: that fortune denying him all means of opposing the affront\ndesigned to be put upon him, his courage at least enjoined him to free\nhimself from the sense of it, and not to serve for a fable to the people,\nnor for a triumph to men less deserving than himself; which having said\nhe leaped into the fire.\n\nSextilia, wife of Scaurus, and Paxaea, wife of Labeo, to encourage their\nhusbands to avoid the dangers that pressed upon them, wherein they had no\nother share than conjugal affection, voluntarily sacrificed their own\nlives to serve them in this extreme necessity for company and example.\nWhat they did for their husbands, Cocceius Nerva did for his country,\nwith less utility though with equal affection: this great lawyer,\nflourishing in health, riches, reputation, and favour with the Emperor,\nhad no other cause to kill himself but the sole compassion of the\nmiserable state of the Roman Republic.  Nothing can be added to the\nbeauty of the death of the wife of Fulvius, a familiar favourite of\nAugustus: Augustus having discovered that he had vented an important\nsecret he had entrusted him withal, one morning that he came to make his\ncourt, received him very coldly and looked frowningly upon him.  He\nreturned home, full of, despair, where he sorrowfully told his wife that,\nhaving fallen into this misfortune, he was resolved to kill himself: to\nwhich she roundly replied, \"'tis but reason you should, seeing that\nhaving so often experienced the incontinence of my tongue, you could not\ntake warning: but let me kill myself first,\" and without any more saying\nran herself through the body with a sword.  Vibius Virrius, despairing of\nthe safety of his city besieged by the Romans and of their mercy, in the\nlast deliberation of his city's senate, after many arguments conducing to\nthat end, concluded that the most noble means to escape fortune was by\ntheir own hands: telling them that the enemy would have them in honour,\nand Hannibal would be sensible how many faithful friends he had\nabandoned; inviting those who approved of his advice to come to a good\nsupper he had ready at home, where after they had eaten well, they would\ndrink together of what he had prepared; a beverage, said he, that will\ndeliver our bodies from torments, our souls from insult, and our eyes and\nears from the sense of so many hateful mischiefs, as the conquered suffer\nfrom cruel and implacable conquerors.  I have, said he, taken order for\nfit persons to throw our bodies into a funeral pile before my door so\nsoon as we are dead.  Many enough approved this high resolution, but few\nimitated it; seven-and-twenty senators followed him, who, after having\ntried to drown the thought of this fatal determination in wine, ended the\nfeast with the mortal mess; and embracing one another, after they had\njointly deplored the misfortune of their country, some retired home to\ntheir own houses, others stayed to be burned with Vibius in his funeral\npyre; and were all of them so long in dying, the vapour of the wine\nhaving prepossessed the veins, and by that means deferred the effect of\npoison, that some of them were within an hour of seeing the enemy inside\nthe walls of Capua, which was taken the next morning, and of undergoing\nthe miseries they had at so dear a rate endeavoured to avoid.  Jubellius\nTaurea, another citizen of the same country, the Consul Fulvius returning\nfrom the shameful butchery he had made of two hundred and twenty-five\nsenators, called him back fiercely by name, and having made him stop:\n\"Give the word,\" said he, \"that somebody may dispatch me after the\nmassacre of so many others, that thou mayest boast to have killed a much\nmore valiant man than thyself.\"  Fulvius, disdaining him as a man out of\nhis wits, and also having received letters from Rome censuring the\ninhumanity of his execution which tied his hands, Jubellius proceeded:\n\"Since my country has been taken, my friends dead, and having with my own\nhands slain my wife and children to rescue them from the desolation of\nthis ruin, I am denied to die the death of my fellow-citizens, let me\nborrow from virtue vengeance on this hated life,\" and therewithal drawing\na short sword he carried concealed about him, he ran it through his own\nbosom, falling down backward, and expiring at the consul's feet.\n\nAlexander, laying siege to a city of the Indies, those within, finding\nthemselves very hardly set, put on a vigorous resolution to deprive him\nof the pleasure of his victory, and accordingly burned themselves in\ngeneral, together with their city, in despite of his humanity: a new kind\nof war, where the enemies sought to save them, and they to destroy\nthemselves, doing to make themselves sure of death, all that men do to\nsecure life.\n\nAstapa, a city of Spain, finding itself weak in walls and defence to\nwithstand the Romans, the inhabitants made a heap of all their riches and\nfurniture in the public place; and, having ranged upon this heap all the\nwomen and children, and piled them round with wood and other combustible\nmatter to take sudden fire, and left fifty of their young men for the\nexecution of that whereon they had resolved, they made a desperate sally,\nwhere for want of power to overcome, they caused themselves to be every\nman slain.  The fifty, after having massacred every living soul\nthroughout the whole city, and put fire to this pile, threw themselves\nlastly into it, finishing their generous liberty, rather after an\ninsensible, than after a sorrowful and disgraceful manner, giving the\nenemy to understand, that if fortune had been so pleased, they had as\nwell the courage to snatch from them victory as they had to frustrate and\nrender it dreadful, and even mortal to those who, allured by the\nsplendour of the gold melting in this flame, having approached it,\na great number were there suffocated and burned, being kept from retiring\nby the crowd that followed after.\n\nThe Abydeans, being pressed by King Philip, put on the same resolution;\nbut, not having time, they could not put it 'in effect.  The king, who\nwas struck with horror at the rash precipitation of this execution (the\ntreasure and movables that they had condemned to the flames being first\nseized), drawing off his soldiers, granted them three days' time to kill\nthemselves in, that they might do it with more order and at greater ease:\nwhich time they filled with blood and slaughter beyond the utmost excess\nof all hostile cruelty, so that not so much as any one soul was left\nalive that had power to destroy itself.  There are infinite examples of\nlike popular resolutions which seem the more fierce and cruel in\nproportion as the effect is more universal, and yet are really less so\nthan when singly executed; what arguments and persuasion cannot do with\nindividual men, they can do with all, the ardour of society ravishing\nparticular judgments.\n\nThe condemned who would live to be executed in the reign of Tiberius,\nforfeited their goods and were denied the rites of sepulture; those who,\nby killing themselves, anticipated it, were interred, and had liberty to\ndispose of their estates by will.\n\nBut men sometimes covet death out of hope of a greater good.  \"I desire,\"\nsays St. Paul, \"to be with Christ,\" and \"who shall rid me of these\nbands?\"  Cleombrotus of Ambracia, having read Plato's Pheedo, entered\ninto so great a desire of the life to come that, without any other\noccasion, he threw himself into the sea.  By which it appears how\nimproperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair, to which the\neagerness of hope often inclines us, and, often, a calm and temperate\ndesire proceeding from a mature and deliberate judgment.  Jacques du\nChastel, bishop of Soissons, in St. Louis's foreign expedition, seeing\nthe king and whole army upon the point of returning into France, leaving\nthe affairs of religion imperfect, took a resolution rather to go into\nParadise; wherefore, having taken solemn leave of his friends, he charged\nalone, in the sight of every one, into the enemy's army, where he was\npresently cut to pieces.  In a certain kingdom of the new discovered\nworld, upon a day of solemn procession, when the idol they adore is drawn\nabout in public upon a chariot of marvellous greatness; besides that many\nare then seen cutting off pieces of their flesh to offer to him, there\nare a number of others who prostrate themselves upon the place, causing\nthemselves to be crushed and broken to pieces under the weighty wheels,\nto obtain the veneration of sanctity after death, which is accordingly\npaid them.  The death of the bishop, sword in hand, has more of\nmagnanimity in it, and less of sentiment, the ardour of combat taking\naway part of the latter.\n\nThere are some governments who have taken upon them to regulate the\njustice and opportunity of voluntary death.  In former times there was\nkept in our city of Marseilles a poison prepared out of hemlock, at the\npublic charge, for those who had a mind to hasten their end, having\nfirst, before the six hundred, who were their senate, given account of\nthe reasons and motives of their design, and it was not otherwise lawful,\nthan by leave from the magistrate and upon just occasion to do violence\nto themselves.--[Valerius Maximus, ii. 6, 7.]--The same law was also\nin use in other places.\n\nSextus Pompeius, in his expedition into Asia, touched at the isle of Cea\nin Negropont: it happened whilst he was there, as we have it from one\nthat was with him, that a woman of great quality, having given an account\nto her citizens why she was resolved to put an end to her life, invited\nPompeius to her death, to render it the more honourable, an invitation\nthat he accepted; and having long tried in vain by the power of his\neloquence, which was very great, and persuasion, to divert her from that\ndesign, he acquiesced in the end in her own will.  She had passed the age\nof four score and ten in a very happy state, both of body and mind; being\nthen laid upon her bed, better dressed than ordinary and leaning upon her\nelbow, \"The gods,\" said she, \"O Sextus Pompeius, and rather those I leave\nthan those I go to seek, reward thee, for that thou hast not disdained to\nbe both the counsellor of my life and the witness of my death.  For my\npart, having always experienced the smiles of fortune, for fear lest the\ndesire of living too long may make me see a contrary face, I am going, by\na happy end, to dismiss the remains of my soul, leaving behind two\ndaughters of my body and a legion of nephews\"; which having said, with\nsome exhortations to her family to live in peace, she divided amongst\nthem her goods, and recommending her domestic gods to her eldest\ndaughter, she boldly took the bowl that contained the poison, and having\nmade her vows and prayers to Mercury to conduct her to some happy abode\nin the other world, she roundly swallowed the mortal poison.  This being\ndone, she entertained the company with the progress of its operation, and\nhow the cold by degrees seized the several parts of her body one after\nanother, till having in the end told them it began to seize upon her\nheart and bowels, she called her daughters to do the last office and\nclose her eyes.\n\nPliny tells us of a certain Hyperborean nation where, by reason of the\nsweet temperature of the air, lives rarely ended but by the voluntary\nsurrender of the inhabitants, who, being weary of and satiated with\nliving, had the custom, at a very old age, after having made good cheer,\nto precipitate themselves into the sea from the top of a certain rock,\nassigned for that service.  Pain and the fear of a worse death seem to me\nthe most excusable incitements.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTO-MORROW'S A NEW DAY\n\nI give, as it seems to me, with good reason the palm to Jacques Amyot of\nall our French writers, not only for the simplicity and purity of his\nlanguage, wherein he excels all others, nor for his constancy in going\nthrough so long a work,  nor for the depth of his knowledge, having been\nable so successfully to smooth and unravel so knotty and intricate an\nauthor (for let people tell me what they will, I understand nothing of\nGreek; but I meet with sense so well united and maintained throughout his\nwhole translation, that certainly he either knew the true fancy of the\nauthor, or having, by being long conversant with him, imprinted a vivid\nand general idea of that of Plutarch in his soul, he has delivered us\nnothing that either derogates from or contradicts him), but above all, I\nam the most taken with him for having made so discreet a choice of a book\nso worthy and of so great utility wherewith to present his country.  We\nignorant fellows had been lost, had not this book raised us out of the\ndirt; by this favour of his we dare now speak and write; the ladies are\nable to read to schoolmasters; 'tis our breviary.  If this good man be\nyet living, I would recommend to him Xenophon, to do as much by that;\n'tis a much more easy task than the other, and consequently more proper\nfor his age.  And, besides, though I know not how, methinks he does\nbriskly--and clearly enough trip over steps another would have stumbled\nat, yet nevertheless his style seems to be more his own where he does not\nencounter those difficulties, and rolls away at his own ease.\n\nI was just now reading this passage where Plutarch says of himself, that\nRusticus being present at a declamation of his at Rome, there received a\npacket from the emperor, and deferred to open it till all was done: for\nwhich, says he, all the company highly applauded the gravity of this\nperson.  'Tis true, that being upon the subject of curiosity and of that\neager passion for news, which makes us with so much indiscretion and\nimpatience leave all to entertain a newcomer, and without any manner of\nrespect or outcry, tear open on a sudden, in what company soever, the\nletters that are delivered to us, he had reason to applaud the gravity of\nRusticus upon this occasion; and might moreover have added to it the\ncommendation of his civility and courtesy, that would not interrupt the\ncurrent of his declamation.  But I doubt whether any one can commend his\nprudence; for receiving unexpected letters, and especially from an\nemperor, it might have fallen out that the deferring to read them might\nhave been of great prejudice.  The vice opposite to curiosity is\nnegligence, to which I naturally incline, and wherein I have seen some\nmen so extreme that one might have found letters sent them three or four\ndays before, still sealed up in their pockets.\n\nI never open any letters directed to another; not only those intrusted\nwith me, but even such as fortune has guided to my hand; and am angry\nwith myself if my eyes unawares steal any contents of letters of\nimportance he is reading when I stand near a great man.  Never was man\nless inquisitive or less prying into other men's affairs than I.\n\nIn our fathers' days, Monsieur de Boutieres had like to have lost Turin\nfrom having, while engaged in good company at supper, delayed to read\ninformation that was sent him of the treason plotted against that city\nwhere he commanded.  And this very Plutarch has given me to understand,\nthat Julius Caesar had preserved himself, if, going to the Senate the day\nhe was assassinated by the conspirators, he had read a note which was\npresented to him by, the way.  He tells also the story of Archias, the\ntyrant of Thebes, that the night before the execution of the design\nPelopidas had plotted to kill him to restore his country to liberty, he\nhad a full account sent him in writing by another Archias, an Athenian,\nof the whole conspiracy, and that, this packet having been delivered to\nhim while he sat at supper, he deferred the opening of it, saying, which\nafterwards turned to a proverb in Greece, \"Business to-morrow.\"\n\nA wise man may, I think, out of respect to another, as not to disturb the\ncompany, as Rusticus did, or not to break off another affair of\nimportance in hand, defer to read or hear any new thing that is brought\nhim; but for his own interest or particular pleasure, especially if he be\na public minister, that he will not interrupt his dinner or break his\nsleep is inexcusable.  And there was anciently at Rome, the consular\nplace, as they called it, which was the most honourable at the table, as\nbeing a place of most liberty, and of more convenient access to those who\ncame in to speak to the person seated there; by which it appears, that\nbeing at meat, they did not totally abandon the concern of other affairs\nand incidents.  But when all is said, it is very hard in human actions to\ngive so exact a rule upon moral reasons, that fortune will not therein\nmaintain her own right.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nOF CONSCIENCE\n\nThe Sieur de la Brousse, my brother, and I, travelling one day together\nduring the time of our civil wars, met a gentleman of good sort.  He was\nof the contrary party, though I did not know so much, for he pretended\notherwise: and the mischief on't is, that in this sort of war the cards\nare so shuffled, your enemy not being distinguished from yourself by any\napparent mark either of language or habit, and being nourished under the\nsame law, air, and manners, it is very hard to avoid disorder and\nconfusion.  This made me afraid myself of meeting any of our troops in a\nplace where I was not known, that I might not be in fear to tell my name,\nand peradventure of something worse; as it had befallen me before, where,\nby such a mistake, I lost both men and horses, and amongst others an\nItalian gentleman my page, whom I bred with the greatest care and\naffection, was miserably slain, in whom a youth of great promise and\nexpectation was extinguished.  But the gentleman my brother and I met\nhad so desperate, half-dead a fear upon him at meeting with any horse,\nor passing by any of the towns that held for the King, that I at last\ndiscovered it to be alarms of conscience.  It seemed to the poor man as\nif through his visor and the crosses upon his cassock, one would have\npenetrated into his bosom and read the most secret intentions of his\nheart; so wonderful is the power of conscience.  It makes us betray,\naccuse, and fight against ourselves, and for want of other witnesses, to\ngive evidence against ourselves:\n\n               \"Occultum quatiens animo tortore flagellum.\"\n\n     [\"The torturer of the soul brandishing a sharp scourge within.\"\n     --Juvenal, iii. 195.]\n\nThis story is in every child's mouth: Bessus the Paeonian, being\nreproached for wantonly pulling down a nest of young sparrows and killing\nthem, replied, that he had reason to do so, seeing that those little\nbirds never ceased falsely to accuse him of the murder of his father.\nThis parricide had till then been concealed and unknown, but the\nrevenging fury of conscience caused it to be discovered by him himself,\nwho was to suffer for it.  Hesiod corrects the saying of Plato, that\npunishment closely follows sin, it being, as he says, born at the same\ntime with it.  Whoever expects punishment already suffers it, and whoever\nhas deserved it expects it.  Wickedness contrives torments against\nitself:\n\n               \"Malum consilium consultori pessimum.\"\n\n               [\"Ill designs are worst to the contriver.\"\n               --Apud Aul. Gellium, iv. 5.]\n\nas the wasp stings and hurts another, but most of all itself, for it\nthere loses its sting and its use for ever,\n\n                    \"Vitasque in vulnere ponunt.\"\n\n               [\"And leave their own lives in the wound.\"\n               --Virgil, Geo., iv. 238.]\n\nCantharides have somewhere about them, by a contrariety of nature, a\ncounterpoison against their poison.  In like manner, at the same time\nthat men take delight in vice, there springs in the conscience a\ndispleasure that afflicts us sleeping and waking with various tormenting\nimaginations:\n\n              \"Quippe ubi se multi, per somnia saepe loquentes,\n               Aut morbo delirantes, protraxe ferantur,\n               Et celata diu in medium peccata dedisse.\"\n\n     [\"Surely where many, often talking in their sleep, or raving in\n     disease, are said to have betrayed themselves, and to have given\n     publicity to offences long concealed.\"--Lucretius, v. 1157.]\n\nApollodorus dreamed that he saw himself flayed by the Scythians and\nafterwards boiled in a cauldron, and that his heart muttered these words\n\"I am the cause of all these mischiefs that have befallen thee.\"\nEpicurus said that no hiding-hole could conceal the wicked, since they\ncould never assure themselves of being hid whilst their conscience\ndiscovered them to themselves.\n\n                    \"Prima est haec ultio, quod se\n               Judice nemo nocens absohitur.\"\n\n     [\"Tis the first punishment of sin that no man absolves himself.\" or:\n     \"This is the highest revenge, that by its judgment no offender is\n     absolved.\"--Juvenal, xiii. 2.]\n\nAs an ill conscience fills us with fear, so a good one gives us greater\nconfidence and assurance; and I can truly say that I have gone through\nseveral hazards with a more steady pace in consideration of the secret\nknowledge I had of my own will and the innocence of my intentions:\n\n         \"Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra\n          Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo.\"\n\n     [\"As a man's conscience is, so within hope or fear prevails, suiting\n     to his design.\"--Ovid, Fast., i. 485.]\n\nOf this are a thousand examples; but it will be enough to instance three\nof one and the same person.  Scipio, being one day accused before the\npeople of Rome of some crimes of a very high nature, instead of excusing\nhimself or flattering his judges: \"It will become you well,\" said he,\n\"to sit in judgment upon a head, by whose means you have the power to\njudge all the world.\"  Another time, all the answer he gave to several\nimpeachments brought against him by a tribune of the people, instead of\nmaking his defence: \"Let us go, citizens,\" said he, \"let us go render\nthanks to the gods for the victory they gave me over the Carthaginians as\nthis day,\" and advancing himself before towards the Temple, he had\npresently all the assembly and his very accuser himself following at his\nheels.  And Petilius, having been set on by Cato to demand an account of\nthe money that had passed through his hands in the province of Antioch,\nScipio being come into the senate to that purpose, produced a book from\nunder his robe, wherein he told them was an exact account of his receipts\nand disbursements; but being required to deliver it to the prothonotary\nto be examined, he refused, saying, he would not do himself so great a\ndisgrace; and in the presence of the whole senate tore the book with his\nown hands to pieces.  I do not believe that the most seared conscience\ncould have counterfeited so great an assurance.  He had naturally too\nhigh a spirit and was accustomed to too high a fortune, says Titius\nLivius, to know how to be criminal, and to lower himself to the meanness\nof defending his innocence.  The putting men to the rack is a dangerous\ninvention, and seems to be rather a trial of patience than of truth.\nBoth he who has the fortitude to endure it conceals the truth, and he who\nhas not: for why should pain sooner make me confess what really is, than\nforce me to say what is not?  And, on the contrary, if he who is not\nguilty of that whereof he is accused, has the courage to undergo those\ntorments, why should not he who is guilty have the same, so fair a reward\nas life being in his prospect?  I believe the ground of this invention\nproceeds from the consideration of the force of conscience: for, to the\nguilty, it seems to assist the rack to make him confess his fault and to\nshake his resolution; and, on the other side, that it fortifies the\ninnocent against the torture.  But when all is done, 'tis, in plain\ntruth, a trial full of uncertainty and danger what would not a man say,\nwhat would not a man do, to avoid so intolerable torments?\n\n               \"Etiam innocentes cogit mentiri dolor.\"\n\n     [\"Pain will make even the innocent lie.\"--Publius Syrus, De Dolore.]\n\nWhence it comes to pass, that him whom the judge has racked that he may\nnot die innocent, he makes him die both innocent and racked.  A thousand\nand a thousand have charged their own heads by false confessions, amongst\nwhom I place Philotas, considering the circumstances of the trial\nAlexander put upon him and the progress of his torture.  But so it is\nthat some say it is the least evil human weakness could invent; very\ninhumanly, notwithstanding, and to very little purpose, in my opinion.\n\nMany nations less barbarous in this than the Greeks and Romans who call\nthem so, repute it horrible and cruel to torment and pull a man to pieces\nfor a fault of which they are yet in doubt.  How can he help your\nignorance?  Are not you unjust, that, not to kill him without cause, do\nworse than kill him?  And that this is so, do but observe how often men\nprefer to die without reason than undergo this examination, more painful\nthan execution itself; and that oft-times by its extremity anticipates\nexecution, and perform it.  I know not where I had this story, but it\nexactly matches the conscience of our justice in this particular.  A\ncountry-woman, to a general of a very severe discipline, accused one of\nhis soldiers that he had taken from her children the little soup meat she\nhad left to nourish them withal, the army having consumed all the rest;\nbut of this proof there was none.  The general, after having cautioned\nthe woman to take good heed to what she said, for that she would make\nherself guilty of a false accusation if she told a lie, and she\npersisting, he presently caused the soldier's belly to be ripped up to\nclear the truth of the fact, and the woman was found to be right.  An\ninstructive sentence.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nUSE MAKES PERFECT\n\n'Tis not to be expected that argument and instruction, though we never so\nvoluntarily surrender our belief to what is read to us, should be of\nforce to lead us on so far as to action, if we do not, over and above,\nexercise and form the soul by experience to the course for which we\ndesign it; it will, otherwise, doubtless find itself at a loss when it\ncomes to the pinch of the business.  This is the reason why those amongst\nthe philosophers who were ambitious to attain to a greater excellence,\nwere not contented to await the severities of fortune in the retirement\nand repose of their own habitations, lest he should have surprised them\nraw and inexpert in the combat, but sallied out to meet her, and\npurposely threw themselves into the proof of difficulties.  Some of them\nabandoned riches to exercise themselves in a voluntary poverty; others\nsought out labour and an austerity of life, to inure them to hardships\nand inconveniences; others have deprived themselves of their dearest\nmembers, as of sight, and of the instruments of generation, lest their\ntoo delightful and effeminate service should soften and debauch the\nstability of their souls.\n\nBut in dying, which is the greatest work we have to do, practice can give\nus no assistance at all.  A man may by custom fortify himself against\npain, shame, necessity, and such-like accidents, but as to death, we can\nexperiment it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it.\nThere have, anciently, been men so excellent managers of their time that\nthey have tried even in death itself to relish and taste it, and who have\nbent their utmost faculties of mind to discover what this passage is, but\nthey are none of them come back to tell us the news:\n\n               \"Nemo expergitus exstat,\n               Frigida quern semel est vitai pausa sequuta.\"\n\n     [\"No one wakes who has once fallen into the cold sleep of death.\"\n     --Lucretius, iii. 942]\n\nJulius Canus, a noble Roman, of singular constancy and virtue, having\nbeen condemned to die by that worthless fellow Caligula, besides many\nmarvellous testimonies that he gave of his resolution, as he was just\ngoing to receive the stroke of the executioner, was asked by a\nphilosopher, a friend of his: \"Well, Canus, whereabout is your soul now?\nwhat is she doing?  What are you thinking of?\"--\"I was thinking,\" replied\nthe other, \"to keep myself ready, and the faculties of my mind full\nsettled and fixed, to try if in this short and quick instant of death, I\ncould perceive the motion of the soul when she parts from the body, and\nwhether she has any sentiment at the separation, that I may after come\nagain if I can, to acquaint my friends with it.\"  This man philosophises\nnot unto death only, but in death itself.  What a strange assurance was\nthis, and what bravery of courage, to desire his death should be a lesson\nto him, and to have leisure to think of other things in so great an\naffair:\n\n               \"Jus hoc animi morientis habebat.\"\n\n     [\"This mighty power of mind he had dying.\"-Lucan, viii. 636.]\n\nAnd yet I fancy, there is a certain way of making it familiar to us, and\nin some sort of making trial what it is.  We may gain experience, if not\nentire and perfect, yet such, at least, as shall not be totally useless\nto us, and that may render us more confident and more assured.  If we\ncannot overtake it, we may approach it and view it, and if we do not\nadvance so far as the fort, we may at least discover and make ourselves\nacquainted with the avenues.  It is not without reason that we are taught\nto consider sleep as a resemblance of death: with how great facility do\nwe pass from waking to sleeping, and with how little concern do we lose\nthe knowledge of light and of ourselves.  Peradventure, the faculty of\nsleeping would seem useless and contrary to nature, since it deprives us\nof all action and sentiment, were it not that by it nature instructs us\nthat she has equally made us to die as to live; and in life presents to\nus the eternal state she reserves for us after it, to accustom us to it\nand to take from us the fear of it.  But such as have by violent accident\nfallen into a swoon, and in it have lost all sense, these, methinks, have\nbeen very near seeing the true and natural face of death; for as to the\nmoment of the passage, it is not to be feared that it brings with it any\npain or displeasure, forasmuch as we can have no feeling without leisure;\nour sufferings require time, which in death is so short, and so\nprecipitous, that it must necessarily be insensible.  They are the\napproaches that we are to fear, and these may fall within the limits of\nexperience.\n\nMany things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect; I have\npassed a good part of my life in a perfect and entire health; I say, not\nonly entire, but, moreover, sprightly and wanton.  This state, so full of\nverdure, jollity, and vigour, made the consideration of sickness so\nformidable to me, that when I came to experience it, I found the attacks\nfaint and easy in comparison with what I had apprehended.  Of this I have\ndaily experience; if I am under the shelter of a warm room, in a stormy\nand tempestuous night, I wonder how people can live abroad, and am\nafflicted for those who are out in the fields: if I am there myself, I do\nnot wish to be anywhere else.  This one thing of being always shut up in\na chamber I fancied insupportable: but I was presently inured to be so\nimprisoned a week, nay a month together, in a very weak, disordered, and\nsad condition; and I have found that, in the time of my health, I much\nmore pitied the sick, than I think myself to be pitied when I am so, and\nthat the force of my imagination enhances near one-half of the essence\nand reality of the thing.  I hope that when I come to die I shall find it\nthe same, and that, after all, it is not worth the pains I take, so much\npreparation and so much assistance as I call in, to undergo the stroke.\nBut, at all events, we cannot give ourselves too much advantage.\n\nIn the time of our third or second troubles (I do not well remember\nwhich), going one day abroad to take the air, about a league from my own\nhouse, which is seated in the very centre of all the bustle and mischief\nof the late civil wars in France; thinking myself in all security and so\nnear to my retreat that I stood in need of no better equipage, I had\ntaken a horse that went very easy upon his pace, but was not very strong.\nBeing upon my return home, a sudden occasion falling out to make use of\nthis horse in a kind of service that he was not accustomed to, one of my\ntrain, a lusty, tall fellow, mounted upon a strong German horse, that had\na very ill mouth, fresh and vigorous, to play the brave and set on ahead\nof his fellows, comes thundering full speed in the very track where I\nwas, rushing like a Colossus upon the little man and the little horse,\nwith such a career of strength and weight, that he turned us both over\nand over, topsy-turvy with our heels in the air: so that there lay the\nhorse overthrown and stunned with the fall, and I ten or twelve paces\nfrom him stretched out at length, with my face all battered and broken,\nmy sword which I had had in my hand, above ten paces beyond that, and my\nbelt broken all to pieces, without motion or sense any more than a stock.\n'Twas the only swoon I was ever in till that hour in my life.  Those who\nwere with me, after having used all the means they could to bring me to\nmyself, concluding me dead, took me up in their arms, and carried me with\nvery much difficulty home to my house, which was about half a French\nleague from thence.  On the way, having been for more than two hours\ngiven over for a dead man, I began to move and to fetch my breath; for so\ngreat abundance of blood was fallen into my stomach, that nature had need\nto rouse her forces to discharge it.  They then raised me upon my feet,\nwhere I threw off a whole bucket of clots of blood, as this I did also\nseveral times by the way.  This gave me so much ease, that I began to\nrecover a little life, but so leisurely and by so small advances, that my\nfirst sentiments were much nearer the approaches of death than life:\n\n               \"Perche, dubbiosa ancor del suo ritorno,\n               Non s'assicura attonita la mente.\"\n\n    [\"For the soul, doubtful as to its return, could not compose itself\"\n     --Tasso, Gierus.  Lib., xii. 74.]\n\nThe remembrance of this accident, which is very well imprinted in my\nmemory, so naturally representing to me the image and idea of death, has\nin some sort reconciled me to that untoward adventure.  When I first\nbegan to open my eyes, it was with so perplexed, so weak and dead a\nsight, that I could yet distinguish nothing but only discern the light:\n\n               \"Come quel ch'or apre, or'chiude\n               Gli occhi, mezzo tra'l sonno e l'esser desto.\"\n\n     [\"As a man that now opens, now shuts his eyes, between sleep\n     and waking.\"--Tasso, Gierus.  Lib., viii., 26.]\n\nAs to the functions of the soul, they advanced with the same pace and\nmeasure with those of the body.  I saw myself all bloody, my doublet\nbeing stained all over with the blood I had vomited.  The first thought\nthat came into my mind was that I had a harquebuss shot in my head, and\nindeed, at the time there were a great many fired round about us.\nMethought my life but just hung upon my, lips: and I shut my eyes, to\nhelp, methought, to thrust it out, and took a pleasure in languishing and\nletting myself go.  It was an imagination that only superficially floated\nupon my soul, as tender and weak as all the rest, but really, not only\nexempt from anything displeasing, but mixed with that sweetness that\npeople feel when they glide into a slumber.\n\nI believe it is the very same condition those people are in, whom we see\nswoon with weakness in the agony of death we pity them without cause,\nsupposing them agitated with grievous dolours, or that their souls suffer\nunder painful thoughts.  It has ever been my belief, contrary to the\nopinion of many, and particularly of La Boetie, that those whom we see so\nsubdued and stupefied at the approaches of their end, or oppressed with\nthe length of the disease, or by accident of an apoplexy or falling\nsickness,\n\n         \"Vi morbi saepe coactus\n          Ante oculos aliquis nostros, ut fulminis ictu,\n          Concidit, et spumas agit; ingemit, et tremit artus;\n          Desipit, extentat nervos, torquetur, anhelat,\n          Inconstanter, et in jactando membra fatigat;\"\n\n     [\"Often, compelled by the force of disease, some one as\n     thunderstruck falls under our eyes, and foams, groans, and trembles,\n     stretches, twists, breathes irregularly, and in paroxysms wears out\n     his strength.\"--Lucretius, iii. 485.]\n\nor hurt in the head, whom we hear to mutter, and by fits to utter\ngrievous groans; though we gather from these signs by which it seems as\nif they had some remains of consciousness, and that there are movements\nof the body; I have always believed, I say, both the body and the soul\nbenumbed and asleep,\n\n               \"Vivit, et est vitae nescius ipse suae,\"\n\n               [\"He lives, and does not know that he is alive.\"\n               --Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 12.]\n\nand could not believe that in so great a stupefaction of the members and\nso great a defection of the senses, the soul could maintain any force\nwithin to take cognisance of herself, and that, therefore, they had no\ntormenting reflections to make them consider and be sensible of the\nmisery of their condition, and consequently were not much to be pitied.\n\nI can, for my part, think of no state so insupportable and dreadful, as\nto have the soul vivid and afflicted, without means to declare itself; as\none should say of such as are sent to execution with their tongues first\ncut out (were it not that in this kind of dying, the most silent seems to\nme the most graceful, if accompanied with a grave and constant\ncountenance); or if those miserable prisoners, who fall into the hands of\nthe base hangman soldiers of this age, by whom they are tormented with\nall sorts of inhuman usage to compel them to some excessive and\nimpossible ransom; kept, in the meantime, in such condition and place,\nwhere they have no means of expressing or signifying their thoughts and\ntheir misery.  The poets have feigned some gods who favour the\ndeliverance of such as suffer under a languishing death:\n\n                              \"Hunc ego Diti\n               Sacrum jussa fero, teque isto corpore solvo.\"\n\n     [\"I bidden offer this sacred thing to Pluto, and from that body\n     dismiss thee.\"--AEneid, iv. 782.]\n\nboth the interrupted words, and the short and irregular answers one gets\nfrom them sometimes, by bawling and keeping a clutter about them; or the\nmotions which seem to yield some consent to what we would have them do,\nare no testimony, nevertheless, that they live, an entire life at least.\nSo it happens to us in the yawning of sleep, before it has fully\npossessed us, to perceive, as in a dream, what is done about us, and to\nfollow the last things that are said with a perplexed and uncertain\nhearing which seems but to touch upon the borders of the soul; and to\nmake answers to the last words that have been spoken to us, which have\nmore in them of chance than sense.\n\nNow seeing I have in effect tried it, I have no doubt but I have hitherto\nmade a right judgment; for first, being in a swoon, I laboured to rip\nopen the buttons of my doublet with my nails, for my sword was gone; and\nyet I felt nothing in my imagination that hurt me; for we have many\nmotions in us that do not proceed from our direction;\n\n          \"Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque retractant;\"\n\n     [\"Half-dead fingers grope about, and grasp again the sword.\"\n     --AEneid, x. 396.]\n\nso falling people extend their arms before them by a natural impulse,\nwhich prompts our limbs to offices and motions without any commission\nfrom our reason.\n\n         \"Falciferos memorant currus abscindere membra .  .  .\n          Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod\n          Decidit abscissum; cum mens tamen atque hominis vis\n          Mobilitate mali, non quit sentire dolorem.\"\n\n     [\"They relate that scythe-bearing chariots mow off limbs, so that\n     they quiver on the ground; and yet the mind of him from whom the\n     limb is taken by the swiftness of the blow feels no pain.\"\n     --Lucretius, iii. 642.]\n\nMy stomach was so oppressed with the coagulated blood, that my hands\nmoved to that part, of their own voluntary motion, as they frequently do\nto the part that itches, without being directed by our will.  There are\nseveral animals, and even men, in whom one may perceive the muscles to\nstir and tremble after they are dead.  Every one experimentally knows\nthat there are some members which grow stiff and flag without his leave.\nNow, those passions which only touch the outward bark of us, cannot be\nsaid to be ours: to make them so, there must be a concurrence of the\nwhole man; and the pains which are felt by the hand or the foot while\nwe are sleeping, are none of ours.\n\nAs I drew near my own house, where the alarm of my fall was already got\nbefore me, and my family were come out to meet me, with the hubbub usual\nin such cases, not only did I make some little answer to some questions\nwhich were asked me; but they moreover tell me, that I was sufficiently\ncollected to order them to bring a horse to my wife whom on the road,\nI saw struggling and tiring herself which is hilly and rugged.  This\nshould seem to proceed from a soul its functions; but it was nothing so\nwith me. I knew not what I said or did, and they were nothing but idle\nthoughts in the clouds, that were stirred up by the senses of the eyes\nand ears, and proceeded not from me.  I knew not for all that, whence I\ncame or whither I went, neither was I capable to weigh and consider what\nwas said to me: these were light effects, that the senses produced of\nthemselves as of custom; what the soul contributed was in a dream,\nlightly touched, licked and bedewed by the soft impression of the senses.\nNotwithstanding, my condition was, in truth, very easy and quiet; I had\nno affliction upon me, either for others or myself; it was an extreme\nlanguor and weakness, without any manner of pain.  I saw my own house,\nbut knew it not.  When they had put me to bed I found an inexpressible\nsweetness in that repose; for I had been desperately tugged and lugged by\nthose poor people who had taken the pains to carry me upon their arms a\nvery great and a very rough way, and had in so doing all quite tired out\nthemselves, twice or thrice one after another.  They offered me several\nremedies, but I would take none, certainly believing that I was mortally\nwounded in the head.  And, in earnest, it had been a very happy death,\nfor the weakness of my understanding deprived me of the faculty of\ndiscerning, and that of my body of the sense of feeling; I was suffering\nmyself to glide away so sweetly and after so soft and easy a manner, that\nI scarce find any other action less troublesome than that was.  But when\nI came again to myself and to resume my faculties:\n\n               \"Ut tandem sensus convaluere mei,\"\n\n          [\"When at length my lost senses again returned.\"\n          --Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 14.]\n\nwhich was two or three hours after, I felt myself on a sudden involved in\nterrible pain, having my limbs battered and ground with my fall, and was.\nso ill for two or three nights after, that I thought I was once more\ndying again, but a more painful death, having concluded myself as good as\ndead before, and to this hour am sensible of the bruises of that terrible\nshock.  I will not here omit, that the last thing I could make them beat\ninto my head, was the memory of this accident, and I had it over and over\nagain repeated to me, whither I was going, from whence I came, and at\nwhat time of the day this mischance befell me, before I could comprehend\nit.  As to the manner of my fall, that was concealed from me in favour to\nhim who had been the occasion, and other flim-flams were invented.  But a\nlong time after, and the very next day that my memory began to return and\nto represent to me the state wherein I was, at the instant that I\nperceived this horse coming full drive upon me (for I had seen him at my\nheels, and gave myself for gone, but this thought had been so sudden,\nthat fear had had no leisure to introduce itself) it seemed to me like a\nflash of lightning that had pierced my soul, and that I came from the\nother world.\n\nThis long story of so light an accident would appear vain enough, were it\nnot for the knowledge I have gained by it for my own use; for I do really\nfind, that to get acquainted with death, needs no more but nearly to\napproach it.  Every one, as Pliny says, is a good doctrine to himself,\nprovided he be capable of discovering himself near at hand.  Here, this\nis not my doctrine, 'tis my study; and is not the lesson of another, but\nmy own; and if I communicate it, it ought not to be ill taken, for that\nwhich is of use to me, may also, peradventure, be useful to another.  As\nto the rest, I spoil nothing, I make use of nothing but my own; and if I\nplay the fool, 'tis at my own expense, and nobody else is concerned in't;\nfor 'tis a folly that will die with me, and that no one is to inherit.\nWe hear but of two or three of the ancients, who have beaten this path,\nand yet I cannot say if it was after this manner, knowing no more of them\nbut their names.  No one since has followed the track: 'tis a rugged\nroad, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain,\nas that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate\ninternal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble\nmotions; 'tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us\nfrom the common and most recommended employments of the world.  'Tis now\nmany years since that my thoughts have had no other aim and level than\nmyself, and that I have only pried into and studied myself: or, if I\nstudy any other thing, 'tis to apply it to or rather in myself.  And yet\nI do not think it a fault, if, as others do by other much less profitable\nsciences, I communicate what I have learned in this, though I am not very\nwell pleased with my own progress.  There is no description so difficult,\nnor doubtless of so great utility, as that of a man's self: and withal, a\nman must curl his hair and set out and adjust himself, to appear in\npublic: now I am perpetually tricking myself out, for I am eternally upon\nmy own description.  Custom has made all speaking of a man's self\nvicious, and positively interdicts it, in hatred to the boasting that\nseems inseparable from the testimony men give of themselves:\n\n                    \"In vitium ducit culpae fuga.\"\n\n     [\"The avoiding a mere fault often leads us into a greater.\"\n     Or: \"The escape from a fault leads into a vice\"\n     --Horace, De Arte Poetics, verse 31.]\n\nInstead of blowing the child's nose, this is to take his nose off\naltogether.  I think the remedy worse than the disease.  But, allowing it\nto be true that it must of necessity be presumption to entertain people\nwith discourses of one's self, I ought not, pursuing my general design,\nto forbear an action that publishes this infirmity of mine, nor conceal\nthe fault which I not only practise but profess.  Notwithstanding, to\nspeak my thought freely, I think that the custom of condemning wine,\nbecause some people will be drunk, is itself to be condemned; a man\ncannot abuse anything but what is good in itself; and I believe that this\nrule has only regard to the popular vice.  They are bits for calves, with\nwhich neither the saints whom we hear speak so highly of themselves, nor\nthe philosophers, nor the divines will be curbed; neither will I, who am\nas little the one as the other, If they do not write of it expressly, at\nall events, when the occasions arise, they don't hesitate to put\nthemselves on the public highway.  Of what does Socrates treat more\nlargely than of himself?  To what does he more direct and address the\ndiscourses of his disciples, than to speak of themselves, not of the\nlesson in their book, but of the essence and motion of their souls?  We\nconfess ourselves religiously to God and our confessor; as our\nneighbours, do to all the people.  But some will answer that we there\nspeak nothing but accusation against ourselves; why then, we say all; for\nour very virtue itself is faulty and penetrable.  My trade and art is to\nlive; he that forbids me to speak according to my own sense, experience,\nand practice, may as well enjoin an architect not to speak of building\naccording to his own knowledge, but according to that of his neighbour;\naccording to the knowledge of another, and not according to his own.  If\nit be vainglory for a man to publish his own virtues, why does not Cicero\nprefer the eloquence of Hortensius, and Hortensius that of Cicero?\nPeradventure they mean that I should give testimony of myself by works\nand effects, not barely by words.  I chiefly paint my thoughts, a subject\nvoid of form and incapable of operative production; 'tis all that I can\ndo to couch it in this airy body of the voice; the wisest and devoutest\nmen have lived in the greatest care to avoid all apparent effects.\nEffects would more speak of fortune than of me; they manifest their own\noffice and not mine, but uncertainly and by conjecture; patterns of some\none particular virtue.  I expose myself entire; 'tis a body where, at one\nview, the veins, muscles, and tendons are apparent, every of them in its\nproper place; here the effects of a cold; there of the heart beating,\nvery dubiously.  I do not write my own acts, but myself and my essence.\n\nI am of opinion that a man must be very cautious how he values himself,\nand equally conscientious to give a true report, be it better or worse,\nimpartially.  If I thought myself perfectly good and wise, I would rattle\nit out to some purpose.  To speak less of one's self than what one really\nis is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under\na man's value is pusillanimity and cowardice, according to, Aristotle.\nNo virtue assists itself with falsehood; truth is never matter of error.\nTo speak more of one's self than is really true is not always mere\npresumption; 'tis, moreover, very often folly; to, be immeasurably\npleased with what one is, and to fall into an indiscreet self-love, is in\nmy opinion the substance of this vice.  The most sovereign remedy to cure\nit, is to do quite contrary to what these people direct who, in\nforbidding men to speak of themselves, consequently, at the same time,\ninterdict thinking of themselves too.  Pride dwells in the thought; the\ntongue can have but a very little share in it.\n\nThey fancy that to think of one's self is to be delighted with one's\nself; to frequent and converse with one's self, to be overindulgent; but\nthis excess springs only in those who take but a superficial view of\nthemselves, and dedicate their main inspection to their affairs; who call\nit mere reverie and idleness to occupy one's self with one's self, and\nthe building one's self up a mere building of castles in the air; who\nlook upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger.  If any one be\nin rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, let\nhim but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be\nabated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him\nunder foot.  If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personal\nvalour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so many\narmies, so many nations, that leave him so far behind them.  No\nparticular quality can make any man proud, that will at the same time put\nthe many other weak and imperfect ones he has in the other scale, and the\nnothingness of human condition to make up the weight.  Because Socrates\nhad alone digested to purpose the precept of his god, \"to know himself,\"\nand by that study arrived at the perfection of setting himself at nought,\nhe only was reputed worthy the title of a sage.  Whosoever shall so know\nhimself, let him boldly speak it out.\n\n\n\n\n     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:\n\n     Addresses his voyage to no certain, port\n     All apprentices when we come to it (death)\n     Any one may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death\n     Business to-morrow\n     Condemning wine, because some people will be drunk\n     Conscience makes us betray, accuse, and fight against ourselves\n     Curiosity and of that eager passion for news\n     Delivered into our own custody the keys of life\n     Drunkeness a true and certain trial of every one's nature\n     I can more hardly believe a man's constancy than any virtue\n     \"I wish you good health.\"  \"No health to thee,\" replied the other\n     If to philosophise be, as 'tis defined, to doubt\n     Improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair\n     It's madness to nourish infirmity\n     Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man\n     Living is slavery if the liberty of dying be wanting.\n     Look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger\n     Lower himself to the meanness of defending his innocence\n     Much difference betwixt us and ourselves\n     No alcohol the night on which a man intends to get children\n     No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness\n     Not conclude too much upon your mistress's inviolable chastity\n     One door into life, but a hundred thousand ways out\n     Ordinary method of cure is carried on at the expense of life\n     Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age\n     Shame for me to serve, being so near the reach of liberty\n     Speak less of one's self than what one really is is folly\n     Taught to consider sleep as a resemblance of death\n     The action is commendable, not the man\n     The most voluntary death is the finest\n     The vice opposite to curiosity is negligence\n     Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect\n     Thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain\n     Tis evil counsel that will admit no change\n     Torture: rather a trial of patience than of truth\n     We do not go, we are driven\n     What can they suffer who do not fear to die?\n     Whoever expects punishment already suffers it\n     Wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can","title":"Essays of Michel de Montaigne \u2014 Volume 09","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":20512}