{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_3599/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_3599","id":"gutenberg_3599","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3599","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","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\n\nCONTENTS OF VOLUME 19.\n\nXIII.  Of Experience.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nOF EXPERIENCE\n\nThere is no desire more natural than that of knowledge.  We try all ways\nthat can lead us to it; where reason is wanting, we therein employ\nexperience,\n\n              \"Per varios usus artem experientia fecit,\n               Exemplo monstrante viam,\"\n\n     [\"By various trials experience created art, example shewing the\n     way.\"--Manilius, i. 59.]\n\nwhich is a means much more weak and cheap; but truth is so great a thing\nthat we ought not to disdain any mediation that will guide us to it.\nReason has so many forms that we know not to which to take; experience\nhas no fewer; the consequence we would draw from the comparison of events\nis unsure, by reason they are always unlike.  There is no quality so\nuniversal in this image of things as diversity and variety.  Both the\nGreeks and the Latins and we, for the most express example of similitude,\nemploy that of eggs; and yet there have been men, particularly one at\nDelphos, who could distinguish marks of difference amongst eggs so well\nthat he never mistook one for another, and having many hens, could tell\nwhich had laid it.\n\nDissimilitude intrudes itself of itself in our works; no art can arrive\nat perfect similitude: neither Perrozet nor any other can so carefully\npolish and blanch the backs of his cards that some gamesters will not\ndistinguish them by seeing them only shuffled by another.  Resemblance\ndoes not so much make one as difference makes another.  Nature has\nobliged herself to make nothing other that was not unlike.\n\nAnd yet I am not much pleased with his opinion, who thought by the\nmultitude of laws to curb the authority of judges in cutting out for them\ntheir several parcels; he was not aware that there is as much liberty and\nlatitude in the interpretation of laws as in their form; and they but\nfool themselves, who think to lessen and stop our disputes by recalling\nus to the express words of the Bible: forasmuch as our mind does not find\nthe field less spacious wherein to controvert the sense of another than\nto deliver his own; and as if there were less animosity and tartness in\ncommentary than in invention.  We see how much he was mistaken, for we\nhave more laws in France than all the rest of the world put together, and\nmore than would be necessary for the government of all the worlds of\nEpicurus:\n\n          \"Ut olim flagitiis, sic nunc legibus, laboramus.\"\n\n     [\"As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by\n     laws.\"--Tacitus, Annal., iii. 25.]\n\nand yet we have left so much to the opinions and decisions of our judges\nthat there never was so full a liberty or so full a license.  What have\nour legislators gained by culling out a hundred thousand particular\ncases, and by applying to these a hundred thousand laws?  This number\nholds no manner of proportion with the infinite diversity of human\nactions; the multiplication of our inventions will never arrive at the\nvariety of examples; add to these a hundred times as many more, it will\nstill not happen that, of events to come, there shall one be found that,\nin this vast number of millions of events so chosen and recorded, shall\nso tally with any other one, and be so exactly coupled and matched with\nit that there will not remain some circumstance and diversity which will\nrequire a diverse judgment.  There is little relation betwixt our\nactions, which are in perpetual mutation, and fixed and immutable laws;\nthe most to be desired are those that are the most rare, the most simple\nand general; and I am even of opinion that we had better have none at all\nthan to have them in so prodigious a number as we have.\n\nNature always gives them better and happier than those we make ourselves;\nwitness the picture of the Golden Age of the Poets and the state wherein\nwe see nations live who have no other.  Some there are, who for their\nonly judge take the first passer-by that travels along their mountains,\nto determine their cause; and others who, on their market day, choose out\nsome one amongst them upon the spot to decide their controversies.  What\ndanger would there be that the wisest amongst us should so determine\nours, according to occurrences and at sight, without obligation of\nexample and consequence?  For every foot its own shoe.  King Ferdinand,\nsending colonies to the Indies, wisely provided that they should not\ncarry along with them any students of jurisprudence, for fear lest suits\nshould get footing in that new world, as being a science in its own\nnature, breeder of altercation and division; judging with Plato, \"that\nlawyers and physicians are bad institutions of a country.\"\n\nWhence does it come to pass that our common language, so easy for all\nother uses, becomes obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts?\nand that he who so clearly expresses himself in whatever else he speaks\nor writes, cannot find in these any way of declaring himself that does\nnot fall into doubt and contradiction? if it be not that the princes of\nthat art, applying themselves with a peculiar attention to cull out\nportentous words and to contrive artificial sentences, have so weighed\nevery syllable, and so thoroughly sifted every sort of quirking\nconnection that they are now confounded and entangled in the infinity of\nfigures and minute divisions, and can no more fall within any rule or\nprescription, nor any certain intelligence:\n\n          \"Confusum est, quidquid usque in pulverem sectum est.\"\n\n     [\"Whatever is beaten into powder is undistinguishable (confused).\"\n     --Seneca, Ep., 89.]\n\nAs you see children trying to bring a mass of quicksilver to a certain\nnumber of parts, the more they press and work it and endeavour to reduce\nit to their own will, the more they irritate the liberty of this generous\nmetal; it evades their endeavour and sprinkles itself into so many\nseparate bodies as frustrate all reckoning; so is it here, for in\nsubdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doubts; they\nput us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties, and\nlengthen and disperse them.  In sowing and retailing questions they make\nthe world fructify and increase in uncertainties and disputes, as the\nearth is made fertile by being crumbled and dug deep.\n\n                    \"Difficultatem facit doctrina.\"\n\n               [\"Learning (Doctrine) begets difficulty.\"\n               --Quintilian, Insat. Orat., x. 3.]\n\nWe doubted of Ulpian, and are still now more perplexed with Bartolus and\nBaldus.  We should efface the trace of this innumerable diversity of\nopinions; not adorn ourselves with it, and fill posterity with crotchets.\nI know not what to say to it; but experience makes it manifest, that so\nmany interpretations dissipate truth and break it.  Aristotle wrote to be\nunderstood; if he could not do this, much less will another that is not\nso good at it; and a third than he, who expressed his own thoughts.  We\nopen the matter, and spill it in pouring out: of one subject we make a\nthousand, and in multiplying and subdividing them, fall again into the\ninfinity of atoms of Epicurus.  Never did two men make the same judgment\nof the same thing; and 'tis impossible to find two opinions exactly\nalike, not only in several men, but in the same man, at diverse hours.\nI often find matter of doubt in things of which the commentary has\ndisdained to take notice; I am most apt to stumble in an even country,\nlike some horses that I have known, that make most trips in the smoothest\nway.\n\nWho will not say that glosses augment doubts and ignorance, since there's\nno book to be found, either human or divine, which the world busies\nitself about, whereof the difficulties are cleared by interpretation.\nThe hundredth commentator passes it on to the next, still more knotty and\nperplexed than he found it.  When were we ever agreed amongst ourselves:\n\"This book has enough; there is now no more to be said about it\"?  This\nis most apparent in the law; we give the authority of law to infinite\ndoctors, infinite decrees, and as many interpretations; yet do we find\nany end of the need of interpretating?  is there, for all that, any\nprogress or advancement towards peace, or do we stand in need of any\nfewer advocates and judges than when this great mass of law was yet in\nits first infancy?  On the contrary, we darken and bury intelligence; we\ncan no longer discover it, but at the mercy of so many fences and\nbarriers.  Men do not know the natural disease of the mind; it does\nnothing but ferret and inquire, and is eternally wheeling, juggling, and\nperplexing itself like silkworms, and then suffocates itself in its work;\n\"Mus in pice.\"--[\"A mouse in a pitch barrel.\"]--It thinks it discovers\nat a great distance, I know not what glimpses of light and imaginary\ntruth: but whilst running to it, so many difficulties, hindrances, and\nnew inquisitions cross it, that it loses its way, and is made drunk with\nthe motion: not much unlike AEsop's dogs, that seeing something like a\ndead body floating in the sea, and not being able to approach it, set to\nwork to drink the water and lay the passage dry, and so choked\nthemselves.  To which what one Crates' said of the writings of Heraclitus\nfalls pat enough, \"that they required a reader who could swim well,\" so\nthat the depth and weight of his learning might not overwhelm and stifle\nhim.  'Tis nothing but particular weakness that makes us content with\nwhat others or ourselves have found out in this chase after knowledge:\none of better understanding will not rest so content; there is always\nroom for one to follow, nay, even for ourselves; and another road; there\nis no end of our inquisitions; our end is in the other world.  'Tis a\nsign either that the mind has grown shortsighted when it is satisfied, or\nthat it has got weary.  No generous mind can stop in itself; it will\nstill tend further and beyond its power; it has sallies beyond its\neffects; if it do not advance and press forward, and retire, and rush and\nwheel about, 'tis but half alive; its pursuits are without bound or\nmethod; its aliment is admiration, the chase, ambiguity, which Apollo\nsufficiently declared in always speaking to us in a double, obscure, and\noblique sense: not feeding, but amusing and puzzling us.  'Tis an\nirregular and perpetual motion, without model and without aim; its\ninventions heat, pursue, and interproduce one another:\n\nEstienne de la Boetie; thus translated by Cotton:\n\n         \"So in a running stream one wave we see\n          After another roll incessantly,\n          And as they glide, each does successively\n          Pursue the other, each the other fly\n          By this that's evermore pushed on, and this\n          By that continually preceded is:\n          The water still does into water swill,\n          Still the same brook, but different water still.\"\n\nThere is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things,\nand more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but\ncomment upon one another.  Every place swarms with commentaries; of\nauthors there is great scarcity.  Is it not the principal and most\nreputed knowledge of our later ages to understand the learned?  Is it not\nthe common and final end of all studies?  Our opinions are grafted upon\none another; the first serves as a stock to the second, the second to the\nthird, and so forth; thus step by step we climb the ladder; whence it\ncomes to pass that he who is mounted highest has often more honour than\nmerit, for he is got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, but\none.\n\nHow often, and, peradventure, how foolishly, have I extended my book to\nmake it speak of itself; foolishly, if for no other reason but this, that\nit should remind me of what I say of others who do the same: that the\nfrequent amorous glances they cast upon their work witness that their\nhearts pant with self-love, and that even the disdainful severity\nwherewith they scourge them are but the dandlings and caressings of\nmaternal love; as Aristotle, whose valuing and undervaluing himself often\nspring from the same air of arrogance.  My own excuse is, that I ought in\nthis to have more liberty than others, forasmuch as I write specifically\nof myself and of my writings, as I do of my other actions; that my theme\nturns upon itself; but I know not whether others will accept this excuse.\n\nI observed in Germany that Luther has left as many divisions and disputes\nabout the doubt of his opinions, and more, than he himself raised upon\nthe Holy Scriptures.  Our contest is verbal: I ask what nature is, what\npleasure, circle, and substitution are?  the question is about words, and\nis answered accordingly.  A stone is a body; but if a man should further\nurge: \"And what is a body?\"--\"Substance\"; \"And what is substance?\"  and\nso on, he would drive the respondent to the end of his Calepin.\n\n     [Calepin (Ambrogio da Calepio), a famous lexicographer of the\n     fifteenth century.  His Polyglot Dictionary became so famous, that\n     Calepin became a common appellation for a lexicon]\n\nWe exchange one word for another, and often for one less understood.\nI better know what man is than I know what Animal is, or Mortal, or\nRational.  To satisfy one doubt, they give me three; 'tis the Hydra's\nhead.  Socrates asked Menon, \"What virtue was.\"  \"There is,\" says Menon,\n\"the virtue of a man and of a woman, of a magistrate and of a private\nperson, of an old man and of a child.\"  \"Very fine,\" cried Socrates,\n\"we were in quest of one virtue, and thou hast  brought us a whole\nswarm.\"  We put one question, and they return us a whole hive.  As no\nevent, no face, entirely resembles another, so do they not entirely\ndiffer: an ingenious mixture of nature.  If our faces were not alike, we\ncould not distinguish man from beast; if they were not unlike, we could\nnot distinguish one man from another; all things hold by some similitude;\nevery example halts, and the relation which is drawn from experience is\nalways faulty and imperfect.  Comparisons are ever-coupled at one end or\nother: so do the laws serve, and are fitted to every one of our affairs,\nby some wrested, biassed, and forced interpretation.\n\nSince the ethic laws, that concern the particular duty of every one in\nhimself, are so hard to be framed, as we see they are, 'tis no wonder if\nthose which govern so many particulars are much more so.  Do but consider\nthe form of this justice that governs us; 'tis a true testimony of human\nweakness, so full is it of error and contradiction.  What we find to be\nfavour and severity in justice--and we find so much of them both, that I\nknow not whether the medium is as often met with are sickly and unjust\nmembers of the very body and essence of justice.  Some country people\nhave just brought me news in great haste, that they presently left in a\nforest of mine a man with a hundred wounds upon him, who was yet\nbreathing, and begged of them water for pity's sake, and help to carry\nhim to some place of relief; they tell me they durst not go near him, but\nhave run away, lest the officers of justice should catch them there; and\nas happens to those who are found near a murdered person, they should be\ncalled in question about this accident, to their utter ruin, having\nneither money nor friends to defend their innocence.  What could I have\nsaid to these people?  'Tis certain that this office of humanity would\nhave brought them into trouble.\n\nHow many innocent people have we known that have been punished, and this\nwithout the judge's fault; and how many that have not arrived at our\nknowledge?  This happened in my time: certain men were condemned to die\nfor a murder committed; their sentence, if not pronounced, at least\ndetermined and concluded on.  The judges, just in the nick, are informed\nby the officers of an inferior court hard by, that they have some men in\ncustody, who have directly confessed the murder, and made an indubitable\ndiscovery of all the particulars of the fact.  Yet it was gravely\ndeliberated whether or not they ought to suspend the execution of the\nsentence already passed upon the first accused: they considered the\nnovelty of the example judicially, and the consequence of reversing\njudgments; that the sentence was passed, and the judges deprived of\nrepentance; and in the result, these poor devils were sacrificed by the\nforms of justice.  Philip, or some other,  provided against a like\ninconvenience after this manner.  He had condemned a man in a great fine\ntowards another by an absolute judgment.  The truth some time after being\ndiscovered, he found that he had passed an unjust sentence.  On one side\nwas the reason of the cause; on the other side, the reason of the\njudicial forms: he in some sort satisfied both, leaving the sentence in\nthe state it was, and out of his own purse recompensing the condemned\nparty.  But he had to do with a reparable affair; my men were irreparably\nhanged.  How many condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimes\nthemselves?\n\nAll which makes me remember the ancient opinions, \"That 'tis of necessity\na man must do wrong by retail who will do right in gross; and injustice\nin little things, who would come to do justice in great: that human\njustice is formed after the model of physic, according to which, all that\nis useful is also just and honest: and of what is held by the Stoics,\nthat Nature herself proceeds contrary to justice in most of her works:\nand of what is received by the Cyrenaics, that there is nothing just of\nitself, but that customs and laws make justice: and what the Theodorians\nheld that theft, sacrilege, and all sorts of uncleanness, are just in a\nsage, if he knows them to be profitable to him.\"  There is no remedy: I\nam in the same case that Alcibiades was, that I will never, if I can help\nit, put myself into the hands of a man who may determine as to my head,\nwhere my life and honour shall more depend upon the skill and diligence\nof my attorney than on my own innocence.  I would venture myself with\nsuch justice as would take notice of my good deeds, as well as my ill;\nwhere I had as much to hope as to fear: indemnity is not sufficient pay\nto a man who does better than not to do amiss.  Our justice presents to\nus but one hand, and that the left hand, too; let him be who he may, he\nshall be sure to come off with loss.\n\nIn China, of which kingdom the government and arts, without commerce with\nor knowledge of ours, surpass our examples in several excellent features,\nand of which the history teaches me how much greater and more various the\nworld is than either the ancients or we have been able to penetrate, the\nofficers deputed by the prince to visit the state of his provinces, as\nthey punish those who behave themselves ill in their charge, so do they\nliberally reward those who have conducted themselves better than the\ncommon sort, and beyond the necessity of their duty; these there present\nthemselves, not only to be approved but to get; not simply to be paid,\nbut to have a present made to them.\n\nNo judge, thank God, has ever yet spoken to me in the quality of a judge,\nupon any account whatever, whether my own or that of a third party,\nwhether criminal or civil; nor no prison has ever received me, not even\nto walk there.  Imagination renders the very outside of a jail\ndispleasing to me; I am so enamoured of liberty, that should I be\ninterdicted the access to some corner of the Indies, I should live a\nlittle less at my ease; and whilst I can find earth or air open\nelsewhere, I shall never lurk in any place where I must hide myself.\nMy God!  how ill should I endure the condition wherein I see so many\npeople, nailed to a corner of the kingdom, deprived of the right to enter\nthe principal cities and courts, and the liberty of the public roads,\nfor having quarrelled with our laws.  If those under which I live should\nshake a finger at me by way of menace, I would immediately go seek out\nothers, let them be where they would.  All my little prudence in the\ncivil wars wherein we are now engaged is employed that they may not\nhinder my liberty of going and coming.\n\nNow, the laws keep up their credit, not for being just, but because they\nare laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no\nother, and it well answers their purpose.  They are often made by fools,\nstill oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity, but\nalways by men, vain and irresolute authors.  There is nothing so much,\nnor so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty, as the laws.  Whoever obeys\nthem because they are just, does not justly obey them as he ought.  Our\nFrench laws, by their irregularity and deformity, lend, in some sort, a\nhelping hand to the disorder and corruption that all manifest in their\ndispensation and execution: the command is so perplexed and inconstant,\nthat it in some sort excuses alike disobedience and defect in the\ninterpretation, the administration and the observation of it.  What fruit\nthen soever we may extract from experience, that will little advantage\nour institution, which we draw from foreign examples, if we make so\nlittle profit of that we have of our own, which is more familiar to us,\nand, doubtless, sufficient to instruct us in that whereof we have need.\nI study myself more than any other subject; 'tis my metaphysic, my\nphysic:\n\n              \"Quis deus hanc mundi temperet arte domum:\n               Qua venit exoriens, qua deficit: unde coactis\n               Cornibus in plenum menstrua luna redit\n               Unde salo superant venti, quid flamine captet\n               Eurus, et in nubes unde perennis aqua;\n               Sit ventura dies mundi quae subruat arces....\"\n\n\n     [\"What god may govern with skill this dwelling of the world?  whence\n     rises the monthly moon, whither wanes she?  how is it that her horns\n     are contracted and reopen?  whence do winds prevail on the main?\n     what does the east wind court with its blasts?  and whence are the\n     clouds perpetually supplied with water?  is a day to come which may\n     undermine the world?\"--Propertius, iii. 5, 26.]\n\n               \"Quaerite, quos agitat mundi labor.\"\n\n     [\"Ask whom the cares of the world trouble\"--Lucan, i. 417.]\n\nIn this universality, I suffer myself to be ignorantly and negligently\nled by the general law of the world: I shall know it well enough when I\nfeel it; my learning cannot make it alter its course; it will not change\nitself for me; 'tis folly to hope it, and a greater folly to concern\none's self about it, seeing it is necessarily alike public and common.\nThe goodness and capacity of the governor ought absolutely to discharge\nus of all care of the government: philosophical inquisitions and\ncontemplations serve for no other use but to increase our curiosity.\nThe philosophers; with great reason, send us back to the rules of nature;\nbut they have nothing to do with so sublime a knowledge; they falsify\nthem, and present us her face painted with too high and too adulterate a\ncomplexion, whence spring so many different pictures of so uniform a\nsubject.  As she has given us feet to walk with, so has she given us\nprudence to guide us in life: not so ingenious, robust, and pompous a\nprudence as that of their invention; but yet one that is easy, quiet, and\nsalutary, and that very well performs what the other promises, in him who\nhas the good luck to know how to employ it sincerely and regularly, that\nis to say, according to nature.  The most simply to commit one's self to\nnature is to do it most wisely.  Oh, what a soft, easy, and wholesome\npillow is ignorance and incuriosity, whereon to repose a well-ordered\nhead!\n\nI had rather understand myself well in myself, than in Cicero.  Of the\nexperience I have of myself, I find enough to make me wise, if I were but\na good scholar: whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger,\nand to what a degree that fever transported him, will see the deformity\nof this passion better than in Aristotle, and conceive a more just hatred\nagainst it; whoever will remember the ills he has undergone, those that\nhave threatened him, and the light occasions that have removed him from\none state to another, will by that prepare himself for future changes,\nand the knowledge of his condition.  The life of Caesar has no greater\nexample for us than our own: though popular and of command, 'tis still a\nlife subject to all human accidents.  Let us but listen to it; we apply\nto ourselves all whereof we have principal need; whoever shall call to\nmemory how many and many times he has been mistaken in his own judgment,\nis he not a great fool if he does not ever after suspect it?  When I find\nmyself convinced, by the reason of another, of a false opinion, I do not\nso much learn what he has said to me that is new and the particular\nignorance--that would be no great acquisition--as, in general, I learn my\nown debility and the treachery of my understanding, whence I extract the\nreformation of the whole mass.  In all my other errors I do the same, and\nfind from this rule great utility to life; I regard not the species and\nindividual as a stone that I have stumbled at; I learn to suspect my\nsteps throughout, and am careful to place them right.  To learn that a\nman has said or done a foolish thing is nothing: a man must learn that he\nis nothing but a fool, a much more ample, and important instruction.  The\nfalse steps that my memory has so often made, even then when it was most\nsecure and confident of itself, are not idly thrown away; it vainly\nswears and assures me I shake my ears; the first opposition that is made\nto its testimony puts me into suspense, and I durst not rely upon it in\nanything of moment, nor warrant it in another person's concerns: and were\nit not that what I do for want of memory, others do more often for want\nof good faith, I should always, in matter of fact, rather choose to take\nthe truth from another's mouth than from my own.  If every one would pry\ninto the effects and circumstances of the passions that sway him, as I\nhave done into those which I am most subject to, he would see them\ncoming, and would a little break their impetuosity and career; they do\nnot always seize us on a sudden; there is threatening and degrees\n\n              \"Fluctus uti primo coepit cum albescere vento,\n               Paulatim sese tollit mare, et altius undas\n               Erigit, inde imo consurgit ad aethera fundo.\"\n\n     [\"As with the first wind the sea begins to foam, and swells, thence\n     higher swells, and higher raises the waves, till the ocean rises\n     from its depths to the sky.\"--AEneid, vii. 528.]\n\nJudgment holds in me a magisterial seat; at least it carefully endeavours\nto make it so: it leaves my appetites to take their own course, hatred\nand friendship, nay, even that I bear to myself, without change or\ncorruption; if it cannot reform the other parts according to its own\nmodel, at least it suffers not itself to be corrupted by them, but plays\nits game apart.\n\nThe advice to every one, \"to know themselves,\" should be of important\neffect, since that god of wisdom and light' caused it to be written on\nthe front of his temple,--[At Delphi]--as comprehending all he had to\nadvise us.  Plato says also, that prudence is no other thing than the\nexecution of this ordinance; and Socrates minutely verifies it in\nXenophon.  The difficulties and obscurity are not discerned in any\nscience but by those who are got into it; for a certain degree of\nintelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not, and we\nmust push against a door to know whether it be bolted against us or no:\nwhence this Platonic subtlety springs, that \"neither they who know are to\nenquire, forasmuch as they know; nor they who do not know, forasmuch as\nto inquire they must know what they inquire of.\"  So in this, \"of knowing\na man's self,\" that every man is seen so resolved and satisfied with\nhimself, that every man thinks himself sufficiently intelligent,\nsignifies that every one knows nothing about the matter; as Socrates\ngives Euthydemus to understand.  I, who profess nothing else, therein\nfind so infinite a depth and variety, that all the fruit I have reaped\nfrom my learning serves only to make me sensible how much I have to\nlearn.  To my weakness, so often confessed, I owe the propension I have\nto modesty, to the obedience of belief prescribed me, to a constant\ncoldness and moderation of opinions, and a hatred of that troublesome and\nwrangling arrogance, wholly believing and trusting in itself, the capital\nenemy of discipline and truth.  Do but hear them domineer; the first\nfopperies they utter, 'tis in the style wherewith men establish religions\nand laws:\n\n          \"Nihil est turpius, quam cognitioni et perceptions\n          assertionem approbationemque praecurrere.\"\n\n     [\"Nothing is worse than that assertion and decision should precede\n     knowledge and perception.\"--Cicero, Acad., i. 13.]\n\nAristarchus said that anciently there were scarce seven sages to be found\nin the world, and in his time scarce so many fools: have not we more\nreason than he to say so in this age of ours?  Affirmation and obstinacy\nare express signs of want of wit.  This fellow may have knocked his nose\nagainst the ground a hundred times in a day, yet he will be at his Ergo's\nas resolute and sturdy as before.  You would say he had had some new soul\nand vigour of understanding infused into him since, and that it happened\nto him, as to that ancient son of the earth, who took fresh courage and\nvigour by his fall;\n\n                      \"Cui cum tetigere parentem,\n            jam defecta vigent renovata robore membra:\"\n\n     [\"Whose broken limbs, when they touched his mother earth,\n     immediately new force acquired.\"--Lucan, iv. 599.]\n\ndoes not this incorrigible coxcomb think that he assumes a new\nunderstanding by undertaking a new dispute?  'Tis by my own experience\nthat I accuse human ignorance, which is, in my opinion, the surest part\nof the world's school.  Such as will not conclude it in themselves, by so\nvain an example as mine, or their own, let them believe it from Socrates,\nthe master of masters; for the philosopher Antisthenes said to his\ndisciples, \"Let us go and hear Socrates; there I will be a pupil with you\";\nand, maintaining this doctrine of the Stoic sect, \"that virtue was\nsufficient to make a life completely happy, having no need of any other\nthing whatever\"; except of the force of Socrates, added he.\n\nThat long attention that I employ in considering myself, also fits rile\nto judge tolerably enough of others; and there are few things whereof I\nspeak better and with better excuse.  I happen very often more exactly to\nsee and distinguish the qualities of my friends than they do themselves:\nI have astonished some with the pertinence of my description, and have\ngiven them warning of themselves.  By having from my infancy been\naccustomed to contemplate my own life in those of others, I have acquired\na complexion studious in that particular; and when I am once interit upon\nit, I let few things about me, whether countenances, humours,\nor discourses, that serve to that purpose, escape me.  I study all,\nboth what I am to avoid and what I am to follow.  Also in my friends,\nI discover by their productions their inward inclinations; not by\narranging this infinite variety of so diverse and unconnected actions\ninto certain species and chapters, and distinctly distributing my parcels\nand divisions under known heads and classes;\n\n          \"Sed neque quam multae species, nec nomina quae sint,\n          Est numerus.\"\n\n     [\"But neither can we enumerate how many kinds there what are their\n     names.\"--Virgil, Georg., ii. 103.]\n\nThe wise speak and deliver their fancies more specifically, and piece by\npiece; I, who see no further into things than as use informs me, present\nmine generally without rule and experimentally: I pronounce my opinion by\ndisjointed articles, as a thing that cannot be spoken at once and in\ngross; relation and conformity are not to be found in such low and common\nsouls as ours.  Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which every\npiece keeps its place and bears its mark:\n\n               \"Sola sapientia in se tota conversa est.\"\n\n     [\"Wisdom only is wholly within itself\"--Cicero, De Fin., iii. 7.]\n\nI leave it to artists, and I know not whether or no they will be able to\nbring it about, in so perplexed, minute, and fortuitous a thing, to\nmarshal into distinct bodies this infinite diversity of faces, to settle\nour inconstancy, and set it in order.  I do not only find it hard to\npiece our actions to one another, but I moreover find it hard properly to\ndesign each by itself by any principal quality, so ambiguous and variform\nthey are with diverse lights.  That which is remarked for rare in\nPerseus, king of Macedon, \"that his mind, fixing itself to no one\ncondition, wandered in all sorts of living, and represented manners so\nwild and erratic that it was neither known to himself or any other what\nkind of man he was,\" seems almost to fit all the world; and, especially,\nI have seen another of his make, to whom I think this conclusion might\nmore properly be applied; no moderate settledness, still running headlong\nfrom one extreme to another, upon occasions not to be guessed at; no line\nof path without traverse and wonderful contrariety: no one quality simple\nand unmixed; so that the best guess men can one day make will be, that he\naffected and studied to make himself known by being not to be known.  A\nman had need have sound ears to hear himself frankly criticised; and as\nthere are few who can endure to hear it without being nettled, those who\nhazard the undertaking it to us manifest a singular effect of friendship;\nfor 'tis to love sincerely indeed, to venture to wound and offend us, for\nour own good.  I think it harsh to judge a man whose ill qualities are\nmore than his good ones: Plato requires three things in him who will\nexamine the soul of another: knowledge, benevolence, boldness.\n\nI was sometimes asked, what I should have thought myself fit for, had any\none designed to make use of me, while I was of suitable years:\n\n         \"Dum melior vires sanguis dabat, aemula necdum\n          Temporibus geminis canebat sparsa senectus:\"\n\n     [\"Whilst better blood gave me vigour, and before envious old age\n     whitened and thinned my temples.\"--AEneid, V. 415.]\n\n\"for nothing,\" said I; and I willingly excuse myself from knowing\nanything which enslaves me to others.  But I had told the truth to my\nmaster,--[Was this Henri VI.?  D.W.]--and had regulated his manners, if\nhe had so pleased, not in gross, by scholastic lessons, which I\nunderstand not, and from which I see no true reformation spring in those\nthat do; but by observing them by leisure, at all opportunities, and\nsimply and naturally judging them as an eye-witness, distinctly one by\none; giving him to understand upon what terms he was in the common\nopinion, in opposition to his flatterers.  There is none of us who would\nnot be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with\nthat sort of canaille.  How, if Alexander, that great king and\nphilosopher, cannot defend himself from them!\n\nI should have had fidelity, judgment, and freedom enough for that\npurpose.  It would be a nameless office, otherwise it would lose its\ngrace and its effect; and 'tis a part that is not indifferently fit for\nall men; for truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times\nand indiscriminately; its use, noble as it is, has its circumspections\nand limits.  It often falls out, as the world goes, that a man lets it\nslip into the ear of a prince, not only to no purpose, but moreover\ninjuriously and unjustly; and no man shall make me believe that a\nvirtuous remonstrance may not be viciously applied, and that the interest\nof the substance is not often to give way to that of the form.\n\nFor such a purpose, I would  have a man who is content with his own\nfortune:\n\n               \"Quod sit, esse velit, nihilque malit,\"\n\n          [\"Who is pleased with what he is and desires nothing further.\"\n          --Martial, x. ii, 18.]\n\nand of moderate station; forasmuch as, on the one hand, he would not be\nafraid to touch his master's heart to the quick, for fear by that means\nof losing his preferment: and, on the other hand, being of no high\nquality, he would have more easy communication with all sorts of people.\nI would have this office limited to only one person; for to allow the\nprivilege of his liberty and privacy to many, would beget an inconvenient\nirreverence; and of that one, I would above all things require the\nfidelity of silence.\n\nA king is not to be believed when he brags of his constancy in standing\nthe shock of the enemy for his glory, if for his profit and amendment he\ncannot stand the liberty of a friend's advice, which has no other power\nbut to pinch his ear, the remainder of its effect being still in his own\nhands.  Now, there is no condition of men whatever who stand in so great\nneed of true and free advice and warning, as they do: they sustain a\npublic life, and have to satisfy the opinion of so many spectators, that,\nas those about them conceal from them whatever should divert them from\ntheir own way, they insensibly find themselves involved in the hatred and\ndetestation of their people, often upon occasions which they might have\navoided without any prejudice even of their pleasures themselves, had\nthey been advised and set right in time.  Their favourites commonly have\nmore regard to themselves than to their master; and indeed it answers\nwith them, forasmuch as, in truth, most offices of real friendship, when\napplied to the sovereign, are under a rude and dangerous hazard, so that\ntherein there is great need, not only of very great affection and\nfreedom, but of courage too.\n\nIn fine, all this hodge-podge which I scribble here, is nothing but a\nregister of the essays of my own life, which, for the internal soundness,\nis exemplary enough to take instruction against the grain; but as to\nbodily health, no man can furnish out more profitable experience than I,\nwho present it pure, and no way corrupted and changed by art or opinion.\nExperience is properly upon its own dunghill in the subject of physic,\nwhere reason wholly gives it place: Tiberius said that whoever had lived\ntwenty years ought to be responsible to himself for all things that were\nhurtful or wholesome to him, and know how to order himself without\nphysic;\n\n     [All that Suetonius says in his Life of Tiberius is that this\n     emperor, after he was thirty years old, governed his health without\n     the aid of physicians; and what Plutarch tells us, in his essay on\n     the Rules and Precepts of Health, is that Tiberius said that the man\n     who, having attained sixty years, held out his pulse to a physician\n     was a fool.]\n\nand he might have learned it of Socrates, who, advising his disciples to\nbe solicitous of their health as a chief study, added that it was hard if\na man of sense, having a care to his exercise and diet, did not better\nknow than any physician what was good or ill for him.  And physic itself\nprofesses always to have experience for the test of its operations: so\nPlato had reason to say that, to be a right physician, it would be\nnecessary that he who would become such, should first himself have passed\nthrough all the diseases he pretends to cure, and through all the\naccidents and circumstances whereof he is to judge.  'Tis but reason they\nshould get the pox, if they will know how to cure it; for my part,\nI should put myself into such hands; the others but guide us, like him\nwho paints seas and rocks and ports sitting at table, and there makes the\nmodel of a ship sailing in all security; but put him to the work itself,\nhe knows not at which end to begin.  They make such a description of our\nmaladies as a town crier does of a lost horse or dog--such a color, such\na height, such an ear--but bring it to him and he knows it not, for all\nthat.  If physic should one day give me some good and visible relief,\nthen truly I will cry out in good earnest:\n\n               \"Tandem effcaci do manus scientiae.\"\n\n     [\"Show me and efficacious science, and I will take it by the hand.\"\n     --Horace, xvii. I.]\n\nThe arts that promise to keep our bodies and souls in health promise a\ngreat deal; but, withal, there are none that less keep their promise.\nAnd, in our time, those who make profession of these arts amongst us,\nless manifest the effects than any other sort of men; one may say of\nthem, at the most, that they sell medicinal drugs; but that they are\nphysicians, a man cannot say.\n\n     [The edition of 1588 adds: \"Judging by themselves, and those\n     who are ruled by them.\"]\n\nI have lived long enough to be able to give an account of the custom that\nhas carried me so far; for him who has a mind to try it, as his taster,\nI have made the experiment.  Here are some of the articles, as my memory\nshall supply me with them; I have no custom that has not varied according\nto circumstances; but I only record those that I have been best\nacquainted with, and that hitherto have had the greatest possession of\nme.\n\nMy form of life is the same in sickness as in health; the same bed, the\nsame hours, the same meat, and even the same drink, serve me in both\nconditions alike; I add nothing to them but the moderation of more or\nless, according to my strength and appetite.  My health is to maintain my\nwonted state without disturbance.  I see that sickness puts me off it on\none side, and if I will be ruled by the physicians, they will put me off\non the other; so that by fortune and by art I am out of my way.\nI believe nothing more certainly than this, that I cannot be hurt by the\nuse of things to which I have been so long accustomed.  'Tis for custom\nto give a form to a man's life, such as it pleases him; she is all in all\nin that: 'tis the potion of Circe, that varies our nature as she best\npleases.  How many nations, and but three steps from us, think the fear\nof the night-dew, that so manifestly is hurtful to us, a ridiculous\nfancy; and our own watermen and peasants laugh at it.  You make a German\nsick if you lay him upon a mattress, as you do an Italian if you lay him\non a feather-bed, and a Frenchman, if without curtains or fire. A Spanish\nstomach cannot hold out to eat as we can, nor ours to drink like the\nSwiss.  A German made me very merry at Augsburg, by finding fault with\nour hearths, by the same arguments which we commonly make use of in\ndecrying their stoves: for, to say the truth, the smothered heat, and\nthen the smell of that heated matter of which the fire is composed, very\nmuch offend such as are not used to them; not me; and, indeed, the heat\nbeing always equal, constant, and universal, without flame, without\nsmoke, and without the wind that comes down our chimneys, they may many\nways sustain comparison with ours.  Why do we not imitate the Roman\narchitecture? for they say that anciently fires were not made in the\nhouses, but on the outside, and at the foot of them, whence the heat was\nconveyed to the whole fabric by pipes contrived in the wall, which were\ndrawn twining about the rooms that were to be warmed: which I have seen\nplainly described somewhere in Seneca.  This German hearing me commend\nthe conveniences and beauties of his city, which truly deserves it, began\nto compassionate me that I had to leave it; and the first inconvenience\nhe alleged to me was, the heaviness of head that the chimneys elsewhere\nwould bring upon me.  He had heard some one make this complaint, and\nfixed it upon us, being by custom deprived of the means of perceiving it\nat home.  All heat that comes from the fire weakens and dulls me.  Evenus\nsaid that fire was the best condiment of life: I rather choose any other\nway of making myself warm.\n\nWe are afraid to drink our wines, when toward the bottom of the cask; in\nPortugal those fumes are reputed delicious, and it is the beverage of\nprinces.  In short, every nation has many customs and usages that are not\nonly unknown to other nations, but savage and miraculous in their sight.\nWhat should we do with those people who admit of no evidence that is not\nin print, who believe not men if they are not in a book, nor truth if it\nbe not of competent age? we dignify our fopperies when we commit them to\nthe press: 'tis of a great deal more weight to say, \"I have read such a\nthing,\" than if you only say, \"I have heard such a thing.\"  But I, who no\nmore disbelieve a man's mouth than his pen, and who know that men write\nas indiscreetly as they speak, and who look upon this age as one that is\npast, as soon quote a friend as Aulus Gelliusor Macrobius; and what I\nhave seen, as what they have written.  And, as 'tis held of virtue, that\nit is not greater for having continued longer, so do I hold of truth,\nthat for being older it is none the wiser.  I often say, that it is mere\nfolly that makes us run after foreign and scholastic examples; their\nfertility is the same now that it was in the time of Homer and Plato.\nBut is it not that we seek more honour from the quotation, than from the\ntruth of the matter in hand?  As if it were more to the purpose to borrow\nour proofs from the shops of Vascosan or Plantin, than from what is to be\nseen in our own village; or else, indeed, that we have not the wit to\ncull out and make useful what we see before us, and to judge of it\nclearly enough to draw it into example: for if we say that we want\nauthority to give faith to our testimony, we speak from the purpose;\nforasmuch as, in my opinion, of the most ordinary, common, and known\nthings, could we but find out their light, the greatest miracles of\nnature might be formed, and the most wonderful examples, especially upon\nthe subject of human actions.\n\nNow, upon this subject, setting aside the examples I have gathered from\nbooks, and what Aristotle says of Andron the Argian, that he travelled\nover the arid sands of Lybia without drinking: a gentleman, who has very\nwell behaved himself in several employments, said, in a place where I\nwas, that he had ridden from Madrid to Lisbon, in the heat of summer,\nwithout any drink at all.  He is very healthful and vigorous for his age,\nand has nothing extraordinary in the use of his life, but this, to live\nsometimes two or three months, nay, a whole year, as he has told me,\nwithout drinking.  He is sometimes thirsty, but he lets it pass over,\nand he holds that it is an appetite which easily goes off of itself;\nand he drinks more out of caprice than either for need or pleasure.\n\nHere is another example: 'tis not long ago that I found one of the\nlearnedest men in France, among those of not inconsiderable fortune,\nstudying in a corner of a hall that they had separated for him with\ntapestry, and about him a rabble of his servants full of licence.  He\ntold me, and Seneca almost says the same of himself,  he made an\nadvantage of this hubbub; that, beaten with this noise, he so much\nthe more collected and retired himself into himself for contemplation,\nand that this tempest of voices drove back his thoughts within himself.\nBeing a student at Padua, he had his study so long situated amid the\nrattle of coaches and the tumult of the square, that he not only formed\nhimself to the contempt, but even to the use of noise, for the service of\nhis studies.  Socrates answered Alcibiades, who was astonished how he\ncould endure the perpetual scolding of his wife, \"Why,\" said he, \"as\nthose do who are accustomed to the ordinary noise of wheels drawing\nwater.\"  I am quite otherwise; I have a tender head and easily\ndiscomposed; when 'tis bent upon anything, the least buzzing of a fly\nmurders it.\n\nSeneca in his youth having warmly espoused the example of Sextius, of\neating nothing that had died, for a whole year dispensed with such food,\nand, as he said, with pleasure, and discontinued it that he might not be\nsuspected of taking up this rule from some new religion by which it was\nprescribed: he adopted, in like manner, from the precepts of Attalus a\ncustom not to lie upon any sort of bedding that gave way under his\nweight, and, even to his old age, made use of such as would not yield to\nany pressure.  What the usage of his time made him account roughness,\nthat of ours makes us look upon as effeminacy.\n\nDo but observe the difference betwixt the way of living of my labourers\nand my own; the Scythians and Indians have nothing more remote both from\nmy capacity and my form.  I have picked up charity  boys to serve me: who\nsoon after have quitted both my kitchen and livery, only that they might\nreturn to their former course of life; and I found one afterwards,\npicking mussels out of the sewer for his dinner, whom I could neither by\nentreaties nor threats reclaim from the sweetness he found in indigence.\nBeggars have their magnificences and delights, as well as the rich, and,\n'tis said, their dignities and polities.  These are the effects of\ncustom; she can mould us, not only into what form she pleases (the sages\nsay we ought to apply ourselves to the best, which she will soon make\neasy to us), but also to change and variation, which is the most noble\nand most useful instruction of all she teaches us.  The best of my bodily\nconditions is that I am flexible and not very obstinate: I have\ninclinations more my own and ordinary, and more agreeable than others;\nbut I am diverted from them with very little ado, and easily slip into a\ncontrary course.  A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awaken his\nvigour and to keep it from growing faint and rusty; and there is no\ncourse of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule\nand discipline;\n\n         \"Ad primum lapidem vectari quum placet, hora\n          Sumitur ex libro; si prurit frictus ocelli\n          Angulus, inspecta genesi, collyria quaerit;\"\n\n     [\"When he is pleased to have himself carried to the first milestone,\n     the hour is chosen from the almanac; if he but rub the corner of his\n     eye, his horoscope having been examined, he seeks the aid of\n     salves.\"---Juvenal, vi. 576.]\n\nhe shall often throw himself even into excesses, if he will take my\nadvice; otherwise the least debauch will destroy him, and render him\ntroublesome and disagreeable in company.  The worst quality in a\nwell-bred man is over-fastidiousness, and an obligation to a certain\nparticular way; and it is particular, if not pliable and supple.  It is a\nkind of reproach, not to be able, or not to dare, to do what we see those\nabout us do; let such as these stop at home.  It is in every man\nunbecoming, but in a soldier vicious and intolerable: who, as Philopcemen\nsaid, ought to accustom himself to every variety and inequality of life.\n\nThough I have been brought up, as much as was possible, to liberty and\nindependence, yet so it is that, growing old, and having by indifference\nmore settled upon certain forms (my age is now past instruction, and has\nhenceforward nothing to do but to keep itself up as well as it can),\ncustom has already, ere I was aware, so imprinted its character in me in\ncertain things, that I look upon it as a kind of excess to leave them\noff; and, without a force upon myself, cannot sleep in the daytime, nor\neat between meals, nor breakfast, nor go to bed, without a great interval\nbetwixt eating and sleeping,--[Gastroesophogeal Reflux. D.W.]--as of\nthree hours after supper; nor get children but before I sleep, nor get\nthem standing; nor endure my own sweat; nor quench my thirst either with\npure water or pure wine; nor keep my head long bare, nor cut my hair\nafter dinner; and I should be as uneasy without my gloves as without my\nshirt, or without washing when I rise from table or out of my bed; and I\ncould not lie without a canopy and curtains, as if they were essential\nthings.  I could dine without a tablecloth, but without a clean napkin,\nafter the German fashion, very incommodiously; I foul them more than the\nGermans or Italians do, and make but little use either of spoon or fork.\nI complain that they did not keep up the fashion, begun after the example\nof kings, to change our napkin at every service, as they do our plate.\nWe are told of that laborious soldier Marius that, growing old, he became\nnice in his drink, and never drank but out of a particular cup of his own\nI, in like manner, have suffered myself to fancy a certain form of\nglasses, and not willingly to drink in common glasses, no more than from\na strange common hand: all metal offends me in comparison of a clear and\ntransparent matter: let my eyes taste, too, according to their capacity.\nI owe several other such niceties to custom.  Nature has also, on the\nother side, helped me to some of hers: as not to be able to endure more\nthan two full meals in one day, without overcharging my stomach, nor a\ntotal abstinence from one of those meals without filling myself with\nwind, drying up my mouth, and dulling my appetite; the finding great\ninconvenience from overmuch evening air; for of late years, in night\nmarches, which often happen to be all night long, after five or six hours\nmy stomach begins to be queasy, with a violent pain in my head, so that I\nalways vomit before the day can break.  When the others go to breakfast,\nI go to sleep; and when I rise, I am as brisk and gay as before.  I had\nalways been told that the night dew never rises but in the beginning of\nthe night; but for some years past, long and familiar intercourse with\na lord, possessed with the opinion that the night dew is more sharp and\ndangerous about the declining of the sun, an hour or two before it sets,\nwhich he carefully avoids, and despises that of the night, he almost\nimpressed upon me, not so much his reasoning as his experiences.  What,\nshall mere doubt and inquiry strike our imagination, so as to change us?\nSuch as absolutely and on a sudden give way to these propensions, draw\ntotal destruction upon themselves. I am sorry for several gentlemen who,\nthrough the folly of their physicians, have in their youth and health\nwholly shut themselves up: it were better to endure a cough, than, by\ndisuse, for ever to lose the commerce of common life in things of so\ngreat utility.  Malignant science, to interdict us the most pleasant\nhours of the day!  Let us keep our possession to the last; for the most\npart, a man hardens himself by being obstinate, and corrects his\nconstitution, as Caesar did the falling sickness, by dint of contempt.\nA man should addict himself to the best rules, but not enslave himself to\nthem, except to such, if there be any such, where obligation and\nservitude are of profit.\n\nBoth kings and philosophers go to stool, and ladies too; public lives are\nbound to ceremony; mine, that is obscure and private, enjoys all natural\ndispensation; soldier and Gascon are also qualities a little subject to\nindiscretion; wherefore I shall say of this act of relieving nature, that\nit is desirable to refer it to certain prescribed and nocturnal hours,\nand compel one's self to this by custom, as I have done; but not to\nsubject one's self, as I have done in my declining years, to a particular\nconvenience of place and seat for that purpose, and make it troublesome\nby long sitting; and yet, in the fouler offices, is it not in some\nmeasure excusable to require more care and cleanliness?\n\n          \"Naturt homo mundum et elegans animal est.\"\n\n     [\"Man is by nature a clean and delicate creature.\"--Seneca, Ep., 92.]\n\nOf all the actions of nature, I am the most impatient of being\ninterrupted in that.  I have seen many soldiers troubled with the\nunruliness of their bellies; whereas mine and I never fail of our\npunctual assignation, which is at leaping out of bed, if some\nindispensable business or sickness does not molest us.\n\nI think then, as I said before, that sick men cannot better place\nthemselves anywhere in more safety, than in sitting still in that course\nof life wherein they have been bred and trained up; change, be it what it\nwill, distempers and puts one out.  Do you believe that chestnuts can\nhurt a Perigordin or a Lucchese, or milk and cheese the mountain people?\nWe enjoin them not only a new, but a contrary, method of life; a change\nthat the healthful cannot endure.  Prescribe water to a Breton of\nthreescore and ten; shut a seaman up in a stove; forbid a Basque footman\nto walk: you will deprive them of motion, and in the end of air and\nlight:\n\n              \"An vivere tanti est?\n               Cogimur a suetis animum suspendere rebus,\n               Atque, ut vivamus, vivere desinimus.  .\n               Hos superesse reor, quibus et spirabilis aer\n               Et lux, qua regimur, redditur ipsa gravis.\"\n\n     [\"Is life worth so much?  We are compelled to withhold the mind\n     from things to which we are accustomed; and, that we may live, we\n     cease to live .  .  .  .  Do I conceive that they still live, to\n     whom the respirable air, and the light itself, by which we are\n     governed, is rendered oppressive?\"\n     --Pseudo-Gallus, Eclog., i. 155, 247.]\n\nIf they do no other good, they do this at least, that they prepare\npatients betimes for death, by little and little undermining and cutting\noff the use of life.\n\nBoth well and sick, I have ever willingly suffered myself to obey the\nappetites that pressed upon me.  I give great rein to my desires and\npropensities; I do not love to cure one disease by another; I hate\nremedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself.  To be\nsubject to the colic and subject to abstain from eating oysters are two\nevils instead of one; the disease torments us on the one side, and the\nremedy on the other.  Since we are ever in danger of mistaking, let us\nrather run the hazard of a mistake, after we have had the pleasure.  The\nworld proceeds quite the other way, and thinks nothing profitable that is\nnot painful; it has great suspicion of facility.  My appetite, in various\nthings, has of its own accord happily enough accommodated itself to the\nhealth of my stomach.  Relish and pungency in sauces were pleasant to me\nwhen young; my stomach disliking them since, my taste incontinently\nfollowed.  Wine is hurtful to sick people, and 'tis the first thing that\nmy mouth then finds distasteful, and with an invincible dislike.\nWhatever I take against my liking does me harm; and nothing hurts me that\nI eat with appetite and delight.  I never received harm by any action\nthat was very pleasant to me; and accordingly have made all medicinal\nconclusions largely give way to my pleasure; and I have, when I was\nyoung,\n\n         \"Quem circumcursans huc atque huc saepe Cupido\n          Fulgebat crocink splendidus in tunic.\"\n\n     [\"When Cupid, fluttering round me here and there, shone in his rich\n     purple mantle.\"--Catullus, lxvi. 133.]\n\ngiven myself the rein as licentiously and inconsiderately to the desire\nthat was predominant in me, as any other whomsoever:\n\n                    \"Et militavi non sine gloria;\"\n\n          [\"And I have played the soldier not ingloriously.\"\n          --Horace, Od., iii.  26, 2.]\n\nyet more in continuation and holding out, than in sally:\n\n               \"Sex me vix memini sustinuisse vices.\"\n\n          [\"I can scarcely remember six bouts in one night\"\n          --Ovid, Amor., iii. 7, 26.]\n\n'Tis certainly a misfortune and a miracle at once to confess at what a\ntender age I first came under the subjection of love: it was, indeed, by\nchance; for it was long before the years of choice or knowledge; I do not\nremember myself so far back; and my fortune may well be coupled with that\nof Quartilla, who could not remember when she was a maid:\n\n         \"Inde tragus, celeresque pili, mirandaque matri\n          Barba meae.\"\n\n     [\"Thence the odour of the arm-pits, the precocious hair, and the\n     beard which astonished my mother.\"--Martial, xi. 22, 7.]\n\nPhysicians modify their rules according to the violent longings that\nhappen to sick persons, ordinarily with good success; this great desire\ncannot be imagined so strange and vicious, but that nature must have a\nhand in it.  And then how easy a thing is it to satisfy the fancy?  In my\nopinion; this part wholly carries it, at least, above all the rest.  The\nmost grievous and ordinary evils are those that fancy loads us with; this\nSpanish saying pleases me in several aspects:\n\n                  \"Defenda me Dios de me.\"\n\n               [\"God defend me from myself.\"]\n\nI am sorry when I am sick, that I have not some longing that might give\nme the pleasure of satisfying it; all the rules of physic would hardly be\nable to divert me from it.  I do the same when I am well; I can see very\nlittle more to be hoped or wished for.  'Twere pity a man should be so\nweak and languishing, as not to have even wishing left to him.\n\nThe art of physic is not so fixed, that we need be without authority for\nwhatever we do; it changes according to climates and moons, according to\nFernel and to Scaliger.--[Physicians to Henry II.]--If your physician\ndoes not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat such\nand such meats, never trouble yourself; I will find you another that\nshall not be of his opinion; the diversity of medical arguments and\nopinions embraces all sorts and forms.  I saw a miserable sick person\npanting and burning for thirst, that he might be cured, who was\nafterwards laughed at for his pains by another physician, who condemned\nthat advice as prejudicial to him: had he not tormented himself to good\npurpose?  There lately died of the stone a man of that profession, who\nhad made use of extreme abstinence to contend with his disease: his\nfellow-physicians say that, on the contrary, this abstinence had dried\nhim up and baked the gravel in his kidneys.\n\nI have observed, that both in wounds and sicknesses, speaking discomposes\nand hurts me, as much as any irregularity I can commit.  My voice pains\nand tires me, for 'tis loud and forced; so that when I have gone to a\nwhisper some great persons about affairs of consequence, they have often\ndesired me to moderate my voice.\n\nThis story is worth a diversion.  Some one in a certain Greek school\nspeaking loud as I do, the master of the ceremonies sent to him to speak\nsoftly: \"Tell him, then, he must send me,\" replied the other, \"the tone\nhe would have me speak in.\"  To which the other replied, \"That he should\ntake the tone from the ears of him to whom he spake.\"  It was well said,\nif it is to be understood: \"Speak according to the affair you are\nspeaking about to your auditor,\" for if it mean, \"'tis sufficient that he\nhear you, or govern yourself by him,\" I do not find it to be reason.  The\ntone and motion of my voice carries with it a great deal of the\nexpression and signification of my meaning, and 'tis I who am to govern\nit, to make myself understood: there is a voice to instruct, a voice to\nflatter, and a voice to reprehend.  I will not only that my voice reach\nhim, but, peradventure, that it strike and pierce him.  When I rate my\nvalet with sharp and bitter language, it would be very pretty for him to\nsay; \"Pray, master, speak lower; I hear you very well\":\n\n               \"Est quaedam vox ad auditum accommodata,\n               non magnitudine, sed proprietate.\"\n\n     [\"There is a certain voice accommodated to the hearing, not by its\n     loudness, but by its propriety.\"--Quintilian, xi. 3.]\n\nSpeaking is half his who speaks, and half his who hears; the latter\nought to prepare himself to receive it, according to its bias; as with\ntennis-players, he who receives the ball, shifts and prepares, according\nas he sees him move who strikes the stroke, and according to the stroke\nitself.\n\nExperience has, moreover, taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by\nimpatience.  Evils have their life and limits, their diseases and their\nrecovery.\n\nThe constitution of maladies is formed by the pattern of the constitution\nof animals; they have their fortune and their days limited from their\nbirth; he who attempts imperiously to cut them short by force in the\nmiddle of their course, lengthens and multiplies them, and incenses\ninstead of appeasing them.  I am of Crantor's opinion, that we are\nneither obstinately and deafly to oppose evils, nor succumb to them from\nwant of courage; but that we are naturally to give way to them, according\nto their condition and our own.  We ought to grant free passage to\ndiseases; I find they stay less with me, who let them alone; and I have\nlost some, reputed the most tenacious and obstinate, by their own decay,\nwithout help and without art, and contrary to its rules.  Let us a little\npermit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs\nthan we.  But such an one died of it; and so shall you: if not of that\ndisease, of another.  And how many have not escaped dying, who have had\nthree physicians at their tails?  Example is a vague and universal\nmirror, and of various reflections.  If it be a delicious medicine, take\nit: 'tis always so much present good.  I will never stick at the name nor\nthe colour, if it be pleasant and grateful to the palate: pleasure is one\nof the chiefest kinds of profit.  I have suffered colds, gouty\ndefluxions, relaxations, palpitations of the heart, megrims, and other\naccidents, to grow old and die in time a natural death.  I have so lost\nthem when I was half fit to keep them: they are sooner prevailed upon by\ncourtesy than huffing.  We must patiently suffer the laws of our\ncondition; we are born to grow old, to grow weak, and to be sick, in\ndespite of all medicine.  'Tis the first lesson the Mexicans teach their\nchildren; so soon as ever they are born they thus salute them: \"Thou art\ncome into the world, child, to endure: endure, suffer, and say nothing.\"\n'Tis injustice to lament that which has befallen any one which may befall\nevery one:\n\n     \"Indignare, si quid in to inique proprio constitutum est.\"\n\n     [\"Then be angry, when there is anything unjustly decreed against\n     thee alone.\"--Seneca, Ep., 91.]\n\nSee an old man who begs of God that he will maintain his health vigorous\nand entire; that is to say, that he restore him to youth:\n\n          \"Stulte, quid haec frustra votis puerilibus optas?\"\n\n          [\"Fool!  why do you vainly form these puerile wishes?\"\n          --Ovid., Trist., 111. 8, II.]\n\nis it not folly?  his condition is not capable of it.  The gout, the\nstone, and indigestion are symptoms of long years; as heat, rains, and\nwinds are of long journeys.  Plato does not believe that AEsculapius\ntroubled himself to provide by regimen to prolong life in a weak and\nwasted body, useless to his country and to his profession, or to beget\nhealthful and robust children; and does not think this care suitable to\nthe Divine justice and prudence, which is to direct all things to\nutility.  My good friend, your business is done; nobody can restore you;\nthey can, at the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little, and by\nthat means prolong your misery an hour or two:\n\n              \"Non secus instantem cupiens fulcire ruinam,\n               Diversis contra nititur obiicibus;\n               Donec certa dies, omni compage soluta,\n               Ipsum cum rebus subruat auxilium.\"\n\n     [\"Like one who, desiring to stay an impending ruin, places various\n     props against it, till, in a short time, the house, the props, and\n     all, giving way, fall together.\"--Pseudo-Gallus, i. 171.]\n\nWe must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony\nof the world, is composed of contrary things--of diverse tones, sweet and\nharsh, sharp and flat, sprightly and solemn: the musician who should only\naffect some of these, what would he be able to do?  he must know how to\nmake use of them all, and to mix them; and so we should mingle the goods\nand evils which are consubstantial with our life; our being cannot\nsubsist without this mixture, and the one part is no less necessary to it\nthan the other.  To attempt to combat natural necessity, is to represent\nthe folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook to kick with his mule.--[Plutarch,\nHow to restrain Anger, c. 8.]\n\nI consult little about the alterations I feel: for these doctors take\nadvantage; when they have you at their mercy, they surfeit your ears with\ntheir prognostics; and formerly surprising me, weakened with sickness,\ninjuriously handled me with their dogmas and magisterial fopperies--one\nwhile menacing me with great pains, and another with approaching death.\nHereby I was indeed moved and shaken, but not subdued nor jostled from my\nplace; and though my judgment was neither altered nor distracted, yet it\nwas at least disturbed: 'tis always agitation and combat.\n\nNow, I use my imagination as gently as I can, and would discharge it, if\nI could, of all trouble and contest; a man must assist, flatter, and\ndeceive it, if he can; my mind is fit for that office; it needs no\nappearances throughout: could it persuade as it preaches, it would\nsuccessfully relieve me.  Will you have an example?  It tells me: \"that\n'tis for my good to have the stone: that the structure of my age must\nnaturally suffer some decay, and it is now time it should begin to\ndisjoin and to confess a breach; 'tis a common necessity, and there is\nnothing in it either miraculous or new; I therein pay what is due to old\nage, and I cannot expect a better bargain; that society ought to comfort\nme, being fallen into the most common infirmity of my age; I see\neverywhere men tormented with the same disease, and am honoured by the\nfellowship, forasmuch as men of the best quality are most frequently\nafflicted with it: 'tis a noble and dignified disease: that of such as\nare struck with it, few have it to a less degree of pain; that these are\nput to the trouble of a strict diet and the daily taking of nauseous\npotions, whereas I owe my better state purely to my good fortune; for\nsome ordinary broths of eringo or burst-wort that I have twice or thrice\ntaken to oblige the ladies, who, with greater kindness than my pain was\nsharp, would needs present me half of theirs, seemed to me equally easy\nto take and fruitless in operation, the others have to pay a thousand\nvows to AEsculapius, and as many crowns to their physicians, for the\nvoiding a little gravel, which I often do by the aid of nature: even the\ndecorum of my countenance is not disturbed in company; and I can hold my\nwater ten hours, and as long as any man in health.  The fear of this\ndisease,\" says my mind, \"formerly affrighted thee, when it was unknown to\nthee; the cries and despairing groans of those who make it worse by their\nimpatience, begot a horror in thee.  'Tis an infirmity that punishes the\nmembers by which thou hast most offended.  Thou art a conscientious\nfellow;\"\n\n               \"Quae venit indigne poena, dolenda venit:\"\n\n     [\"We are entitled to complain of a punishment that we have not\n     deserved.\"--Ovid, Heroid., v. 8.]\n\n\"consider this chastisement: 'tis very easy in comparison of others, and\ninflicted with a paternal tenderness: do but observe how late it comes;\nit only seizes on and incommodes that part of thy life which is, one way\nand another, sterile and lost; having, as it were by composition, given\ntime for the licence and pleasures of thy youth.  The fear and the\ncompassion that the people have of this disease serve thee for matter of\nglory; a quality whereof if thou bast thy judgment purified, and that thy\nreason has somewhat cured it, thy friends notwithstanding, discern some\ntincture in thy complexion.  'Tis a pleasure to hear it said of oneself\nwhat strength of mind, what patience!  Thou art seen to sweat with pain,\nto turn pale and red, to tremble, to vomit blood, to suffer strange\ncontractions and convulsions, at times to let great tears drop from thine\neyes, to urine thick, black, and dreadful water, or to have it suppressed\nby some sharp and craggy stone, that cruelly pricks and tears the neck of\nthe bladder, whilst all the while thou entertainest the company with an\nordinary countenance; droning by fits with thy people; making one in a\ncontinuous discourse, now and then making excuse for thy pain, and\nrepresenting thy suffering less than it is.  Dost thou call to mind the\nmen of past times, who so greedily sought diseases to keep their virtue\nin breath and exercise?  Put the case that nature sets thee on and impels\nthee to this glorious school, into which thou wouldst never have entered\nof thy own free will.  If thou tellest me that it is a dangerous and\nmortal disease, what others are not so?  for 'tis a physical cheat to\nexpect any that they say do not go direct to death: what matters if they\ngo thither by accident, or if they easily slide and slip into the path\nthat leads us to it?  But thou dost not die because thou art sick; thou\ndiest because thou art living: death kills thee without the help of\nsickness: and sickness has deferred death in some, who have lived longer\nby reason that they thought themselves always dying; to which may be\nadded, that as in wounds, so in diseases, some are medicinal and\nwholesome.  The stone is often no less long-lived than you; we see men\nwith whom it has continued from their infancy even to their extreme old\nage; and if they had not broken company, it would have been with them\nlonger still; you more often kill it than it kills you.  And though it\nshould present to you the image of approaching death, were it not a good\noffice to a man of such an age, to put him in mind of his end?  And,\nwhich is worse, thou hast no longer anything that should make thee desire\nto be cured.  Whether or no, common necessity will soon call thee away.\nDo but consider how skilfully and gently she puts thee out of concern\nwith life, and weans thee from the world; not forcing thee with a\ntyrannical subjection, like so many other infirmities which thou seest\nold men afflicted withal, that hold them in continual torment, and keep\nthem in perpetual and unintermitted weakness and pains, but by warnings\nand instructions at intervals, intermixing long pauses of repose, as it\nwere to give thee opportunity to meditate and ruminate upon thy lesson,\nat thy own ease and leisure.  To give thee means to judge aright, and to\nassume the resolution of a man of courage, it presents to thee the state\nof thy entire condition, both in good and evil; and one while a very\ncheerful and another an insupportable life, in one and the same day.  If\nthou embracest not death, at least thou shakest hands with it once a\nmonth; whence thou hast more cause to hope that it will one day surprise\nthee without menace; and that being so often conducted to the water-side,\nbut still thinking thyself to be upon the accustomed terms, thou and thy\nconfidence will at one time or another be unexpectedly wafted over.  A\nman cannot reasonably complain of diseases that fairly divide the time\nwith health.\"\n\nI am obliged to Fortune for having so often assaulted me with the same\nsort of weapons: she forms and fashions me by use, hardens and habituates\nme, so that I can know within a little for how much I shall be quit.  For\nwant of natural memory, I make one of paper; and as any new symptom\nhappens in my disease, I set it down, whence it falls out that, having\nnow almost passed through all sorts of examples, if anything striking\nthreatens me, turning over these little loose notes, as the Sybilline\nleaves, I never fail of finding matter of consolation from some\nfavourable prognostic in my past experience.  Custom also makes me hope\nbetter for the time to come; for, the conduct of this clearing out having\nso long continued, 'tis to be believed that nature will not alter her\ncourse, and that no other worse accident will happen than what I already\nfeel.  And besides, the condition of this disease is not unsuitable to my\nprompt and sudden complexion: when it assaults me gently, I am afraid,\nfor 'tis then for a great while; but it has, naturally, brisk and\nvigorous excesses; it claws me to purpose for a day or two.  My kidneys\nheld out an age without alteration; and I have almost now lived another,\nsince they changed their state; evils have their periods, as well as\nbenefits: peradventure, the infirmity draws towards an end.  Age weakens\nthe heat of my stomach, and, its digestion being less perfect, sends this\ncrude matter to my kidneys; why, at a certain revolution, may not the\nheat of my kidneys be also abated, so that they can no more petrify my\nphlegm, and nature find out some other way of purgation.  Years have\nevidently helped me to drain certain rheums; and why not these excrements\nwhich furnish matter for gravel?  But is there anything delightful in\ncomparison of this sudden change, when from an excessive pain, I come, by\nthe voiding of a stone, to recover, as by a flash of lightning, the\nbeautiful light of health, so free and full, as it happens in our sudden\nand sharpest colics?  Is there anything in the pain suffered, that one\ncan counterpoise to the pleasure of so sudden an amendment?  Oh, how much\ndoes health seem the more pleasant to me, after a sickness so near and so\ncontiguous, that I can distinguish them in the presence of one another,\nin their greatest show; when they appear in emulation, as if to make head\nagainst and dispute it with one another!  As the Stoics say that vices\nare profitably introduced to give value to and to set off virtue, we can,\nwith better reason and less temerity of conjecture, say that nature has\ngiven us pain for the honour and service of pleasure and indolence.  When\nSocrates, after his fetters were knocked off, felt the pleasure of that\nitching which the weight of them had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to\nconsider the strict alliance betwixt pain and pleasure; how they are\nlinked together by a necessary connection, so that by turns they follow\nand mutually beget one another; and cried out to good AEsop, that he\nought out of this consideration to have taken matter for a fine fable.\n\nThe worst that I see in other diseases is, that they are not so grievous\nin their effect as they are in their issue: a man is a whole year in\nrecovering, and all the while full of weakness and fear.  There is so\nmuch hazard, and so many steps to arrive at safety, that there is no end\non't before they have unmuffled you of a kerchief, and then of a cap,\nbefore they allow you to walk abroad and take the air, to drink wine, to\nlie with your wife, to eat melons, 'tis odds you relapse into some new\ndistemper.  The stone has this privilege, that it carries itself clean\noff: whereas the other maladies always leave behind them some impression\nand alteration that render the body subject to a new disease, and lend a\nhand to one another.  Those are excusable that content themselves with\npossessing us, without extending farther and introducing their followers;\nbut courteous and kind are those whose passage brings us any profitable\nissue.  Since I have been troubled with the stone, I find myself freed\nfrom all other accidents, much more, methinks, than I was before, and\nhave never had any fever since; I argue that the extreme and frequent\nvomitings that I am subject to purge me: and, on the other hand, my\ndistastes for this and that, and the strange fasts I am forced to keep,\ndigest my peccant humours, and nature, with those stones, voids whatever\nthere is in me superfluous and hurtful.  Let them never tell me that it\nis a medicine too dear bought: for what avail so many stinking draughts,\nso many caustics, incisions, sweats, setons, diets, and so many other\nmethods of cure, which often, by reason we are not able to undergo their\nviolence and importunity, bring us to our graves?  So that when I have\nthe stone, I look upon it as physic; when free from it, as an absolute\ndeliverance.\n\nAnd here is another particular benefit of my disease; which is, that it\nalmost plays its game by itself, and lets 'me play mine, if I have only\ncourage to do it; for, in its greatest fury, I have endured it ten hours\ntogether on horseback.  Do but endure only; you need no other regimen\nplay, run, dine, do this and t'other, if you can; your debauch will do\nyou more good than harm; say as much to one that has the pox, the gout,\nor hernia!  The other diseases have more universal obligations; rack our\nactions after another kind of manner, disturb our whole order, and to\ntheir consideration engage the whole state of life: this only pinches the\nskin; it leaves the understanding and the will wholly at our own\ndisposal, and the tongue, the hands, and the feet; it rather awakens than\nstupefies you.  The soul is struck with the ardour of a fever,\noverwhelmed with an epilepsy, and displaced by a sharp megrim, and, in\nshort, astounded by all the diseases that hurt the whole mass and the\nmost noble parts; this never meddles with the soul; if anything goes\namiss with her, 'tis her own fault; she betrays, dismounts, and abandons\nherself.  There are none but fools who suffer themselves to be persuaded\nthat this hard and massive body which is baked in our kidneys is to be\ndissolved by drinks; wherefore, when it is once stirred, there is nothing\nto be done but to give it passage; and, for that matter, it will itself\nmake one.\n\nI moreover observe this particular convenience in it, that it is a\ndisease wherein we have little to guess at: we are dispensed from the\ntrouble into which other diseases throw us by the uncertainty of their\ncauses, conditions, and progress; a trouble that is infinitely painful:\nwe have no need of consultations and doctoral interpretations; the senses\nwell enough inform us both what it is and where it is.\n\nBy suchlike arguments, weak and strong, as Cicero with the disease of his\nold age, I try to rock asleep and amuse my imagination, and to dress its\nwounds.  If I find them worse tomorrow, I will provide new stratagems.\nThat this is true: I am come to that pass of late, that the least motion\nforces pure blood out of my kidneys: what of that?  I move about,\nnevertheless, as before, and ride after my hounds with a juvenile and\ninsolent ardour; and hold that I have very good satisfaction for an\naccident of that importance, when it costs me no more but a dull\nheaviness and uneasiness in that part; 'tis some great stone that wastes\nand consumes the substance of my kidneys and my life, which I by little\nand little evacuate, not without some natural pleasure, as an excrement\nhenceforward superfluous and troublesome.  Now if I feel anything\nstirring, do not fancy that I trouble myself to consult my pulse or my\nurine, thereby to put myself upon some annoying prevention; I shall soon\nenough feel the pain, without making it more and longer by the disease of\nfear.  He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.  To\nwhich may be added that the doubts and ignorance of those who take upon\nthem to expound the designs of nature and her internal progressions, and\nthe many false prognostics of their art, ought to give us to understand\nthat her ways are inscrutable and utterly unknown; there is great\nuncertainty, variety, and obscurity in what she either promises or\nthreatens.  Old age excepted, which is an indubitable sign of the\napproach of death, in all other accidents I see few signs of the future,\nwhereon we may ground our divination.  I only judge of myself by actual\nsensation, not by reasoning: to what end, since I am resolved to bring\nnothing to it but expectation and patience?  Will you know how much I get\nby this? observe those who do otherwise, and who rely upon so many\ndiverse persuasions and counsels; how often the imagination presses upon\nthem without any bodily pain.  I have many times amused myself, being\nwell and in safety, and quite free from these dangerous attacks in\ncommunicating them to the physicians as then beginning to discover\nthemselves in me; I underwent the decree of their dreadful conclusions,\nbeing all the while quite at my ease, and so much the more obliged to the\nfavour of God and better satisfied of the vanity of this art.\n\nThere is nothing that ought so much to be recommended to youth as\nactivity and vigilance our life is nothing but movement.  I bestir myself\nwith great difficulty, and am slow in everything, whether in rising,\ngoing to bed, or eating: seven of the clock in the morning is early for\nme, and where I rule, I never dine before eleven, nor sup till after six.\nI formerly attributed the cause of the fevers and other diseases I fell\ninto to the heaviness that long sleeping had brought upon me, and have\never repented going to sleep again in the morning.  Plato is more angry\nat excess of sleeping than at excess of drinking.  I love to lie hard and\nalone, even without my wife, as kings do; pretty well covered with\nclothes.  They never warm my bed, but since I have grown old they give me\nat need cloths to lay to my feet and stomach.  They found fault with the\ngreat Scipio that he was a great sleeper; not, in my opinion, for any\nother reason than that men were displeased that he alone should have\nnothing in him to be found fault with.  If I am anything fastidious in my\nway of living 'tis rather in my lying than anything else; but generally\nI give way and accommodate myself as well as any one to necessity.\nSleeping has taken up a great part of my life, and I yet continue, at the\nage I now am, to sleep eight or nine hours at one breath.  I wean myself\nwith utility from this proneness to sloth, and am evidently the better\nfor so doing.  I find the change a little hard indeed, but in three days\n'tis over; and I see but few who live with less sleep, when need\nrequires, and who more constantly exercise themselves, or to whom long\njourneys are less troublesome.  My body is capable of a firm, but not of\na violent or sudden agitation.  I escape of late from violent exercises,\nand such as make me sweat: my limbs grow weary before they are warm.\nI can stand a whole day together, and am never weary of walking; but from\nmy youth I have ever preferred to ride upon paved roads; on foot, I get\nup to the haunches in dirt, and little fellows as I am are subject in the\nstreets to be elbowed and jostled for want of presence; I have ever loved\nto repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or\nhigher than my seat.\n\nThere is no profession as pleasant as the military, a profession both\nnoble in its execution (for valour is the stoutest, proudest, and most\ngenerous of all virtues), and noble in its cause: there is no utility\neither more universal or more just than the protection of the peace and\ngreatness of one's country.  The company of so many noble, young, and\nactive men delights you; the ordinary sight of so many tragic spectacles;\nthe freedom of the conversation, without art; a masculine and\nunceremonious way of living, please you; the variety of a thousand\nseveral actions; the encouraging harmony of martial music that ravishes\nand inflames both your ears and souls; the honour of this occupation,\nnay, even its hardships and difficulties, which Plato holds so light that\nin his Republic he makes women and children share in them, are delightful\nto you.  You put yourself voluntarily upon particular exploits and\nhazards, according as you judge of their lustre and importance; and, a\nvolunteer, find even life itself excusably employed:\n\n               \"Pulchrumque mori succurrit in armis.\"\n\n          [\"'Tis fine to die sword in hand.\" (\"And he remembers that it\n          is honourable to die in arms.\")--AEneid, ii. 317.]\n\n\nTo fear common dangers that concern so great a multitude of men; not to\ndare to do what so many sorts of souls, what a whole people dare, is for\na heart that is poor and mean beyond all measure: company encourages even\nchildren.  If others excel you in knowledge, in gracefulness, in\nstrength, or fortune, you have alternative resources at your disposal;\nbut to give place to them in stability of mind, you can blame no one for\nthat but yourself. Death is more abject, more languishing and\ntroublesome, in bed than in a fight: fevers and catarrhs as painful and\nmortal as a musket-shot.  Whoever has fortified himself valiantly to bear\nthe accidents of common life need not raise his courage to be a soldier:\n\n                    \"Vivere, mi Lucili, militare est.\"\n\n          [\"To live, my Lucilius, is (to make war) to be a soldier.\"\n          --Seneca, Ep., 96.]\n\nI do not remember that I ever had the itch, and yet scratching is one of\nnature's sweetest gratifications, and so much at hand; but repentance\nfollows too near.  I use it most in my ears, which are at intervals apt\nto itch.\n\nI came into the world with all my senses entire, even to perfection.  My\nstomach is commodiously good, as also is my head and my breath; and, for\nthe most part, uphold themselves so in the height of fevers.  I have\npassed the age to which some nations, not without reason, have prescribed\nso just a term of life that they would not suffer men to exceed it; and\nyet I have some intermissions, though short and inconstant, so clean and\nsound as to be little inferior to the health and pleasantness of my\nyouth.  I do not speak of vigour and sprightliness; 'tis not reason they\nshould follow me beyond their limits:\n\n               \"Non hoc amplius est liminis, aut aquae\n               Coelestis, patiens latus.\"\n\n     [\"I am no longer able to stand waiting at a door in the rain.\"\n     --Horace, Od., iii. 10, 9.]\n\nMy face and eyes presently discover my condition; all my alterations\nbegin there, and appear somewhat worse than they really are; my friends\noften pity me before I feel the cause in myself.  My looking-glass does\nnot frighten me; for even in my youth it has befallen me more than once\nto have a scurvy complexion and of ill augury, without any great\nconsequence, so that the physicians, not finding any cause within\nanswerable to that outward alteration, attributed it to the mind and to\nsome secret passion that tormented me within; but they were deceived.\nIf my body would govern itself as well, according to my rule, as my mind\ndoes, we should move a little more at our ease.  My mind was then not\nonly free from trouble, but, moreover, full of joy and satisfaction,\nas it commonly is, half by its complexion, half by its design:\n\n               \"Nec vitiant artus aegrae contagia mentis.\"\n\n          [\"Nor do the troubles of the body ever affect my mind.\"\n          --Ovid, Trist., iii. 8, 25.]\n\nI am of the opinion that this temperature of my soul has often raised my\nbody from its lapses; this is often depressed; if the other be not brisk\nand gay, 'tis at least tranquil and at rest.  I had a quartan ague four\nor five months, that made me look miserably ill; my mind was always, if\nnot calm, yet pleasant.  If the pain be without me, the weakness and\nlanguor do not much afflict me; I see various corporal faintings, that\nbeget a horror in me but to name, which yet I should less fear than a\nthousand passions and agitations of the mind that I see about me.  I make\nup my mind no more to run; 'tis enough that I can crawl along; nor do I\nmore complain of the natural decadence that I feel in myself:\n\n               \"Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus?\"\n\n          [\"Who is surprised to see a swollen goitre in the Alps?\"\n          --Juvenal, xiii. 162.]\n\nthan I regret that my duration shall not be as long and entire as that of\nan oak.\n\nI have no reason to complain of my imagination; I have had few thoughts\nin my life that have so much as broken my sleep, except those of desire,\nwhich have awakened without afflicting me.  I dream but seldom, and then\nof chimaeras and fantastic things, commonly produced from pleasant\nthoughts, and rather ridiculous than sad; and I believe it to be true\nthat dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is\nart required to sort and understand them\n\n    \"Res, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident,\n     Quaeque agunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt,\n     Minus mirandum est.\"\n\n     [\"'Tis less wonder, what men practise, think, care for, see, and do\n     when waking, (should also run in their heads and disturb them when\n     they are asleep) and which affect their feelings, if they happen to\n     any in sleep.\"--Attius, cited in Cicero, De Divin., i. 22.]\n\nPlato, moreover, says, that 'tis the office of prudence to draw\ninstructions of divination of future things from dreams: I don't know\nabout this, but there are wonderful instances of it that Socrates,\nXenophon, and Aristotle, men of irreproachable authority, relate.\nHistorians say that the Atlantes never dream; who also never eat any\nanimal food, which I add, forasmuch as it is, peradventure, the reason\nwhy they never dream, for Pythagoras ordered a certain preparation of\ndiet to beget appropriate dreams.  Mine are very gentle, without any\nagitation of body or expression of voice.  I have seen several of my time\nwonderfully disturbed by them.  Theon the philosopher walked in his\nsleep, and so did Pericles servant, and that upon the tiles and top of\nthe house.\n\nI hardly ever choose my dish at table, but take the next at hand, and\nunwillingly change it for another.  A confusion of meats and a clatter of\ndishes displease me as much as any other confusion: I am easily satisfied\nwith few dishes: and am an enemy to the opinion of Favorinus, that in a\nfeast they should snatch from you the meat you like, and set a plate of\nanother sort before you; and that 'tis a pitiful supper, if you do not\nsate your guests with the rumps of various fowls, the beccafico only\ndeserving to be all eaten.  I usually eat salt meats, yet I prefer bread\nthat has no salt in it; and my baker never sends up other to my table,\ncontrary to the custom of the country.  In my infancy, what they had most\nto correct in me was the refusal of things that children commonly best\nlove, as sugar, sweetmeats, and march-panes.  My tutor contended with\nthis aversion to delicate things, as a kind of over-nicety; and indeed\n'tis nothing else but a difficulty of taste, in anything it applies\nitself to.  Whoever cures a child of an obstinate liking for brown bread,\nbacon, or garlic, cures him also of pampering his palate.  There are some\nwho affect temperance and plainness by wishing for beef and ham amongst\nthe partridges; 'tis all very fine; this is the delicacy of the delicate;\n'tis the taste of an effeminate fortune that disrelishes ordinary and\naccustomed things.\n\n               \"Per qux luxuria divitiarum taedio ludit.\"\n\n     [\"By which the luxury of wealth causes tedium.\"--Seneca, Ep., 18.]\n\nNot to make good cheer with what another is enjoying, and to be curious\nin what a man eats, is the essence of this vice:\n\n               \"Si modica coenare times olus omne patella.\"\n\n     [\"If you can't be content with herbs in a small dish for supper.\"\n     --Horace, Ep., i. 5, 2.]\n\nThere is indeed this difference, that 'tis better to oblige one's\nappetite to things that are most easy to be had; but 'tis always vice to\noblige one's self.  I formerly said a kinsman of mine was overnice, who,\nby being in our galleys, had unlearned the use of beds and to undress\nwhen he went to sleep.\n\nIf I had any sons, I should willingly wish them my fortune.  The good\nfather that God gave me (who has nothing of me but the acknowledgment of\nhis goodness, but truly 'tis a very hearty one) sent me from my cradle to\nbe brought up in a poor village of his, and there continued me all the\nwhile I was at nurse, and still longer, bringing me up to the meanest and\nmost common way of living:\n\n          \"Magna pars libertatis est bene moratus venter.\"\n\n          [\"A well-governed stomach is a great part of liberty.\"\n          --Seneca,Ep., 123.]\n\nNever take upon yourselves, and much less give up to your wives, the care\nof their nurture; leave the formation to fortune, under popular and\nnatural laws; leave it to custom to train them up to frugality and\nhardship, that they may rather descend from rigour than mount up to it.\nThis humour of his yet aimed at another end, to make me familiar with the\npeople and the condition of men who most need our assistance; considering\nthat I should rather regard them who extend their arms to me, than those\nwho turn their backs upon me; and for this reason it was that he provided\nto hold me at the font persons of the meanest fortune, to oblige and\nattach me to them.\n\nNor has his design succeeded altogether ill; for, whether upon the\naccount of the more honour in such a condescension, or out of a natural\ncompassion that has a very great power over me, I have an inclination\ntowards the meaner sort of people.  The faction which I should condemn in\nour wars, I should more sharply condemn, flourishing and successful; it\nwill somewhat reconcile me to it, when I shall see it miserable and\noverwhelmed.  How willingly do I admire the fine humour of Cheilonis,\ndaughter and wife to kings of Sparta.  Whilst her husband Cleombrotus, in\nthe commotion of her city, had the advantage over Leonidas her father,\nshe, like a good daughter, stuck close to her father in all his misery\nand exile, in opposition to the conqueror.  But so soon as the chance of\nwar turned, she changed her will with the change of fortune, and bravely\nturned to her husband's side, whom she accompanied throughout, where his\nruin carried him: admitting, as it appears to me, no other choice than to\ncleave to the side that stood most in need of her, and where she could\nbest manifest her compassion.  I am naturally more apt to follow the\nexample of Flaminius, who rather gave his assistance to those who had\nmost need of him than to those who had power to do him good, than I do to\nthat of Pyrrhus, who was of an humour to truckle under the great and to\ndomineer over the poor.\n\nLong sittings at table both trouble me and do me harm; for, be it that I\nwas so accustomed when a child, I eat all the while I sit.  Therefore it\nis that at my own house, though the meals there are of the shortest, I\nusually sit down a little while after the rest, after the manner of\nAugustus, but I do not imitate him in rising also before the rest; on the\ncontrary, I love to sit still a long time after, and to hear them talk,\nprovided I am none of the talkers: for I tire and hurt myself with\nspeaking upon a full stomach, as much as I find it very wholesome and\npleasant to argue and to strain my voice before dinner.\n\nThe ancient Greeks and Romans had more reason than we in setting apart\nfor eating, which is a principal action of life, if they were not\nprevented by other extraordinary business, many hours and the greatest\npart of the night; eating and drinking more deliberately than we do, who\nperform all our actions post-haste; and in extending this natural\npleasure to more leisure and better use, intermixing with profitable\nconversation.\n\nThey whose concern it is to have a care of me, may very easily hinder me\nfrom eating anything they think will do me harm; for in such matters I\nnever covet nor miss anything I do not see; but withal, if it once comes\nin my sight, 'tis in vain to persuade me to forbear; so that when I\ndesign to fast I must be kept apart from the suppers, and must have only\nso much given me as is required for a prescribed collation; for if to\ntable, I forget my resolution.  When I order my cook to alter the manner\nof dressing any dish, all my family know what it means, that my stomach\nis out of order, and that I shall not touch it.\n\nI love to have all meats, that will endure it, very little boiled or\nroasted, and prefer them very high, and even, as to several, quite gone.\nNothing but hardness generally offends me (of any other quality I am as\npatient and indifferent as any man I have known); so that, contrary to\nthe common humour, even in fish it often happens that I find them both\ntoo fresh and too firm; not for want of teeth, which I ever had good,\neven to excellence, and which age does not now begin to threaten; I have\nalways been used every morning to rub them with a napkin, and before and\nafter dinner.  God is favourable to those whom He makes to die by\ndegrees; 'tis the only benefit of old age; the last death will be so much\nthe less painful; it will kill but a half or a quarter of a man.  There\nis one tooth lately fallen out without drawing and without pain; it was\nthe natural term of its duration; in that part of my being and several\nothers, are already dead, others half dead, of those that were most\nactive and in the first rank during my vigorous years; 'tis so I melt and\nsteal away from myself.  What a folly it would be in my understanding to\napprehend the height of this fall, already so much advanced, as if it\nwere from the very top!  I hope I shall not.  I, in truth, receive a\nprincipal consolation in meditating my death, that it will be just and\nnatural, and that henceforward I cannot herein either require or hope\nfrom Destiny any other but unlawful favour.  Men make themselves believe\nthat we formerly had longer lives as well as greater stature.  But they\ndeceive themselves; and Solon, who was of those elder times, limits the\nduration of life to threescore and ten years. I, who have so much and so\nuniversally adored that \"The mean is best,\" of the passed time, and who\nhave concluded the most moderate measures to be the most perfect, shall\nI pretend to an immeasurable and prodigious old age?  Whatever happens\ncontrary to the course of nature may be troublesome; but what comes\naccording to her should always be pleasant:\n\n     \"Omnia, quae secundum naturam fiunt, sunt habenda in bonis.\"\n\n     [\"All things that are done according to nature\n     are to be accounted good.\"--Cicero, De Senect., c. 19.]\n\nAnd so, says Plato, the death which is occasioned by wounds and diseases\nis violent; but that which comes upon us, old age conducting us to it, is\nof all others the most easy, and in some sort delicious:\n\n          \"Vitam adolescentibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas.\"\n\n     [\"Young men are taken away by violence, old men by maturity.\"\n     --Cicero, ubi sup.]\n\nDeath mixes and confounds itself throughout with life; decay anticipates\nits hour, and shoulders itself even into the course of our advance.\nI have portraits of myself taken at five-and-twenty and five-and-thirty\nyears of age.  I compare them with that lately drawn: how many times is\nit no longer me; how much more is my present image unlike the former,\nthan unlike my dying one?  It is too much to abuse nature, to make her\ntrot so far that she must be forced to leave us, and abandon our conduct,\nour eyes, teeth, legs, and all the rest to the mercy of a foreign and\nhaggard countenance, and to resign us into the hands of art, being weary\nof following us herself.\n\nI am not excessively fond either of salads or fruits, except melons.  My\nfather hated all sorts of sauces; I love them all.  Eating too much hurts\nme; but, as to the quality of what I eat, I do not yet certainly know\nthat any sort of meat disagrees with me; neither have I observed that\neither full moon or decrease, autumn or spring, have any influence upon\nme.  We have in us motions that are inconstant and unknown; for example,\nI found radishes first grateful to my stomach, since that nauseous, and\nnow again grateful.  In several other things, I find my stomach and\nappetite vary after the same manner; I have changed again and again from\nwhite wine to claret, from claret to white wine.\n\nI am a great lover of fish, and consequently make my fasts feasts and\nfeasts fasts; and I believe what some people say, that it is more easy of\ndigestion than flesh.  As I make a conscience of eating flesh upon\nfish-days, so does my taste make a conscience of mixing fish and flesh;\nthe difference betwixt them seems to me too remote.\n\nFrom my youth, I have sometimes kept out of the way at meals; either to\nsharpen my appetite against the next morning (for, as Epicurus fasted and\nmade lean meals to accustom his pleasure to make shift without abundance,\nI, on the contrary, do it to prepare my pleasure to make better and more\ncheerful use of abundance); or else I fasted to preserve my vigour for\nthe service of some action of body or mind: for both the one and the\nother of these is cruelly dulled in me by repletion; and, above all\nthings, I hate that foolish coupling of so healthful and sprightly a\ngoddess with that little belching god, bloated with the fumes of his\nliquor--[ Montaigne did not approve of coupling Bacchus with Venus.]--\nor to cure my sick stomach, or for want of fit company; for I say, as the\nsame Epicurus did, that one is not so much to regard what he eats, as\nwith whom; and I commend Chilo, that he would not engage himself to be at\nPeriander's feast till he was first informed who were to be the other\nguests; no dish is so acceptable to me, nor no sauce so appetising, as\nthat which is extracted from society.  I think it more wholesome to eat\nmore leisurely and less, and to eat oftener; but I would have appetite\nand hunger attended to; I should take no pleasure to be fed with three or\nfour pitiful and stinted repasts a day, after a medicinal manner: who\nwill assure me that, if I have a good appetite in the morning, I shall\nhave the same at supper?  But we old fellows especially, let us take the\nfirst opportune time of eating, and leave to almanac-makers hopes and\nprognostics.  The utmost fruit of my health is pleasure; let us take hold\nof the present and known.  I avoid the invariable in these laws of\nfasting; he who would have one form serve him, let him avoid the\ncontinuing it; we harden ourselves in it; our strength is there stupefied\nand laid asleep; six months after, you shall find your stomach so inured\nto it, that all you have got is the loss of your liberty of doing\notherwise but to your prejudice.\n\nI never keep my legs and thighs warmer in winter than in summer; one\nsimple pair of silk stockings is all.  I have suffered myself, for the\nrelief of my colds, to keep my head warmer, and my belly upon the account\nof my colic: my diseases in a few days habituate themselves thereto, and\ndisdained my ordinary provisions: we soon get from a coif to a kerchief\nover it, from a simple cap to a quilted hat; the trimmings of the doublet\nmust not merely serve for ornament: there must be added a hare's skin or\na vulture's skin, and a cap under the hat: follow this gradation, and you\nwill go a very fine way to work.  I will do nothing of the sort, and\nwould willingly leave off what I have begun.  If you fall into any new\ninconvenience, all this is labour lost; you are accustomed to it; seek\nout some other.  Thus do they destroy themselves who submit to be\npestered with these enforced and superstitious rules; they must add\nsomething more, and something more after that; there is no end on't.\n\nFor what concerns our affairs and pleasures, it is much more commodious,\nas the ancients did, to lose one's dinner, and defer making good cheer\ntill the hour of retirement and repose, without breaking up a day; and so\nwas I formerly used to do.  As to health, I since by experience find, on\nthe contrary, that it is better to dine, and that the digestion is better\nwhile awake.  I am not very used to be thirsty, either well or sick; my\nmouth is, indeed, apt to be dry, but without thirst; and commonly I never\ndrink but with thirst that is created by eating, and far on in the meal;\nI drink pretty well for a man of my pitch: in summer, and at a relishing\nmeal, I do not only exceed the limits of Augustus, who drank but thrice\nprecisely; but not to offend Democritus rule, who forbade that men should\nstop at four times as an unlucky number, I proceed at need to the fifth\nglass, about three half-pints; for the little glasses are my favourites,\nand I like to drink them off, which other people avoid as an unbecoming\nthing.  I mix my wine sometimes with half, sometimes with the third part\nwater; and when I am at home, by an ancient custom that my father's\nphysician prescribed both to him and himself, they mix that which is\ndesigned for me in the buttery, two or three hours before 'tis brought\nin.  'Tis said that Cranabs, king of Attica, was the inventor of this\ncustom of diluting wine; whether useful or no, I have heard disputed.\nI think it more decent and wholesome for children to drink no wine till\nafter sixteen or eighteen years of age.  The most usual and common method\nof living is the most becoming; all particularity, in my opinion, is to\nbe avoided; and I should as much hate a German who mixed water with his\nwine, as I should a Frenchman who drank it pure.  Public usage gives the\nlaw in these things.\n\nI fear a mist, and fly from smoke as from the plague: the first repairs I\nfell upon in my own house were the chimneys and houses of office, the\ncommon and insupportable defects of all old buildings; and amongst the\ndifficulties of war I reckon the choking dust they made us ride in a\nwhole day together.  I have a free and easy respiration, and my colds for\nthe most part go off without offence to the lungs and without a cough.\n\nThe heat of summer is more an enemy to me than the cold of winter; for,\nbesides the incommodity of heat, less remediable than cold, and besides\nthe force of the sunbeams that strike upon the head, all glittering light\noffends my eyes, so that I could not now sit at dinner over against a\nflaming fire.\n\nTo dull the whiteness of paper, in those times when I was more wont to\nread, I laid a piece of glass upon my book, and found my eyes much\nrelieved by it.  I am to this hour--to the age of fifty-four--Ignorant of\nthe use of spectacles; and I can see as far as ever I did, or any other.\n'Tis true that in the evening I begin to find a little disturbance and\nweakness in my sight if I read, an exercise I have always found\ntroublesome, especially by night.  Here is one step back, and a very\nmanifest one; I shall retire another: from the second to the third, and\nso to the fourth, so gently, that I shall be stark blind before I shall\nbe sensible of the age and decay of my sight: so artificially do the\nFatal Sisters untwist our lives.  And so I doubt whether my hearing\nbegins to grow thick; and you will see I shall have half lost it, when I\nshall still lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me.  A man\nmust screw up his soul to a high pitch to make it sensible how it ebbs\naway.\n\nMy walking is quick and firm; and I know not which of the two, my mind or\nmy body, I have most to do to keep in the same state.  That preacher is\nvery much my friend who can fix my attention a whole sermon through: in\nplaces of ceremony, where every one's countenance is so starched, where I\nhave seen the ladies keep even their eyes so fixed, I could never order\nit so, that some part or other of me did not lash out; so that though I\nwas seated, I was never settled; and as to gesticulation, I am never\nwithout a switch in my hand, walking or riding.  As the philosopher\nChrysippus' maid said of her master, that he was only drunk in his legs,\nfor it was his custom to be always kicking them about in what place\nsoever he sat; and she said it when, the wine having made all his\ncompanions drunk, he found no alteration in himself at all; it may have\nbeen said of me from my infancy, that I had either folly or quicksilver\nin my feet, so much stirring and unsettledness there is in them, wherever\nthey are placed.\n\n'Tis indecent, besides the hurt it does to one's health, and even to the\npleasure of eating, to eat greedily as I do; I often bite my tongue, and\nsometimes my fingers, in my haste.  Diogenes, meeting a boy eating after\nthat manner, gave his tutor a box on the ear!  There were men at Rome\nthat taught people to chew, as well as to walk, with a good grace.  I\nlose thereby the leisure of speaking, which gives great relish to the\ntable, provided the discourse be suitable, that is, pleasant and short.\n\nThere is jealousy and envy amongst our pleasures; they cross and hinder\none another.  Alcibiades, a man who well understood how to make good\ncheer, banished even music from the table, that it might not disturb the\nentertainment of discourse, for the reason, as Plato tells us, \"that it\nis the custom of ordinary people to call fiddlers and singing men to\nfeasts, for want of good discourse and pleasant talk, with which men of\nunderstanding know how to entertain one another.\"  Varro requires all\nthis in entertainments: \"Persons of graceful presence and agreeable\nconversation, who are neither silent nor garrulous; neatness and\ndelicacy, both of meat and place; and fair weather.\"  The art of dining\nwell is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure; neither the\ngreatest captains nor the greatest philosophers have disdained the use or\nscience of eating well.  My imagination has delivered three repasts to\nthe custody of my memory, which fortune rendered sovereignly sweet to me,\nupon several occasions in my more flourishing age; my present state\nexcludes me; for every one, according to the good temper of body and mind\nwherein he then finds himself, furnishes for his own share a particular\ngrace and savour.  I, who but crawl upon the earth, hate this inhuman\nwisdom, that will have us despise and hate all culture of the body; I\nlook upon it as an equal injustice to loath natural pleasures as to be\ntoo much in love with them.  Xerxes was a blockhead, who, environed with\nall human delights, proposed a reward to him who could find out others;\nbut he is not much less so who cuts off any of those pleasures that\nnature has provided for him.  A man should neither pursue nor avoid them,\nbut receive them.  I receive them, I confess, a little too warmly and\nkindly, and easily suffer myself to follow my natural propensions.  We\nhave no need to exaggerate their inanity; they themselves will make us\nsufficiently sensible of it, thanks to our sick wet-blanket mind, that\nputs us out of taste with them as with itself; it treats both itself and\nall it receives, one while better, and another worse, according to its\ninsatiable, vagabond, and versatile essence:\n\n         \"Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis, acescit.\"\n\n          [\"Unless the vessel be clean, it will sour whatever\n          you put into it.\"--Horace, Ep., i. 2, 54.]\n\nI, who boast that I so curiously and particularly embrace the\nconveniences of life, find them, when I most nearly consider them, very\nlittle more than wind.  But what?  We are all wind throughout; and,\nmoreover, the wind itself, more discreet than we, loves to bluster and\nshift from corner to corner, and contents itself with its proper offices\nwithout desiring stability and solidity-qualities not its own.\n\nThe pure pleasures, as well as the pure displeasures, of the imagination,\nsay some, are the greatest, as was expressed by the balance of\nCritolaiis.  'Tis no wonder; it makes them to its own liking, and cuts\nthem out of the whole cloth; of this I every day see notable examples,\nand, peradventure, to be desired.  But I, who am of a mixed and heavy\ncondition, cannot snap so soon at this one simple object, but that I\nnegligently suffer myself to be carried away with the present pleasures\nof the, general human law, intellectually sensible, and sensibly\nintellectual.  The Cyrenaic philosophers will have it that as corporal\npains, so corporal pleasures are more powerful, both as double and as\nmore just.  There are some, as Aristotle says, who out of a savage kind\nof stupidity dislike them; and I know others who out of ambition do the\nsame.  Why do they not, moreover, forswear breathing?  why do they not\nlive of their own?  why not refuse light, because it is gratuitous, and\ncosts them neither invention nor exertion?  Let Mars, Pallas, or Mercury\nafford them their light by which to see, instead of Venus, Ceres, and\nBacchus.  These boastful humours may counterfeit some content, for what\nwill not fancy do?  But as to wisdom, there is no touch of it.  Will they\nnot seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives?  I hate\nthat we should be enjoined to have our minds in the clouds, when our\nbodies are at table; I would not have the mind nailed there, nor wallow\nthere; I would have it take place there and sit, but not lie down.\nAristippus maintained nothing but the body, as if we had no soul; Zeno\ncomprehended only the soul, as if we had no body: both of them faultily.\nPythagoras, they say, followed a philosophy that was all contemplation,\nSocrates one that was all conduct and action; Plato found a mean betwixt\nthe two; but they only say this for the sake of talking.  The true\ntemperament is found in Socrates; and, Plato is much more Socratic than\nPythagoric, and it becomes him better.  When I dance, I dance; when I\nsleep, I sleep.  Nay, when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my\nthoughts are some part of the time taken up with external occurrences,\nI some part of the time call them back again to my walk, to the orchard,\nto the sweetness of that solitude, and to myself.\n\nNature has mother-like observed this, that the actions she has enjoined\nus for our necessity should be also pleasurable to us; and she invites us\nto them, not only by reason, but also by appetite, and 'tis injustice to\ninfringe her laws.  When I see alike Caesar and Alexander, in the midst\nof his greatest business, so fully enjoy human and corporal pleasures, I\ndo not say that he relaxed his mind: I say that he strengthened it, by\nvigour of courage subjecting those violent employments and laborious\nthoughts to the ordinary usage of life: wise, had he believed the last\nwas his ordinary, the first his extraordinary, vocation.  We are great\nfools.  \"He has passed his life in idleness,\" say we: \"I have done\nnothing to-day.\"  What? have you not lived?  that is not only the\nfundamental, but the most illustrious, of your occupations.  \"Had I been\nput to the management of great affairs, I should have made it seen what I\ncould do.\"  \"Have you known how to meditate and manage your life?  you\nhave performed the greatest work of all.\"  In order to shew and develop\nherself, nature needs only fortune; she equally manifests herself in all\nstages, and behind a curtain as well as without one.  Have you known how\nto regulate your conduct, you have done a great deal more than he who has\ncomposed books.  Have you known how to take repose, you have done more\nthan he who has taken empires and cities.\n\nThe glorious masterpiece of man is to live to purpose; all other things:\nto reign, to lay up treasure, to build, are but little appendices and\nprops.  I take pleasure in seeing a general of an army, at the foot of a\nbreach he is presently to assault, give himself up entire and free at\ndinner, to talk and be merry with his friends.  And Brutus, when heaven\nand earth were conspired against him and the Roman liberty, stealing some\nhour of the night from his rounds to read and scan Polybius in all\nsecurity.  'Tis for little souls, buried under the weight of affairs, not\nfrom them to know how clearly to disengage themselves, not to know how to\nlay them aside and take them up again:\n\n                   \"O fortes, pejoraque passi\n                    Mecum saepe viri!  nunc vino pellite curas\n                    Cras ingens iterabimus aequor.\"\n\n     [\"O brave spirits, who have often suffered sorrow with me, drink\n     cares away; tomorrow we will embark once more on the vast sea.\"\n     --Horace, Od., i. 7, 30.]\n\nWhether it be in jest or earnest, that the theological and Sorbonnical\nwine, and their feasts, are turned into a proverb, I find it reasonable\nthey should dine so much more commodiously and pleasantly, as they have\nprofitably and seriously employed the morning in the exercise of their\nschools.  The conscience of having well spent the other hours, is the\njust and savoury sauce of the dinner-table.  The sages lived after that\nmanner; and that inimitable emulation to virtue, which astonishes us both\nin the one and the other Cato, that humour of theirs, so severe as even\nto be importunate, gently submits itself and yields to the laws of the\nhuman condition, of Venus and Bacchus; according to the precepts of their\nsect, that require the perfect sage to be as expert and intelligent in\nthe use of natural pleasures as in all other duties of life:\n\n               \"Cui cor sapiat, ei et sapiat palatus.\"\n\nRelaxation and facility, methinks, wonderfully honour and best become a\nstrong and generous soul.  Epaminondas did not think that to take part,\nand that heartily, in songs and sports and dances with the young men of\nhis city, were things that in any way derogated from the honour of his\nglorious victories and the perfect purity of manners that was in him.\nAnd amongst so many admirable actions of Scipio the grandfather, a person\nworthy to be reputed of a heavenly extraction, there is nothing that\ngives him a greater grace than to see him carelessly and childishly\ntrifling at gathering and selecting cockle shells, and playing at quoits,\n\n     [This game, as the \"Dictionnaire de Trevoux\" describes it, is one\n     wherein two persons contend which of them shall soonest pick up some\n     object.]\n\namusing and tickling himself in representing by writing in comedies the\nmeanest and most popular actions of men.  And his head full of that\nwonderful enterprise of Hannibal and Africa, visiting the schools in\nSicily, and attending philosophical lectures, to the extent of arming the\nblind envy of his enemies at Rome.  Nor is there anything more remarkable\nin Socrates than that, old as he was, he found time to make himself\ntaught dancing and playing upon instruments, and thought it time well\nspent.  This same man was seen in an ecstasy, standing upon his feet a\nwhole day and a night together, in the presence of all the Grecian army,\nsurprised and absorbed by some profound thought.  He was the first,\namongst so many valiant men of the army, to run to the relief of\nAlcibiades, oppressed with the enemy, to shield him with his own body,\nand disengage him from the crowd by absolute force of arms.  It was he\nwho, in the Delian battle, raised and saved Xenophon when fallen from his\nhorse; and who, amongst all the people of Athens, enraged as he was at so\nunworthy a spectacle, first presented himself to rescue Theramenes, whom\nthe thirty tyrants were leading to execution by their satellites, and\ndesisted not from his bold enterprise but at the remonstrance of\nTheramenes himself, though he was only followed by two more in all.  He\nwas seen, when courted by a beauty with whom he was in love, to maintain\nat need a severe abstinence.  He was seen ever to go to the wars, and\nwalk upon ice, with bare feet; to wear the same robe, winter and summer;\nto surpass all his companions in patience of bearing hardships, and to\neat no more at a feast than at his own private dinner.  He was seen, for\nseven-and-twenty years together, to endure hunger, poverty, the\nindocility of his children, and the nails of his wife, with the same\ncountenance.  And, in the end, calumny, tyranny, imprisonment, fetters,\nand poison.  But was this man obliged to drink full bumpers by any rule\nof civility?  he was also the man of the whole army with whom the\nadvantage in drinking, remained.  And he never refused to play at\nnoisettes, nor to ride the hobby-horse with children, and it became him\nwell; for all actions, says philosophy, equally become and equally honour\na wise man.  We have enough wherewithal to do it, and we ought never to\nbe weary of presenting the image of this great man in all the patterns\nand forms of perfection.  There are very few examples of life, full and\npure; and we wrong our teaching every day, to propose to ourselves those\nthat are weak and imperfect, scarce good for any one service, and rather\npull us back; corrupters rather than correctors of manners.  The people\ndeceive themselves; a man goes much more easily indeed by the ends, where\nthe extremity serves for a bound, a stop, and guide, than by the middle\nway, large and open; and according to art, more than according to nature:\nbut withal much less nobly and commendably.\n\nGreatness of soul consists not so much in mounting and in pressing\nforward, as in knowing how to govern and circumscribe itself; it takes\neverything for great, that is enough, and demonstrates itself in\npreferring moderate to eminent things.  There is nothing so fine and\nlegitimate as well and duly to play the man; nor science so arduous as\nwell and naturally to know how to live this life; and of all the\ninfirmities we have, 'tis the most barbarous to despise our being.\n\nWhoever has a mind to isolate his spirit, when the body is ill at ease,\nto preserve it from the contagion, let him by all means do it if he can:\nbut otherwise let him on the contrary favour and assist it, and not\nrefuse to participate of its natural pleasures with a conjugal\ncomplacency, bringing to it, if it be the wiser, moderation, lest by\nindiscretion they should get confounded with displeasure.  Intemperance\nis the pest of pleasure; and temperance is not its scourge, but rather\nits seasoning.  Euxodus, who therein established the sovereign good, and\nhis companions, who set so high a value upon it, tasted it in its most\ncharming sweetness, by the means of temperance, which in them was\nsingular and exemplary.\n\nI enjoin my soul to look upon pain and pleasure with an eye equally\nregulated:\n\n          \"Eodem enim vitio est effusio animi in laetitia\n          quo in dolore contractio,\"\n\n     [\"For from the same imperfection arises the expansion of the\n     mind in pleasure and its contraction in sorrow.\"\n     --Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., iv. 31.]\n\nand equally firm; but the one gaily and the other severely, and so far as\nit is able, to be careful to extinguish the one as to extend the other.\nThe judging rightly of good brings along with it the judging soundly of\nevil: pain has something of the inevitable in its tender beginnings, and\npleasure something of the evitable in its excessive end.  Plato couples\nthem together, and wills that it should be equally the office of\nfortitude to fight against pain, and against the immoderate and charming\nblandishments of pleasure: they are two fountains, from which whoever\ndraws, when and as much as he needs, whether city, man, or beast, is very\nfortunate.  The first is to be taken medicinally and upon necessity, and\nmore scantily; the other for thirst, but not to, drunkenness.  Pain,\npleasure, love and hatred are the first things that a child is sensible\nof: if, when reason comes, they apply it to themselves, that is virtue.\n\nI have a special vocabulary of my own; I \"pass away time,\" when it is ill\nand uneasy, but when 'tis good I do not pass it away: \"I taste it over\nagain and adhere to it\"; one must run over the ill and settle upon the\ngood.  This ordinary phrase of pastime, and passing away the time,\nrepresents the usage of those wise sort of people who think they cannot\ndo better with their lives than to let them run out and slide away, pass\nthem over, and baulk them, and, as much as they can, ignore them and shun\nthem as a thing of troublesome and contemptible quality: but I know it to\nbe another kind of thing, and find it both valuable and commodious, even\nin its latest decay, wherein I now enjoy it; and nature has delivered it\ninto our hands in such and so favourable circumstances that we have only\nourselves to blame if it be troublesome to us, or escapes us\nunprofitably:\n\n     \"Stulti vita ingrata est, trepida est, tota in futurum fertur.\"\n\n     [\"The life of a fool is thankless, timorous, and wholly bent upon\n     the future.\"--Seneca, Ep:, 15.]\n\nNevertheless I compose myself to lose mine without regret; but withal as\na thing that is perishable by its condition, not that it molests or\nannoys me.  Nor does it properly well become any not to be displeased\nwhen they die, excepting such as are pleased to live.  There is good\nhusbandry in enjoying it: I enjoy it double to what others do; for the\nmeasure of its fruition depends upon our more or less application to it.\nChiefly that I perceive mine to be so short in time, I desire to extend\nit in weight; I will stop the promptitude of its flight by the\npromptitude of my grasp; and by the vigour of using it compensate the\nspeed of its running away.  In proportion as the possession of life is\nmore short, I must make it so much deeper and fuller.\n\nOthers feel the pleasure of content and prosperity; I feel it too, as\nwell as they, but not as it passes and slips by; one should study, taste,\nand ruminate upon it to render condign thanks to Him who grants it to us.\nThey enjoy the other pleasures as they do that of sleep, without knowing\nit.  To the end that even sleep itself should not so stupidly escape from\nme, I have formerly caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, so that I\nmight the better and more sensibly relish and taste it.  I ponder with\nmyself of content; I do not skim over, but sound it; and I bend my\nreason, now grown perverse and peevish, to entertain it.  Do I find\nmyself in any calm composedness?  is there any pleasure that tickles me?\nI do not suffer it to dally with my senses only; I associate my soul to\nit too: not there to engage itself, but therein to take delight; not\nthere to lose itself, but to be present there; and I employ it, on its\npart, to view itself in this prosperous state, to weigh and appreciate\nits happiness and to amplify it.  It reckons how much it stands indebted\nto God that its conscience and the intestine passions are in repose; that\nit has the body in its natural disposition, orderly and competently\nenjoying the soft and soothing functions by which He, of His grace is\npleased to compensate the sufferings wherewith His justice at His good\npleasure chastises us.  It reflects how great a benefit it is to be so\nprotected, that which way soever it turns its eye the heavens are calm\naround it.  No desire, no fear, no doubt, troubles the air; no\ndifficulty, past, present, or to, come, that its imagination may not pass\nover without offence.  This consideration takes great lustre from the\ncomparison of different conditions.  So it is that I present to my\nthought, in a thousand aspects, those whom fortune or their own error\ncarries away and torments.  And, again, those who, more like to me, so\nnegligently and incuriously receive their good fortune.  Those are folks\nwho spend their time indeed; they pass over the present and that which\nthey possess, to wait on hope, and for shadows and vain images which\nfancy puts before them:\n\n         \"Morte obita quales fama est volitare figuras,\n          Aut quae sopitos deludunt somnia sensus:\"\n\n     [\"Such forms as those which after death are reputed to hover about,\n     or dreams which delude the senses in sleep.\"--AEneid, x. 641.]\n\nwhich hasten and prolong their flight, according as they are pursued.\nThe fruit and end of their pursuit is to pursue; as Alexander said, that\nthe end of his labour was to labour:\n\n          \"Nil actum credens, cum quid superesset agendum.\"\n\n     [\"Thinking nothing done, if anything remained to be done.\n     --\"Lucan, ii. 657.]\n\nFor my part then, I love life and cultivate it, such as it has pleased\nGod to bestow it upon us.  I do not desire it should be without the\nnecessity of eating and drinking; and I should think it a not less\nexcusable failing to wish it had been twice as long;\n\n     \"Sapiens divitiarum naturalium quaesitor acerrimus:\"\n\n     [\"A wise man is the keenest seeker for natural riches.\"\n     --Seneca, Ep., 119.]\n\nnor that we should support ourselves by putting only a little of that\ndrug into our mouths, by which Epimenides took away his appetite and kept\nhimself alive; nor that we should stupidly beget children with our\nfingers or heels, but rather; with reverence be it spoken, that we might\nvoluptuously beget them with our fingers and heels; nor that the body\nshould be without desire and without titillation.  These are ungrateful\nand wicked complaints.  I accept kindly, and with gratitude, what nature\nhas done for me; am well pleased with it, and proud of it.  A man does\nwrong to that great and omnipotent giver to refuse, annul, or disfigure\nhis gift: all goodness himself, he has made everything good:\n\n     \"Omnia quae secundum naturam sunt, aestimatione digna sunt.\"\n\n     [\"All things that are according to nature are worthy of esteem.\"\n     --Cicero, De Fin., iii. 6.]\n\nOf philosophical opinions, I preferably embrace those that are most\nsolid, that is to say, the most human and most our own: my discourse is,\nsuitable to my manners, low and humble: philosophy plays the child, to my\nthinking, when it puts itself upon its Ergos to preach to us that 'tis a\nbarbarous alliance to marry the divine with the earthly, the reasonable\nwith the unreasonable, the severe with the indulgent, the honest with the\ndishonest.  That pleasure is a brutish quality, unworthy to be tasted by\na wise man; that the sole pleasure he extracts from the enjoyment of a\nfair young wife is a pleasure of his conscience to perform an action\naccording to order, as to put on his boots for a profitable journey.\nOh, that its followers had no more right, nor nerves, nor vigour in\ngetting their wives' maidenheads than in its lesson.\n\nThis is not what Socrates says, who is its master and ours: he values, as\nhe ought, bodily pleasure; but he prefers that of the mind as having more\nforce, constancy, facility, variety, and dignity.  This, according to\nhim, goes by no means alone--he is not so fantastic--but only it goes\nfirst; temperance with him is the moderatrix, not the adversary of\npleasure.  Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than\nprudent and just.\n\n          \"Intrandum est in rerum naturam, et penitus,\n          quid ea postulet, pervidendum.\"\n\n     [\"A man must search into the nature of things, and fully examine\n     what she requires.\"--Cicero, De Fin., V. 16.]\n\nI hunt after her foot throughout: we have confounded it with artificial\ntraces; and that academic and peripatetic good, which is \"to live\naccording to it,\" becomes on this account hard to limit and explain; and\nthat of the Stoics, neighbour to it, which is \"to consent to nature.\"\nIs it not an error to esteem any actions less worthy, because they are\nnecessary?  And yet they will not take it out of my head, that it is not\na very convenient marriage of pleasure with necessity, with which, says\nan ancient, the gods always conspire.  To what end do we dismember by\ndivorce a building united by so close and brotherly a correspondence?\nLet us, on the contrary, confirm it by mutual offices; let the mind rouse\nand quicken the heaviness of the body, and the body stay and fix the\nlevity of the soul:\n\n     \"Qui, velut summum bonum, laudat animac naturam, et, tanquam malum,\n     naturam carnis accusat, profectd et animam carnatiter appetit, et\n     carnem carnaliter fugit; quoniam id vanitate sentit humans, non\n     veritate divina.\"\n\n     [\"He who commends the nature of the soul as the supreme good, and\n     condemns the nature of the flesh as evil, at once both carnally\n     desires the soul, and carnally flies the flesh, because he feels\n     thus from human vanity, not from divine truth.\"\n     --St. Augustin, De Civit.  Dei, xiv.  5.]\n\nIn this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care;\nwe stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to\nman, to conduct man according to his condition; 'tis express, plain, and\nthe very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly\nprescribed it to us.  Authority has power only to work in regard to\nmatters of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language;\ntherefore let us again charge at it in this place:\n\n     \"Stultitiae proprium quis non dixerit, ignave et contumaciter\n     facere, quae facienda sunt; et alio corpus impellere, alio animum;\n     distrahique inter diversissimos motus?\"\n\n     [\"Who will not say, that it is the property of folly, slothfully and\n     contumaciously to perform what is to be done, and to bend the body\n     one way and the mind another, and to be distracted betwixt wholly\n     different motions?\"--Seneca, Ep., 74.]\n\nTo make this apparent, ask any one, some day, to tell you what whimsies\nand imaginations he put into his pate, upon the account of which he\ndiverted his thoughts from a good meal, and regrets the time he spends in\neating; you will find there is nothing so insipid in all the dishes at\nyour table as this wise meditation of his (for the most part we had\nbetter sleep than wake to the purpose we wake); and that his discourses\nand notions are not worth the worst mess there.  Though they were the\necstasies of Archimedes himself, what then?  I do not here speak of, nor\nmix with the rabble of us ordinary men, and the vanity of the thoughts\nand desires that divert us, those venerable souls, elevated by the ardour\nof devotion and religion, to a constant and conscientious meditation of\ndivine things, who, by the energy of vivid and vehement hope,\nprepossessing the use of the eternal nourishment, the final aim and last\nstep of Christian desires, the sole constant, and incorruptible pleasure,\ndisdain to apply themselves to our necessitous, fluid, and ambiguous\nconveniences, and easily resign to the body the care and use of sensual\nand temporal pasture; 'tis a privileged study.  Between ourselves, I have\never observed supercelestial opinions and subterranean manners to be of\nsingular accord.\n\nAEsop, that great man, saw his master piss as he walked: \"What then,\"\nsaid he, \"must we drop as we run?\"  Let us manage our time; there yet\nremains a great deal idle and ill employed.  The mind has not willingly\nother hours enough wherein to do its business, without disassociating\nitself from the body, in that little space it must have for its\nnecessity.  They would put themselves out of themselves, and escape from\nbeing men.  It is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels,\nthey transform themselves into beasts; instead of elevating, they lay\nthemselves lower.  These transcendental humours affright me, like high\nand inaccessible places; and nothing is hard for me to digest in the life\nof Socrates but his ecstasies and communication with demons; nothing so\nhuman in Plato as that for which they say he was called divine; and of\nour sciences, those seem to be the most terrestrial and low that are\nhighest mounted; and I find nothing so humble and mortal in the life of\nAlexander as his fancies about his immortalisation.  Philotas pleasantly\nquipped him in his answer; he congratulated him by letter concerning the\noracle of Jupiter Ammon, which had placed him amongst the gods: \"Upon thy\naccount I am glad of it, but the men are to be pitied who are to live\nwith a man, and to obey him, who exceeds and is not contented with the\nmeasure of a man:\"\n\n               \"Diis to minorem quod geris, imperas.\"\n\n     [\"Because thou carriest thyself lower than the gods, thou rulest.\"\n     --Horace, Od., iii. 6, 5.]\n\nThe pretty inscription wherewith the Athenians honoured the entry of\nPompey into their city is conformable to my sense: \"By so much thou art\na god, as thou confessest thee a man.\"  'Tis an absolute and, as it were,\na divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being.\nWe seek other conditions, by reason we do not understand the use of our\nown; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside.\n'Tis to much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we must\nyet walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in\nthe world, we are but seated upon our breech.  The fairest lives, in my\nopinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common\nand human model without miracle, without extravagance.  Old age stands a\nlittle in need of a more gentle treatment.  Let us recommend that to God,\nthe protector of health and wisdom, but let it be gay and sociable:\n\n                   \"Frui paratis et valido mihi\n                    Latoe, dones, et precor, integra\n                    Cum mente; nec turpem senectam\n                    Degere, nec Cithara carentem.\"\n\n     [\"Grant it to me, Apollo, that I may enjoy my possessions in good\n     health; let me be sound in mind; let me not lead a dishonourable\n     old age, nor want the cittern.\"--Horace, Od., i. 31, 17.]\n\nOr:\n\n     [\"Grant it to me, Apollo, that I may enjoy what I have in good\n     health; let me be sound in body and mind; let me live in honour when\n     old, nor let music be wanting.\"]\n\n\n\n\nAPOLOGY:\n[In fact, the first edition of the Essays (Bordeaux, 1580) has very few\nquotations.  These became more numerous in the edition of 1588; but the\nmultitude of classical texts which at times encumber Montaigne's text,\nonly dates from the posthumous edition of 1595] he had made these\ncollections in the four last years of his life, as an amusement of his\n\"idleness.\"--Le Clerc.  They grow, however, more sparing in the Third\nBook.\n\n\n\n\n     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:\n\n     A well-governed stomach is a great part of liberty\n     Affirmation and obstinacy are express signs of want of wit\n     Alexander said, that the end of his labour was to labour\n     All actions equally become and equally honour a wise man\n     As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by law\n     At the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little\n     better have none at all than to have them in so prodigious a num\n     Both kings and philosophers go to stool\n     Cannot stand the liberty of a friend's advice\n     Cleave to the side that stood most in need of her\n     Condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimes\n     Customs and laws make justice\n     Dignify our fopperies when we commit them to the press\n     Diversity of medical arguments and opinions embraces all\n     Every man thinks himself sufficiently intelligent\n     Excuse myself from knowing anything which enslaves me to others\n     First informed who were to be the other guests\n     Go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside\n     Got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, but one\n     Hate remedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself\n     He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears\n     How many and many times he has been mistaken in his own judgment\n     \"I have done nothing to-day.\"--\"What? have you not lived?\"\n     If it be a delicious medicine, take it\n     Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not\n     Intemperance is the pest of pleasure\n     Language: obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts\n     Last death will kill but a half or a quarter of a man\n     Law: breeder of altercation and division\n     Laws keep up their credit, not for being just--but as laws\n     Lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me.\n     Learn my own debility and the treachery of my understanding\n     Life of Caesar has no greater example for us than our own\n     Long sittings at table both trouble me and do me harm\n     Made all medicinal conclusions largely give way to my pleasure\n     Man after  who held out his pulse to a physician was a fool\n     Man must learn that he is nothing but a fool\n     More ado to interpret interpretations\n     More books upon books than upon any other subject\n     Never did two men make the same judgment of the same thing\n     None that less keep their promise (than physicians)\n     Nor get children but before I sleep, nor get them standing\n     Nothing so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty, as the laws\n     Our justice presents to us but one hand\n     Perpetual scolding of his wife (of Socrates)\n     Physician: pass through all the diseases he pretends to cure\n     Plato angry at excess of sleeping than at excess of drinking\n     Plato: lawyers and physicians are bad institutions of a country\n     Prolong your misery an hour or two\n     Put us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties\n     Resolved to bring nothing to it but expectation and patience\n     Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications\n     Seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives\n     So weak and languishing, as not to have even wishing left to him\n     Soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity\n     Study makes me sensible how much I have to learn\n     Style wherewith men establish religions and laws\n     Subdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doub\n     That we may live, we cease to live\n     The mean is best\n     There is none of us who would not be worse than kings\n     Thinking nothing done, if anything remained to be done\n     Thinks nothing profitable that is not painful\n     Thou diest because thou art living\n     Tis so I melt and steal away from myself\n     Truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times\n     Truth, that for being older it is none the wiser\n     We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade\n     We ought to grant free passage to diseases\n     Whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger\n     Why do we not imitate the Roman architecture?\n     Wrangling arrogance, wholly believing and trusting in itself\n     Yet do we find any end of the need of interpretating?","title":"Essays of Michel de Montaigne \u2014 Volume 19","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":25687}