The Essays of Montaigne, Book II

The Essays of
Montaigne, Book II
by Michel de Montaigne
Trans. by Charles Cotton
Styled by LimpidSoft
Contents
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ii
VOLUME 9
1
CHAPTER I
OF THE INCONSTANCY OF OUR ACTIONS
as make it their business to oversee human actions,
S
do not find themselves in anything so much perplexed
as to reconcile them and bring them into the world’s eye
UCH
with the same lustre and reputation; for they commonly so
strangely contradict one another that it seems impossible
they should proceed from one and the same person. We
find the younger Marius one while a son of Mars and another a son of Venus. Pope Boniface VIII. entered, it is said,
into his Papacy like a fox, behaved himself in it like a lion,
and died like a dog; and who could believe it to be the same
Nero, the perfect image of all cruelty, who, having the sentence of a condemned man brought to him to sign, as was
the custom, cried out, “O that I had never been taught to
write!” so much it went to his heart to condemn a man to
death. All story is full of such examples, and every man is
able to produce so many to himself, or out of his own practice or observation, that I sometimes wonder to see men of
understanding give themselves the trouble of sorting these
pieces, considering that irresolution appears to me to be the
most common and manifest vice of our nature witness the
famous verse of the player Publius:
“Malum consilium est,
potest.”1
quod mutari non
There seems some reason in forming a judgment of a
man from the most usual methods of his life; but, considering the natural instability of our manners and opinions, I
have often thought even the best authors a little out in so obstinately endeavouring to make of us any constant and solid
contexture; they choose a general air of a man, and according to that interpret all his actions, of which, if they cannot
1 “‘Tis evil counsel that will admit no change.”
Aul. Gell., xvii. 14.
2
–Pub.
Mim., ex
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CHAPTER I
bend some to a uniformity with the rest, they are presently
imputed to dissimulation. Augustus has escaped them, for
there was in him so apparent, sudden, and continual variety
of actions all the whole course of his life, that he has slipped
away clear and undecided from the most daring critics. I
can more hardly believe a man’s constancy than any other
virtue, and believe nothing sooner than the contrary. He
that would judge of a man in detail and distinctly, bit by bit,
would oftener be able to speak the truth. It is a hard matter, from all antiquity, to pick out a dozen men who have
formed their lives to one certain and constant course, which
is the principal design of wisdom; for to comprise it all in
one word, says one of the ancients, and to contract all the
rules of human life into one, “it is to will, and not to will,
always one and the same thing: I will not vouchsafe,” says
he, “to add, provided the will be just, for if it be not just, it
is impossible it should be always one.” I have indeed formerly learned that vice is nothing but irregularity, and want
of measure, and therefore ‘tis impossible to fix constancy to
it. ‘Tis a saying of. Demosthenes, “that the beginning oh all
virtue is consultation and deliberation; the end and perfection, constancy.” If we would resolve on any certain course
by reason, we should pitch upon the best, but nobody has
thought on’t:
“Quod petit, spernit; repetit, quod nuper omisit;
AEstuat, et vitae disconvenit ordine toto.”2
Our ordinary practice is to follow the inclinations of our
appetite, be it to the left or right, upwards or downwards,
according as we are wafted by the breath of occasion. We
never meditate what we would have till the instant we have
a mind to have it; and change like that little creature which
receives its colour from what it is laid upon. What we but
2 “That which he sought he despises; what he lately lost, he
seeks again. He fluctuates, and is inconsistent in the whole order of
life.” –Horace, Ep., i. I, 98.
3
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CHAPTER I
just now proposed to ourselves we immediately alter, and
presently return again to it; ‘tis nothing but shifting and inconsistency:
“Ducimur, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum.”3
We do not go, we are driven; like things that float, now
leisurely, then with violence, according to the gentleness or
rapidity of the current:
“Nonne videmus,
Quid sibi quisque velit, nescire, et quaerere semper
Commutare locum, quasi onus deponere possit?”4
Every day a new whimsy, and our humours keep motion
with the time.
“Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse
Juppiter auctificas lustravit lumine terras.”5
We fluctuate betwixt various inclinations; we will nothing
freely, nothing absolutely, nothing constantly. In any one
who had prescribed and established determinate laws and
rules in his head for his own conduct, we should perceive
an equality of manners, an order and an infallible relation
of one thing or action to another, shine through his whole
life; Empedocles observed this discrepancy in the Agrigentines, that they gave themselves up to delights, as if every
3 “We are turned about like the top with the thong of others.”
–
Idem, Sat., ii. 7, 82.
4 “Do we not see them, uncertain what they want, and always asking for something new, as if they could get rid of the burthen.” –
Lucretius, iii. 1070.
5 “Such are the minds of men, that they change as the light with
which father Jupiter himself has illumined the increasing earth.” –
Cicero, Frag. Poet, lib. x.
4
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CHAPTER I
day was their last, and built as if they had been to live for
ever. The judgment would not be hard to make, as is very
evident in the younger Cato; he who therein has found one
step, it will lead him to all the rest; ‘tis a harmony of very
according sounds, that cannot jar. But with us ‘t is quite
contrary; every particular action requires a particular judgment. The surest way to steer, in my opinion, would be
to take our measures from the nearest allied circumstances,
without engaging in a longer inquisition, or without concluding any other consequence. I was told, during the civil
disorders of our poor kingdom, that a maid, hard by the
place where I then was, had thrown herself out of a window to avoid being forced by a common soldier who was
quartered in the house; she was not killed by the fall, and
therefore, repeating her attempt would have cut her own
throat, had she not been prevented; but having, nevertheless, wounded herself to some show of danger, she voluntarily confessed that the soldier had not as yet importuned
her otherwise; than by courtship, earnest solicitation, and
presents; but that she was afraid that in the end he would
have proceeded to violence, all which she delivered with
such a countenance and accent, and withal embrued in her
own blood, the highest testimony of her virtue, that she appeared another Lucretia; and yet I have since been very well
assured that both before and after she was not so difficult a
piece. And, according to my host’s tale in Ariosto, be as
handsome a man and as worthy a gentleman as you will,
do not conclude too much upon your mistress’s inviolable
chastity for having been repulsed; you do not know but she
may have a better stomach to your muleteer.
Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great
degree of favour and esteem for his valour, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him of a long and inward disease
under which he had a great while languished, and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work
than before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed
him: “Yourself, sir,” replied the other, “by having eased me
5
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CHAPTER I
of the pains that made me weary of my life.” Lucullus’s soldier having been rifled by the enemy, performed upon them
in revenge a brave exploit, by which having made himself a
gainer, Lucullus, who had conceived a good opinion of him
from that action, went about to engage him in some enterprise of very great danger, with all the plausible persuasions
and promises he could think of;
“Verbis, quae timido quoque possent addere
mentem”6
“Pray employ,” answered he, “some miserable plundered soldier in that affair”:
“Quantumvis rusticus, ibit,
Ibit eo, quo vis, qui zonam perdidit, inquit;”7
and flatly refused to go. When we read that Mahomet having furiously rated Chasan, Bassa of the Janissaries, because
he had seen the Hungarians break into his squadrons, and
himself behave very ill in the business, and that Chasan,
instead of any other answer, rushed furiously alone, scimitar in hand, into the first body of the enemy, where he was
presently cut to pieces, we are not to look upon that action,
peradventure, so much as vindication as a turn of mind,
not so much natural valour as a sudden despite. The man
you saw yesterday so adventurous and brave, you must
not think it strange to see him as great a poltroon the next:
anger, necessity, company, wine, or the sound of the trumpet had roused his spirits; this is no valour formed and established by reason, but accidentally created by such circumstances, and therefore it is no wonder if by contrary circumstances it appear quite another thing.
6 “Words which might add courage to any timid man.”
–Horace,
Ep., ii. 2, 1, 2.
7 “Some poor fellow, who has lost his purse, will go whither you
wish, said he.” –Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 39.
6
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These supple variations and contradictions so manifest
in us, have given occasion to some to believe that man has
two souls; other two distinct powers that always accompany and incline us, the one towards good and the other
towards ill, according to their own nature and propension;
so abrupt a variety not being imaginable to flow from one
and the same source.
For my part, the puff of every accident not only carries
me along with it according to its own proclivity, but moreover I discompose and trouble myself by the instability of
my own posture; and whoever will look narrowly into his
own bosom, will hardly find himself twice in the same condition. I give to my soul sometimes one face and sometimes
another, according to the side I turn her to. If I speak variously of myself, it is because I consider myself variously; all
the contrarieties are there to be found in one corner or another; after one fashion or another: bashful, insolent; chaste,
lustful; prating, silent; laborious, delicate; ingenious, heavy;
melancholic, pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant; liberal, covetous, and prodigal: I find all this in myself, more
or less, according as I turn myself about; and whoever will
sift himself to the bottom, will find in himself, and even in
his own judgment, this volubility and discordance. I have
nothing to say of myself entirely, simply, and solidly without mixture and confusion. ‘Distinguo’ is the most universal member of my logic. Though I always intend to speak
well of good things, and rather to interpret such things as
fall out in the best sense than otherwise, yet such is the
strangeness of our condition, that we are often pushed on
to do well even by vice itself, if well-doing were not judged
by the intention only. One gallant action, therefore, ought
not to conclude a man valiant; if a man were brave indeed,
he would be always so, and upon all occasions. If it were
a habit of valour and not a sally, it would render a man
equally resolute in all accidents; the same alone as in company; the same in lists as in a battle: for, let them say what
they will, there is not one valour for the pavement and an7
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CHAPTER I
other for the field; he would bear a sickness in his bed as
bravely as a wound in the field, and no more fear death in
his own house than at an assault. We should not then see the
same man charge into a breach with a brave assurance, and
afterwards torment himself like a woman for the loss of a
trial at law or the death of a child; when, being an infamous
coward, he is firm in the necessities of poverty; when he
shrinks at the sight of a barber’s razor, and rushes fearless
upon the swords of the enemy, the action is commendable,
not the man.
Many of the Greeks, says Cicero,8 cannot endure the
sight of an enemy, and yet are courageous in sickness; the
Cimbrians and Celtiberians quite contrary;
“Nihil enim potest esse aequabile, quod non a
certa ratione proficiscatur.”9
No valour can be more extreme in its kind than that
of Alexander: but it is of but one kind, nor full enough
throughout, nor universal. Incomparable as it is, it has yet
some blemishes; of which his being so often at his wits’
end upon every light suspicion of his captains conspiring
against his life, and the carrying himself in that inquisition
with so much vehemence and indiscreet injustice, and with
a fear that subverted his natural reason, is one pregnant instance. The superstition, also, with which he was so much
tainted, carries along with it some image of pusillanimity;
and the excess of his penitence for the murder of Clytus
is also a testimony of the unevenness of his courage. All
we perform is no other than a cento, as a man may say, of
several pieces, and we would acquire honour by a false title. Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one
sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she
presently pulls it away again. ‘Tis a vivid and strong tincture which, when the soul has once thoroughly imbibed it,
8 Cicero,
Tusc. Quaes., ii. 27.
can be regular that does not proceed from a fixed
ground of reason.” –Idem, ibid., c. 26.
9 “Nothing
8
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CHAPTER I
will not out but with the piece. And, therefore, to make a
right judgment of a man, we are long and very observingly
to follow his trace: if constancy does not there stand firm
upon her own proper base,
“Cui vivendi via considerata atque provisa
est,”10
if the variety of occurrences makes him alter his pace (his
path, I mean, for the pace may be faster or slower) let him
go; such an one runs before the wind, “Avau le dent,” as the
motto of our Talebot has it.
‘Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance
has so great a dominion over us, since it is by chance we
live. It is not possible for any one who has not designed
his life for some certain end, it is impossible for any one
to arrange the pieces, who has not the whole form already
contrived in his imagination. Of what use are colours to
him that knows not what he is to paint? No one lays down
a certain design for his life, and we only deliberate thereof
by pieces. The archer ought first to know at what he is to
aim, and then accommodate his arm, bow, string, shaft, and
motion to it; our counsels deviate and wander, because not
levelled to any determinate end. No wind serves him who
addresses his voyage to no certain, port. I cannot acquiesce
in the judgment given by one in the behalf of Sophocles,
who concluded him capable of the management of domestic
affairs, against the accusation of his son, from having read
one of his tragedies.
Neither do I allow of the conjecture of the Parians, sent
to regulate the Milesians sufficient for such a consequence
as they from thence derived coming to visit the island, they
took notice of such grounds as were best husbanded, and
such country-houses as were best governed; and having
taken the names of the owners, when they had assembled
10 “If the way of his life is thoroughly considered and traced
out.” –Cicero, Paradox, v. 1.
9
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CHAPTER I
the citizens, they appointed these farmers for new governors and magistrates; concluding that they, who had been
so provident in their own private concerns, would be so of
the public too. We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its
own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and
ourselves as betwixt us and others:
“Magnam rem puta, unum hominem agere.”11
Since ambition can teach man valour, temperance, and
liberality, and even justice too; seeing that avarice can inspire the courage of a shop-boy, bred and nursed up in obscurity and ease, with the assurance to expose himself so
far from the fireside to the mercy of the waves and angry
Neptune in a frail boat; that she further teaches discretion
and prudence; and that even Venus can inflate boys under
the discipline of the rod with boldness and resolution, and
infuse masculine courage into the heart of tender virgins in
their mothers’ arms:
“Hac duce, custodes furtim transgressa jacentes,
Ad juvenem tenebris sola puella venit:”12
‘tis not all the understanding has to do, simply to judge us
by our outward actions; it must penetrate the very soul, and
there discover by what springs the motion is guided. But
that being a high and hazardous undertaking, I could wish
that fewer would attempt it.
11 “Esteem it a great thing always to act as one and the same
man.” –Seneca, Ep., 150.
12 “She
leading, the maiden, furtively passing by the
recumbent guards, goes alone in the darkness to the youth.” –
Tibullus, ii. 2, 75.
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CHAPTER II
OF DRUNKENNESS
world is nothing but variety and disemblance, vices
T
are all alike, as they are vices, and peradventure the Stoics understand them so; but although they are equally vices,
HE
yet they are not all equal vices; and he who has transgressed
the ordinary bounds a hundred paces:
“Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum,”13
should not be in a worse condition than he that has advanced but ten, is not to be believed; or that sacrilege is not
worse than stealing a cabbage:
“Nec vincet ratio hoc, tantumdem ut peccet,
idemque,
Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti,
Et qui nocturnus divum sacra legerit.”
There is in this as great diversity as in anything whatever.
The confounding of the order and measure of sins is dangerous: murderers, traitors, and tyrants get too much by it, and
it is not reasonable they should flatter their consciences, because another man is idle, lascivious, or not assiduous at his
devotion. Every one overrates the offence of his companions, but extenuates his own. Our very instructors themselves rank them sometimes, in my opinion, very ill. As
Socrates said that the principal office of wisdom was to distinguish good from evil, we, the best of whom are vicious,
ought also to say the same of the science of distinguishing
betwixt vice and vice, without which, and that very exactly
performed, the virtuous and the wicked will remain confounded and unrecognised.
13 “Beyond or within which the right cannot exist.”
i, 1, 107.
11
–Horace, Sat.,
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CHAPTER II
Now, amongst the rest, drunkenness seems to me to
be a gross and brutish vice. The soul has greater part in
the rest, and there are some vices that have something, if
a man may so say, of generous in them; there are vices
wherein there is a mixture of knowledge, diligence, valour,
prudence, dexterity, and address; this one is totally corporeal and earthly. And the rudest nation this day in Europe
is that alone where it is in fashion. Other vices discompose
the understanding: this totally overthrows it and renders
the body stupid:
“Cum vini vis penetravit...
Consequitur gravitas membrorum, praepediuntur
Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens,
Nant oculi; clamor, singultus, jurgia, gliscunt.”14
The worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge and government of himself. And ‘tis said amongst
other things upon this subject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top whatever it has in the
bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyond measure,
vents the most inward secrets:
“Tu sapientum
Curas et arcanum jocoso
Consilium retegis Lyaeo.”1516
Josephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy
had sent to him his full dose of liquor, he wormed out his
14 “When the power of wine has penetrated us, a heaviness of
the limbs follows, the legs of the tottering person are impeded; the
tongue
grows torpid, the mind is dimmed, the eyes swim; noise,
hiccup, and quarrels arise. –“Lucretius, i. 3, 475.
15 “Thou disclosest to the merry Lyacus the cares and secret counsel
of the wise.” –Horace, Od., xxi. 1, 114.
16 Lyacus, a name given to Bacchus.
12
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CHAPTER II
secrets. And yet, Augustus, committing the most inward
secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who conquered Thrace,
never found him faulty in the least, no more than Tiberias
did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels,
though we know they were both so given to drink that they
have often been fain to carry both the one and the other
drunk out of the Senate:
“Hesterno inflatum venas ut semper, Lyaeo.”17
And the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to Cimber, though he would often be drunk, as to
Cassius, who drank nothing but water.18
We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know
their post, remember the word, and keep to their ranks:
“Nec facilis victoria de madidis, et
Blaesis, atque mero titubantibus.”19
I could not have believed there had been so profound,
senseless, and dead a degree of drunkenness had I not read
in history that Attalus having, to put a notable affront upon
him, invited to supper the same Pausanias, who upon the
very same occasion afterwards killed Philip of Macedon, a
king who by his excellent qualities gave sufficient testimony
of his education in the house and company of Epaminondas, made him drink to such a pitch that he could after
abandon his beauty, as of a hedge strumpet, to the muleteers and servants of the basest office in the house. And
I have been further told by a lady whom I highly honour
and esteem, that near Bordeaux and about Castres where
17 “Their
veins full, as usual, of yesterday’s wine.” –Virgil, Egl.,
15.
18 As to which Cassius pleasantly said: “What, shall I bear a tyrant,
I who cannot bear wine?”
19 “Nor is a victory easily obtained over men so drunk, they can
scarce speak or stand.” –Juvenal, Sat., xv. 47.
vi.
13
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CHAPTER II
she lives, a country woman, a widow of chaste repute, perceiving in herself the first symptoms of breeding, innocently
told her neighbours that if she had a husband she should
think herself with child; but the causes of suspicion every
day more and more increasing, and at last growing up to a
manifest proof, the poor woman was reduced to the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed in her parish church, that
whoever had done that deed and would frankly confess it,
she did not only promise to forgive, but moreover to marry
him, if he liked the motion; whereupon a young fellow that
served her in the quality of a labourer, encouraged by this
proclamation, declared that he had one holiday found her,
having taken too much of the bottle, so fast asleep by the
chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he could conveniently do his business without waking her; and they yet
live together man and wife.
It is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice;
the writings even of several philosophers speak very tenderly of it, and even amongst the Stoics there are some who
advise folks to give themselves sometimes the liberty to
drink, nay, to drunkenness, to refresh the soul:
“Hoc quoque virtutum quondam certamine,
magnum
Socratem palmam promeruisse ferunt.”20
That censor and reprover of others, Cato, was reproached
that he was a hard drinker:
“Narratur et prisci Catonis
Saepe mero caluisse virtus.”21
Cyrus, that so renowned king, amongst the other qualities
by which he claimed to be preferred before his brother Artaxerxes, urged this excellence, that he could drink a great
20 “In this trial of power formerly they relate that the great Socrates
deserved the palm.” –Cornet. Gallus, Ep., i. 47.
21 “And of old Cato it is said, that his courage was often warmed
with wine.” –Horace, Od., xxi. 3, 11. –Cato the Elder.
14
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CHAPTER II
deal more than he. And in the best governed nations this
trial of skill in drinking is very much in use. I have heard
Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that lest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were
not amiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and
to spur them lest they should grow dull and rusty; and one
author tells us that the Persians used to consult about their
most important affairs after being well warmed with wine.
My taste and constitution are greater enemies to this
vice than my discourse; for besides that I easily submit my
belief to the authority of ancient opinions, I look upon it indeed as an unmanly and stupid vice, but less malicious and
hurtful than the others, which, almost all, more directly jostle public society. And if we cannot please ourselves but it
must cost us something, as they hold, I find this vice costs
a man’s conscience less than the others, besides that it is of
no difficult preparation, nor hard to be found, a consideration not altogether to be despised. A man well advanced
both in dignity and age, amongst three principal commodities that he said remained to him of life, reckoned to me this
for one, and where would a man more justly find it than
amongst the natural conveniences? But he did not take it
right, for delicacy and the curious choice of wines is therein
to be avoided. If you found your pleasure upon drinking of
the best, you condemn yourself to the penance of drinking
of the worst. Your taste must be more indifferent and free;
so delicate a palate is not required to make a good toper.
The Germans drink almost indifferently of all wines with
delight; their business is to pour down and not to taste; and
it’s so much the better for them: their pleasure is so much
the more plentiful and nearer at hand.
Secondly, to drink, after the French fashion, but at two
meals, and then very moderately, is to be too sparing of the
favours of the god. There is more time and constancy required than so. The ancients spent whole nights in this exercise, and ofttimes added the day following to eke it out,
and therefore we are to take greater liberty and stick closer
15
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CHAPTER II
to our work. I have seen a great lord of my time, a man
of high enterprise and famous success, that without setting
himself to’t, and after his ordinary rate of drinking at meals,
drank not much less than five quarts of wine, and at his going away appeared but too wise and discreet, to the detriment of our affairs. The pleasure we hold in esteem for
the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our
time dedicated to it; we should, like shopboys and labourers, refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds. Methinks we every
day abridge and curtail the use of wine, and that the after
breakfasts, dinner snatches, and collations I used to see in
my father’s house, when I was a boy, were more usual and
frequent then than now.
Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no: but
it may be we are more addicted to Venus than our fathers
were. They are two exercises that thwart and hinder one another in their vigour. Lechery weakens our stomach on the
one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce
and amorous for the exercise of love.
‘Tis wonderful what strange stories I have heard my
father tell of the chastity of that age wherein he lived. It
was for him to say it, being both by art and nature cut out
and finished for the service of ladies. He spoke well and
little: ever mixing his language with some illustration out
of authors most in use, especially in Spanish, and among
the Spanish he whom they called Marcus Aurelius22 was
ordinarily in his mouth. His behaviour was gently grave,
humble, and very modest; he was very solicitous of neatness and propriety both in his person and clothes, whether
on horseback or afoot, he was monstrously punctual in his
word; and of a conscience and religion generally tending
rather towards superstition than otherwise. For a man of little stature, very strong, well proportioned, and well knit; of
a pleasing countenance inclining to brown, and very adroit
in all noble exercises. I have yet in the house to be seen
22 Guevara’s
Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
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canes poured full of lead, with which they say he exercised
his arms for throwing the bar or the stone, or in fencing;
and shoes with leaden soles to make him lighter for running or leaping. Of his vaulting he has left little miracles
behind him: I have seen him when past three score laugh at
our exercises, and throw himself in his furred gown into the
saddle, make the tour of a table upon his thumbs and scarce
ever mount the stairs into his chamber without taking three
or four steps at a time. But as to what I was speaking of
before; he said there was scarce one woman of quality of ill
fame in the whole province: he would tell of strange confidences, and some of them his own, with virtuous women,
free from any manner of suspicion of ill, and for his own
part solemnly swore he was a virgin at his marriage; and
yet it was after a long practice of arms beyond the mountains, of which wars he left us a journal under his own hand,
wherein he has given a precise account from point to point
of all passages, both relating to the public and to himself.
And he was, moreover, married at a well advanced maturity, in the year 1528, the three-and-thirtieth year of his age,
upon his way home from Italy. But let us return to our bottles.
The incommodities of old age, that stand in need of
some refreshment and support, might with reason beget in
me a desire of this faculty, it being as it were the last pleasure the course of years deprives us of. The natural heat, say
the good-fellows, first seats itself in the feet: that concerns
infancy; thence it mounts into the middle region, where it
makes a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole
true pleasures of human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end, like a vapour that still mounts
upward, it arrives at the throat, where it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress. I do not, nevertheless,
understand how a man can extend the pleasure of drinking
beyond thirst, and forge in his imagination an appetite artificial and against nature; my stomach would not proceed
so far; it has enough to do to deal with what it takes in for
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its necessity. My constitution is not to care for drink but
as following eating and washing down my meat, and for
that reason my last draught is always the greatest. And seeing that in old age we have our palate furred with phlegms
or depraved by some other ill constitution, the wine tastes
better to us as the pores are cleaner washed and laid more
open. At least, I seldom taste the first glass well. Anacharsis
wondered that the Greeks drank in greater glasses towards
the end of a meal than at the beginning; which was, I suppose, for the same reason the Germans do the same, who
then begin the battle of drink.
Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age,
and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave
to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their
feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their
youth; who mollifies the passions of the soul, as iron is
softened by fire; and in his Lazes allows such merry meetings, provided they have a discreet chief to govern and keep
them in order, as good and of great utility; drunkenness
being, he says, a true and certain trial of every one’s nature, and, withal, fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use,
and that they dare not attempt when sober. He, moreover,
says that wine is able to supply the soul with temperance
and the body with health. Nevertheless, these restrictions,
in part borrowed from the Carthaginians, please him: that
men forbear excesses in the expeditions of war; that every
judge and magistrate abstain from it when about the administrations of his place or the consultations of the public
affairs; that the day is not to be employed with it, that being
a time due to other occupations, nor the night on which a
man intends to get children.
‘Tis said that the philosopher Stilpo, when oppressed
with age, purposely hastened his end by drinking pure
wine. The same thing, but not designed by him, despatched
also the philosopher Arcesilaus.
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But ‘tis an old and pleasant question, whether the soul
of a wise man can be overcome by the strength of wine?
“Si munitae adhibet vim sapientiae.”
To what vanity does the good opinion we have of ourselves push us? The most regular and most perfect soul in
the world has but too much to do to keep itself upright, and
from being overthrown by its own weakness. There is not
one of a thousand that is right and settled so much as one
minute in a whole life, and that may not very well doubt,
whether according to her natural condition she ever can be;
but to join constancy to it is her utmost perfection; I mean
when nothing should jostle and discompose her, which a
thousand accidents may do. ‘Tis to much purpose that the
great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy, when, behold! he goes mad with a love philtre. Is it to
be imagined that an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well
as a porter? Some men have forgotten their own names by
the violence of a disease; and a slight wound has turned the
judgment of others topsy-turvy. Let him be as wise as he
will, after all he is but a man; and than that what is there
more frail, more miserable, or more nothing? Wisdom does
not force our natural dispositions,
“Sudores itaque, et pallorem exsistere toto
Corpore, et infringi linguam, vocemque aboriri,
Caligare oculos, sonere aures, succidere artus,
Demque concidere, ex animi terrore, videmus.”23
he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him;
he must tremble upon the margin of a precipice, like a child;
nature having reserved these light marks of her authority,
23 “Sweat and paleness come over the whole body, the tongue is
rendered powerless, the voice dies away, the eyes are darkened, there
is ringing in the ears, the limbs sink under us by the influence of
fear.” –Lucretius, iii. 155.
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not to be forced by our reason and the stoic virtue, to teach
man his mortality and our weakness; he turns pale with
fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, if not with
desperate outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice:
“Humani a se nihil alienum putet.”24
The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their greatest heroes of tears:
“Sic fatur lacrymans,
habenas.”25
classique
immittit
‘Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for totally to suppress them is not in him to do.
Even our great Plutarch, that excellent and perfect judge
of human actions, when he sees Brutus and Torquatus kill
their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could proceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not
rather been stimulated by some other passion.26 –All actions exceeding the ordinary bounds are liable to sinister
interpretation, for as much as our liking no more holds with
what is above than with what is below it.
Let us leave that other sect, that sets up an express
profession of scornful superiority27 : but when even in that
sect, reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these
rhodomontades of Metrodorus:
“Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque
aditus tuos interclusi ut ad me aspirare non
posses;”28
24 “Let him not think himself exempt from that which is incidental
to men in general.” –Terence, Heauton, i. 1, 25.
25 “Thus he speaks, weeping, and then sets sail with his fleet.”
–
Aeneid, vi. i.
26 Plutarch, Life of Publicola, c.
3.
27 The Stoics.
28 “Fortune, I have got the better of thee, and have made all the
avenues so sure thou canst not come at me.” –Cicero, Tusc. Quaes.,
v. 9.
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when Anaxarchus, by command of Nicocreon the tyrant of
Cyprus, was put into a stone mortar, and laid upon with
mauls of iron, ceases not to say, “Strike, batter, break; ‘tis
not Anaxarchus, ‘tis but his sheath that you pound and bray
so”; when we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant from
the middle of the flame, “This side is roasted enough, fall
to and eat, it is enough done; fall to work with the other;”
when we hear the child in Josephus’ torn piece-meal with
pincers, defying Antiochus, and crying out with a constant
and assured voice: “Tyrant, thou losest thy labour, I am
still at ease; where is the pain, where are the torments with
which thou didst so threaten me? Is this all thou canst do?
My constancy torments thee more than thy cruelty does me.
O pitiful coward, thou faintest, and I grow stronger; make
me complain, make me bend, make me yield if thou canst;
encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners; see, see
they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew,
spur them up”; truly, a man must confess that there is some
phrenzy, some fury, how holy soever, that at that time possesses those souls. When we come to these Stoical sallies:
“I had rather be mad than voluptuous,” a saying of Antisthenes. When Sextius tells us, “he had rather be fettered
with affliction than pleasure”: when Epicurus takes upon
him to play with his gout, and, refusing health and ease,
defies all torments, and despising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets and calls out for
others sharper, more violent, and more worthy of him;
“Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votis
Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte
leonem:”29
who but must conclude that these are wild sallies pushed
on by a courage that has broken loose from its place? Our
soul cannot from her own seat reach so high; ‘tis necessary
29 “And instead of timid beasts, wishes the foaming boar or tawny
lion would come from the mountain.” –AEneid, iv. 158.
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she must leave it, raise herself up, and, taking the bridle in
her teeth, transport her man so far that he shall afterwards
himself be astonished at what he has done; as, in war, the
heat of battle impels generous soldiers to perform things
of so infinite danger, as afterwards, recollecting them, they
themselves are the first to wonder at; as it also fares with the
poets, who are often rapt with admiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the track through
which they performed so fine a Career; which also is in
them called fury and rapture. And as Plato says, ‘tis to no
purpose for a sober-minded man to knock at the door of
poesy: so Aristotle says, that no excellent soul is exempt
from a mixture of madness; and he has reason to call all
transports, how commendable soever, that surpass our own
judgment and understanding, madness; forasmuch as wisdom is a regular government of the soul, which is carried on
with measure and proportion, and for which she is to herself responsible. Plato argues thus, that the faculty of prophesying is so far above us, that we must be out of ourselves
when we meddle with it, and our prudence must either be
obstructed by sleep or sickness, or lifted from her place by
some celestial rapture.
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CHAPTER III
A CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA30
to philosophise be, as ‘tis defined, to doubt, much more
Ibe toreputed
write at random and play the fool, as I do, ought to
doubting, for it is for novices and freshmen to
F
inquire and to dispute, and for the chairman to moderate
and determine.
My moderator is the authority of the divine will, that
governs us without contradiction, and that is seated above
these human and vain contestations.
Philip having forcibly entered into Peloponnesus, and
some one saying to Damidas that the Lacedaemonians were
likely very much to suffer if they did not in time reconcile
themselves to his favour: “Why, you pitiful fellow,” replied
he, “what can they suffer who do not fear to die?” It being also asked of Agis, which way a man might live free?
“Why,” said he, “by despising death.” These, and a thousand other sayings to the same purpose, distinctly sound
of something more than the patient attending the stroke of
death when it shall come; for there are several accidents
in life far worse to suffer than death itself. Witness the
Lacedaemonian boy taken by Antigonus, and sold for a
slave, who being by his master commanded to some base
employment: “Thou shalt see,” says the boy, “whom thou
hast bought; it would be a shame for me to serve, being so
near the reach of liberty,” and having so said, threw himself
from the top of the house. Antipater severely threatening
the Lacedaemonians, that he might the better incline them
to acquiesce in a certain demand of his: “If thou threatenest
us with more than death,” replied they, “we shall the more
willingly die”; and to Philip, having written them word that
he would frustrate all their enterprises: “What, wilt thou
also hinder us from dying?” This is the meaning of the sentence, “That the wise man lives as long as he ought, not so
30 Cos.
Cea is the form of the name given by Pliny
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long as he can; and that the most obliging present Nature
has made us, and which takes from us all colour of complaint of our condition, is to have delivered into our own
custody the keys of life; she has only ordered, one door
into life, but a hundred thousand ways out. We may be
straitened for earth to live upon, but earth sufficient to die
upon can never be wanting, as Boiocalus answered the Romans.”31 Why dost thou complain of this world? it detains
thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in
pain. There needs no more to die but to will to die:
“Ubique mors est; optime hoc cavit deus.
Eripere vitam nemo non homini potest;
At nemo mortem; mille ad hanc aditus
patent.”32
Neither is it a recipe for one disease only; death is the infallible cure of all; ‘tis a most assured port that is never to
be feared, and very often to be sought. It comes all to one,
whether a man give himself his end, or stays to receive it by
some other means; whether he pays before his day, or stay
till his day of payment come; from whencesoever it comes,
it is still his; in what part soever the thread breaks, there’s
the end of the clue. The most voluntary death is the finest.
Life depends upon the pleasure of others; death upon our
own. We ought not to accommodate ourselves to our own
humour in anything so much as in this. Reputation is not
concerned in such an enterprise; ‘tis folly to be concerned
by any such apprehension. Living is slavery if the liberty
of dying be wanting. The ordinary method of cure is carried on at the expense of life; they torment us with caustics,
incisions, and amputations of limbs; they interdict aliment
and exhaust our blood; one step farther and we are cured
indeed and effectually. Why is not the jugular vein as much
31 Tacitus,
Annal., xiii. 56.
is everywhere: heaven has well provided for that. Any
one may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death. To death
there are a thousand avenues.” –Seneca, Theb:, i, I, 151.
32 “Death
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at our disposal as the median vein? For a desperate disease
a desperate cure. Servius the grammarian, being tormented
with the gout, could think of no better remedy than to apply
poison to his legs, to deprive them of their sense; let them
be gouty at their will, so they were insensible of pain. God
gives us leave enough to go when He is pleased to reduce
us to such a condition that to live is far worse than to die.
‘Tis weakness to truckle under infirmities, but it’s madness
to nourish them. The Stoics say, that it is living according
to nature in a wise man to, take his leave of life, even in
the height of prosperity, if he do it opportunely; and in a
fool to prolong it, though he be miserable, provided he be
not indigent of those things which they repute to be according to nature. As I do not offend the law against thieves
when I embezzle my own money and cut my own purse;
nor that against incendiaries when I burn my own wood; so
am I not under the lash of those made against murderers for
having deprived myself of my own life. Hegesias said, that
as the condition of life did, so the condition of death ought
to depend upon our own choice. And Diogenes meeting
the philosopher Speusippus, so blown up with an inveterate dropsy that he was fain to be carried in a litter, and by
him saluted with the compliment, “I wish you good health.”
“No health to thee,” replied the other, “who art content to
live in such a condition.”
And in fact, not long after, Speusippus, weary of so languishing a state of life, found a means to die.
But this does not pass without admitting a dispute: for
many are of opinion that we cannot quit this garrison of
the world without the express command of Him who has
placed us in it; and that it appertains to God who has placed
us here, not for ourselves only but for His Glory and the service of others, to dismiss us when it shall best please Him,
and not for us to depart without His licence: that we are
not born for ourselves only, but for our country also, the
laws of which require an account from us upon the score
of their own interest, and have an action of manslaughter
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good against us; and if these fail to take cognisance of the
fact, we are punished in the other world as deserters of our
duty:
“Proxima deinde tenent maesti loca, qui sibi letum
Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi
Proiecere animas.”33
There is more constancy in suffering the chain we are tied
to than in breaking it, and more pregnant evidence of fortitude in Regulus than in Cato; ‘tis indiscretion and impatience that push us on to these precipices: no accidents can
make true virtue turn her back; she seeks and requires evils,
pains, and grief, as the things by which she is nourished and
supported; the menaces of tyrants, racks, and tortures serve
only to animate and rouse her:
“Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus
Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido,
Per damma, percmdes, ab ipso
Ducit opes, animumque ferro.”34
And as another says:
“Non est, ut putas, virtus, pater,
Timere vitam; sed malis ingentibus
Obstare, nec se vertere, ac retro dare.”35
Or as this:
33 “Thence the sad ones occupy the next abodes, who, though free
from guilt, were by their own hands slain, and, hating light, sought
death.” –AEneid, vi. 434.
34 “As in Mount Algidus, the sturdy oak even from the axe
itself
derives new vigour and life.” –Horace, Od., iv. 4, 57.
35 “Father, ‘tis no virtue to fear life, but to withstand great misfortunes, nor turn back from them.” –Seneca, Theb., i. 190.
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“Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere
mortem
Fortius ille facit, qui miser esse potest.”36
‘Tis cowardice, not virtue, to lie squat in a furrow, under a
tomb, to evade the blows of fortune; virtue never stops nor
goes out of her path, for the greatest storm that blows:
“Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinae.”37
For the most part, the flying from other inconveniences
brings us to this; nay, endeavouring to evade death, we often run into its very mouth:
“Hic, rogo, non furor est, ne moriare, mori?”38
like those who, from fear of a precipice, throw themselves
headlong into it;
“Multos in summa pericula misfit
Venturi timor ipse mali: fortissimus ille est,
Qui promptus metuenda pati, si cominus instent,
Et differre potest.”39
“Usque adeo, mortis formidine, vitae
Percipit humanos odium, lucisque videndae,
Ut sibi consciscant moerenti pectore lethum
36 “It is easy in adversity to despise death; but he acts more bravely,
who can live wretched.” –Martial, xi. 56, 15.
37 “Should the world’s axis crack, the ruins will but crush a fearless
head.” –Horace, Od., iii. 3, 7.
38 “Tell me, is it not madness, that one should die for fear of
dying?” –Martial, ii. 80, 2.
39 “The fear of future ills often makes men run into extreme danger;
he is truly brave who boldly dares withstand the mischiefs he apprehends, when they confront him and can be deferred.” –Lucan, vii.
104.
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Obliti fontem curarum hunc esse timorem.”40
Plato, in his Laws, assigns an ignominious sepulture to him
who has deprived his nearest and best friend, namely himself, of life and his destined course, being neither compelled
so to do by public judgment, by any sad and inevitable accident of fortune, nor by any insupportable disgrace, but
merely pushed on by cowardice and the imbecility of a timorous soul. And the opinion that makes so little of life, is
ridiculous; for it is our being, ‘tis all we have. Things of a
nobler and more elevated being may, indeed, reproach ours;
but it is against nature for us to contemn and make little account of ourselves; ‘tis a disease particular to man, and not
discerned in any other creatures, to hate and despise itself.
And it is a vanity of the same stamp to desire to be something else than what we are; the effect of such a desire does
not at all touch us, forasmuch as it is contradicted and hindered in itself. He that desires of a man to be made an angel,
does nothing for himself; he would be never the better for
it; for, being no more, who shall rejoice or be sensible of this
benefit for him.
“Debet enim, misere cui forti, aegreque futurum
est,
Ipse quoque esse in eo turn tempore, cum male
possit
Accidere.”41
Security, indolence, impassability, the privation of the evils
of this life, which we pretend to purchase at the price of dying, are of no manner of advantage to us: that man evades
war to very little purpose who can have no fruition of peace;
40 “Death to that degree so frightens some men, that causing them
to hate both life and light, they kill themselves, miserably forgetting
that this same fear is the fountain of their cares.” –Lucretius, iii. 79.
41 “For he to whom misery and pain are to be in the future, must
himself then exist, when these ills befall him.” –Idem, ibid., 874.
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and as little to the purpose does he avoid trouble who cannot enjoy repose.
Amongst those of the first of these two opinions, there
has been great debate, what occasions are sufficient to justify the meditation of self-murder, which they call “A reasonable exit.”42 For though they say that men must often die
for trivial causes, seeing those that detain us in life are of no
very great weight, yet there is to be some limit. There are
fantastic and senseless humours that have prompted not
only individual men, but whole nations to destroy themselves, of which I have elsewhere given some examples;
and we further read of the Milesian virgins, that by a frantic compact they hanged themselves one after another till
the magistrate took order in it, enacting that the bodies of
such as should be found so hanged should be drawn by the
same halter stark naked through the city. When Therykion
tried to persuade Cleomenes to despatch himself, by reason
of the ill posture of his affairs, and, having missed a death
of more honour in the battle he had lost, to accept of this
the second in honour to it, and not to give the conquerors
leisure to make him undergo either an ignominious death
or an infamous life; Cleomenes, with a courage truly Stoic
and Lacedaemonian, rejected his counsel as unmanly and
mean; “that,” said he, “is a remedy that can never be wanting, but which a man is never to make use of, whilst there is
an inch of hope remaining”: telling him, “that it was sometimes constancy and valour to live; that he would that even
his death should be of use to his country, and would make
of it an act of honour and virtue.” Therykion, notwithstanding, thought himself in the right, and did his own business;
and Cleomenes afterwards did the same, but not till he had
first tried the utmost malevolence of fortune. All the inconveniences in the world are not considerable enough that a
man should die to evade them; and, besides, there being so
many, so sudden and unexpected changes in human things,
it is hard rightly to judge when we are at the end of our
42 Diogenes
Laertius, Life of Zeno.
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hope:
“Sperat et in saeva victus gladiator arena,
Sit licet infesto pollice turba minax.”43
All things, says an old adage, are to be hoped for by a man
whilst he lives; ay, but, replies Seneca, why should this
rather be always running in a man’s head that fortune can
do all things for the living man, than this, that fortune has
no power over him that knows how to die? Josephus, when
engaged in so near and apparent danger, a whole people
being violently bent against him, that there was no visible
means of escape, nevertheless, being, as he himself says, in
this extremity counselled by one of his friends to despatch
himself, it was well for him that he yet maintained himself
in hope, for fortune diverted the accident beyond all human expectation, so that he saw himself delivered without
any manner of inconvenience. Whereas Brutus and Cassius,
on the contrary, threw away the remains of the Roman liberty, of which they were the sole protectors, by the precipitation and temerity wherewith they killed themselves before the due time and a just occasion. Monsieur d’Anguien,
at the battle of Serisolles, twice attempted to run himself
through, despairing of the fortune of the day, which went
indeed very untowardly on that side of the field where he
was engaged, and by that precipitation was very near depriving himself of the enjoyment of so brave a victory. I
have seen a hundred hares escape out of the very teeth of
the greyhounds:
“Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit.”44
“Multa dies, variusque labor mutabilis nevi
Rettulit in melius; multos alterna revisens
43 “The gladiator conquered in the lists hopes on, though the menacing spectators, turning their thumb, order him to die.” –Pentadius,
De Spe, ap. Virgilii Catadecta.
44 “Some have survived their executioners.”
–Seneca, Ep., 13.
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Lusit, et in solido rursus fortuna locavit.”45
Piny says there are but three sorts of diseases, to escape
which a man has good title to destroy himself; the worst
of which is the stone in the bladder, when the urine is suppressed.46
Seneca says those only which for a long time are discomposing the functions of the soul. And some there have
been who, to avoid a worse death, have chosen one to their
own liking. Democritus, general of the AEtolians, being
brought prisoner to Rome, found means to make his escape
by night: but close pursued by his keepers, rather than suffer himself to be retaken, he fell upon his own sword and
died. Antinous and Theodotus, their city of Epirus being
reduced by the Romans to the last extremity, gave the people counsel universally to kill themselves; but, these preferring to give themselves up to the enemy, the two chiefs
went to seek the death they desired, rushing furiously upon
the enemy, with intention to strike home but not to ward a
blow. The Island of Gozzo being taken some years ago by
the Turks, a Sicilian, who had two beautiful daughters marriageable, killed them both with his own hand, and their
mother, running in to save them, to boot, which having
done, sallying out of the house with a cross-bow and harquebus, with two shots he killed two of the Turks nearest
to his door, and drawing his sword, charged furiously in
amongst the rest, where he was suddenly enclosed and cut
to pieces, by that means delivering his family and himself
from slavery and dishonour. The Jewish women, after having circumcised their children, threw them and themselves
down a precipice to avoid the cruelty of Antigonus. I have
45 “Length of days, and the various labour of changeful time, have
brought things to a better state; fortune turning, shews a reverse face,
and again restores men to prosperity.” –AEneid, xi. 425.
46 “In the quarto edition of these essays, in 1588, Pliny is said to
mention two more, viz., a pain in the stomach and a headache, which,
he says (lib. xxv. c. 9.), were the only three distempers almost
for
which men killed themselves.”
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been told of a person of condition in one of our prisons, that
his friends, being informed that he would certainly be condemned, to avoid the ignominy of such a death suborned a
priest to tell him that the only means of his deliverance was
to recommend himself to such a saint, under such and such
vows, and to fast eight days together without taking any
manner of nourishment, what weakness or faintness soever
he might find in himself during the time; he followed their
advice, and by that means destroyed himself before he was
aware, not dreaming of death or any danger in the experiment. Scribonia advising her nephew Libo to kill himself
rather than await the stroke of justice, told him that it was
to do other people’s business to preserve his life to put it
after into the hands of those who within three or four days
would fetch him to execution, and that it was to serve his
enemies to keep his blood to gratify their malice.
We read in the Bible that Nicanor, the persecutor of
the law of God, having sent his soldiers to seize upon the
good old man Razis, surnamed in honour of his virtue the
father of the Jews: the good man, seeing no other remedy, his gates burned down, and the enemies ready to seize
him, choosing rather to die nobly than to fall into the hands
of his wicked adversaries and suffer himself to be cruelly
butchered by them, contrary to the honour of his rank and
quality, stabbed himself with his own sword, but the blow,
for haste, not having been given home, he ran and threw
himself from the top of a wall headlong among them, who
separating themselves and making room, he pitched directly upon his head; notwithstanding which, feeling yet
in himself some remains of life, he renewed his courage,
and starting up upon his feet all bloody and wounded as
he was, and making his way through the crowd to a precipitous rock, there, through one of his wounds, drew out his
bowels, which, tearing and pulling to pieces with both his
hands, he threw amongst his pursuers, all the while attesting and invoking the Divine vengeance upon them for their
cruelty and injustice.
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Of violences offered to the conscience, that against the
chastity of woman is, in my opinion, most to be avoided,
forasmuch as there is a certain pleasure naturally mixed
with it, and for that reason the dissent therein cannot be
sufficiently perfect and entire, so that the violence seems to
be mixed with a little consent of the forced party. The ecclesiastical history has several examples of devout persons
who have embraced death to secure them from the outrages
prepared by tyrants against their religion and honour. Pelagia and Sophronia, both canonised, the first of these precipitated herself with her mother and sisters into the river to
avoid being forced by some soldiers, and the last also killed
herself to avoid being ravished by the Emperor Maxentius.
It may, peradventure, be an honour to us in future ages,
that a learned author of this present time, and a Parisian,
takes a great deal of pains to persuade the ladies of our age
rather to take any other course than to enter into the horrid
meditation of such a despair. I am sorry he had never heard,
that he might have inserted it amongst his other stories, the
saying of a woman, which was told me at Toulouse, who
had passed through the handling of some soldiers: “God be
praised,” said she, “that once at least in my life I have had
my fill without sin.” In truth, these cruelties are very unworthy the French good nature, and also, God be thanked,
our air is very well purged of them since this good advice:
‘tis enough that they say “no” in doing it, according to the
rule of the good Marot.
“Un doulx nenny, avec un doulx sourire
Est tant honneste.” –Marot.
History is everywhere full of those who by a thousand ways
have exchanged a painful and irksome life for death. Lucius
Aruntius killed himself, to fly, he said, both the future and
the past. Granius Silvanus and Statius Proximus, after having been pardoned by Nero, killed themselves; either disdaining to live by the favour of so wicked a man, or that
they might not be troubled, at some other time, to obtain a
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second pardon, considering the proclivity of his nature to
suspect and credit accusations against worthy men. Spargapises, son of Queen Tomyris, being a prisoner of war to
Cyrus, made use of the first favour Cyrus shewed him, in
commanding him to be unbound, to kill himself, having
pretended to no other benefit of liberty, but only to be revenged of himself for the disgrace of being taken. Boges,
governor in Eion for King Xerxes, being besieged by the
Athenian army under the conduct of Cimon, refused the
conditions offered, that he might safe return into Asia with
all his wealth, impatient to survive the loss of a place his
master had given him to keep; wherefore, having defended
the city to the last extremity, nothing being left to eat, he
first threw all the gold and whatever else the enemy could
make booty of into the river Strymon, and then causing a
great pile to be set on fire, and the throats of all the women,
children, concubines, and servants to be cut, he threw their
bodies into the fire, and at last leaped into it himself.
Ninachetuen, an Indian lord, so soon as he heard the
first whisper of the Portuguese Viceroy’s determination to
dispossess him, without any apparent cause, of his command in Malacca, to transfer it to the King of Campar, he
took this resolution with himself: he caused a scaffold, more
long than broad, to be erected, supported by columns royally adorned with tapestry and strewed with flowers and
abundance of perfumes; all which being prepared, in a robe
of cloth of gold, set full of jewels of great value, he came
out into the street, and mounted the steps to the scaffold,
at one corner of which he had a pile lighted of aromatic
wood. Everybody ran to see to what end these unusual
preparations were made; when Ninachetuen, with a manly
but displeased countenance, set forth how much he had
obliged the Portuguese nation, and with how unspotted fidelity he had carried himself in his charge; that having so
often, sword in hand, manifested in the behalf of others, that
honour was much more dear to him than life, he was not to
abandon the concern of it for himself: that fortune denying
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him all means of opposing the affront designed to be put
upon him, his courage at least enjoined him to free himself
from the sense of it, and not to serve for a fable to the people, nor for a triumph to men less deserving than himself;
which having said he leaped into the fire.
Sextilia, wife of Scaurus, and Paxaea, wife of Labeo, to
encourage their husbands to avoid the dangers that pressed
upon them, wherein they had no other share than conjugal affection, voluntarily sacrificed their own lives to serve
them in this extreme necessity for company and example.
What they did for their husbands, Cocceius Nerva did for
his country, with less utility though with equal affection:
this great lawyer, flourishing in health, riches, reputation,
and favour with the Emperor, had no other cause to kill
himself but the sole compassion of the miserable state of
the Roman Republic. Nothing can be added to the beauty
of the death of the wife of Fulvius, a familiar favourite of
Augustus: Augustus having discovered that he had vented
an important secret he had entrusted him withal, one morning that he came to make his court, received him very coldly
and looked frowningly upon him. He returned home, full
of, despair, where he sorrowfully told his wife that, having
fallen into this misfortune, he was resolved to kill himself:
to which she roundly replied, “‘tis but reason you should,
seeing that having so often experienced the incontinence of
my tongue, you could not take warning: but let me kill myself first,” and without any more saying ran herself through
the body with a sword. Vibius Virrius, despairing of the
safety of his city besieged by the Romans and of their mercy,
in the last deliberation of his city’s senate, after many arguments conducing to that end, concluded that the most noble means to escape fortune was by their own hands: telling
them that the enemy would have them in honour, and Hannibal would be sensible how many faithful friends he had
abandoned; inviting those who approved of his advice to
come to a good supper he had ready at home, where after
they had eaten well, they would drink together of what he
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had prepared; a beverage, said he, that will deliver our bodies from torments, our souls from insult, and our eyes and
ears from the sense of so many hateful mischiefs, as the conquered suffer from cruel and implacable conquerors. I have,
said he, taken order for fit persons to throw our bodies into
a funeral pile before my door so soon as we are dead. Many
enough approved this high resolution, but few imitated it;
seven-and-twenty senators followed him, who, after having tried to drown the thought of this fatal determination in
wine, ended the feast with the mortal mess; and embracing
one another, after they had jointly deplored the misfortune
of their country, some retired home to their own houses,
others stayed to be burned with Vibius in his funeral pyre;
and were all of them so long in dying, the vapour of the
wine having prepossessed the veins, and by that means deferred the effect of poison, that some of them were within an
hour of seeing the enemy inside the walls of Capua, which
was taken the next morning, and of undergoing the miseries
they had at so dear a rate endeavoured to avoid. Jubellius Taurea, another citizen of the same country, the Consul Fulvius returning from the shameful butchery he had
made of two hundred and twenty-five senators, called him
back fiercely by name, and having made him stop: “Give
the word,” said he, “that somebody may dispatch me after
the massacre of so many others, that thou mayest boast to
have killed a much more valiant man than thyself.” Fulvius, disdaining him as a man out of his wits, and also having received letters from Rome censuring the inhumanity
of his execution which tied his hands, Jubellius proceeded:
“Since my country has been taken, my friends dead, and
having with my own hands slain my wife and children to
rescue them from the desolation of this ruin, I am denied
to die the death of my fellow-citizens, let me borrow from
virtue vengeance on this hated life,” and therewithal drawing a short sword he carried concealed about him, he ran it
through his own bosom, falling down backward, and expiring at the consul’s feet.
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Alexander, laying siege to a city of the Indies, those
within, finding themselves very hardly set, put on a vigorous resolution to deprive him of the pleasure of his victory, and accordingly burned themselves in general, together with their city, in despite of his humanity: a new
kind of war, where the enemies sought to save them, and
they to destroy themselves, doing to make themselves sure
of death, all that men do to secure life.
Astapa, a city of Spain, finding itself weak in walls and
defence to withstand the Romans, the inhabitants made a
heap of all their riches and furniture in the public place; and,
having ranged upon this heap all the women and children,
and piled them round with wood and other combustible
matter to take sudden fire, and left fifty of their young men
for the execution of that whereon they had resolved, they
made a desperate sally, where for want of power to overcome, they caused themselves to be every man slain. The
fifty, after having massacred every living soul throughout
the whole city, and put fire to this pile, threw themselves
lastly into it, finishing their generous liberty, rather after an
insensible, than after a sorrowful and disgraceful manner,
giving the enemy to understand, that if fortune had been so
pleased, they had as well the courage to snatch from them
victory as they had to frustrate and render it dreadful, and
even mortal to those who, allured by the splendour of the
gold melting in this flame, having approached it, a great
number were there suffocated and burned, being kept from
retiring by the crowd that followed after.
The Abydeans, being pressed by King Philip, put on
the same resolution; but, not having time, they could not
put it ‘in effect. The king, who was struck with horror at
the rash precipitation of this execution (the treasure and
movables that they had condemned to the flames being first
seized), drawing off his soldiers, granted them three days’
time to kill themselves in, that they might do it with more
order and at greater ease: which time they filled with blood
and slaughter beyond the utmost excess of all hostile cru37
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elty, so that not so much as any one soul was left alive
that had power to destroy itself. There are infinite examples of like popular resolutions which seem the more fierce
and cruel in proportion as the effect is more universal, and
yet are really less so than when singly executed; what arguments and persuasion cannot do with individual men, they
can do with all, the ardour of society ravishing particular
judgments.
The condemned who would live to be executed in the
reign of Tiberius, forfeited their goods and were denied the
rites of sepulture; those who, by killing themselves, anticipated it, were interred, and had liberty to dispose of their
estates by will.
But men sometimes covet death out of hope of a greater
good. “I desire,” says St. Paul, “to be with Christ,” and
“who shall rid me of these bands?” Cleombrotus of Ambracia, having read Plato’s Pheedo, entered into so great a
desire of the life to come that, without any other occasion,
he threw himself into the sea. By which it appears how
improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair, to
which the eagerness of hope often inclines us, and, often, a
calm and temperate desire proceeding from a mature and
deliberate judgment. Jacques du Chastel, bishop of Soissons, in St. Louis’s foreign expedition, seeing the king and
whole army upon the point of returning into France, leaving the affairs of religion imperfect, took a resolution rather
to go into Paradise; wherefore, having taken solemn leave
of his friends, he charged alone, in the sight of every one,
into the enemy’s army, where he was presently cut to pieces.
In a certain kingdom of the new discovered world, upon
a day of solemn procession, when the idol they adore is
drawn about in public upon a chariot of marvellous greatness; besides that many are then seen cutting off pieces of
their flesh to offer to him, there are a number of others who
prostrate themselves upon the place, causing themselves to
be crushed and broken to pieces under the weighty wheels,
to obtain the veneration of sanctity after death, which is ac38
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cordingly paid them. The death of the bishop, sword in
hand, has more of magnanimity in it, and less of sentiment,
the ardour of combat taking away part of the latter.
There are some governments who have taken upon
them to regulate the justice and opportunity of voluntary
death. In former times there was kept in our city of Marseilles a poison prepared out of hemlock, at the public
charge, for those who had a mind to hasten their end, having first, before the six hundred, who were their senate,
given account of the reasons and motives of their design,
and it was not otherwise lawful, than by leave from the
magistrate and upon just occasion to do violence to themselves.47 The same law was also in use in other places.
Sextus Pompeius, in his expedition into Asia, touched
at the isle of Cea in Negropont: it happened whilst he was
there, as we have it from one that was with him, that a
woman of great quality, having given an account to her citizens why she was resolved to put an end to her life, invited
Pompeius to her death, to render it the more honourable, an
invitation that he accepted; and having long tried in vain by
the power of his eloquence, which was very great, and persuasion, to divert her from that design, he acquiesced in the
end in her own will. She had passed the age of four score
and ten in a very happy state, both of body and mind; being
then laid upon her bed, better dressed than ordinary and
leaning upon her elbow, “The gods,” said she, “O Sextus
Pompeius, and rather those I leave than those I go to seek,
reward thee, for that thou hast not disdained to be both the
counsellor of my life and the witness of my death. For my
part, having always experienced the smiles of fortune, for
fear lest the desire of living too long may make me see a
contrary face, I am going, by a happy end, to dismiss the
remains of my soul, leaving behind two daughters of my
body and a legion of nephews”; which having said, with
some exhortations to her family to live in peace, she divided
amongst them her goods, and recommending her domes47 Valerius
Maximus, ii. 6, 7.
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tic gods to her eldest daughter, she boldly took the bowl
that contained the poison, and having made her vows and
prayers to Mercury to conduct her to some happy abode
in the other world, she roundly swallowed the mortal poison. This being done, she entertained the company with
the progress of its operation, and how the cold by degrees
seized the several parts of her body one after another, till
having in the end told them it began to seize upon her heart
and bowels, she called her daughters to do the last office
and close her eyes.
Pliny tells us of a certain Hyperborean nation where, by
reason of the sweet temperature of the air, lives rarely ended
but by the voluntary surrender of the inhabitants, who, being weary of and satiated with living, had the custom, at a
very old age, after having made good cheer, to precipitate
themselves into the sea from the top of a certain rock, assigned for that service. Pain and the fear of a worse death
seem to me the most excusable incitements.
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CHAPTER IV
TO-MORROW’S A NEW DAY
as it seems to me, with good reason the palm to
Ithegive,
Jacques Amyot of all our French writers, not only for
simplicity and purity of his language, wherein he excels
all others, nor for his constancy in going through so long a
work, nor for the depth of his knowledge, having been able
so successfully to smooth and unravel so knotty and intricate an author (for let people tell me what they will, I understand nothing of Greek; but I meet with sense so well
united and maintained throughout his whole translation,
that certainly he either knew the true fancy of the author,
or having, by being long conversant with him, imprinted
a vivid and general idea of that of Plutarch in his soul, he
has delivered us nothing that either derogates from or contradicts him), but above all, I am the most taken with him
for having made so discreet a choice of a book so worthy
and of so great utility wherewith to present his country. We
ignorant fellows had been lost, had not this book raised us
out of the dirt; by this favour of his we dare now speak and
write; the ladies are able to read to schoolmasters; ‘tis our
breviary. If this good man be yet living, I would recommend
to him Xenophon, to do as much by that; ‘tis a much more
easy task than the other, and consequently more proper for
his age. And, besides, though I know not how, methinks
he does briskly–and clearly enough trip over steps another
would have stumbled at, yet nevertheless his style seems to
be more his own where he does not encounter those difficulties, and rolls away at his own ease.
I was just now reading this passage where Plutarch
says of himself, that Rusticus being present at a declamation of his at Rome, there received a packet from the emperor, and deferred to open it till all was done: for which,
says he, all the company highly applauded the gravity of
this person. ‘Tis true, that being upon the subject of curiosity and of that eager passion for news, which makes us
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with so much indiscretion and impatience leave all to entertain a newcomer, and without any manner of respect or
outcry, tear open on a sudden, in what company soever, the
letters that are delivered to us, he had reason to applaud
the gravity of Rusticus upon this occasion; and might moreover have added to it the commendation of his civility and
courtesy, that would not interrupt the current of his declamation. But I doubt whether any one can commend his
prudence; for receiving unexpected letters, and especially
from an emperor, it might have fallen out that the deferring
to read them might have been of great prejudice. The vice
opposite to curiosity is negligence, to which I naturally incline, and wherein I have seen some men so extreme that
one might have found letters sent them three or four days
before, still sealed up in their pockets.
I never open any letters directed to another; not only
those intrusted with me, but even such as fortune has
guided to my hand; and am angry with myself if my eyes
unawares steal any contents of letters of importance he is
reading when I stand near a great man. Never was man less
inquisitive or less prying into other men’s affairs than I
In our fathers’ days, Monsieur de Boutieres had like to
have lost Turin from having, while engaged in good company at supper, delayed to read information that was sent
him of the treason plotted against that city where he commanded. And this very Plutarch has given me to understand, that Julius Caesar had preserved himself, if, going
to the Senate the day he was assassinated by the conspirators, he had read a note which was presented to him by, the
way. He tells also the story of Archias, the tyrant of Thebes,
that the night before the execution of the design Pelopidas
had plotted to kill him to restore his country to liberty, he
had a full account sent him in writing by another Archias,
an Athenian, of the whole conspiracy, and that, this packet
having been delivered to him while he sat at supper, he deferred the opening of it, saying, which afterwards turned to
a proverb in Greece, “Business to-morrow.”
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A wise man may, I think, out of respect to another, as
not to disturb the company, as Rusticus did, or not to break
off another affair of importance in hand, defer to read or
hear any new thing that is brought him; but for his own
interest or particular pleasure, especially if he be a public
minister, that he will not interrupt his dinner or break his
sleep is inexcusable. And there was anciently at Rome, the
consular place, as they called it, which was the most honourable at the table, as being a place of most liberty, and of
more convenient access to those who came in to speak to
the person seated there; by which it appears, that being at
meat, they did not totally abandon the concern of other affairs and incidents. But when all is said, it is very hard in
human actions to give so exact a rule upon moral reasons,
that fortune will not therein maintain her own right.
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CHAPTER V
OF CONSCIENCE
Sieur de la Brousse, my brother, and I, travelling one
T
day together during the time of our civil wars, met
a gentleman of good sort. He was of the contrary party,
HE
though I did not know so much, for he pretended otherwise:
and the mischief on’t is, that in this sort of war the cards are
so shuffled, your enemy not being distinguished from yourself by any apparent mark either of language or habit, and
being nourished under the same law, air, and manners, it
is very hard to avoid disorder and confusion. This made
me afraid myself of meeting any of our troops in a place
where I was not known, that I might not be in fear to tell my
name, and peradventure of something worse; as it had befallen me before, where, by such a mistake, I lost both men
and horses, and amongst others an Italian gentleman my
page, whom I bred with the greatest care and affection, was
miserably slain, in whom a youth of great promise and expectation was extinguished. But the gentleman my brother
and I met had so desperate, half-dead a fear upon him at
meeting with any horse, or passing by any of the towns that
held for the King, that I at last discovered it to be alarms of
conscience. It seemed to the poor man as if through his visor and the crosses upon his cassock, one would have penetrated into his bosom and read the most secret intentions of
his heart; so wonderful is the power of conscience. It makes
us betray, accuse, and fight against ourselves, and for want
of other witnesses, to give evidence against ourselves:
“Occultum quatiens animo tortore flagellum.”48
This story is in every child’s mouth: Bessus the Paeonian, being reproached for wantonly pulling down a nest
48 “The torturer of the soul brandishing a sharp scourge within.”
Juvenal, iii. 195.
44
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of young sparrows and killing them, replied, that he had
reason to do so, seeing that those little birds never ceased
falsely to accuse him of the murder of his father. This parricide had till then been concealed and unknown, but the
revenging fury of conscience caused it to be discovered by
him himself, who was to suffer for it. Hesiod corrects the
saying of Plato, that punishment closely follows sin, it being, as he says, born at the same time with it. Whoever expects punishment already suffers it, and whoever has deserved it expects it. Wickedness contrives torments against
itself:
“Malum consilium consultori pessimum.”49
“Vitasque in vulnere ponunt.”50
Cantharides have somewhere about them, by a contrariety of nature, a counterpoison against their poison. In like
manner, at the same time that men take delight in vice, there
springs in the conscience a displeasure that afflicts us sleeping and waking with various tormenting imaginations:
“Quippe ubi se multi, per somnia saepe loquentes,
Aut morbo delirantes, protraxe ferantur,
Et celata diu in medium peccata dedisse.”51
Apollodorus dreamed that he saw himself flayed by the
Scythians and afterwards boiled in a cauldron, and that his
heart muttered these words “I am the cause of all these
mischiefs that have befallen thee.” Epicurus said that no
hiding-hole could conceal the wicked, since they could
49 “Ill
designs are worst to the contriver.”
–Apud Aul. Gellium, iv.
5.
50 “And leave their own lives in the wound.”
–Virgil, Geo., iv. 238.
where many, often talking in their sleep, or raving in disease, are said to have betrayed themselves, and to have given publicity
to offences long concealed.” –Lucretius, v. 1157.
51 “Surely
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never assure themselves of being hid whilst their conscience
discovered them to themselves.
“Prima est haec ultio, quod se
Judice nemo nocens absohitur.”52
As an ill conscience fills us with fear, so a good one gives us
greater confidence and assurance; and I can truly say that I
have gone through several hazards with a more steady pace
in consideration of the secret knowledge I had of my own
will and the innocence of my intentions:
“Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra
Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo.”53
Of this are a thousand examples; but it will be enough to
instance three of one and the same person. Scipio, being
one day accused before the people of Rome of some crimes
of a very high nature, instead of excusing himself or flattering his judges: “It will become you well,” said he, “to sit
in judgment upon a head, by whose means you have the
power to judge all the world.” Another time, all the answer he gave to several impeachments brought against him
by a tribune of the people, instead of making his defence:
“Let us go, citizens,” said he, “let us go render thanks to the
gods for the victory they gave me over the Carthaginians as
this day,” and advancing himself before towards the Temple, he had presently all the assembly and his very accuser
himself following at his heels. And Petilius, having been
set on by Cato to demand an account of the money that had
passed through his hands in the province of Antioch, Scipio
being come into the senate to that purpose, produced a book
52 “Tis the first punishment of sin that no man absolves himself.”
or: “This is the highest revenge, that by its judgment no offender is
absolved.” –Juvenal, xiii. 2.
53 “As a man’s conscience is, so within hope or fear prevails, suiting
to his design.” –Ovid, Fast., i. 485.
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from under his robe, wherein he told them was an exact account of his receipts and disbursements; but being required
to deliver it to the prothonotary to be examined, he refused,
saying, he would not do himself so great a disgrace; and in
the presence of the whole senate tore the book with his own
hands to pieces. I do not believe that the most seared conscience could have counterfeited so great an assurance. He
had naturally too high a spirit and was accustomed to too
high a fortune, says Titius Livius, to know how to be criminal, and to lower himself to the meanness of defending his
innocence. The putting men to the rack is a dangerous invention, and seems to be rather a trial of patience than of
truth. Both he who has the fortitude to endure it conceals
the truth, and he who has not: for why should pain sooner
make me confess what really is, than force me to say what
is not? And, on the contrary, if he who is not guilty of that
whereof he is accused, has the courage to undergo those
torments, why should not he who is guilty have the same,
so fair a reward as life being in his prospect? I believe the
ground of this invention proceeds from the consideration of
the force of conscience: for, to the guilty, it seems to assist
the rack to make him confess his fault and to shake his resolution; and, on the other side, that it fortifies the innocent
against the torture. But when all is done, ‘tis, in plain truth,
a trial full of uncertainty and danger what would not a man
say, what would not a man do, to avoid so intolerable torments?
“Etiam innocentes cogit mentiri dolor.”54
Whence it comes to pass, that him whom the judge
has racked that he may not die innocent, he makes him
die both innocent and racked. A thousand and a thousand
have charged their own heads by false confessions, amongst
whom I place Philotas, considering the circumstances of the
54 “Pain
will make even the innocent lie.”
lore.
47
–Publius Syrus, De Do-
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trial Alexander put upon him and the progress of his torture. But so it is that some say it is the least evil human
weakness could invent; very inhumanly, notwithstanding,
and to very little purpose, in my opinion.
Many nations less barbarous in this than the Greeks
and Romans who call them so, repute it horrible and cruel
to torment and pull a man to pieces for a fault of which
they are yet in doubt. How can he help your ignorance?
Are not you unjust, that, not to kill him without cause, do
worse than kill him? And that this is so, do but observe
how often men prefer to die without reason than undergo
this examination, more painful than execution itself; and
that oft-times by its extremity anticipates execution, and
perform it. I know not where I had this story, but it exactly matches the conscience of our justice in this particular. A country-woman, to a general of a very severe discipline, accused one of his soldiers that he had taken from her
children the little soup meat she had left to nourish them
withal, the army having consumed all the rest; but of this
proof there was none. The general, after having cautioned
the woman to take good heed to what she said, for that she
would make herself guilty of a false accusation if she told
a lie, and she persisting, he presently caused the soldier’s
belly to be ripped up to clear the truth of the fact, and the
woman was found to be right. An instructive sentence.
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CHAPTER VI
USE MAKES PERFECT
‘TIS NOT TO be expected that argument and instruction,
though we never so voluntarily surrender our belief to what
is read to us, should be of force to lead us on so far as to action, if we do not, over and above, exercise and form the
soul by experience to the course for which we design it; it
will, otherwise, doubtless find itself at a loss when it comes
to the pinch of the business. This is the reason why those
amongst the philosophers who were ambitious to attain to
a greater excellence, were not contented to await the severities of fortune in the retirement and repose of their own
habitations, lest he should have surprised them raw and inexpert in the combat, but sallied out to meet her, and purposely threw themselves into the proof of difficulties. Some
of them abandoned riches to exercise themselves in a voluntary poverty; others sought out labour and an austerity of
life, to inure them to hardships and inconveniences; others
have deprived themselves of their dearest members, as of
sight, and of the instruments of generation, lest their too delightful and effeminate service should soften and debauch
the stability of their souls.
But in dying, which is the greatest work we have to
do, practice can give us no assistance at all. A man may by
custom fortify himself against pain, shame, necessity, and
such-like accidents, but as to death, we can experiment it
but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it. There
have, anciently, been men so excellent managers of their
time that they have tried even in death itself to relish and
taste it, and who have bent their utmost faculties of mind
to discover what this passage is, but they are none of them
come back to tell us the news:
“Nemo expergitus exstat,
Frigida quern semel est vitai pausa sequuta.”55
55 “No
one wakes who has once fallen into the cold sleep of
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Julius Canus, a noble Roman, of singular constancy and
virtue, having been condemned to die by that worthless
fellow Caligula, besides many marvellous testimonies that
he gave of his resolution, as he was just going to receive
the stroke of the executioner, was asked by a philosopher, a
friend of his: “Well, Canus, whereabout is your soul now?
what is she doing? What are you thinking of?”–“I was
thinking,” replied the other, “to keep myself ready, and the
faculties of my mind full settled and fixed, to try if in this
short and quick instant of death, I could perceive the motion
of the soul when she parts from the body, and whether she
has any sentiment at the separation, that I may after come
again if I can, to acquaint my friends with it.” This man
philosophises not unto death only, but in death itself. What
a strange assurance was this, and what bravery of courage,
to desire his death should be a lesson to him, and to have
leisure to think of other things in so great an affair:
“Jus hoc animi morientis habebat.”56
And yet I fancy, there is a certain way of making it familiar to us, and in some sort of making trial what it is. We
may gain experience, if not entire and perfect, yet such, at
least, as shall not be totally useless to us, and that may render us more confident and more assured. If we cannot overtake it, we may approach it and view it, and if we do not advance so far as the fort, we may at least discover and make
ourselves acquainted with the avenues. It is not without
reason that we are taught to consider sleep as a resemblance
of death: with how great facility do we pass from waking to
sleeping, and with how little concern do we lose the knowledge of light and of ourselves. Peradventure, the faculty of
sleeping would seem useless and contrary to nature, since it
deprives us of all action and sentiment, were it not that by it
nature instructs us that she has equally made us to die as to
death.” –Lucretius, iii. 942
56 “This mighty power of mind he had dying.”
50
–Lucan, viii. 636.
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live; and in life presents to us the eternal state she reserves
for us after it, to accustom us to it and to take from us the
fear of it. But such as have by violent accident fallen into a
swoon, and in it have lost all sense, these, methinks, have
been very near seeing the true and natural face of death; for
as to the moment of the passage, it is not to be feared that it
brings with it any pain or displeasure, forasmuch as we can
have no feeling without leisure; our sufferings require time,
which in death is so short, and so precipitous, that it must
necessarily be insensible. They are the approaches that we
are to fear, and these may fall within the limits of experience.
Many things seem greater by imagination than they are
in effect; I have passed a good part of my life in a perfect and
entire health; I say, not only entire, but, moreover, sprightly
and wanton. This state, so full of verdure, jollity, and vigour,
made the consideration of sickness so formidable to me, that
when I came to experience it, I found the attacks faint and
easy in comparison with what I had apprehended. Of this
I have daily experience; if I am under the shelter of a warm
room, in a stormy and tempestuous night, I wonder how
people can live abroad, and am afflicted for those who are
out in the fields: if I am there myself, I do not wish to be
anywhere else. This one thing of being always shut up in a
chamber I fancied insupportable: but I was presently inured
to be so imprisoned a week, nay a month together, in a very
weak, disordered, and sad condition; and I have found that,
in the time of my health, I much more pitied the sick, than I
think myself to be pitied when I am so, and that the force of
my imagination enhances near one-half of the essence and
reality of the thing. I hope that when I come to die I shall
find it the same, and that, after all, it is not worth the pains
I take, so much preparation and so much assistance as I call
in, to undergo the stroke. But, at all events, we cannot give
ourselves too much advantage.
In the time of our third or second troubles (I do not
well remember which), going one day abroad to take the
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air, about a league from my own house, which is seated in
the very centre of all the bustle and mischief of the late civil
wars in France; thinking myself in all security and so near
to my retreat that I stood in need of no better equipage, I
had taken a horse that went very easy upon his pace, but
was not very strong. Being upon my return home, a sudden occasion falling out to make use of this horse in a kind
of service that he was not accustomed to, one of my train,
a lusty, tall fellow, mounted upon a strong German horse,
that had a very ill mouth, fresh and vigorous, to play the
brave and set on ahead of his fellows, comes thundering full
speed in the very track where I was, rushing like a Colossus
upon the little man and the little horse, with such a career of
strength and weight, that he turned us both over and over,
topsy-turvy with our heels in the air: so that there lay the
horse overthrown and stunned with the fall, and I ten or
twelve paces from him stretched out at length, with my face
all battered and broken, my sword which I had had in my
hand, above ten paces beyond that, and my belt broken all
to pieces, without motion or sense any more than a stock.
‘Twas the only swoon I was ever in till that hour in my life.
Those who were with me, after having used all the means
they could to bring me to myself, concluding me dead, took
me up in their arms, and carried me with very much difficulty home to my house, which was about half a French
league from thence. On the way, having been for more than
two hours given over for a dead man, I began to move and
to fetch my breath; for so great abundance of blood was
fallen into my stomach, that nature had need to rouse her
forces to discharge it. They then raised me upon my feet,
where I threw off a whole bucket of clots of blood, as this
I did also several times by the way. This gave me so much
ease, that I began to recover a little life, but so leisurely and
by so small advances, that my first sentiments were much
nearer the approaches of death than life:
“Perche, dubbiosa ancor del suo ritorno,
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Non s’assicura attonita la mente.”57
The remembrance of this accident, which is very well imprinted in my memory, so naturally representing to me the
image and idea of death, has in some sort reconciled me to
that untoward adventure. When I first began to open my
eyes, it was with so perplexed, so weak and dead a sight,
that I could yet distinguish nothing but only discern the
light:
“Come quel ch’or apre, or’chiude
Gli occhi, mezzo tra’l sonno e l’esser desto.”58
As to the functions of the soul, they advanced with the same
pace and measure with those of the body. I saw myself all
bloody, my doublet being stained all over with the blood
I had vomited. The first thought that came into my mind
was that I had a harquebuss shot in my head, and indeed,
at the time there were a great many fired round about us.
Methought my life but just hung upon my, lips: and I shut
my eyes, to help, methought, to thrust it out, and took a
pleasure in languishing and letting myself go. It was an
imagination that only superficially floated upon my soul, as
tender and weak as all the rest, but really, not only exempt
from anything displeasing, but mixed with that sweetness
that people feel when they glide into a slumber.
I believe it is the very same condition those people
are in, whom we see swoon with weakness in the agony
of death we pity them without cause, supposing them agitated with grievous dolours, or that their souls suffer under
painful thoughts. It has ever been my belief, contrary to the
opinion of many, and particularly of La Boetie, that those
whom we see so subdued and stupefied at the approaches
57 “For the soul, doubtful as to its return, could not compose
itself” –Tasso, Gierus. Lib., xii. 74.
58 “As a man that now opens, now shuts his eyes, between sleep
and waking.” –Tasso, Gierus. Lib., viii., 26.
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of their end, or oppressed with the length of the disease, or
by accident of an apoplexy or falling sickness,
“Vi morbi saepe coactus
Ante oculos aliquis nostros, ut fulminis ictu,
Concidit, et spumas agit; ingemit, et tremit artus;
Desipit, extentat nervos, torquetur, anhelat,
Inconstanter, et in jactando membra fatigat;”59
or hurt in the head, whom we hear to mutter, and by fits to
utter grievous groans; though we gather from these signs
by which it seems as if they had some remains of consciousness, and that there are movements of the body; I have always believed, I say, both the body and the soul benumbed
and asleep,
“Vivit, et est vitae nescius ipse suae,”60
and could not believe that in so great a stupefaction of the
members and so great a defection of the senses, the soul
could maintain any force within to take cognisance of herself, and that, therefore, they had no tormenting reflections
to make them consider and be sensible of the misery of their
condition, and consequently were not much to be pitied.
I can, for my part, think of no state so insupportable
and dreadful, as to have the soul vivid and afflicted, without means to declare itself; as one should say of such as
are sent to execution with their tongues first cut out (were
it not that in this kind of dying, the most silent seems to
me the most graceful, if accompanied with a grave and constant countenance); or if those miserable prisoners, who fall
59 “Often, compelled by the force of disease, some one as thunderstruck falls under our eyes, and foams, groans, and trembles, stretches, twists, breathes irregularly, and in paroxysms wears
out his strength.” –Lucretius, iii. 485.
60 “He lives, and does not know that he is alive.”
–Ovid, Trist., i.
3, 12.
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into the hands of the base hangman soldiers of this age,
by whom they are tormented with all sorts of inhuman usage to compel them to some excessive and impossible ransom; kept, in the meantime, in such condition and place,
where they have no means of expressing or signifying their
thoughts and their misery. The poets have feigned some
gods who favour the deliverance of such as suffer under a
languishing death:
“Hunc ego Diti
Sacrum jussa fero, teque isto corpore solvo.”61
both the interrupted words, and the short and irregular answers one gets from them sometimes, by bawling and keeping a clutter about them; or the motions which seem to yield
some consent to what we would have them do, are no testimony, nevertheless, that they live, an entire life at least.
So it happens to us in the yawning of sleep, before it has
fully possessed us, to perceive, as in a dream, what is done
about us, and to follow the last things that are said with a
perplexed and uncertain hearing which seems but to touch
upon the borders of the soul; and to make answers to the
last words that have been spoken to us, which have more in
them of chance than sense.
Now seeing I have in effect tried it, I have no doubt but
I have hitherto made a right judgment; for first, being in
a swoon, I laboured to rip open the buttons of my doublet
with my nails, for my sword was gone; and yet I felt nothing
in my imagination that hurt me; for we have many motions
in us that do not proceed from our direction;
“Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque retractant;”62
61 “I bidden offer this sacred thing to Pluto, and from that body dismiss thee.” –AEneid, iv. 782.
62 “Half-dead fingers grope about, and grasp again the sword.”
–
AEneid, x. 396.
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so falling people extend their arms before them by a natural
impulse, which prompts our limbs to offices and motions
without any commission from our reason.
“Falciferos memorant currus abscindere membra...
Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod
Decidit abscissum; cum mens tamen atque hominis vis
Mobilitate mali, non quit sentire dolorem.”63
My stomach was so oppressed with the coagulated blood,
that my hands moved to that part, of their own voluntary
motion, as they frequently do to the part that itches, without being directed by our will. There are several animals,
and even men, in whom one may perceive the muscles to
stir and tremble after they are dead. Every one experimentally knows that there are some members which grow stiff
and flag without his leave. Now, those passions which only
touch the outward bark of us, cannot be said to be ours: to
make them so, there must be a concurrence of the whole
man; and the pains which are felt by the hand or the foot
while we are sleeping, are none of ours.
As I drew near my own house, where the alarm of my
fall was already got before me, and my family were come
out to meet me, with the hubbub usual in such cases, not
only did I make some little answer to some questions which
were asked me; but they moreover tell me, that I was sufficiently collected to order them to bring a horse to my wife
whom on the road, I saw struggling and tiring herself which
is hilly and rugged. This should seem to proceed from a
soul its functions; but it was nothing so with me. I knew not
what I said or did, and they were nothing but idle thoughts
in the clouds, that were stirred up by the senses of the eyes
63 “They relate that scythe-bearing chariots mow off limbs, so that
they quiver on the ground; and yet the mind of him from whom the
limb is taken by the swiftness of the blow feels no pain.” –Lucretius,
iii. 642.
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and ears, and proceeded not from me. I knew not for all
that, whence I came or whither I went, neither was I capable to weigh and consider what was said to me: these were
light effects, that the senses produced of themselves as of
custom; what the soul contributed was in a dream, lightly
touched, licked and bedewed by the soft impression of the
senses. Notwithstanding, my condition was, in truth, very
easy and quiet; I had no affliction upon me, either for others
or myself; it was an extreme languor and weakness, without any manner of pain. I saw my own house, but knew it
not. When they had put me to bed I found an inexpressible
sweetness in that repose; for I had been desperately tugged
and lugged by those poor people who had taken the pains
to carry me upon their arms a very great and a very rough
way, and had in so doing all quite tired out themselves,
twice or thrice one after another. They offered me several
remedies, but I would take none, certainly believing that I
was mortally wounded in the head. And, in earnest, it had
been a very happy death, for the weakness of my understanding deprived me of the faculty of discerning, and that
of my body of the sense of feeling; I was suffering myself
to glide away so sweetly and after so soft and easy a manner, that I scarce find any other action less troublesome than
that was. But when I came again to myself and to resume
my faculties:
“Ut tandem sensus convaluere mei,”64
which was two or three hours after, I felt myself on a sudden involved in terrible pain, having my limbs battered and
ground with my fall, and was. so ill for two or three nights
after, that I thought I was once more dying again, but a more
painful death, having concluded myself as good as dead before, and to this hour am sensible of the bruises of that terrible shock. I will not here omit, that the last thing I could
64 “When at length my lost senses again returned.”
i. 3, 14.
57
–Ovid, Trist.,
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make them beat into my head, was the memory of this accident, and I had it over and over again repeated to me,
whither I was going, from whence I came, and at what time
of the day this mischance befell me, before I could comprehend it. As to the manner of my fall, that was concealed
from me in favour to him who had been the occasion, and
other flim-flams were invented. But a long time after, and
the very next day that my memory began to return and to
represent to me the state wherein I was, at the instant that
I perceived this horse coming full drive upon me (for I had
seen him at my heels, and gave myself for gone, but this
thought had been so sudden, that fear had had no leisure to
introduce itself) it seemed to me like a flash of lightning that
had pierced my soul, and that I came from the other world.
This long story of so light an accident would appear
vain enough, were it not for the knowledge I have gained by
it for my own use; for I do really find, that to get acquainted
with death, needs no more but nearly to approach it. Every
one, as Pliny says, is a good doctrine to himself, provided he
be capable of discovering himself near at hand. Here, this is
not my doctrine, ‘tis my study; and is not the lesson of another, but my own; and if I communicate it, it ought not to
be ill taken, for that which is of use to me, may also, peradventure, be useful to another. As to the rest, I spoil nothing,
I make use of nothing but my own; and if I play the fool,
‘tis at my own expense, and nobody else is concerned in’t;
for ‘tis a folly that will die with me, and that no one is to
inherit. We hear but of two or three of the ancients, who
have beaten this path, and yet I cannot say if it was after
this manner, knowing no more of them but their names. No
one since has followed the track: ‘tis a rugged road, more
so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain, as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities
of its intricate internal windings; to choose and lay hold of
so many little nimble motions; ‘tis a new and extraordinary
undertaking, and that withdraws us from the common and
most recommended employments of the world. ‘Tis now
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many years since that my thoughts have had no other aim
and level than myself, and that I have only pried into and
studied myself: or, if I study any other thing, ‘tis to apply it
to or rather in myself. And yet I do not think it a fault, if,
as others do by other much less profitable sciences, I communicate what I have learned in this, though I am not very
well pleased with my own progress. There is no description so difficult, nor doubtless of so great utility, as that of a
man’s self: and withal, a man must curl his hair and set out
and adjust himself, to appear in public: now I am perpetually tricking myself out, for I am eternally upon my own
description. Custom has made all speaking of a man’s self
vicious, and positively interdicts it, in hatred to the boasting that seems inseparable from the testimony men give of
themselves:
“In vitium ducit culpae fuga.”65
Instead of blowing the child’s nose, this is to take his
nose off altogether. I think the remedy worse than the disease. But, allowing it to be true that it must of necessity be
presumption to entertain people with discourses of one’s
self, I ought not, pursuing my general design, to forbear an
action that publishes this infirmity of mine, nor conceal the
fault which I not only practise but profess. Notwithstanding, to speak my thought freely, I think that the custom of
condemning wine, because some people will be drunk, is
itself to be condemned; a man cannot abuse anything but
what is good in itself; and I believe that this rule has only
regard to the popular vice. They are bits for calves, with
which neither the saints whom we hear speak so highly of
themselves, nor the philosophers, nor the divines will be
curbed; neither will I, who am as little the one as the other,
If they do not write of it expressly, at all events, when the
occasions arise, they don’t hesitate to put themselves on the
65 “The avoiding a mere fault often leads us into a greater.” Or: “The
escape from a fault leads into a vice” –Horace, De Arte Poetics, verse
31.
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public highway. Of what does Socrates treat more largely
than of himself? To what does he more direct and address
the discourses of his disciples, than to speak of themselves,
not of the lesson in their book, but of the essence and motion of their souls? We confess ourselves religiously to God
and our confessor; as our neighbours, do to all the people.
But some will answer that we there speak nothing but accusation against ourselves; why then, we say all; for our very
virtue itself is faulty and penetrable. My trade and art is
to live; he that forbids me to speak according to my own
sense, experience, and practice, may as well enjoin an architect not to speak of building according to his own knowledge, but according to that of his neighbour; according to
the knowledge of another, and not according to his own. If it
be vainglory for a man to publish his own virtues, why does
not Cicero prefer the eloquence of Hortensius, and Hortensius that of Cicero? Peradventure they mean that I should
give testimony of myself by works and effects, not barely by
words. I chiefly paint my thoughts, a subject void of form
and incapable of operative production; ‘tis all that I can do
to couch it in this airy body of the voice; the wisest and
devoutest men have lived in the greatest care to avoid all
apparent effects. Effects would more speak of fortune than
of me; they manifest their own office and not mine, but uncertainly and by conjecture; patterns of some one particular virtue. I expose myself entire; ‘tis a body where, at one
view, the veins, muscles, and tendons are apparent, every
of them in its proper place; here the effects of a cold; there
of the heart beating, very dubiously. I do not write my own
acts, but myself and my essence.
I am of opinion that a man must be very cautious how
he values himself, and equally conscientious to give a true
report, be it better or worse, impartially. If I thought myself
perfectly good and wise, I would rattle it out to some purpose. To speak less of one’s self than what one really is is
folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which
is under a man’s value is pusillanimity and cowardice, ac60
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cording to, Aristotle. No virtue assists itself with falsehood;
truth is never matter of error. To speak more of one’s self
than is really true is not always mere presumption; ‘tis,
moreover, very often folly; to, be immeasurably pleased
with what one is, and to fall into an indiscreet self-love, is in
my opinion the substance of this vice. The most sovereign
remedy to cure it, is to do quite contrary to what these people direct who, in forbidding men to speak of themselves,
consequently, at the same time, interdict thinking of themselves too. Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have
but a very little share in it.
They fancy that to think of one’s self is to be delighted
with one’s self; to frequent and converse with one’s self, to
be overindulgent; but this excess springs only in those who
take but a superficial view of themselves, and dedicate their
main inspection to their affairs; who call it mere reverie and
idleness to occupy one’s self with one’s self, and the building one’s self up a mere building of castles in the air; who
look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger. If
any one be in rapture with his own knowledge, looking only
on those below him, let him but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be abated, when he shall
there find so many thousand wits that trample him under
foot. If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personal
valour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so many armies, so many nations, that leave him so
far behind them. No particular quality can make any man
proud, that will at the same time put the many other weak
and imperfect ones he has in the other scale, and the nothingness of human condition to make up the weight. Because
Socrates had alone digested to purpose the precept of his
god, “to know himself,” and by that study arrived at the
perfection of setting himself at nought, he only was reputed
worthy the title of a sage. Whosoever shall so know himself,
let him boldly speak it out.
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CHAPTER VII
OF RECOMPENSES OF HONOUR
T
HEY who write the life of Augustus Caesar,66 observe this
in his military discipline, that he was wonderfully liberal of gifts to men of merit, but that as to the true recompenses of honour he was as sparing; yet he himself had been
gratified by his uncle with all the military recompenses before he had ever been in the field. It was a pretty invention,
and received into most governments of the world, to institute certain vain and in themselves valueless distinctions to
honour and recompense virtue, such as the crowns of laurel, oak, and myrtle, the particular fashion of some garment,
the privilege to ride in a coach in the city, or at night with
a torch, some peculiar place assigned in public assemblies,
the prerogative of certain additional names and titles, certain distinctions in the bearing of coats of arms, and the like,
the use of which, according to the several humours of nations, has been variously received, and yet continues.
We in France, as also several of our neighbours, have
orders of knighthood that are instituted only for this end.
And ‘tis, in earnest, a very good and profitable custom to
find out an acknowledgment for the worth of rare and excellent men, and to satisfy them with rewards that are not
at all chargeable either to prince or people. And that which
has always been found by ancient experience, and which
we have heretofore observed among ourselves, that men of
quality have ever been more jealous of such recompenses
than of those wherein there was gain and profit, is not without very good ground and reason. If with the reward, which
ought to be simply a recompense of honour, they should
mix other commodities and add riches, this mixture, instead of procuring an increase of estimation, would debase
and abate it. The Order of St. Michael, which has been so
long in repute amongst us, had no greater commodity than
66 Suetonius,
Life of Augustus, c. 25.
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that it had no communication with any other commodity,
which produced this effect, that formerly there was no office or title whatever to which the gentry pretended with
so great desire and affection as they did to that; no quality
that carried with it more respect and grandeur, valour and
worth more willingly embracing and with greater ambition
aspiring to a recompense purely its own, and rather glorious than profitable. For, in truth, other gifts have not so
great a dignity of usage, by reason they are laid out upon
all sorts of occasions; with money a man pays the wages
of a servant, the diligence of a courier, dancing, vaulting,
speaking, and the meanest offices we receive; nay, and reward vice with it too, as flattery, treachery, and pimping;
and therefore ‘tis no wonder if virtue less desires and less
willingly receives this common sort of payment, than that
which is proper and peculiar to her, throughout generous
and noble. Augustus had reason to be more sparing of this
than the other, insomuch that honour is a privilege which
derives its principal essence from rarity; and so virtue itself:
“Cui malus est nemo, quis bonus esse potest?”67
We do not intend it for a commendation when we say
that such a one is careful in the education of his children, by
reason it is a common act, how just and well done soever;
no more than we commend a great tree, where the whole
forest is the same. I do not think that any citizen of Sparta
glorified himself much upon his valour, it being the universal virtue of the whole nation; and as little upon his fidelity
and contempt of riches. There is no recompense becomes
virtue, how great soever, that is once passed into a custom;
and I know not withal whether we can ever call it great, being common.
Seeing, then, that these remunerations of honour have
no other value and estimation but only this, that few people enjoy them, ‘tis but to be liberal of them to bring them
67 “To
whom no one is ill who can be good?”
63
–Martial, xii. 82.
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down to nothing. And though there should be now more
men found than in former times worthy of our order, the
estimation of it nevertheless should not be abated, nor the
honour made cheap; and it may easily happen that more
may merit it; for there is no virtue that so easily spreads as
that of military valour. There is another virtue, true, perfect,
and philosophical, of which I do not speak, and only make
use of the word in our common acceptation, much greater
than this and more full, which is a force and assurance of
the soul, equally despising all sorts of adverse accidents,
equable, uniform, and constant, of which ours is no more
than one little ray. Use, education, example, and custom can
do all in all to the establishment of that whereof I am speaking, and with great facility render it common, as by the experience of our civil wars is manifest enough; and whoever
could at this time unite us all, Catholic and Huguenot, into
one body, and set us upon some brave common enterprise,
we should again make our ancient military reputation flourish. It is most certain that in times past the recompense of
this order had not only a regard to valour, but had a further
prospect; it never was the reward of a valiant soldier but
of a great captain; the science of obeying was not reputed
worthy of so honourable a guerdon. There was therein a
more universal military expertness required, and that comprehended the most and the greatest qualities of a military
man:
“Neque enim eaedem militares et imperatorix
artes sunt,”68
as also, besides, a condition suitable to such a dignity. But, I
say, though more men were worthy than formerly, yet ought
it not to be more liberally distributed, and it were better to
fall short in not giving it at all to whom it should be due,
than for ever to lose, as we have lately done, the fruit of so
68 “For the arts of soldiery and generalship are not the same.”
Livy, xxv. 19.
64
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profitable an invention. No man of spirit will deign to advantage himself with what is in common with many; and
such of the present time as have least merited this recompense themselves make the greater show of disdaining it,
in order thereby to be ranked with those to whom so much
wrong has been done by the unworthy conferring and debasing the distinction which was their particular right.
Now, to expect that in obliterating and abolishing this,
suddenly to create and bring into credit a like institution,
is not a proper attempt for so licentious and so sick a time
as this wherein we now are; and it will fall out that the last
will from its birth incur the same inconveniences that have
ruined the other.69 The rules for dispensing this new order
had need to be extremely clipt and bound under great restrictions, to give it authority; and this tumultuous season
is incapable of such a curb: besides that, before this can be
brought into repute, ‘tis necessary that the memory of the
first, and of the contempt into which it is fallen, be buried
in oblivion.
This place might naturally enough admit of some discourse upon the consideration of valour, and the difference
of this virtue from others; but, Plutarch having so often handled this subject, I should give myself an unnecessary trouble to repeat what he has said. But this is worth considering: that our nation places valour, vaillance, in the highest
degree of virtue, as its very word evidences, being derived
from valeur, and that, according to our use, when we say a
man of high worth a good man, in our court style–‘tis to say
a valiant man, after the Roman way; for the general appellation of virtue with them takes etymology from vis, force.
The proper, sole, and essential profession of, the French noblesse is that of arms: and ‘tis likely that the first virtue that
discovered itself amongst men and has given to some advantage over others, was that by which the strongest and
most valiant have mastered the weaker, and acquired a par69 Montaigne refers to the Order of the Saint-Esprit, instituted by
Henry III. in 1578.
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ticular authority and reputation, whence came to it that dignified appellation; or else, that these nations, being very
warlike, gave the pre-eminence to that of the virtues which
was most familiar to them; just as our passion and the feverish solicitude we have of the chastity of women occasions
that to say, a good woman, a woman of worth, a woman of
honour and virtue, signifies merely a chaste woman as if,
to oblige them to that one duty, we were indifferent as to all
the rest, and gave them the reins in all other faults whatever
to compound for that one of incontinence.
66
CHAPTER VIII
OF THE AFFECTION OF FATHERS TO THEIR
CHILDREN
To Madame D’Estissac.
MADAM, if the strangeness and novelty of my subject,
which are wont to give value to things, do not save me, I
shall never come off with honour from this foolish attempt:
but ‘tis so fantastic, and carries a face so unlike the common use, that this, peradventure, may make it pass. ‘Tis
a melancholic humour, and consequently a humour very
much an enemy to my natural complexion, engendered by
the pensiveness of the solitude into which for some years
past I have retired myself, that first put into my head this
idle fancy of writing. Wherein, finding myself totally unprovided and empty of other matter, I presented myself to
myself for argument and subject. ‘Tis the only book in the
world of its kind, and of a wild and extravagant design.
There is nothing worth remark in this affair but that extravagancy: for in a subject so vain and frivolous, the best
workman in the world could not have given it a form fit to
recommend it to any manner of esteem.
Now, madam, having to draw my own picture to the
life, I had omitted one important feature, had I not therein
represented the honour I have ever had for you and your
merits; which I have purposely chosen to say in the beginning of this chapter, by reason that amongst the many other
excellent qualities you are mistress of, that of the tender love
you have manifested to your children, is seated in one of
the highest places. Whoever knows at what age Monsieur
D’Estissac, your husband, left you a widow, the great and
honourable matches that have since been offered to you, as
many as to any lady of your condition in France, the constancy and steadiness wherewith, for so many years, you
have sustained so many sharp difficulties, the burden and
conduct of affairs, which have persecuted you in every corner of the kingdom, and are not yet weary of tormenting
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you, and the happy direction you have given to all these,
by your sole prudence or good fortune, will easily conclude
with me that we have not so vivid an example as yours of
maternal affection in our times. I praise God, madam, that
it has been so well employed; for the great hopes Monsieur
D’Estissac, your son, gives of himself, render sufficient assurance that when he comes of age you will reap from him
all the obedience and gratitude of a very good man. But,
forasmuch as by reason of his tender years, he has not been
capable of taking notice of those offices of extremest value
he has in so great number received from you, I will, if these
papers shall one day happen to fall into his hands, when
I shall neither have mouth nor speech left to deliver it to
him, that he shall receive from me a true account of those
things, which shall be more effectually manifested to him
by their own effects, by which he will understand that there
is not a gentleman in France who stands more indebted to a
mother’s care; and that he cannot, in the future, give a better nor more certain testimony of his own worth and virtue
than by acknowledging you for that excellent mother you
are.
If there be any law truly natural, that is to say, any instinct that is seen universally and perpetually imprinted in
both beasts and men (which is not without controversy), I
can say, that in my opinion, next to the care every animal has
of its own preservation, and to avoid that which may hurt
him, the affection that the begetter bears to his offspring
holds the second place in this rank. And seeing that nature appears to have recommended it to us, having regard
to the extension and progression of the successive pieces of
this machine of hers, ‘tis no wonder if, on the contrary, that
of children towards their parents is not so great. To which
we may add this other Aristotelian consideration, that he
who confers a benefit on any one, loves him better than he
is beloved by him again: that he to whom is owing, loves
better than he who owes; and that every artificer is fonder
of his work, than, if that work had sense, it would be of
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him; by reason that it is dear to us to be, and to be consists
in movement and action; therefore every one has in some
sort a being in his work. He who confers a benefit exercises
a fine and honest action; he who receives it exercises the
useful only. Now the useful is much less lovable than the
honest; the honest is stable and permanent, supplying him
who has done it with a continual gratification. The useful
loses itself, easily slides away, and the memory of it is neither so fresh nor so pleasing. Those things are dearest to us
that have cost us most, and giving is more chargeable than
receiving.
Since it has pleased God to endue us with some capacity of reason, to the end we may not, like brutes, be servilely
subject and enslaved to the laws common to both, but that
we should by judgment and a voluntary liberty apply ourselves to them, we ought, indeed, something to yield to
the simple authority of nature, but not suffer ourselves to
be tyrannically hurried away and transported by her; reason alone should have the conduct of our inclinations. I,
for my part, have a strange disgust for those propensions
that are started in us without the mediation and direction
of the judgment, as, upon the subject I am speaking of, I
cannot entertain that passion of dandling and caressing infants scarcely born, having as yet neither motion of soul nor
shape of body distinguishable, by which they can render
themselves amiable, and have not willingly suffered them
to be nursed near me. A true and regular affection ought
to spring and increase with the knowledge they give us of
themselves, and then, if they are worthy of it, the natural
propension walking hand in hand with reason, to cherish
them with a truly paternal love; and so to judge, also, if they
be otherwise, still rendering ourselves to reason, notwithstanding the inclination of nature. ‘Tis oft-times quite otherwise; and, most commonly, we find ourselves more taken
with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterwards, with their
most complete actions; as if we had loved them for our
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sport, like monkeys, and not as men; and some there are,
who are very liberal in buying them balls to play withal,
who are very close-handed for the least necessary expense
when they come to age. Nay, it looks as if the jealousy of
seeing them appear in and enjoy the world when we are
about to leave it, rendered us more niggardly and stingy towards them; it vexes us that they tread upon our heels, as
if to solicit us to go out; if this were to be feared, since the
order of things will have it so that they cannot, to speak the
truth, be nor live, but at the expense of our being and life,
we should never meddle with being fathers at all.
For my part, I think it cruelty and injustice not to receive them into the share and society of our goods, and not
to make them partakers in the intelligence of our domestic
affairs when they are capable, and not to lessen and contract
our own expenses to make the more room for theirs, seeing
we beget them to that effect. ‘Tis unjust that an old fellow,
broken and half dead, should alone, in a corner of the chimney, enjoy the money that would suffice for the maintenance
and advancement of many children, and suffer them, in the
meantime, to lose their’ best years for want of means to advance themselves in the public service and the knowledge
of men. A man by this course drives them to despair, and
to seek out by any means, how unjust or dishonourable soever, to provide for their own support: as I have, in my time,
seen several young men of good extraction so addicted to
stealing, that no correction could cure them of it. I know
one of a very good family, to whom, at the request of a
brother of his, a very honest and brave gentleman, I once
spoke on this account, who made answer, and confessed to
me roundly, that he had been put upon this paltry practice
by the severity and avarice of his father; but that he was
now so accustomed to it he could not leave it off. And, at
that very time, he was trapped stealing a lady’s rings, having come into her chamber, as she was dressing with several
others. He put me in mind of a story I had heard of another
gentleman, so perfect and accomplished in this fine trade
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in his youth, that, after he came to his estate and resolved
to give it over, he could not hold his hands, nevertheless, if
he passed by a shop where he saw anything he liked, from
catching it up, though it put him to the shame of sending
afterwards to pay for it. And I have myself seen several so
habituated to this quality that even amongst their comrades
they could not forbear filching, though with intent to restore
what they had taken. I am a Gascon, and yet there is no vice
I so little understand as that; I hate it something more by
disposition than I condemn it by reason; I do not so much
as desire anything of another man’s. This province of ours
is, in plain truth, a little more decried than the other parts
of the kingdom; and yet we have several times seen, in our
times, men of good families of other provinces, in the hands
of justice, convicted of abominable thefts. I fear this vice is,
in some sort, to be attributed to the fore-mentioned vice of
the fathers.
And if a man should tell me, as a lord of very good understanding once did, that “he hoarded up wealth, not to
extract any other fruit and use from his parsimony, but to
make himself honoured and sought after by his relations;
and that age having deprived him of all other power, it was
the only remaining remedy to maintain his authority in his
family, and to keep him from being neglected and despised
by all around,” in truth, not only old age, but all other imbecility, according to Aristotle, is the promoter of avarice; that
is something, but it is physic for a disease that a man should
prevent the birth of. A father is very miserable who has
no other hold on his children’s affection than the need they
have of his assistance, if that can be called affection; he must
render himself worthy to be respected by his virtue and wisdom, and beloved by his kindness and the sweetness of his
manners; even the very ashes of a rich matter have their
value; and we are wont to have the bones and relics of worthy men in regard and reverence. No old age can be so decrepid in a man who has passed his life in honour, but it
must be venerable, especially to his children, whose soul he
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must have trained up to their duty by reason, not by necessity and the need they have of him, nor by harshness and
compulsion:
“Et errat longe mea quidem sententia
Qui imperium credat esse gravius, aut stabilius,
Vi quod fit, quam illud, quod amicitia adjungitur.”70
I condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul that
is designed for honour and liberty. There is I know not what
of servile in rigour and constraint; and I am of opinion that
what is not to be done by reason, prudence, and address, is
never to be affected by force. I myself was brought up after
that manner; and they tell me that in all my first age I never
felt the rod but twice, and then very slightly. I practised
the same method with my children, who all of them died at
nurse, except Leonora, my only daughter, and who arrived
to the age of five years and upward without other correction
for her childish faults (her mother’s indulgence easily concurring) than words only, and those very gentle; in which
kind of proceeding, though my end and expectation should
be both frustrated, there are other causes enough to lay the
fault on without blaming my discipline, which I know to be
natural and just, and I should, in this, have yet been more
religious towards the males, as less born to subjection and
more free; and I should have made it my business to fill their
hearts with ingenuousness and freedom. I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more
cowardly, or more wilfully obstinate.
Do we desire to be beloved of our children? Will we remove from them all occasion of wishing our death though
no occasion of so horrid a wish can either be just or excusable?
70 “He wanders far from the truth, in my opinion, who thinks that
government more absolute and durable which is acquired by force
than that which is attached to friendship.” –Terence, Adelph., i. I,
40.
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“Nullum scelus rationem habet.”71
Let us reasonably accommodate their lives with what
is in our power. In order to this, we should not marry so
young that our age shall in a manner be confounded with
theirs; for this inconvenience plunges us into many very
great difficulties, and especially the gentry of the nation,
who are of a condition wherein they have little to do, and
who live upon their rents only: for elsewhere, with people
who live by their labour, the plurality and company of children is an increase to the common stock; they are so many
new tools and instruments wherewith to grow rich.
I married at three-and-thirty years of age, and concur in
the opinion of thirty-five, which is said to be that of Aristotle. Plato will have nobody marry before thirty; but he has
reason to laugh at those who undertook the work of marriage after five-and-fifty, and condemns their offspring as
unworthy of aliment and life. Thales gave the truest limits, who, young and being importuned by his mother to
marry, answered, “That it was too soon,” and, being grown
into years and urged again, “That it was too late.” A man
must deny opportunity to every inopportune action. The
ancient Gauls’ looked upon it as a very horrid thing for a
man to have society with a woman before he was twenty
years of age, and strictly recommended to the men who designed themselves for war the keeping their virginity till
well grown in years, forasmuch as courage is abated and
diverted by intercourse with women:
’“Ma, or congiunto a giovinetta sposa,
E lieto omai de’ figli, era invilito
Negli affetti di padre et di marito.”72
Muley Hassam, king of Tunis, he whom the Emperor
71 “No
wickedness has reason.” –Livy, xxviii. 28
married to a young wife and happy in children, he was
demoralised by his love as father and husband.” –Tasso, Gierus., x.
39.
72 “Now,
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Charles V. restored to his kingdom, reproached the memory of his father Mahomet with the frequentation of women,
styling him loose, effeminate, and a getter of children.73 The
Greek history observes of Iccus the Tarentine, of Chryso,
Astyllus, Diopompos, and others, that to keep their bodies in order for the Olympic games and such like exercises,
they denied themselves during that preparation all commerce with Venus. In a certain country of the Spanish Indies
men were not permitted to marry till after forty age, and yet
the girls were allowed at ten. ‘Tis not time for a gentleman
of thirty years old to give place to his son who is twenty; he
is himself in a condition to serve both in the expeditions of
war and in the court of his prince; has need of all his appurtenances; and yet, doubtless, he ought to surrender a share,
but not so great an one as to forget himself for others; and
for such an one the answer that fathers have ordinarily in
their mouths, “I will not put off my clothes, before I go to
bed,” serves well.
But a father worn out with age and infirmities, and deprived by weakness and want of health of the common society of men, wrongs himself and his to amass a great heap
of treasure. He has lived long enough, if he be wise, to have
a mind to strip himself to go to bed, not to his very shirt, I
confess, but to that and a good, warm dressing-gown; the
remaining pomps, of which he has no further use, he ought
voluntarily to surrender to those, to whom by the order of
nature they belong. ‘Tis reason he should refer the use of
those things to them, seeing that nature has reduced him to
such a state that he cannot enjoy them himself; otherwise
there is doubtless malice and envy in the case. The greatest
act of the Emperor Charles V. was that when, in imitation
of some of the ancients of his own quality, confessing it but
reason to strip ourselves when our clothes encumber and
grow too heavy for us, and to lie down when our legs begin to fail us, he resigned his possessions, grandeur, and
power to his son, when he found himself failing in vigour,
73 Of
whom he had thirty-four.
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and steadiness for the conduct of his affairs suitable with
the glory he had therein acquired:
“Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat.”74
This fault of not perceiving betimes and of not being sensible of the feebleness and extreme alteration that age naturally brings both upon body and mind, which, in my opinion, is equal, if indeed the soul has not more than half, has
lost the reputation of most of the great men in the world.
I have known in my time, and been intimately acquainted
with persons of great authority, whom one might easily discern marvellously lapsed from the sufficiency I knew they
were once endued with, by the reputation they had acquired in their former years, whom I could heartily, for their
own sakes, have wished at home at their ease, discharged
of their public or military employments, which were now
grown too heavy for their shoulders. I have formerly been
very familiar in a gentleman’s house, a widower and very
old, though healthy and cheerful enough: this gentleman
had several daughters to marry and a son already of ripe
age, which brought upon him many visitors, and a great expense, neither of which well pleased him, not only out of
consideration of frugality, but yet more for having, by reason of his age, entered into a course of life far differing from
ours. I told him one day a little boldly, as I used to do, that
he would do better to give us younger folk room, and to
leave his principal house (for he had but that well placed
and furnished) to his son, and himself retire to an estate he
had hard by, where nobody would trouble his repose, seeing he could not otherwise avoid being importuned by us,
the condition of his children considered. He took my advice
afterwards, and found an advantage in so doing.
I do not mean that a man should so instal them as not to
reserve to himself a liberty to retract; I, who am now arrived
74 “Dismiss the old horse in good time, lest, failing in the lists, the
spectators laugh.” –Horace, Epist., i., I, 8.
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to the age wherein such things are fit to be done, would
resign to them the enjoyment of my house and goods, but
with a power of revocation if they should give me cause to
alter my mind; I would leave to them the use, that being no
longer convenient for me; and, of the general authority and
power over all, would reserve as much as–I thought good
to myself; having always held that it must needs be a great
satisfaction to an aged father himself to put his children into
the way of governing his affairs, and to have power during
his own life to control their behaviour, supplying them with
instruction and advice from his own experience, and himself to transfer the ancient honour and order of his house
into the hands of those who are to succeed him, and by that
means to satisfy himself as to the hopes he may conceive
of their future conduct. And in order to this I would not
avoid their company; I would observe them near at hand,
and partake, according to the condition of my age, of their
feasts and jollities. If I did not live absolutely amongst
them, which I could not do without annoying them and
their friends, by reason of the morosity of my age and the
restlessness of my infirmities, and without violating also the
rules and order of living I should then have set down to myself, I would, at least, live near them in some retired part of
my house, not the best in show, but the most commodious.
Nor as I saw some years ago, a dean of St. Hilary of Poitiers
given up to such a solitude, that at the time I came into his
chamber it had been two and twenty years that he had not
stepped one foot out of it, and yet had all his motions free
and easy, and was in good health, saving a cold that fell
upon his lungs; he would, hardly once in a week, suffer any
one to come in to see him; he always kept himself shut up in
his chamber alone, except that a servant brought him, once
a day, something to eat, and did then but just come in and
go out again. His employment was to walk up and down,
and read some book, for he was a bit of a scholar; but, as to
the rest, obstinately bent to die in this retirement, as he soon
after did. I would endeavour by pleasant conversation to
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create in my children a warm and unfeigned friendship and
good-will towards me, which in well-descended natures is
not hard to do; for if they be furious brutes, of which this
age of ours produces thousands, we are then to hate and
avoid them as such.
I am angry at the custom of forbidding children to call
their father by the name of father, and to enjoin them another, as more full of respect and reverence, as if nature
had not sufficiently provided for our authority. We call
Almighty God Father, and disdain to have our children call
us so; I have reformed this error in my family.75 And ‘tis
also folly and injustice to deprive children, when grown
up, of familiarity with their father, and to carry a scornful and austere countenance toward them, thinking by that
to keep them in awe and obedience; for it is a very idle
farce that, instead of producing the effect designed, renders fathers distasteful, and, which is worse, ridiculous to
their own children. They have youth and vigour in possession, and consequently the breath and favour of the world;
and therefore receive these fierce and tyrannical looks–mere
scarecrows– of a man without blood, either in his heart or
veins, with mockery and contempt. Though I could make
myself feared, I had yet much rather make myself beloved:
there are so many sorts of defects in old age, so much imbecility, and it is so liable to contempt, that the best acquisition a man can make is the kindness and affection of his
own family; command and fear are no longer his weapons.
Such an one I have known who, having been very imperious in his youth, when he came to be old, though he might
have lived at his full ease, would ever strike, rant, swear,
and curse: the most violent householder in France: fretting
himself with unnecessary suspicion and vigilance. And all
this rumble and clutter but to make his family cheat him
the more; of his barn, his kitchen, cellar, nay, and his very
purse too, others had the greatest use and share, whilst he
keeps his keys in his pocket much more carefully than his
75 As
did Henry IV. of France
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eyes. Whilst he hugs himself with the pitiful frugality of a
niggard table, everything goes to rack and ruin in every corner of his house, in play, drink, all sorts of profusion, making sport in their junkets with his vain anger and fruitless
parsimony. Every one is a sentinel against him, and if, by
accident, any wretched fellow that serves him is of another
humour, and will not join with the rest, he is presently rendered suspected to him, a bait that old age very easily bites
at of itself. How often has this gentleman boasted to me in
how great awe he kept his family, and how exact an obedience and reverence they paid him! How clearly he saw into
his own affairs!
“Ille solos nescit omnia.”76
I do not know any one that can muster more parts, both
natural and acquired, proper to maintain dominion, than
he; yet he is fallen from it like a child. For this reason it is
that I have picked out him, amongst several others that I
know of the same humour, for the greatest example. It were
matter for a question in the schools, whether he is better
thus or otherwise. In his presence, all submit to and bow
to him, and give so much way to his vanity that nobody
ever resists him; he has his fill of assents, of seeming fear,
submission, and respect. Does he turn away a servant? he
packs up his bundle, and is gone; but ‘tis no further than
just out of his sight: the steps of old age are so slow, the
senses so troubled, that he will live and do his old office in
the same house a year together without being perceived.
And after a fit interval of time, letters are pretended to
come from a great way off; very humble, suppliant; and full
of promises of amendment, by virtue of which he is again
received into favour. Does Monsieur make any bargain, or
prepare any despatch that does not please? ‘tis suppressed,
and causes afterwards forged to excuse the want of execution in the one or answer in the other. No letters being first
76 “He
iv.
alone is ignorant of all that is passing.”
2, 9.
78
–Terence, Adelph.,
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brought to him, he never sees any but those that shall seem
fit for his knowledge. If by accident they fall first into his
own hand, being used to trust somebody to read them to
him; he reads extempore what he thinks fit, and often makes
such a one ask him pardon who abuses and rails at him in
his letter. In short, he sees nothing, but by an image prepared and designed beforehand and the most satisfactory
they can invent, not to rouse and awaken his ill humour
and choler. I have seen, under various aspects, enough of
these modes of domestic government, long-enduring, constant, to the like effect.
Women are evermore addicted to cross their husbands:
they lay hold with both hands on all occasions to contradict
and oppose them; the first excuse serves for a plenary justification. I have seen one who robbed her husband wholesale,
that, as she told her confessor, she might distribute the more
liberal alms. Let who will trust to that religious dispensation. No management of affairs seems to them of sufficient
dignity, if proceeding from the husband’s assent; they must
usurp it either by insolence or cunning, and always injuriously, or else it has not the grace and authority they desire.
When, as in the case I am speaking of, ‘tis against a poor
old man and for the children, then they make use of this
title to serve their passion with glory; and, as for a common service, easily cabal, and combine against his government and dominion. If they be males grown up in full and
flourishing health, they presently corrupt, either by force or
favour, steward, receivers, and all the rout. Such as have
neither wife nor son do not so easily fall into this misfortune; but withal more cruelly and unworthily. Cato the elder in his time said: So many servants, so many enemies;
consider, then, whether according to the vast difference between the purity of the age he lived in and the corruption of
this of ours, he does not seem to shew us that wife, son, and
servant, are so many enemies to us? ‘Tis well for old age
that it is always accompanied by want of observation, ignorance, and a proneness to being deceived. For should we
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see how we are used and would not acquiesce, what would
become of us? especially in such an age as this, where the
very judges who are to determine our controversies are usually partisans to the young, and interested in the cause. In
case the discovery of this cheating escape me, I cannot at
least fail to discern that I am very fit to be cheated. And
can a man ever enough exalt the value of a friend, in comparison with these civil ties? The very image of it which I
see in beasts, so pure and uncorrupted, how religiously do
I respect it! If others deceive me, yet do I not, at least, deceive myself in thinking I am able to defend myself from
them, or in cudgelling my brains to make myself so. I protect myself from such treasons in my own bosom, not by
an unquiet and tumultuous curiosity, but rather by diversion and resolution. When I hear talk of any one’s condition, I never trouble myself to think of him; I presently turn
my eyes upon myself to see in what condition I am; whatever concerns another relates to me; the accident that has
befallen him gives me caution, and rouses me to turn my
defence that way. We every day and every hour say things
of another that we might properly say of ourselves, could
we but apply our observation to our own concerns, as well
as extend it to others. And several authors have in this manner prejudiced their own cause by running headlong upon
those they attack, and darting those shafts against their enemies, that are more properly, and with greater advantage,
to be turned upon themselves.
The late Mareschal de Montluc having lost his son, who
died in the island of Madeira, in truth a very worthy gentleman and of great expectation, did to me, amongst his other
regrets, very much insist upon what a sorrow and heartbreaking it was that he had never made himself familiar
with him; and by that humour of paternal gravity and grimace to have lost the opportunity of having an insight into
and of well knowing, his son, as also of letting him know
the extreme affection he had for him, and the worthy opinion he had of his virtue. “That poor boy,” said he, “never
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saw in me other than a stern and disdainful countenance,
and is gone in a belief that I neither knew how to love him
nor esteem him according to his desert. For whom did I reserve the discovery of that singular affection I had for him
in my soul? Was it not he himself, who ought to have had all
the pleasure of it, and all the obligation? I constrained and
racked myself to put on, and maintain this vain disguise,
and have by that means deprived myself of the pleasure of
his conversation, and, I doubt, in some measure, his affection, which could not but be very cold to me, having never
other from me than austerity, nor felt other than a tyrannical
manner of proceeding.”77
I find this complaint to be rational and rightly apprehended: for, as I myself know by too certain experience,
there is no so sweet consolation in the loss of friends as the
conscience of having had no reserve or secret for them, and
to have had with them a perfect and entire communication.
Oh my friend,78 am I the better for being sensible of this;
or am I the worse? I am, doubtless, much the better. I am
consoled and honoured, in the sorrow for his death. Is it not
a pious and a pleasing office of my life to be always upon
my friend’s obsequies? Can there be any joy equal to this
privation?
I open myself to my family, as much as I can, and
very willingly let them know the state of my opinion and
good will towards them, as I do to everybody else: I make
haste to bring out and present myself to them; for I will
not have them mistaken in me, in anything. Amongst other
particular customs of our ancient Gauls, this, as Caesar reports,79 was one, that the sons never presented themselves
before their fathers, nor durst ever appear in their company
in public, till they began to bear arms; as if they would inti77 Madame de Sevigne tells us that she never read this passage
without
tears in her eyes. “My God!” she exclaims, “how full
is this book
of good sense!” Ed.
78 La Boetie.
79 De Bello Gall., vi.
r8.
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mate by this, that it was also time for their fathers to receive
them into their familiarity and acquaintance.
I have observed yet another sort of indiscretion in fathers of my time, that, not contented with having deprived
their children, during their own long lives, of the share they
naturally ought to have had in their fortunes, they afterwards leave to their wives the same authority over their
estates, and liberty to dispose of them according to their
own fancy. And I have known a certain lord, one of the
principal officers of the crown, who, having in reversion
above fifty thousand crowns yearly revenue, died necessitous and overwhelmed with debt at above fifty years of age;
his mother in her extremest decrepitude being yet in possession of all his property by the will of his father, who had, for
his part, lived till near fourscore years old. This appears to
me by no means reasonable. And therefore I think it of very
little advantage to a man, whose affairs are well enough, to
seek a wife who encumbers his estate with a very great fortune; there is no sort of foreign debt that brings more ruin to
families than this: my predecessors have ever been aware of
that danger and provided against it, and so have I. But those
who dissuade us from rich wives, for fear they should be
less tractable and kind, are out in their advice to make a man
lose a real commodity for so frivolous a conjecture. It costs
an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason
than another; they cherish themselves most where they are
most wrong. Injustice allures them, as the honour of their
virtuous actions does the good; and the more riches they
bring with them, they are so much the more good-natured,
as women, who are handsome, are all the more inclined and
proud to be chaste.
‘Tis reasonable to leave the administration of affairs to
the mothers, till the children are old enough, according to
law, to manage them; but the father has brought them, up
very ill, if he cannot hope that, when they come to maturity,
they will have more wisdom and ability in the management
of affairs than his wife, considering the ordinary weakness
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of the sex. It were, notwithstanding, to say the truth, more
against nature to make the mothers depend upon the discretion of their children; they ought to be plentifully provided
for, to maintain themselves according to their quality and
age, by reason that necessity and indigence are much more
unbecoming and insupportable to them than to men; the
son should rather be cut short than the mother.
In general, the most judicious distribution of our
goods, when we come to die, is, in my opinion, to let them
be distributed according to the custom of the country; the
laws have considered the matter better than we know how
to do, and ‘tis wiser to let them fail in their appointment,
than rashly to run the hazard of miscarrying in ours. Nor
are the goods properly ours, since, by civil prescription and
without us, they are all destined to certain successors. And
although we have some liberty beyond that, yet I think we
ought not, without great and manifest cause, to take away
that from one which his fortune has allotted him, and to
which the public equity gives him title; and that it is against
reason to abuse this liberty, in making it serve our own
frivolous and private fancies. My destiny has been kind to
me in not presenting me with occasions to tempt me and
divert my affection from the common and legitimate institution. I see many with whom ‘tis time lost to employ a
long exercise of good offices: a word ill taken obliterates ten
years’ merit; he is happy who is in a position to oil their
goodwill at this last passage. The last action carries it, not
the best and most frequent offices, but the most recent and
present do the work. These are people that play with their
wills as with apples or rods, to gratify or chastise every action of those who pretend to an interest in their care. ‘Tis a
thing of too great weight and consequence to be so tumbled
and tossed and altered every moment, and wherein the wise
determine once for all, having above all things regard to reason and the public observance. We lay these masculine substitutions too much to heart, proposing a ridiculous eternity
to our names. We are, moreover, too superstitious in vain
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conjectures as to the future, that we derive from the words
and actions of children. Peradventure they might have done
me an injustice, in dispossessing me of my right, for having
been the most dull and heavy, the most slow and unwilling
at my book, not of all my brothers only, but of all the boys
in the whole province: whether about learning my lesson,
or about any bodily exercise. ‘Tis a folly to make an election
out of the ordinary course upon the credit of these divinations wherein we are so often deceived. If the ordinary rule
of descent were to be violated, and the destinies corrected
in the choice they have made of our heirs, one might more
plausibly do it upon the account of some remarkable and
enormous personal deformity, a permanent and incorrigible defect, and in the opinion of us French, who are great
admirers of beauty, an important prejudice.
The pleasant dialogue betwixt Plato’s legislator and his
citizens will be an ornament to this place, “What,” said they,
feeling themselves about to die, “may we not dispose of our
own to whom we please? God! what cruelty that it shall not
be lawful for us, according as we have been served and attended in our sickness, in our old age, in our affairs, to give
more or less to those whom we have found most diligent
about us, at our own fancy and discretion!” To which the
legislator answers thus:
“My friends, who are now, without question, very soon
to die, it is hard for you in the condition you are, either to
know yourselves, or what is yours, according to the delphic inscription. I, who make the laws, am of opinion, that
you neither are yourselves your own, nor is that yours of
which you are possessed. Both your goods and you belong
to your families, as well those past as those to come; but,
further, both your family and goods much more appertain
to the public. Wherefore, lest any flatterer in your old age or
in your sickness, or any passion of your own, should unseasonably prevail with you to make an unjust will, I shall take
care to prevent that inconvenience; but, having respect both
to the universal interests of the city and that of your partic84
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ular family, I shall establish laws, and make it by good reasons appear, that private convenience ought to give place to
the common benefit. Go then cheerfully where human necessity calls you. It is for me, who regard no more the one
thing than the other, and who, as much as in me lies, am
provident of the public interest, to have a care as to what
you leave behind you.”
To return to my subject: it appears to me that women
are very rarely born, to whom the prerogative over men, the
maternal and natural excepted, is in any sort due, unless it
be for the punishment of such, as in some amorous fever
have voluntarily submitted themselves to them: but that in
no way concerns the old ones, of whom we are now speaking. This consideration it is which has made us so willingly
to enact and give force to that law, which was never yet seen
by any one, by which women are excluded the succession to
our crown: and there is hardly a government in the world
where it is not pleaded, as it is here, by the probability of
reason that authorises it, though fortune has given it more
credit in some places than in others. ‘Tis dangerous to leave
the disposal of our succession to their judgment, according
to the choice they shall make of children, which is often fantastic and unjust; for the irregular appetites and depraved
tastes they have during the time of their being with child,
they have at all other times in the mind. We commonly see
them fond of the most weak, ricketty, and deformed children; or of those, if they have such, as are still hanging at the
breast. For, not having sufficient force of reason to choose
and embrace that which is most worthy, they the more willingly suffer themselves to be carried away, where the impressions of nature are most alone; like animals that know
their young no longer than they give them suck. As to the
rest, it is easy by experience to be discerned that this natural
affection to which we give so great authority has but very
weak roots. For a very little profit, we every day tear their
own children out of the mothers’ arms, and make them take
ours in their room: we make them abandon their own to
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some pitiful nurse, to whom we disdain to commit ours, or
to some she-goat, forbidding them, not only to give them
suck, what danger soever they run thereby, but, moreover,
to take any manner of care of them, that they may wholly
be occupied with the care of and attendance upon ours; and
we see in most of them an adulterate affection, more vehement than the natural, begotten by custom toward the foster children, and a greater solicitude for the preservation of
those they have taken charge of, than of their own. And
that which I was saying of goats was upon this account;
that it is ordinary all about where I live, to see the countrywomen, when they want milk of their own for their children, to call goats to their assistance; and I have at this hour
two men-servants that never sucked women’s milk more
than eight days after they were born. These goats are immediately taught to come to suckle the little children, know
their voices when they cry, and come running to them. If
any other than this foster-child be presented to them, they
refuse to let it suck; and the child in like manner will refuse
to suck another goat. I saw one the other day from whom
they had taken away the goat that used to nourish it, by
reason the father had only borrowed it of a neighbour; the
child would not touch any other they could bring, and died,
doubtless of hunger. Beasts as easily alter and corrupt their
natural affection as we: I believe that in what Herodotus relates of a certain district of Lybia, there are many mistakes;
he says that the women are there in common; but that the
child, so soon as it can go, finds him out in the crowd for his
father, to whom he is first led by his natural inclination.
Now, to consider this simple reason for loving our children, that we have begot them, therefore calling them our
second selves, it appears, methinks, that there is another
kind of production proceeding from us, that is of no less recommendation: for that which we engender by the soul, the
issue of our understanding, courage, and abilities, springs
from nobler parts than those of the body, and that are much
more our own: we are both father and mother in this gener86
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ation. These cost us a great deal more and bring us more
honour, if they have anything of good in them. For the
value of our other children is much more theirs than ours;
the share we have in them is very little; but of these all the
beauty, all the grace and value, are ours; and also they more
vividly represent us than the others. Plato adds, that these
are immortal children that immortalise and deify their fathers, as Lycurgus, Solon, Minos. Now, histories being full
of examples of the common affection of fathers to their children, it seems not altogether improper to introduce some
few of this other kind. Heliodorus, that good bishop of
Trikka, rather chose to lose the dignity, profit, and devotion
of so venerable a prelacy, than to lose his daughter; a daughter that continues to this day very graceful and comely; but,
peradventure, a little too curiously and wantonly tricked,
and too amorous for an ecclesiastical and sacerdotal daughter. There was one Labienus at Rome, a man of great worth
and authority, and amongst other qualities excellent in all
sorts of literature, who was, as I take it, the son of that
great Labienus, the chief of Caesar’s captains in the wars of
Gaul; and who, afterwards, siding with Pompey the great,
so valiantly maintained his cause, till he was by Caesar defeated in Spain. This Labienus, of whom I am now speaking, had several enemies, envious of his good qualities, and,
tis likely, the courtiers and minions of the emperors of his
time who were very angry at his freedom and the paternal
humour which he yet retained against tyranny, with which
it is to be supposed he had tinctured his books and writings. His adversaries prosecuted several pieces he had published before the magistrates at Rome, and prevailed so far
against him, as to have them condemned to the fire. It was
in him that this new example of punishment was begun,
which was afterwards continued against others at Rome, to
punish even writing and studies with death. There would
not be means and matter enough of cruelty, did we not mix
with them things that nature has exempted from all sense
and suffering, as reputation and the products of the mind,
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and did we not communicate corporal punishments to the
teachings and monuments of the Muses. Now, Labienus
could not suffer this loss, nor survive these his so dear issue,
and therefore caused himself to be conveyed and shut up
alive in the monument of his ancestors, where he made shift
to kill and bury himself at once. ‘Tis hard to shew a more
vehement paternal affection than this. Cassius Severus, a
man of great eloquence and his very intimate friend, seeing his books burned, cried out that by the same sentence
they should as well condemn him to the fire too, seeing
that he carried in his memory all that they contained. The
like accident befel Cremutius Cordus, who being accused of
having in his books commended Brutus and Cassius, that
dirty, servile, and corrupt Senate, worthy a worse master
than Tiberius, condemned his writings to the flame. He
was willing to bear them company, and killed himself with
fasting. The good Lucan, being condemned by that rascal
Nero, at the last gasp of his life, when the greater part of
his blood was already spent through the veins of his arms,
which he had caused his physician to open to make him die,
and when the cold had seized upon all his extremities, and
began to approach his vital parts, the last thing he had in his
memory was some of the verses of his Battle of Phaysalia,
which he recited, dying with them in his mouth. What was
this, but taking a tender and paternal leave of his children,
in imitation of the valedictions and embraces, wherewith
we part from ours, when we come to die, and an effect of
that natural inclination, that suggests to our remembrance
in this extremity those things which were dearest to us during the time of our life?
Can we believe that Epicurus who, as he says himself,
dying of the intolerable pain of the stone, had all his consolation in the beauty of the doctrine he left behind him,
could have received the same satisfaction from many children, though never so well-conditioned and brought up,
had he had them, as he did from the production of so many
rich writings? Or that, had it been in his choice to have left
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behind him a deformed and untoward child or a foolish and
ridiculous book, he, or any other man of his understanding,
would not rather have chosen to have run the first misfortune than the other? It had been, for example, peradventure, an impiety in St. Augustin, if, on the one hand, it had
been proposed to him to bury his writings, from which religion has received so great fruit, or on the other to bury
his children, had he had them, had he not rather chosen to
bury his children. And I know not whether I had not much
rather have begot a very beautiful one, through society with
the Muses, than by lying with my wife. To this, such as it
is, what I give it I give absolutely and irrevocably, as men
do to their bodily children. That little I have done for it, is
no more at my own disposal; it may know many things that
are gone from me, and from me hold that which I have not
retained; and which, as well as a stranger, I should borrow
thence, should I stand in need. If I am wiser than my book,
it is richer than I. There are few men addicted to poetry, who
would not be much prouder to be the father to the AEneid
than to the handsomest youth of Rome; and who would not
much better bear the loss of the one than of the other. For
according to Aristotle, the poet, of all artificers, is the fondest of his work. ‘Tis hard to believe that Epaminondas, who
boasted that in lieu of all posterity he left two daughters behind him that would one day do their father honour (meaning the two victories he obtained over the Lacedaemonians),
would willingly have consented to exchange these for the
most beautiful creatures of all Greece; or that Alexander
or Caesar ever wished to be deprived of the grandeur of
their glorious exploits in war, for the convenience of children and heirs, how perfect and accomplished soever. Nay,
I make a great question, whether Phidias or any other excellent sculptor would be so solicitous of the preservation and
continuance of his natural children, as he would be of a rare
statue, which with long labour and study he had perfected
according to art. And to those furious and irregular passions that have sometimes inflamed fathers towards their
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own daughters, and mothers towards their own sons, the
like is also found in this other sort of parentage: witness
what is related of Pygmalion who, having made the statue
of a woman of singular beauty, fell so passionately in love
with this work of his, that the gods in favour of his passion
inspired it with life.
“Tentatum mollescit ebur, positoque rigore,
Subsidit digitis.”80
80 “The ivory grows soft under his touch and yields to his
fingers.” –Ovid, Metam., x. 283.
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OF THE ARMS OF THE PARTHIANS
‘TIS AN ILL custom and unmanly that the gentlemen of
our time have got, not to put on arms but just upon the point
of the most extreme necessity, and to lay them by again, so
soon as ever there is any show of the danger being over;
hence many disorders arise; for every one bustling and running to his arms just when he should go to charge, has his
cuirass to buckle on when his companions are already put
to rout. Our ancestors were wont to give their head-piece,
lance and gauntlets to be carried, but never put off the other
pieces so long as there was any work to be done. Our troops
are now cumbered and rendered unsightly with the clutter
of baggage and servants who cannot be from their masters,
by reason they carry their arms. Titus Livius speaking of
our nation:
“Intolerantissima laboris corpora vix arma
humeris gerebant.”81
Many nations do yet, and did anciently, go to war without defensive arms, or with such, at least, as were of very
little proof:
“Tegmina queis capitum, raptus de subere cortex.”82
Alexander, the most adventurous captain that ever
was, very seldom wore armour, and such amongst us as
slight it, do not by that much harm to the main concern; for
if we see some killed for want of it, there are few less whom
81 “Bodies most impatient of labour could scarce endure to wear
their arms on their shoulders.” –Livy, x. 28.
82 “To whom the coverings of the heads were the bark of the corktree.” –AEneid, vii. 742.
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the lumber of arms helps to destroy, either by being overburthened, crushed, and cramped with their weight, by a
rude shock, or otherwise. For, in plain truth, to observe the
weight and thickness of the armour we have now in use,
it seems as if we only sought to defend ourselves, and are
rather loaded than secured by it. We have enough to do
to support its weight, being so manacled and immured, as
if we were only to contend with our own arms, and as if
we had not the same obligation to defend them, that they
have to defend us. Tacitus gives a pleasant description of
the men-at-arms among our ancient Gauls, who were so
armed as only to be able to stand, without power to harm
or to be harmed, or to rise again if once struck down. Lucullus, seeing certain soldiers of the Medes, who formed the
van of Tigranes’ army, heavily armed and very uneasy, as if
in prisons of iron, thence conceived hopes with great ease
to defeat them, and by them began his charge and victory.
And now that our musketeers are in credit, I believe some
invention will be found out to immure us for our safety, and
to draw us to the war in castles, such as those the ancients
loaded their elephants withal.
This humour is far differing from that of the younger
Scipio, who sharply reprehended his soldiers for having
planted caltrops under water, in a ditch by which those of
the town he held besieged might sally out upon him; saying, that those who assaulted should think of attacking, and
not to fear; suspecting, with good reason, that this stop they
had put to the enemies, would make themselves less vigilant upon their guard. He said also to a young man, who
showed him a fine buckler he had, that he was very proud
of, “It is a very fine buckler indeed, but a Roman soldier
ought to repose greater confidence in his right hand than in
his left.”
Now ‘tis nothing but the not being used to wear it that
makes the weight of our armour so intolerable:
“L’usbergo in dosso haveano, et l’elmo in testa,
Due di questi guerrier, de’ quali io canto;
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Ne notte o di, d’ appoi ch’ entraro in questa
Stanza, gl’haveano mai messi da canto;
Che facile a portar come la vesta
Era lor, perche in uso l’havean tanto:”83
the Emperor Caracalla was wont to march on foot, completely armed, at the head of his army. The Roman infantry
always carried not only a morion, a sword, and a shield (for
as to arms, says Cicero, they were so accustomed to have
them always on, that they were no more trouble to them
than their own limbs):
“Arma enim membra militis esse dicunt.”
but, moreover, fifteen days’ provision, together with a certain number of stakes, wherewith to fortify their camp, sixty
pounds in weight. And Marius’ soldiers, laden at the same
rate, were inured to march in order of battle five leagues in
five hours, and sometimes, upon any urgent occasion, siX
Their military discipline was much ruder than ours,
and accordingly produced much greater effects. The
younger Scipio, reforming his army in Spain, ordered his
soldiers to eat standing, and nothing that was drest. The
jeer that was given a Lacedaemonian soldier is marvellously
pat to this purpose, who, in an expedition of war, was reproached for having been seen under the roof of a house:
they were so inured to hardship that, let the weather be
what it would, it was a shame to be seen under any other
cover than the roof of heaven. We should not march our
people very far at that rate.
As to what remains, Marcellinus, a man bred up in the
Roman wars, curiously observes the manner of the Parthians arming themselves, and the rather, for being so different
from that of the Romans. “They had,” says he, “armour so
83 “Two of the warriors, of whom I sing, had on their backs their
cuirass and on their heads their casque, and never had night or day
once laid them by, whilst here they were; those arms, by long practice,
were grown as light to bear as a garment”
–Ariosto, Cant., MI. 30.
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woven as to have all the scales fall over one another like
so many little feathers; which did nothing hinder the motion of the body, and yet were of such resistance, that our
darts hitting upon them, would rebound” (these were the
coats of mail our forefathers were so constantly wont to
use). And in another place: “they had,” says he, “strong
and able horses, covered with thick tanned hides of leather,
and were themselves armed ‘cap-a-pie’ with great plates of
iron, so artificially ordered, that in all parts of the limbs,
which required bending, they lent themselves to the motion. One would have said, that they had been men of iron;
having armour for the head so neatly fitted, and so naturally representing the form of a face, that they were nowhere
vulnerable, save at two little round holes, that gave them a
little light, corresponding with their eyes, and certain small
chinks about their nostrils, through which they, with great
difficulty, breathed,”
“Flexilis inductis animatur lamina membris,
Horribilis visu; credas simulacra moveri
Ferrea, cognatoque viros spirare metallo.
Par vestitus equis: ferrata fronte minantur,
Ferratosque movent, securi vulneris, armos.”84
‘Tis a description drawing very near resembling the
equipage of the men-at-arms in France, with their barded
horses. Plutarch says, that Demetrius caused two complete
suits of armour to be made for himself and for Alcimus,
a captain of the greatest note and authority about him, of
six score pounds weight each, whereas the ordinary suits
weighed but half as much.
84 “Plates of steel are placed over the body, so flexible that, dreadful to be seen, you would think these not living men, but moving
images. The horses are similarly armed, and, secured from wounds,
move their iron shoulders.” –Claud, In Ruf., ii. 358.
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OF BOOKS
no doubt but that I often happen to speak of things
Iwhomake
that are much better and more truly handled by those
are masters of the trade. You have here purely an essay of my natural parts, and not of those acquired: and
whoever shall catch me tripping in ignorance, will not in
any sort get the better of me; for I should be very unwilling to become responsible to another for my writings, who
am not so to myself, nor satisfied with them. Whoever goes
in quest of knowledge, let him fish for it where it is to be
found; there is nothing I so little profess. These are fancies
of my own, by which I do not pretend to discover things
but to lay open myself; they may, peradventure, one day
be known to me, or have formerly been, according as fortune has been able to bring me in place where they have
been explained; but I have utterly forgotten it; and if I am
a man of some reading, I am a man of no retention; so that
I can promise no certainty, more than to make known to
what point the knowledge I now have has risen. Therefore,
let none lay stress upon the matter I write, but upon my
method in writing it. Let them observe, in what I borrow, if
I have known how to choose what is proper to raise or help
the invention, which is always my own. For I make others
say for me, not before but after me, what, either for want of
language or want of sense, I cannot myself so well express.
I do not number my borrowings, I weigh them; and had I
designed to raise their value by number, I had made them
twice as many; they are all, or within a very few, so famed
and ancient authors, that they seem, methinks, themselves
sufficiently to tell who they are, without giving me the trouble. In reasons, comparisons, and arguments, if I transplant
any into my own soil, and confound them amongst my own,
I purposely conceal the author, to awe the temerity of those
precipitate censors who fall upon all sorts of writings, particularly the late ones, of men yet living; and in the vulgar
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tongue which puts every one into a capacity of criticising
and which seem to convict the conception and design as
vulgar also. I will have them give Plutarch a fillip on my
nose, and rail against Seneca when they think they rail at
me. I must shelter my own weakness under these great reputations. I shall love any one that can unplume me, that
is, by clearness of understanding and judgment, and by the
sole distinction of the force and beauty of the discourse. For
I who, for want of memory, am at every turn at a loss to,
pick them out of their national livery, am yet wise enough
to know, by the measure of my own abilities, that my soil is
incapable of producing any of those rich flowers that I there
find growing; and that all the fruits of my own growth are
not worth any one of them. For this, indeed, I hold myself
responsible; if I get in my own way; if there be any vanity
and defect in my writings which I do not of myself perceive
nor can discern, when pointed out to me by another; for
many faults escape our eye, but the infirmity of judgment
consists in not being able to discern them, when by another
laid open to us. Knowledge and truth may be in us without
judgment, and judgment also without them; but the confession of ignorance is one of the finest and surest testimonies
of judgment that I know. I have no other officer to put my
writings in rank and file, but only fortune. As things come
into my head, I heap them one upon another; sometimes
they advance in whole bodies, sometimes in single file. I
would that every one should see my natural and ordinary
pace, irregular as it is; I suffer myself to jog on at my own
rate. Neither are these subjects which a man is not permitted to be ignorant in, or casually and at a venture, to discourse of. I could wish to have a more perfect knowledge
of things, but I will not buy it so dear as it costs. My design
is to pass over easily, and not laboriously, the remainder of
my life; there is nothing that I will cudgel my brains about;
no, not even knowledge, of what value soever.
I seek, in the reading of books, only to please myself by
an honest diversion; or, if I study, ‘tis for no other science
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than what treats of the knowledge of myself, and instructs
me how to die and how to live well.
‘Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus.”85
I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I meet with
in my reading; after a charge or two, I give them over.
Should I insist upon them, I should both lose myself and
time; for I have an impatient understanding, that must be
satisfied at first: what I do not discern at once is by persistence rendered more obscure. I do nothing without gaiety;
continuation and a too obstinate endeavour, darkens, stupefies, and tires my judgment. My sight is confounded and
dissipated with poring; I must withdraw it, and refer my
discovery to new attempts; just as, to judge rightly of the
lustre of scarlet, we are taught to pass the eye lightly over
it, and again to run it over at several sudden and reiterated
glances. If one book do not please me, I take another; and I
never meddle with any, but at such times as I am weary of
doing nothing. I care not much for new ones, because the
old seem fuller and stronger; neither do I converse much
with Greek authors, because my judgment cannot do its
work with imperfect intelligence of the material.
Amongst books that are simply pleasant, of the moderns, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Rabelais, and the Basia of Johannes Secundus (if those may be ranged under the title)
are worth reading for amusement. As to the Amadis, and
such kind of stuff, they had not the credit of arresting even
my childhood. And I will, moreover, say, whether boldly
or rashly, that this old, heavy soul of mine is now no longer
tickled with Ariosto, no, nor with the worthy Ovid; his facility and inventions, with which I was formerly so ravished,
are now of no more relish, and I can hardly have the patience to read them. I speak my opinion freely of all things,
even of those that, perhaps, exceed my capacity, and that I
do not conceive to be, in any wise, under my jurisdiction.
85 “My
horse must work according to my step.”
97
–Propertius, iv.
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And, accordingly, the judgment I deliver, is to show the
measure of my own sight, and not of the things I make so
bold to criticise. When I find myself disgusted with Plato’s
‘Axiochus’, as with a work, with due respect to such an author be it spoken, without force, my judgment does not believe itself: it is not so arrogant as to oppose the authority
of so many other famous judgments of antiquity, which it
considers as its tutors and masters, and with whom it is
rather content to err; in such a case, it condemns itself either to stop at the outward bark, not being able to penetrate
to the heart, or to consider it by sortie false light. It is content with only securing itself from trouble and disorder; as
to its own weakness, it frankly acknowledges and confesses
it. It thinks it gives a just interpretation to the appearances
by its conceptions presented to it; but they are weak and
imperfect. Most of the fables of AEsop have diverse senses
and meanings, of which the mythologists chose some one
that quadrates well to the fable; but, for the most part, ‘tis
but the first face that presents itself and is superficial only;
there yet remain others more vivid, essential, and profound,
into which they have not been able to penetrate; and just so
‘tis with me.
But, to pursue the business of this essay, I have always
thought that, in poesy, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace by many degrees excel the rest; and signally, Virgil in
his Georgics, which I look upon as the most accomplished
piece in poetry; and in comparison of which a man may
easily discern that there are some places in his AEneids,
to which the author would have given a little more of the
file, had he had leisure: and the fifth book of his AEneids
seems to me the most perfect. I also love Lucan, and willingly read him, not so much for his style, as for his own
worth, and the truth and solidity of his opinions and judgments. As for good Terence, the refined elegance and grace
of the Latin tongue, I find him admirable in his vivid representation of our manners and the movements of the soul;
our actions throw me at every turn upon him; and I cannot
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read him so often that I do not still discover some new grace
and beauty. Such as lived near Virgil’s time complained that
some should compare Lucretius to him. I am of opinion that
the comparison is, in truth, very unequal: a belief that, nevertheless, I have much ado to assure myself in, when I come
upon some excellent passage in Lucretius. But if they were
so angry at this comparison, what would they say to the
brutish and barbarous stupidity of those who, nowadays,
compare him with Ariosto? Would not Ariosto himself say?
“O seclum insipiens et inficetum!”86
I think the ancients had more reason to be angry with
those who compared Plautus with Terence, though much
nearer the mark, than Lucretius with Virgil. It makes much
for the estimation and preference of Terence, that the father
of Roman eloquence has him so often, and alone of his class,
in his mouth; and the opinion that the best judge of Roman poets87 has passed upon his companion. I have often
observed that those of our times, who take upon them to
write comedies (in imitation of the Italians, who are happy
enough in that way of writing), take three or four plots of
those of Plautus or Terence to make one of their own, and ,
crowd five or six of Boccaccio’s novels into one single comedy. That which makes them so load themselves with matter is the diffidence they have of being able to support themselves with their own strength. They must find out something to lean to; and not having of their own stuff wherewith to entertain us, they bring in the story to supply the
defect of language. It is quite otherwise with my author;
the elegance and perfection of his way of speaking makes
us lose the appetite of his plot; his refined grace and elegance of diction everywhere occupy us: he is so pleasant
throughout,
86 “O
stupid and tasteless age.” –Catullus, xliii. 8.
De Art. Poetica, 279.
87 Horace,
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“Liquidus, puroque simillimus amni,”88
and so possesses the soul with his graces that we forget
those of his fable. This same consideration carries me
further: I observe that the best of the ancient poets have
avoided affectation and the hunting after, not only fantastic
Spanish and Petrarchic elevations, but even the softer and
more gentle touches, which are the ornament of all succeeding poesy. And yet there is no good judgment that will condemn this in the ancients, and that does not incomparably
more admire the equal polish, and that perpetual sweetness
and flourishing beauty of Catullus’s epigrams, than all the
stings with which Martial arms the tails of his. This is by
the same reason that I gave before, and as Martial says of
himself:
“Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit, in cujus
locum materia successerat:”89
The first, without being moved, or without getting angry, make themselves sufficiently felt; they have matter
enough of laughter throughout, they need not tickle themselves; the others have need of foreign assistance; as they
have the less wit they must have the more body; they mount
on horseback, because they are not able to stand on their
own legs. As in our balls, those mean fellows who teach
to dance, not being able to represent the presence and dignity of our noblesse, are fain to put themselves forward with
dangerous jumping, and other strange motions and tumblers tricks; and the ladies are less put to it in dance; where
there are various coupees, changes, and quick motions of
body, than in some other of a more sedate kind, where they
are only to move a natural pace, and to represent their ordinary grace and presence. And so I have seen good drolls,
88 “Liquid, and likest the pure river.”
–Horace, Ep.,
ii. s, 120.
89 “He had the less for his wit to do that the subject itself supplied
what was necessary.” –Martial, praef. ad lib. viii.
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when in their own everyday clothes, and with the same face
they always wear, give us all the pleasure of their art, when
their apprentices, not yet arrived at such a pitch of perfection, are fain to meal their faces, put themselves into ridiculous disguises, and make a hundred grotesque faces to give
us whereat to laugh. This conception of mine is nowhere
more demonstrable than in comparing the AEneid with Orlando Furioso; of which we see the first, by dint of wing,
flying in a brave and lofty place, and always following his
point: the latter, fluttering and hopping from tale to tale, as
from branch to branch, not daring to trust his wings but in
very short flights, and perching at every turn, lest his breath
and strength should fail.
“Excursusque breves tentat.”90
These, then, as to this sort of subjects, are the authors
that best please me.
As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more profit with the pleasure, and whence I learn how to
marshal my opinions and conditions, the books that serve
me to this purpose are Plutarch, since he has been translated into French, and Seneca. Both of these have this notable convenience suited to my humour, that the knowledge
I there seek is discoursed in loose pieces, that do not require
from me any trouble of reading long, of which I am incapable. Such are the minor works of the first and the epistles of the latter, which are the best and most profiting of
all their writings. ‘Tis no great attempt to take one of them
in hand, and I give over at pleasure; for they have no sequence or dependence upon one another. These authors, for
the most part, concur in useful and true opinions; and there
is this parallel betwixt them, that fortune brought them into
the world about the same century: they were both tutors to
two Roman emperors: both sought out from foreign countries: both rich and both great men. Their instruction is
90 “And
iv.
he attempts short excursions.”
194.
101
–Virgil,
Georgics,
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the cream of philosophy, and delivered after a plain and
pertinent manner. Plutarch is more uniform and constant;
Seneca more various and waving: the last toiled and bent
his whole strength to fortify virtue against weakness, fear,
and vicious appetites; the other seems more to slight their
power, and to disdain to alter his pace and to stand upon
his guard. Plutarch’s opinions are Platonic, gentle, and accommodated to civil society; those of the other are Stoical
and Epicurean, more remote from the common use, but, in
my opinion, more individually commodious and more firm.
Seneca seems to lean a little to the tyranny of the emperors of his time, and only seems; for I take it for certain that
he speaks against his judgment when he condemns the action of the generous murderers of Caesar. Plutarch is frank
throughout: Seneca abounds with brisk touches and sallies;
Plutarch with things that warm and move you more; this
contents and pays you better: he guides us, the other pushes
us on.
As to Cicero, his works that are most useful to my design are they that treat of manners and rules of our life. But
boldly to confess the truth (for since one has passed the barriers of impudence, there is no bridle), his way of writing
appears to me negligent and uninviting: for his prefaces,
definitions, divisions, and etymologies take up the greatest
part of his work: whatever there is of life and marrow is
smothered and lost in the long preparation. When I have
spent an hour in reading him, which is a great deal for me,
and try to recollect what I have thence extracted of juice
and substance, for the most part I find nothing but wind;
for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve to his
purpose, and to the reasons that properly help to form the
knot I seek. For me, who only desire to become more wise,
not more learned or eloquent, these logical and Aristotelian
dispositions of parts are of no use. I would have a man begin with the main proposition. I know well enough what
death and pleasure are; let no man give himself the trouble
to anatomise them to me. I look for good and solid reasons,
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at the first dash, to instruct me how to stand their shock,
for which purpose neither grammatical subtleties nor the
quaint contexture of words and argumentations are of any
use at all. I am for discourses that give the first charge into
the heart of the redoubt; his languish about the subject; they
are proper for the schools, for the bar, and for the pulpit,
where we have leisure to nod, and may awake, a quarter
of an hour after, time enough to find again the thread of
the discourse. It is necessary to speak after this manner
to judges, whom a man has a design to gain over, right or
wrong, to children and common people, to whom a man
must say all, and see what will come of it. I would not
have an author make it his business to render me attentive:
or that he should cry out fifty times Oyez! as the heralds
do. The Romans, in their religious exercises, began with
‘Hoc age’ as we in ours do with ‘Sursum corda’; these are so
many words lost to me: I come already fully prepared from
my chamber. I need no allurement, no invitation, no sauce;
I eat the meat raw, so that, instead of whetting my appetite
by these preparatives, they tire and pall it. Will the licence
of the time excuse my sacrilegious boldness if I censure the
dialogism of Plato himself as also dull and heavy, too much
stifling the matter, and lament so much time lost by a man,
who had so many better things to say, in so many long and
needless preliminary interlocutions? My ignorance will better excuse me in that I understand not Greek so well as to
discern the beauty of his language. I generally choose books
that use sciences, not such as only lead to them. The two
first, and Pliny, and their like, have nothing of this Hoc age;
they will have to do with men already instructed; or if they
have, ‘tis a substantial Hoc age; and that has a body by itself. I also delight in reading the Epistles to Atticus, not only
because they contain a great deal of the history and affairs
of his time, but much more because I therein discover much
of his own private humours; for I have a singular curiosity, as I have said elsewhere, to pry into the souls and the
natural and true opinions of the authors, with whom I con-
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verse. A man may indeed judge of their parts, but not of
their manners nor of themselves, by the writings they exhibit upon the theatre of the world. I have a thousand times
lamented the loss of the treatise Brutus wrote upon Virtue,
for it is well to learn the theory from those who best know
the practice.
But seeing the matter preached and the preacher are
different things, I would as willingly see Brutus in Plutarch,
as in a book of his own. I would rather choose to be certainly informed of the conference he had in his tent with
some particular friends of his the night before a battle, than
of the harangue he made the next day to his army; and of
what he did in his closet and his chamber, than what he did
in the public square and in the senate. As to Cicero, I am
of the common opinion that, learning excepted, he had no
great natural excellence. He was a good citizen, of an affable nature, as all fat, heavy men, such as he was, usually
are; but given to ease, and had, in truth, a mighty share of
vanity and ambition. Neither do I know how to excuse him
for thinking his poetry fit to be published; ‘tis no great imperfection to make ill verses, but it is an imperfection not
to be able to judge how unworthy his verses were of the
glory of his name. For what concerns his eloquence, that
is totally out of all comparison, and I believe it will never
be equalled. The younger Cicero, who resembled his father in nothing but in name, whilst commanding in Asia,
had several strangers one day at his table, and, amongst the
rest, Cestius seated at the lower end, as men often intrude to
the open tables of the great. Cicero asked one of his people
who that man was, who presently told him his name; but
he, as one who had his thoughts taken up with something
else, and who had forgotten the answer made him, asking
three or four times, over and over again; the same question,
the fellow, to deliver himself from so many answers and to
make him know him by some particular circumstance; “‘tis
that Cestius,” said he, “of whom it was told you, that he
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parison of his own.” At which Cicero, being suddenly nettled, commanded poor Cestius presently to be seized, and
caused him to be very well whipped in his own presence;
a very discourteous entertainer! Yet even amongst those,
who, all things considered, have reputed his, eloquence incomparable, there have been some, who have not stuck to
observe some faults in it: as that great Brutus his friend,
for example, who said ‘twas a broken and feeble eloquence,
‘fyactam et elumbem’. The orators also, nearest to the age
wherein he lived, reprehended in him the care he had of a
certain long cadence in his periods, and particularly took
notice of these words, ‘esse videatur’, which he there so often makes use of. For my part, I more approve of a shorter
style, and that comes more roundly off. He does, though,
sometimes shuffle his parts more briskly together, but ‘tis
very seldom. I have myself taken notice of this one passage:
“Ego vero me minus diu senem mallem, quam
esse senem, antequam essem.”91
The historians are my right ball, for they are pleasant
and easy, and where man, in general, the knowledge of
whom I hunt after, appears more vividly and entire than
anywhere else:92 the variety and truth of his internal qualities, in gross and piecemeal, the diversity of means by
which he is united and knit, and the accidents that threaten
him. Now those that write lives, by reason they insist more
upon counsels than events, more upon what sallies from
within, than upon what happens without, are the most
proper for my reading; and, therefore, above all others,
Plutarch is the man for me. I am very sorry we have not
a dozen Laertii,93 or that he was not further extended; for I
91 “I had rather be old a brief time, than be old before old age.
–
“Cicero, De Senect., c. 10.
92 The easiest of my amusements, the right ball at tennis being that
which coming to the player from the right hand, is much easier played
with.–Coste.
93 Diogenes Laertius, who wrote the Lives of the Philosophers
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am equally curious to know the lives and fortunes of these
great instructors of the world, as to know the diversities of
their doctrines and opinions. In this kind of study of histories, a man must tumble over, without distinction, all sorts
of authors, old and new, French or foreign, there to know
the things of which they variously treat. But Caesar, in
my opinion, particularly deserves to be studied, not for the
knowledge of the history only, but for himself, so great an
excellence and perfection he has above all the rest, though
Sallust be one of the number. In earnest, I read this author
with more reverence and respect than is usually allowed
to human writings; one while considering him in his person, by his actions and miraculous greatness, and another
in the purity and inimitable polish of his language, wherein
he not only excels all other historians, as Cicero confesses,
but, peradventure, even Cicero himself; speaking of his enemies with so much sincerity in his judgment, that, the false
colours with which he strives to palliate his evil cause, and
the ordure of his pestilent ambition excepted, I think there
is no fault to be objected against him, saving this, that he
speaks too sparingly of himself, seeing so many great things
could not have been performed under his conduct, but that
his own personal acts must necessarily have had a greater
share in them than he attributes to them.
I love historians, whether of the simple sort, or of the
higher order. The simple, who have nothing of their own to
mix with it, and who only make it their business to collect
all that comes to their knowledge, and faithfully to record
all things, without choice or discrimination, leave to us the
entire judgment of discerning the truth. Such, for example,
amongst others, is honest Froissart, who has proceeded in
his undertaking with so frank a plainness that, having committed an error, he is not ashamed to confess and correct it in
the place where the finger has been laid, and who represents
to us even the variety of rumours that were then spread
abroad, and the different reports that were made to him; ‘tis
the naked and inform matter of history, and of which ev106
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ery one may make his profit, according to his understanding. The more excellent sort of historians have judgment to
pick out what is most worthy to be known; and, of two reports, to examine which is the most likely to be true: from
the condition of princes and their humours, they conclude
their counsels, and attribute to them words proper for the
occasion; such have title to assume the authority of regulating our belief to what they themselves believe; but certainly,
this privilege belongs to very few. For the middle sort of historians, of which the most part are, they spoil all; they will
chew our meat for us; they take upon them to judge of, and
consequently, to incline the history to their own fancy; for if
the judgment lean to one side, a man cannot avoid wresting
and writhing his narrative to that bias; they undertake to select things worthy to be known, and yet often conceal from
us such a word, such a private action, as would much better
instruct us; omit, as incredible, such things as they do not
understand, and peradventure some, because they cannot
express good French or Latin. Let them display their eloquence and intelligence, and judge according to their own
fancy: but let them, withal, leave us something to judge of
after them, and neither alter nor disguise, by their abridgments and at their own choice, anything of the substance
of the matter, but deliver it to us pure and entire in all its
dimensions.
For the most part, and especially in these latter ages,
persons are culled out for this work from amongst the common people, upon the sole consideration of well-speaking,
as if we were to learn grammar from them; and the men
so chosen have fair reason, being hired for no other end
and pretending to nothing but babble, not to be very solicitous of any part but that, and so, with a fine jingle of
words, prepare us a pretty contexture of reports they pick
up in the streets. The only good histories are those that have
been written themselves who held command in the affairs
whereof they write, or who participated in the conduct of
them, or, at least, who have had the conduct of others of
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the same nature. Such are almost all the Greek and Roman
histories: for, several eye-witnesses having written of the
same subject, in the time when grandeur and learning commonly met in the same person, if there happen to be an error, it must of necessity be a very slight one, and upon a very
doubtful incident. What can a man expect from a physician
who writes of war, or from a mere scholar, treating of the
designs of princes? If we could take notice how scrupulous
the Romans were in this, there would need but this example: Asinius Pollio found in the histories of Caesar himself
something misreported, a mistake occasioned; either by reason he could not have his eye in all parts of his army at
once and had given credit to some individual persons who
had not delivered him a very true account; or else, for not
having had too perfect notice given him by his lieutenants
of what they had done in his absence.94 By which we may
see, whether the inquisition after truth be not very delicate,
when a man cannot believe the report of a battle from the
knowledge of him who there commanded, nor from the soldiers who were engaged in it, unless, after the method of a
judicial inquiry, the witnesses be confronted and objections
considered upon the proof of the least detail of every incident. In good earnest the knowledge we have of our own
affairs, is much more obscure: but that has been sufficiently
handled by Bodin, and according to my own sentiment95 A
little to aid the weakness of my memory (so extreme that
it has happened to me more than once, to take books again
into my hand as new and unseen, that I had carefully read
over a few years before, and scribbled with my notes) I have
adopted a custom of late, to note at the end of every book
(that is, of those I never intend to read again) the time when
I made an end on’t, and the judgment I had made of it, to
the end that this might, at least, represent to me the character and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading
94 Suetonius,
Life of Caesar, c. 56.
the work by jean Bodin, entitled “Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem.” 1566.
95 In
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it; and I will here transcribe some of those annotations.
I wrote this, some ten years ago, in my Guicciardini
(of what language soever my books speak to me in, I always speak to them in my own): “He is a diligent historiographer, from whom, in my opinion, a man may learn
the truth of the affairs of his time, as exactly as from any
other; in the most of which he was himself also a personal
actor, and in honourable command. There is no appearance
that he disguised anything, either upon the account of hatred, favour, or vanity; of which the free censures he passes
upon the great ones, and particularly those by whom he was
advanced and employed in commands of great trust and
honour, as Pope Clement VII., give ample testimony. As to
that part which he thinks himself the best at, namely, his
digressions and discourses, he has indeed some very good,
and enriched with fine features; but he is too fond of them:
for, to leave nothing unsaid, having a subject so full, ample,
almost infinite, he degenerates into pedantry and smacks
a little of scholastic prattle. I have also observed this in
him, that of so many souls and so many effects, so many
motives and so many counsels as he judges, he never attributes any one to virtue, religion, or conscience, as if all
these were utterly extinct in the world: and of all the actions, how brave soever in outward show they appear in
themselves, he always refers the cause and motive to some
vicious occasion or some prospect of profit. It is impossible to imagine but that, amongst such an infinite number
of actions as he makes mention of, there must be some one
produced by the way of honest reason. No corruption could
so universally have infected men that some one would not
escape the contagion which makes me suspect that his own
taste was vicious, whence it might happen that he judged
other men by himself.”
In my Philip de Commines there is this written: “You
will here find the language sweet and delightful, of a natural simplicity, the narration pure, with the good faith of the
author conspicuous therein; free from vanity, when speak109
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ing of himself, and from affection or envy, when speaking of
others: his discourses and exhortations rather accompanied
with zeal and truth, than with any exquisite sufficiency;
and, throughout, authority and gravity, which bespeak him
a man of good extraction, and brought up in great affairs.”
Upon the Memoirs of Monsieur du Bellay I find this:
“‘Tis always pleasant to read things written by those that
have experienced how they ought to be carried on; but
withal, it cannot be denied but there is a manifest decadence in these two lords96 from the freedom and liberty of
writing that shine in the elder historians, such as the Sire
de Joinville, the familiar companion of St. Louis; Eginhard, chancellor to Charlemagne; and of later date, Philip
de Commines. What we have here is rather an apology for
King Francis, against the Emperor Charles V., than history.
I will not believe that they have falsified anything, as to
matter of fact; but they make a common practice of twisting the judgment of events, very often contrary to reason,
to our advantage, and of omitting whatsoever is ticklish to
be handled in the life of their master; witness the proceedings of Messieurs de Montmorency and de Biron, which are
here omitted: nay, so much as the very name of Madame
d’Estampes is not here to be found. Secret actions an historian may conceal; but to pass over in silence what all the
world knows and things that have drawn after them public and such high consequences, is an inexcusable defect.
In fine, whoever has a mind to have a perfect knowledge
of King Francis and the events of his reign, let him seek
it elsewhere, if my advice may prevail. The only profit a
man can reap from these Memoirs is in the special narrative
of battles and other exploits of war wherein these gentlemen were personally engaged; in some words and private
actions of the princes of their time, and in the treaties and
negotiations carried on by the Seigneur de Langey, where
there are everywhere things worthy to be known, and dis96 Martin du Bellay and Guillaume de Langey, brothers, who jointly
wrote the Memoirs.
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courses above the vulgar strain.”
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OF CRUELTY
fancy virtue to be something else, and something more
Igoodness,
noble, than good nature, and the mere propension to
that we are born into the world withal. Welldisposed and well-descended souls pursue, indeed, the
same methods, and represent in their actions the same face
that virtue itself does: but the word virtue imports, I know
not what, more great and active than merely for a man to
suffer himself, by a happy disposition, to be gently and
quietly drawn to the rule of reason. He who, by a natural sweetness and facility, should despise injuries received,
would doubtless do a very fine and laudable thing; but
he who, provoked and nettled to the quick by an offence,
should fortify himself with the arms of reason against the
furious appetite of revenge, and after a great conflict, master his own passion, would certainly do a great deal more.
The first would do well; the latter virtuously: one action
might be called goodness, and the other virtue; for methinks, the very name of virtue presupposes difficulty and
contention, and cannot be exercised without an opponent.
‘Tis for this reason, perhaps, that we call God good, mighty,
liberal and just; but we do not call Him virtuous, being that
all His operations are natural and without endeavour.97 It
has been the opinion of many philosophers, not only Stoics,
but Epicureans–and this addition98
97 Rousseau, in his Emile, book v., adopts this passage almost in the
same words.
98 “Montaigne stops here to make his excuse for thus naming the
Epicureans with the Stoics, in conformity to the general opinion that
the Epicureans were not so rigid in their morals as the Stoics, which
is not true in the main, as he demonstrates at one view. This involved
Montaigne in a tedious parenthesis, during which it is proper that the
reader be attentive, that he may not entirely lose the thread of the argument. In some later editions of this author, it has been attempted to
remedy this inconvenience, but without observing that Montaigne’s
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I borrow from the vulgar opinion, which is false,
notwithstanding the witty conceit of Arcesilaus in answer to
one, who, being reproached that many scholars went from
his school to the Epicurean, but never any from thence to
his school, said in answer, “I believe it indeed; numbers of
capons being made out of cocks, but never any cocks out of
capons.”99 For, in truth, the Epicurean sect is not at all inferior to the Stoic in steadiness, and the rigour of opinions
and precepts. And a certain Stoic, showing more honesty
than those disputants, who, in order to quarrel with Epicurus, and to throw the game into their hands, make him
say what he never thought, putting a wrong construction
upon his words, clothing his sentences, by the strict rules
of grammar, with another meaning, and a different opinion
from that which they knew he entertained in his mind and
in his morals, the Stoic, I say, declared that he abandoned
the Epicurean sect, upon this among other considerations,
that he thought their road too lofty and inaccessible;100
These philosophers say that it is not enough to have the
soul seated in a good place, of a good temper, and well disposed to virtue; it is not enough to have our resolutions and
our reasoning fixed above all the power of fortune, but that
we are, moreover, to seek occasions wherein to put them to
the proof: they would seek pain, necessity, and contempt to
contend with them and to keep the soul in breath:
“Multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita.”101
argument is rendered more feeble and obscure by such vain repetitions: it is a licence that ought not to be taken, because he who publishes the work of another, ought to give it as the other composed it.
But, in Mr Cotton’s translation, he was so puzzled with this enormous
parenthesis that he has quite left it out” –Coste.
99 Diogenes Laertius, Life of Archesilaus, lib.
iv., 43.
100 “And those are called lovers of pleasure, being in effect lovers of
honour and justice, who cultivate and observe all the virtues.”–Cicero,
Ep. Fam., xv. i, 19.
101 “Virtue is much strengthened by combats.”
or: “Virtue attacked adds to its own force.” –Seneca, Ep., 13.
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‘Tis one of the reasons why Epaminondas, who was yet
of a third sect,102 refused the riches fortune presented to him
by very lawful means; because, said he, I am to contend
with poverty, in which extreme he maintained himself to
the last. Socrates put himself, methinks, upon a ruder trial,
keeping for his exercise a confounded scolding wife, which
was fighting at sharps. Metellus having, of all the Roman
senators, alone attempted, by the power of virtue, to withstand the violence of Saturninus, tribune of the people at
Rome, who would, by all means, cause an unjust law to
pass in favour of the commons, and, by so doing, having incurred the capital penalties that Saturninus had established
against the dissentient, entertained those who, in this extremity, led him to execution with words to this effect: That
it was a thing too easy and too base to do ill; and that to do
well where there was no danger was a common thing; but
that to do well where there was danger was the proper office
of a man of virtue. These words of Metellus very clearly represent to us what I would make out, viz., that virtue refuses
facility for a companion; and that the easy, smooth, and descending way by which the regular steps of a sweet disposition of nature are conducted is not that of a true virtue;
she requires a rough and stormy passage; she will have either exotic difficulties to wrestle with, like that of Metellus,
by means whereof fortune delights to interrupt the speed
of her career, or internal difficulties, that the inordinate appetites and imperfections of our condition introduce to disturb her.
I am come thus far at my ease; but here it comes into
my head that the soul of Socrates, the most perfect that
ever came to my knowledge, should by this rule be of very
little recommendation; for I cannot conceive in that person any the least motion of a vicious inclination: I cannot
imagine there could be any difficulty or constraint in the
course of his virtue: I know his reason to be so powerful
and sovereign over him that she would never have suffered
102 The
Pythagorean.
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a vicious appetite so much as to spring in him. To a virtue
so elevated as his, I have nothing to oppose. Methinks I see
him march, with a victorious and triumphant pace, in pomp
and at his ease, without opposition or disturbance. If virtue
cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites,
shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honour? What then, also, would become of that
brave and generous Epicurean pleasure, which makes account that it nourishes virtue tenderly in her lap, and there
makes it play and wanton, giving it for toys to play withal,
shame, fevers, poverty, death, and torments? If I presuppose that a perfect virtue manifests itself in contending, in
patient enduring of pain, and undergoing the uttermost extremity of the gout; without being moved in her seat; if I
give her troubles and difficulty for her necessary objects:
what will become of a virtue elevated to such a degree, as
not only to despise pain, but, moreover, to rejoice in it, and
to be tickled with the throes of a sharp colic, such as the
Epicureans have established, and of which many of them,
by their actions, have given most manifest proofs? As have
several others, who I find to have surpassed in effects even
the very rules of their discipline. Witness the younger Cato:
When I see him die, and tearing out his own bowels, I am
not satisfied simply to believe that he had then his soul totally exempt from all trouble and horror: I cannot think that
he only maintained himself in the steadiness that the Stoical
rules prescribed him; temperate, without emotion, and imperturbed. There was, methinks, something in the virtue of
this man too sprightly and fresh to stop there; I believe that,
without doubt, he felt a pleasure and delight in so noble an
action, and was more pleased in it than in any other of his
life:
“Sic abiit a vita, ut causam moriendi nactum se
esse gauderet.”103
103 “He
quitted life rejoicing that a reason for dying had arisen.”
115
–
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I believe it so thoroughly that I question whether he
would have been content to have been deprived of the
occasion of so brave an exploit; and if the goodness that
made him embrace the public concern more than his own,
withheld me not, I should easily fall into an opinion that
he thought himself obliged to fortune for having put his
virtue upon so brave a trial, and for having favoured that
theif104 in treading underfoot the ancient liberty of his country. Methinks I read in this action I know not what exaltation in his soul, and an extraordinary and manly emotion of
pleasure, when he looked upon the generosity and height
of his enterprise:
“Deliberate morte ferocior,”105
not stimulated with any hope of glory, as the popular and
effeminate judgments of some have concluded (for that consideration was too mean and low to possess so generous, so
haughty, and so determined a heart as his), but for the very
beauty of the thing in itself, which he who had the handling
of the springs discerned more clearly and in its perfection
than we are able to do. Philosophy has obliged me in determining that so brave an action had been indecently placed
in any other life than that of Cato; and that it only appertained to his to end so; notwithstanding, and according to
reason, he commanded his son and the senators who accompanied him to take another course in their affairs:
“Catoni, quum incredibilem natura tribuisset
gravitatem, eamque ipse perpetue constantia
roboravisset, semperque in proposito consilio
permansisset, moriendum potius, quam tyranni
vultus aspiciendus, erat.”106
Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 30.
104 Caesar
105 “The more courageous from the deliberation to die.”
–Horace,
Od., i. 37, 29.
106 “Cato, whom nature had given incredible dignity, which he had
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Every death ought to hold proportion with the life before it; we do not become others for dying. I always interpret the death by the life preceding; and if any one tell me
of a death strong and constant in appearance, annexed to a
feeble life, I conclude it produced by some feeble cause, and
suitable to the life before. The easiness then of his death
and the facility of dying he had acquired by the vigour of
his soul; shall we say that it ought to abate anything of the
lustre of his virtue? And who, that has his brain never so
little tinctured with the true philosophy, can be content to
imagine Socrates only free from fear and passion in the accident of his prison, fetters, and condemnation? and that
will not discover in him not only firmness and constancy
(which was his ordinary condition), but, moreover, I know
not what new satisfaction, and a frolic cheerfulness in his
last words and actions? In the start he gave with the pleasure of scratching his leg when his irons were taken off, does
he not discover an equal serenity and joy in his soul for being freed from past inconveniences, and at the same time to
enter into the knowledge of the things to come? Cato shall
pardon me, if he please; his death indeed is more tragical
and more lingering; but yet this is, I know not how, methinks, finer. Aristippus, to one that was lamenting this
death: “The gods grant me such an one,” said he. A man
discerns in the soul of these two great men and their imitators (for I very much doubt whether there were ever their
equals) so perfect a habitude to virtue, that it was turned
to a complexion. It is no longer a laborious virtue, nor the
precepts of reason, to maintain which the soul is so racked,
but the very essence of their soul, its natural and ordinary
habit; they have rendered it such by a long practice of philosophical precepts having lit upon a rich and fine nature; the
vicious passions that spring in us can find no entrance into
them; the force and vigour of their soul stifle and extinguish
fortified by perpetual constancy, ever remaining of his predetermined
opinion, preferred to die rather than to look on the countenance of a
tyrant.” –Cicero, De Ofc., i. 31.
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irregular desires, so soon as they begin to move.
Now, that it is not more noble, by a high and divine
resolution, to hinder the birth of temptations, and to be so
formed to virtue, that the very seeds of vice are rooted out,
than to hinder by main force their progress; and, having
suffered ourselves to be surprised with the first motions of
the passions, to arm ourselves and to stand firm to oppose
their progress, and overcome them; and that this second effect is not also much more generous than to be simply endowed with a facile and affable nature, of itself disaffected
to debauchery and vice, I do not think can be doubted; for
this third and last sort of virtue seems to render a man innocent, but not virtuous; free from doing ill, but not apt
enough to do well: considering also, that this condition is so
near neighbour to imperfection and cowardice, that I know
not very well how to separate the confines and distinguish
them: the very names of goodness and innocence are, for
this reason, in some sort grown into contempt. I very well
know that several virtues, as chastity, sobriety, and temperance, may come to a man through personal defects. Constancy in danger, if it must be so called, the contempt of
death, and patience in misfortunes, may ofttimes be found
in men for want of well judging of such accidents, and not
apprehending them for such as they are. Want of apprehension and stupidity sometimes counterfeit virtuous effects
as I have often seen it happen, that men have been commended for what really merited blame. An Italian lord once
said this, in my presence, to the disadvantage of his own
nation: that the subtlety of the Italians, and the vivacity of
their conceptions were so great, and they foresaw the dangers and accidents that might befall them so far off, that it
was not to be thought strange, if they were often, in war, observed to provide for their safety, even before they had discovered the peril; that we French and the Spaniards, who
were not so cunning, went on further, and that we must
be made to see and feel the danger before we would take
the alarm; but that even then we could not stick to it. But
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the Germans and Swiss, more gross and heavy, had not the
sense to look about them, even when the blows were falling
about their ears. Peradventure, he only talked so for mirth’s
sake; and yet it is most certain that in war raw soldiers rush
into dangers with more precipitancy than after they have
been cudgelled*–(The original has eschauldex–scalded)
“Haud ignarus... quantum nova gloria in armis,
Et praedulce decus, primo certamine possit.”107
For this reason it is that, when we judge of a particular action, we are to consider the circumstances, and the whole
man by whom it is performed, before we give it a name.
To instance in myself: I have sometimes known my
friends call that prudence in me, which was merely fortune;
and repute that courage and patience, which was judgment
and opinion; and attribute to me one title for another, sometimes to my advantage and sometimes otherwise. As to the
rest, I am so far from being arrived at the first and most perfect degree of excellence, where virtue is turned into habit,
that even of the second I have made no great proofs. I have
not been very solicitous to curb the desires by which I have
been importuned. My virtue is a virtue, or rather an innocence, casual and accidental. If I had been born of a more irregular complexion, I am afraid I should have made scurvy
work; for I never observed any great stability in my soul
to resist passions, if they were never so little vehement: I
know not how to nourish quarrels and debates in my own
bosom, and, consequently, owe myself no great thanks that
I am free from several vices:
“Si vitiis mediocribus et mea paucis
Mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si
Egregio
inspersos
reprehendas
corpore
naevos:”108
107 “Not ignorant how much power the fresh glory of arms and
sweetest honour possess in the first contest.” –AEneid, xi. 154
108 “If my nature be disfigured only with slight and few vices, and is
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I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason. She has
caused me to be descended of a race famous for integrity
and of a very good father; I know not whether or no he has
infused into me part of his humours, or whether domestic
examples and the good education of my infancy have insensibly assisted in the work, or, if I was otherwise born so:
“Seu Libra, seu me Scorpius adspicit
Formidolosus, pars violentior
Natalis hors, seu tyrannus
Hesperive Capricornus undae:”109
but so it is, that I have naturally a horror for most vices. The
answer of Antisthenes to him who asked him, which was
the best apprenticeship “to unlearn evil,” seems to point at
this. I have them in horror, I say, with a detestation so natural, and so much my own, that the same instinct and impression I brought of them with me from my nurse, I yet
retain, and no temptation whatever has had the power to
make me alter it. Not so much as my own discourses, which
in some things lashing out of the common road might seem
easily to license me to actions that my natural inclination
makes me hate. I will say a prodigious thing, but I will say
it, however: I find myself in many things more under reputation by my manners than by my opinion, and my concupiscence less debauched than my reason. Aristippus instituted opinions so bold in favour of pleasure and riches
as set all the philosophers against him: but as to his manners, Dionysius the tyrant, having presented three beautiful
women before him, to take his choice; he made answer, that
he would choose them all, and that Paris got himself into
trouble for having preferred one before the other two: but,
having taken them home to his house, he sent them back
otherwise just, it is as if you should blame moles on a fair body.” –
Horatius, Sat., i. 6, 65.
109 “Whether the Balance or dread Scorpio, more potent over my
natal hour, aspects me, or Capricorn, supreme over the Hesperian
sea.’ –Horace, Od., ii. 117.
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untouched. His servant finding himself overladen upon the
way, with the money he carried after him, he ordered him
to pour out and throw away that which troubled him. And
Epicurus, whose doctrines were so irreligious and effeminate, was in his life very laborious and devout; he wrote to
a friend of his that he lived only upon biscuit and water, entreating him to send him a little cheese, to lie by him against
he had a mind to make a feast. Must it be true, that to be a
perfect good man, we must be so by an occult, natural, and
universal propriety, without law, reason, or example? The
debauches wherein I have been engaged, have not been, I
thank God, of the worst sort, and I have condemned them
in myself, for my judgment was never infected by them; on
the contrary, I accuse them more severely in myself than in
any other; but that is all, for, as to the rest. I oppose too
little resistance and suffer myself to incline too much to the
other side of the balance, excepting that I moderate them,
and prevent them from mixing with other vices, which for
the most part will cling together, if a man have not a care. I
have contracted and curtailed mine, to make them as single
and as simple as I can:
“Nec ultra
Errorem foveo.”110
For as to the opinion of the Stoics, who say, “That the wise
man when he works, works by all the virtues together,
though one be most apparent, according to the nature of the
action”; and herein the similitude of a human body might
serve them somewhat, for the action of anger cannot work,
unless all the humours assist it, though choler predominate;
–if they will thence draw a like consequence, that when the
wicked man does wickedly, he does it by all the vices together, I do not believe it to be so, or else I understand
them not, for I by effect find the contrary. These are sharp,
110 “Nor do I cherish error further.”or:
further.” –Juvenal, viii. 164.
121
“Nor carry wrong
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unsubstantial subleties, with which philosophy sometimes
amuses itself. I follow some vices, but I fly others as much as
a saint would do. The Peripatetics also disown this indissoluble connection; and Aristotle is of opinion that a prudent
and just man may be intemperate and inconsistent. Socrates
confessed to some who had discovered a certain inclination
to vice in his physiognomy, that it was, in truth, his natural propension, but that he had by discipline corrected it.
And such as were familiar with the philosopher Stilpo said,
that being born with addiction to wine and women, he had
by study rendered himself very abstinent both from the one
and the other.
What I have in me of good, I have, quite contrary, by
the chance of my birth; and hold it not either by law, precept, or any other instruction; the innocence that is in me is
a simple one; little vigour and no art. Amongst other vices,
I mortally hate cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the
very extreme of all vices: nay, with so much tenderness that
I cannot see a chicken’s neck pulled off without trouble, and
cannot without impatience endure the cry of a hare in my
dog’s teeth, though the chase be a violent pleasure. Such
as have sensuality to encounter, freely make use of this argument, to shew that it is altogether “vicious and unreasonable; that when it is at the height, it masters us to that degree
that a man’s reason can have no access,” and instance our
own experience in the act of love,
“Quum jam praesagit gaudia corpus,
Atque in eo est Venus, ut muliebria conserat
arva.”111
wherein they conceive that the pleasure so transports us,
that our reason cannot perform its office, whilst we are in
111 None of the translators of the old editions used for this etext have
been willing to translate this passage from Lucretius, iv. 1099; they
take a cop out by bashfully saying: “The sense is in the preceding
passage of the text.” D.W.
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such ecstasy and rapture. I know very well it may be otherwise, and that a man may sometimes, if he will, gain this
point over himself to sway his soul, even in the critical moment, to think of something else; but then he must ply it
to that bent. I know that a man may triumph over the utmost effort of this pleasure: I have experienced it in myself,
and have not found Venus so imperious a goddess, as many,
and much more virtuous men than I, declare. I do not consider it a miracle, as the Queen of Navarre does in one of the
Tales of her Heptameron112 (which is a very pretty book of
its kind), nor for a thing of extreme difficulty, to pass whole
nights, where a man has all the convenience and liberty he
can desire, with a long-coveted mistress, and yet be true
to the pledge first given to satisfy himself with kisses and
suchlike endearments, without pressing any further. I conceive that the example of the pleasure of the chase would
be more proper; wherein though the pleasure be less, there
is the higher excitement of unexpected joy, giving no time
for the reason, taken by surprise, to prepare itself for the
encounter, when after a long quest the beast starts up on a
sudden in a place where, peradventure, we least expected
it; the shock and the ardour of the shouts and cries of the
hunters so strike us, that it would be hard for those who
love this lesser chase, to turn their thoughts upon the instant another way; and the poets make Diana triumph over
the torch and shafts of Cupid:
“Quis non malarum, quas amor curas habet,
Haec inter obliviscitur?”113
To return to what I was saying before, I am tenderly compassionate of others’ afflictions, and should readily cry for
company, if, upon any occasion whatever, I could cry at all.
Nothing tempts my tears but tears, and not only those that
112 “Vu
gentil liure pour son estoffe.”
amongst such delights would not remove out of his
thoughts the anxious cares of love.” –Horace, Epod., ii. 37.
113 “Who,
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are real and true, but whatever they are, feigned or painted.
I do not much lament the dead, and should envy them
rather; but I very much lament the dying. The savages do
not so much offend me, in roasting and eating the bodies of
the dead, as they do who torment and persecute the living.
Nay, I cannot look so much as upon the ordinary executions
of justice, how reasonable soever, with a steady eye. Some
one having to give testimony of Julius Caesar’s clemency;
“he was,” says he, “mild in his revenges. Having compelled
the pirates to yield by whom he had before been taken prisoner and put to ransom; forasmuch as he had threatened
them with the cross, he indeed condemned them to it, but
it was after they had been first strangled. He punished his
secretary Philemon, who had attempted to poison him, with
no greater severity than mere death.” Without naming that
Latin author,114 who thus dares to allege as a testimony of
mercy the killing only of those by whom we have been offended; it is easy to guess that he was struck with the horrid
and inhuman examples of cruelty practised by the Roman
tyrants.
For my part, even in justice itself, all that exceeds a simple death appears to me pure cruelty; especially in us who
ought, having regard to their souls, to dismiss them in a
good and calm condition; which cannot be, when we have
agitated them by insufferable torments. Not long since, a
soldier who was a prisoner, perceiving from a tower where
he was shut up, that the people began to assemble to the
place of execution, and that the carpenters were busy erecting a scaffold, he presently concluded that the preparation
was for him, and therefore entered into a resolution to kill
himself, but could find no instrument to assist him in his design except an old rusty cart-nail that fortune presented to
him; with this he first gave himself two great wounds about
his throat, but finding these would not do, he presently afterwards gave himself a third in the belly, where he left
the nail sticking up to the head. The first of his keepers
114 Suetonius,
Life of Casay, c. 74.
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who came in found him in this condition: yet alive, but
sunk down and exhausted by his wounds. To make use
of time, therefore, before he should die, they made haste
to read his sentence; which having done, and he hearing
that he was only condemned to be beheaded, he seemed
to take new courage, accepted wine which he had before refused, and thanked his judges for the unhoped-for mildness
of their sentence; saying, that he had taken a resolution to
despatch himself for fear of a more severe and insupportable death, having entertained an opinion, by the preparations he had seen in the place, that they were resolved to
torment him with some horrible execution, and seemed to
be delivered from death in having it changed from what he
apprehended.
I should advise that those examples of severity by
which ‘tis designed to retain the people in their duty, might
be exercised upon the dead bodies of criminals; for to see
them deprived of sepulture, to see them boiled and divided
into quarters, would almost work as much upon the vulgar,
as the pain they make the living endure; though that in effect be little or nothing, as God himself says, “Who kill the
body, and after that have no more that they can do;”115 and
the poets singularly dwell upon the horrors of this picture,
as something worse than death:
“Heu! reliquias semiustas regis, denudatis ossibus,
Per terram sanie delibutas foede divexarier.”116
I happened to come by one day accidentally at Rome, just
as they were upon executing Catena, a notorious robber: he
was strangled without any emotion of the spectators, but
when they came to cut him in quarters, the hangman gave
115 Luke,
xii. 4.
that the half-burnt remains of the king, exposing his bones,
should be foully dragged along the ground besmeared with gore.” –
Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 44.
116 “Alas!
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not a blow that the people did not follow with a doleful cry
and exclamation, as if every one had lent his sense of feeling to the miserable carcase. Those inhuman excesses ought
to be exercised upon the bark, and not upon the quick. Artaxerxes, in almost a like case, moderated the severity of
the ancient laws of Persia, ordaining that the nobility who
had committed a fault, instead of being whipped, as they
were used to be, should be stripped only and their clothes
whipped for them; and that whereas they were wont to tear
off their hair, they should only take off their high-crowned
tiara.’117 The so devout Egyptians thought they sufficiently
satisfied the divine justice by sacrificing hogs in effigy and
representation; a bold invention to pay God so essential a
substance in picture only and in show.
I live in a time wherein we abound in incredible examples of this vice, through the licence of our civil wars; and
we see nothing in ancient histories more extreme than what
we have proof of every day, but I cannot, any the more, get
used to it. I could hardly persuade myself, before I saw it
with my eyes, that there could be found souls so cruel and
fell, who, for the sole pleasure of murder, would commit it;
would hack and lop off the limbs of others; sharpen their
wits to invent unusual torments and new kinds of death,
without hatred, without profit, and for no other end but
only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of the gestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries of a man dying in
anguish. For this is the utmost point to which cruelty can
arrive:
“Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens,
tantum spectaturus, occidat.”118
For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as
an innocent beast pursued and killed that has no defence,
117 Plutarch,
Notable Sayings of the Ancient King.
a man should kill a man, not being angry, not in fear, only
for the sake of the spectacle.” –Seneca, Ep., 90.
118 “That
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and from which we have received no offence at all; and that
which frequently happens, that the stag we hunt, finding
himself weak and out of breath, and seeing no other remedy,
surrenders himself to us who pursue him, imploring mercy
by his tears:
“Questuque cruentus,
Atque imploranti similis,”119
has ever been to me a very unpleasing sight; and I hardly
ever take a beast alive that I do not presently turn out again.
Pythagoras bought them of fishermen and fowlers to do the
same:
“Primoque a caede ferarum,
Incaluisse puto maculatum
rum.”120
sanguine
fer-
Those natures that are sanguinary towards beasts discover
a natural proneness to cruelty. After they had accustomed
themselves at Rome to spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, of
gladiators. Nature has herself, I fear, imprinted in man a
kind of instinct to inhumanity; nobody takes pleasure in
seeing beasts play with and caress one another, but every
one is delighted with seeing them dismember, and tear one
another to pieces. And that I may not be laughed at for
the sympathy I have with them, theology itself enjoins us
some favour in their behalf; and considering that one and
the same master has lodged us together in this palace for
his service, and that they, as well as we, are of his family, it
has reason to enjoin us some affection and regard to them.
Pythagoras borrowed the metempsychosis from the Egyptians; but it has since been received by several nations, and
particularly by our Druids:
119 “Who, bleeding, by his tears seems to crave mercy.”
–AEnead,
vii. 501.
120 “I think ‘twas slaughter of wild beasts that first stained the steel
of man with blood.” –Ovid, Met., xv. 106.
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“Morte carent animae; semperque, priore relicts
Sede, novis domibus vivunt, habitantque receptae.”121
The religion of our ancient Gauls maintained that souls, being eternal, never ceased to remove and shift their places
from one body to another; mixing moreover with this fancy
some consideration of divine justice; for according to the deportments of the soul, whilst it had been in Alexander, they
said that God assigned it another body to inhabit, more or
less painful, and proper for its condition:
“Muta ferarum
Cogit vincla pati; truculentos ingerit ursis,
Praedonesque lupis; fallaces vulpibus addit:
Atque ubi per varios annos, per mille figuras
Egit, Lethaeo purgatos flumine, tandem
Rursus ad humanae revocat primordia formae:”122
If it had been valiant, he lodged it in the body of
a lion; if voluptuous, in that of a hog; if timorous, in that of a hart or hare; if malicious, in
that of a fox, and so of the rest, till having purified it by this chastisement, it again entered
into the body of some other man:
_V
“Ipse ego nam memini, Trojani, tempore belli
Panthoides Euphorbus eram.”123
121 “Souls never die, but, having left their former seat, live and are
received into new homes.”–Ovid, Met., xv. 158.
122 “He makes them wear the silent chains of brutes, the bloodthirsty
souls he encloses in bears, the thieves in wolves, the deceivers in oxes;
where, after successive years and a thousand forms, man had spent
his life, and after purgation in Lethe’s flood, at last he restores them to
the primordial human shapes.” –Claudian, In Ruf., ii. 482.
123 “For I myself remember that, in the days of the Trojan war, I was
Euphorbus, son of Pantheus.”–Ovid, Met., xv. 160; and see Diogenes
Laertius, Life of Pythagoras.
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As to the relationship betwixt us and beasts, I do not
much admit of it; nor of that which several nations, and
those among the most ancient and most noble, have practised, who have not only received brutes into their society
and companionship, but have given them a rank infinitely
above themselves, esteeming them one while familiars and
favourites of the gods, and having them in more than human reverence and respect; others acknowledged no other
god or divinity than they:
“Bellux a barbaris propter beneficium consecratae.”124
“Crocodilon adorat
Pars haec; illa pavet saturam serpentibus ibin:
Effigies sacri hic nitet aurea cercopitheci;
Hic piscem flumints, illic
Oppida tota canem venerantur.”125
And the very interpretation that Plutarch, gives to this error, which is very well conceived, is advantageous to them:
for he says that it was not the cat or the ox, for example,
that the Egyptians adored: but that they, in those beasts,
adored some image of the divine faculties; in this, patience
and utility: in that, vivacity, or, as with our neighbours the
Burgundians and all the Germans, impatience to see themselves shut up; by which they represented liberty, which
they loved and adored above all other godlike attributes,
and so of the rest. But when, amongst the more moderate
opinions, I meet with arguments that endeavour to demonstrate the near resemblance betwixt us and animals, how
large a share they have in our greatest privileges, and with
124 “Beasts, out of opinion of some benefit received by them, were
consecrated by barbarians” –Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 36.
125 “This place adores the crocodile; another dreads the ibis, feeder
on serpents; here shines the golden image of the sacred ape; here men
venerate the fish of the river; there whole towns worship a dog.” –
Juvenal, xv. 2.
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how much probability they compare us together, truly I
abate a great deal of our presumption, and willingly resign that imaginary sovereignty that is attributed to us over
other creatures.
But supposing all this were not true, there is nevertheless a certain respect, a general duty of humanity, not only
to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees, and
plants. We owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity to other creatures that are capable of it; there is a
certain commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and
us. Nor shall I be afraid to confess the tenderness of my
nature so childish, that I cannot well refuse to play with
my dog, when he the most unseasonably importunes me
to do so. The Turks have alms and hospitals for beasts.
The Romans had public care to the nourishment of geese,
by whose vigilance their Capitol had been preserved. The
Athenians made a decree that the mules and moyls which
had served at the building of the temple called Hecatompedon should be free and suffered to pasture at their own
choice, without hindrance. The Agrigentines had a common use solemnly to inter the beasts they had a kindness
for, as horses of some rare quality, dogs, and useful birds,
and even those that had only been kept to divert their children; and the magnificence that was ordinary with them
in all other things, also particularly appeared in the sumptuosity and numbers of monuments erected to this end,
and which remained in their beauty several ages after. The
Egyptians buried wolves, bears, crocodiles, dogs, and cats
in sacred places, embalmed their bodies, and put on mourning at their death. Cimon gave an honourable sepulture to
the mares with which he had three times gained the prize
of the course at the Olympic Games. The ancient Xantippus
caused his dog to be interred on an eminence near the sea,
which has ever since retained the name, and Plutarch says,
that he had a scruple about selling for a small profit to the
slaughterer an ox that had been long in his service.
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A POLOGY F OR R AIMOND S EBOND
Learning is, indeed, a very great and a very material
accomplishment; and those who despise it sufficiently discover their own want of understanding; but learning yet
I do not prize it at the excessive rate that some others do,
as Herillus, the philosopher, for one, who therein places
the sovereign good, and maintained “That it was only in
her to render us wise and contented,” which I do not believe; no more than I do what others have said, that learning is the mother of all virtue, and that all vice proceeds
from ignorance, which, if it be true, required a very long
interpretation. My house has long-been open to men of
knowledge, and is very well known to them; for my father, who governed it fifty years and upwards, inflamed
with the new ardour with which Francis the First embraced
letters, and brought them into esteem, with great diligence
and expense hunted after the acquaintance of learned men,
receiving them into his house as persons sacred, and that
had some particular inspiration of divine wisdom; collecting their sayings and sentences as so many oracles, and with
so much the greater reverence and religion as he was the
less able to judge of them; for he had no knowledge of letters any more than his predecessors. For my part I love
them well, but I do not adore them. Amongst others, Peter Bunel, a man of great reputation for knowledge in his
time, having, with some others of his sort, staid some days
at Montaigne in my father’s company, he presented him
at his departure with a book, entitled Theologia naturalis;
sive Liber Creaturarum, magistri Raimondi de Sebonde. And as
the Italian and Spanish tongues were familiar to my father,
and as this book was written in a sort of jargon of Spanish
with Latin terminations, he hoped that, with a little help, he
might be able to understand it, and therefore recommended
it to him for a very useful book, and proper tor the time
wherein he gave it to him; which was when the novel doc131
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trines of Luther began to be in vogue, and in many places
to stagger our ancient belief: wherein he was very well advised, wisely, in his own reason, foreseeing that the beginning of this distemper would easily run into an execrable
atheism, for the vulgar, not having the faculty of judging of
things, suffering themselves to be carried away by chance
and appearance, after having once been inspired with the
boldness to despise and control those opinions which they
had before had in extreme reverence, such as those wherein
their salvation is concerned, and that some of the articles of
their religion are brought into doubt and dispute, they afterwards throw all other parts of their belief into the same
uncertainty, they having with them no other authority or
foundation than the others they had already discomposed;
and shake off all the impressions they had received from the
authority of the laws, or the reverence of the ancient customs, as a tyrannical yoke:
Nam cupide eonculcatur nimis ante metutum;
“For with most eagerness they spurn the law,
By which they were before most kept in awe;”
resolving to admit nothing for the future to which they had
not first interposed their own decrees, and given their particular consent.
It happened that my father, a little before his death,
having accidentally found this book under a heap of other
neglected papers, commanded me to translate it for him
into French. It is good too translate such authors as this,
where there is little but the matter itself to express; but such
wherein grace of language and elegance of style are aimed
at, are dangerous to attempt, especially when a man is to
turn them into a weaker idiom. It was a strange and a new
undertaking for me; but having by chance at that time nothing else to do, and not being able to resist the command of
the best father that ever was, I did it as well as I could; and
he was so well pleased with it as to order it to be printed,
which after his death was done.
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I found the ideas of this author exceeding fine the contexture of his work well followed, and his design full of
piety; and because many people take a delight to read it,
and particularly the ladies, to whom we owe the most service, I have often thought to assist them to clear the book of
two principal objections made to it. His design is bold and
daring, for he undertakes, by human and natural reasons, to
establish and make good, against the atheists, all the articles
of the Christian religion: wherein, to speak the truth, he is
so firm and so successful that I do not think it possible to do
better upon that subject; nay, I believe he has been equalled
by none. This work seeming to me to be too beautiful and
too rich for an author whose name is so little known, and of
whom all that we know is that he was a Spaniard, practising
physic at Toulouse about two hundred years ago; I enquired
of Adrian Turnebus, who knew all things, what he thought
of that book; who made answer, “That he thought it was
some abstract drawn from St. Thomas d’Aquin; for that, in
truth, his mind, so full of infinite erudition and admirable
subtlety, was alone capable of such thoughts.” Be this as it
may, whoever was the author and inventor (and ‘tis not reasonable, without greater certainty, to deprive Sebond of that
title), he was a man of great judgment and most admirable
parts.
The first thing they reprehend in his work is “That
Christians are to blame to repose their belief upon human
reason, which is only conceived by faith and the particular inspiration of divine grace.” In which objection there
appears to be something of zeal to piety, and therefore we
are to endeavour to satisfy those who put it forth with the
greater mildness and respect. This were a task more proper
for a man well read in divinity than for me, who know nothing of it; nevertheless, I conceive that in a thing so divine,
so high, and so far transcending all human intelligence, as
is that truth, with which it has pleased the bounty of God to
enlighten us, it is very necessary that he should moreover
lend us his assistance, as a very extraordinary favour and
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privilege, to conceive and imprint it in our understanding.
And I do not believe that means purely human are in any
sort capable of doing it: for, if they were, so many rare and
excellent souls, and so abundantly furnished with natural
force, in former ages, could not have failed, by their reason, to arrive at this knowledge. ‘Tis faith alone that livelily
mind certainly comprehends the deep mysteries of our religion; but, withal, I do not say that it is not a worthy and
very laudable attempt to accommodate those natural and
human utensils with which God has endowed us to the service of our faith: it is not to be doubted but that it is the most
noble use we can put them to; and that there is not a design
in a Christian man more noble than to make it the aim and
end of all his studies to extend and amplify the truth of his
belief. We do not satisfy ourselves with serving God with
our souls and understandings only, we moreover owe and
render him a corporal reverence, and apply our limbs and
motions, and external things to do him honour; we must
here do the same, and accompany our faith with all the reason we have, but always with this reservation, not to fancy
that it is upon us that it depends, nor that our arguments
and endeavours can arrive at so supernatural and divine a
knowledge. If it enters not into us by an extraordinary infusion; if it enters not only by reason, but, moreover, by human ways, it is not in us in its true dignity and splendour:
and yet, I am afraid, we only have it by this way.
If we hold upon God by the mediation of a lively faith;
if we hold upon God by him, and not by us; if we had a
divine basis and foundation, human occasions would not
have the power to shake us as they do; our fortress would
not surrender to so weak a battery; the love of novelty, the
constraint of princes, the success of one party, and the rash
and fortuitous change of our opinions, would not have the
power to stagger and alter our belief: we should not then
leave it to the mercy of every new argument, nor abandon
it to all the rhetoric in the world; we should withstand the
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stancy:
As a great rock repels the rolling tides,
That foam and bark about her marble sides,
From its strong bulk
If we were but touched with this ray of divinity, it would
appear throughout; not only our words, but our works also,
would carry its brightness and lustre; whatever proceeded
from us would be seen illuminated with this noble light.
We ought to be ashamed that, in all the human sects, there
never was any of the faction, that did not, in some measure,
conform his life and behaviour to it, whereas so divine and
heavenly an institution does only distinguish Christians by
the name! Will you see the proof of this? Compare our
manners to those of a Mahometan or Pagan, you will still
find that we fall very short; there, where, out of regard to
the reputation and advantage of our religion, we ought to
shine in excellency at a vast distance beyond all others: and
that it should be said of us, “Are they so just, so charitable, so good: Then they are Christians.” All other signs
are common to all religions; hope, trust, events, ceremonies,
penance, martyrs. The peculiar mark of our truth ought to
be our virtue, as it is also the most heavenly and difficult,
and the most worthy product of truth. For this our good
St. Louis was in the right, who, when the Tartar king, who
was become Christian, designed to come to Lyons to kiss
the Pope’s feet, and there to be an eye-witness of the sanctity he hoped to find in our manner, immediately diverted
him from his purpose; for fear lest our disorderly way of living should, on the contrary, put him out of conceit with so
holy a belief! And yet it happened quite otherwise since to
that other, who, going to Rome, to the same end, and there
seeing the dissoluteness of the prelates and people of that
time, settled himself so much the more firmly in our religion, considering how great the force and divinity of it must
necessarily be that could maintain its dignity and splendour
among so much corruption, and in so vicious hands. If we
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had but one single grain of faith, we should remove mountains from their places, saith the sacred Word; our actions,
that would then be directed and accompanied by the divinity, would not be merely human, they would have in them
something of miraculous, as well as our belief: Brevis est
institutio vitæ honestæ beauæque, si credos. “Believe, and the
way to happiness and virtue is a short one.” Some impose
upon the world that they believe that which they do not;
others, more in number, make themselves believe that they
believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.
We think it strange if, in the civil war which, at this time,
disorders our state, we see events float and vary aller a common and ordinary manner; which is because we bring nothing to it but our own. Justice, which is in one party, is only
there for ornament and palliation; it, is, indeed, pretended,
but ‘tis not there received, settled and espoused: it is there,
as in the mouth of an advocate, not as in the heart and affection of the party. God owes his extraordinary assistance
to faith and religion; not to our passions. Men there are
the conductors, and therein serve themselves with religion,
whereas it ought to be quite contrary. Observe, if it be not
by our own hands that we guide and train it, and draw it
like wax into so many contrary figures, from a rule in itself
so direct and firm. When and where was this more manifest than in France in our days? They who have taken it on
the left hand, they who have taken it on the right; they who
call it black, they who call it white, alike employ it to their
violent and ambitious designs, conduct it with a progress,
so conform in riot and injustice that they render the diversity they pretended in their opinions, in a thing whereon the
conduct and rule of our life depends, doubtful and hard to
believe. Did one ever see, come from the same school and
discipline, manners more united, and more the same? Do
but observe with what horrid impudence we toss divine arguments to and fro, and how irreligiously we have both rejected and retaken them, accord–as fortune has shifted our
places in these intestine storms.
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This so solemn proposition, “Whether it be lawful for
a subject to rebel and take up arms against his prince for
the defence of his religion,” do you remember in whose
mouths, the last year, the affirmative of it was the prop of
one party, and the negative the pillar of another? And hearken now from what quarter comes the voice and instruction of the one and the other, and if arms make less noise
and rattle for this cause than for that. We condemn those
to the fire who say that truth must be made to bear the
yoke of our necessity; and how much worse does France
than say it? Let us confess the truth; whoever should draw
out from the army, even that raised by the king, those who
take up arms out of pure zeal to religion, and also those
who only do it to protect the laws of their country, or for
the service of their prince, could hardly, out of both these
put together, make one complete company of gens-d’armes.
Whence does this proceed, that there are so few to be found
who have maintained the same will and the same progress
in our civil commotions, and that we see them one while
move but a foot-pace, and another run full speed? and the
same men one while damage our affairs by their violent
heat and fierceness, and another by their coldness, gentleness, and slowness; but that they are pushed on by particular and casual considerations, according to the variety
wherein they move?
I evidently perceive that we do not willingly afford devotion any other offices but those that least suit with our
own passions.
There hostility so admirable as the Christian. Our zeal
performs wonders, when it seconds our inclinations to hatred, cruelty, ambition, avarice, detraction, and rebellion:
but when it moves, against the hair, towards bounty, benignity, and temperance, unless, by miracle, some rare and
virtuous disposition prompts us to it, we stir neither hand
nor toot. Our religion is intended to extirpate vices, whereas
it screens, nourishes, and incites them. We must not mock
God. If we believed in him, I do not say by faith, but with
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a simple belief, that is to say (and I speak it to our great
shame) if we believed in him and recognised him as we
do any other history, or as we would do one of our companions, we should love him above all other things for the
infinite bounty and beauty that shines in him;–at least, he
would go equal in our affection with riches, pleasure, glory,
and our friends. The best of us is not so much afraid to outrage him as he is afraid to injure his neighbour, his kinsman,
or his master. Is there any understanding so weak that, having on one side the object of one of our vicious pleasures,
and on the other (in equal knowledge and persuasion) the
state of an immortal glory, would change the first for the
other? and yet we often renounce this out of mere contempt:
for what lust tempts us to blaspheme, if not, perhaps, the
very desire to offend. The philosopher Antisthenes, as he
was being initiated in the mysteries of Orpheus, the priest
telling him, “That those who professed themselves of that
religion were certain to receive perfect and eternal felicity
after death,”–“If thou believest that,” answered he, “why
dost thou not die thyself?” Diogenes, more rudely, according to his manner, and more remote from our purpose, to
the priest that in like manner preached to him, “To become
of his religion, that he might obtain the happiness of the
other world;–“What!” said he, “thou wouldest have me to
believe that Agesilaus and Epaminondas, who were so great
men, shall be miserable, and that thou, who art but a calf,
and canst do nothing to purpose, shalt be happy, because
thou art a priest?” Did we receive these great promises of
eternal beatitude with the same reverence and respect that
we do a philosophical discourse, we should not have death
in so great horror:
Non jam se moriens dissolvi conqurreretur;
Sed magis ire foras, stemque relinquere ut angais,
Gauderet, prealonga senex aut cornua cervus.
“We should not on a death bed grieve to be Dissolved, but rather launch out cheerfully
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From our old hut, and with the snake, be glad
To cast off the corrupted slough we had;
Or with th’ old stag rejoice to be now clear
From the large horns, too ponderous grown to
bear.”
“I desire to be dissolved,” we should say, “and to be with
Jesus Christ” The force of Plato’s arguments concerning the
immortality of the soul set some of his disciples to seek
a premature grave, that they might the sooner enjoy the
things he had made them hope for.
All this is a most evident sign that we only receive our
religion after our own fashion, by our own hands, and no
otherwise than as other religions are received. Either we are
happened in the country where it is in practice, or we reverence the antiquity of it, or the authority of the men who
have maintained it, or fear the menaces it fulminates against
misbelievers, or are allured by its promises. These considerations ought, ‘tis true, to be applied to our belief but as subsidiaries only, for they are human obligations. Another religion, other witnesses, the like promises and threats, might,
by the same way, imprint a quite contrary belief. We are
Christians by the same title that we are Perigordians or Germans. And what Plato says, “That there are few men so
obstinate in their atheism whom a pressing danger will not
reduce to an acknowledgment of the divine power,” does
not concern a true Christian: ‘tis for mortal and human religions to be received by human recommendation. What kind
of faith can that be that cowardice and want of courage establish in us? A pleasant faith, that does not believe what it
believes but for want of courage to disbelieve it! Can a vicious passion, such as inconstancy and astonishment, cause
any regular product in our souls? “They are confident in
their judgment,” says he, “that what is said of hell and future torments is all feigned: but an occasion of making the
expedient presenting itself, when old age or diseases bring
them to the brink of the grave, the terror of death, by the
horror of that future condition, inspires them with a new
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belief!” And by reason that such impressions render them
timorous, he forbids in his Laws all such threatening doctrines, and all persuasion that anything of ill can befall a
man from the gods, excepting for his great good when they
happen to him, and for a medicinal effect. They say of Bion
that, infected with the atheism of Theodoras, he had long
had religious men in great scorn and contempt, but that
death surprising him, he gave himself up to the most extreme superstition; as if the gods withdrew and returned
according to the necessities of Bion. Plato and these examples would conclude that we are brought to a belief of God
either by reason or by force. Atheism being a proposition
as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever,
there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be
the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and
outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are
such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them
in their own conscience. Yet will they not fail to lift up their
hands towards heaven if you give them a good thrust with
a sword in the breast, and when fear or sickness has abated
and dulled the licentious fury of this giddy humour they
will easily re-unite, and very discreetly suffer themselves
to be reconciled to the public faith and examples. A doctrine seriously digested is one thing, and those superficial
impressions another; which springing from the disorder of
an unhinged understanding, float at random and great uncertainty in the fancy. Miserable and senseless men, who
strive to be worse than they can!
The error of paganism and the ignorance of our sacred
truth, let this great soul of Plato, but great only in human
greatness, fall also into this other mistake, “That children
and old men were most susceptible of religion,” as if it
sprung and derived its credit from our weakness. The knot
that ought to bind the judgment and the will, that ought to
restrain the soul and join it to our creator, should be a knot
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erations, from our reasons and passions, but from a divine
and supernatural constraint, having but one form, one face,
and one lustre, which is the authority of God and his divine
grace. Now the heart and soul being governed and commanded by faith, ‘tis but reason that they should muster all
our other faculties, according as they are able to perform to
the service and assistance of their design. Neither is it to
be imagined that all this machine has not some marks imprinted upon it by the hand of the mighty architect, and that
there is not in the things of this world some image that in
some measure resembles the workman who has built and
formed them. He has, in his stupendous works, left the
character of his divinity, and ‘tis our own weakness only
that hinders us from discerning it. ‘Tis what he himself is
pleased to tell us, “That he manifests his invisible operations to us by those that are visible.” Sebond applied himself to this laudable and noble study, and demonstrates to
us that there is not any part or member of the world that
disclaims or derogates from its maker. It were to do wrong
to the divine goodness, did not the universe consent to our
belief. The heavens, the earth, the elements, our bodies and
our souls,–all things concur to this; we have but to find out
the way to use them; they instruct us, if we are capable of instruction. For this world is a sacred temple, into which man
is introduced, there to contemplate statues, not the works of
a mortal hand, but such as the divine purpose has made the
objects of sense; the sun, the stars, the water, and the earth,
to represent those that are intelligible to us. “The invisible
tilings of God,” says St. Paul, “appear by the creation of the
world, his eternal wisdom and divinity being considered by
his works.”
And God himself envies not men the grace
Of seeing and admiring heaven’s face;
But, rolling it about, he still anew
Presents its varied splendour to our view,
And on oar minds himself inculcates, so
That we th’ Almighty mover well may know:
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Instructing us by seeing him the cause
Of ill, to revcreoce and obey his laws.”
Now our prayers and human discourses are but as sterile
and undigested matter. The grace of God is the form; ‘tis
that which gives fashion and value to it. As the virtuous
actions of Socrates and Cato remain vain and fruitless, for
not having had the love and obedience to the true creator
of all things, so is it with our imaginations and discourses;
they have a kind of body, but it is an inform mass, without
fashion and without light, if faith and grace be not added
thereto. Faith coming to tinct and illustrate Sehond’s arguments renders them firm and stolid; and to that degree that
they are capable of serving for directions, and of being the
first guides to an elementary Christian to put him into the
way of this knowledge. They in some measure form him
to, and render him capable of, the grace of God, by which
means he afterwards completes and perfects himself in the
true belief. I know a man of authority, bred up to letters,
who has confessed to me to have been brought back from
the errors of unbelief by Sebond’s arguments. And should
they be stripped of this ornament, and of the assistance and
approbation of the faith, and be looked upon as mere fancies only, to contend with those who are precipitated into
the dreadful and horrible darkness of irréligion, they will
even there find them as solid and firm as any others of the
same quality that can be opposed against them; so that we
shall be ready to say to our opponents:
Si melius quid habes, arcesse; vel imperium fer:
“If you have arguments more fit.
Produce them, or to these submit.”
let them admit the force of our reasons, or let them show
us others, and upon some other subject, better woven and
of finer thread. I am, unawares, half engaged in the second
objection, to which I proposed to make answer in the behalf of Sebond. Some say that his arguments are weak, and
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unable to make good what he intends, and undertake with
great ease to confute them. These are to be a little more
roughly handled, for they are more dangerous and malicious than the first Men willingly wrest the sayings of others to favour their own prejudicate opinions. To an atheist
all writings tend to atheisïm: he corrupts the most innocent
matter with his own venom. These have their judgments
so prepossessed that they cannot relish Sebond’s reasons.
As to the rest, they think we give them very fair play in
putting them into the liberty of combatting our religion with
weapons merely human, whom, in her majesty, full of authority and command, they durst not attack. The means
that I shall use, and that I think most proper to subdue this
frenzy, is to crush and spurn under foot pride and human
arrogance; to make them sensible of the inanity, vanity, and
vileness of man; to wrest the wretched arms of their reason out of their hands; to make them bow down and bite
the ground under the authority and reverence of the Divine
Majesty. ‘Tis to that alone that knowledge and wisdom appertain; that alone that can make a true estimate of itself,
and from which we purloin whatever we value ourselves
upon:126 “God permits not any being but himself to be truly
wise.” Let us subdue this presumption, the first foundation
of the tyranny of the evil spirit Deus superbis re-sistit, humilibus autem dal gratiam. “God resists the proud, but gives
grace to the humble.” “Understanding is in the gods,” says
Plato, “and not at all, or very little, in men.” Now it is in the
mean time a great consolation to a Christian man to see our
frail and mortal parts so fitly suited to our holy and divine
faith that, when we employ them to the subjects of their
own mortal and frail nature they are not even there more
unitedly or more firmly adjusted. Let us see, then, if man
has in his power other more forcible and convincing reasons
than those of Sebond; that is to say, if it be in him to arrive
at any certainty by argument and reason. For St. Augustin,
disputing against these people, has good cause to reproach
126 Greek
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them with injustice, “In that they maintain the part of our
belief to be false that our reason cannot establish.” And to
show that a great many things may be, and have been, of
which our nature could not sound the reason and causes,
he proposes to them certain known and undoubted experiments, wherein men confess they see nothing; and this he
does, as all other things, with a curious and ingenious inquisition. We must do more than this, and make them know
that, to convince the weakness of their reason, there is no necessity of culling out uncommon examples: and that it is so
defective and so blind that there is no faculty clear enough
for it; that to it the easy and the hard are all one; that all
subjects equally, and nature in general, disclaim its authority and reject its mediation.
What does truth mean when she preaches to us to fly
worldly philosophy, when she so often inculcates to us,
“That our wisdom is but folly in the sight of God: that the
vainest of all vanities is man: that the man who presumes
upon his wisdom does not yet know what wisdom is; and
that man, who is nothing, if he thinks himself to be anything, does seduce and deceive himself.” These sentences of
the Holy Spirit do so clearly and vividly express that which
I would maintain that I should need no other proof against
men who would with all humility and obedience submit to
his authority: but these will be whipped at their own expense, and will not suffer a man to oppose their reason but
by itself.
Let us then, for once, consider a man alone, without foreign assistance, armed only with his own proper arms, and
unfurnished of the divine grace and wisdom, which is all
his honour, strength, and the foundation of his being. Let
us see how he stands in this fine equipage. Let him make
me understand, by the force of his reason, upon what foundations he has built those great advantages he thinks he has
over other creatures. Who has made him believe that this
admirable motion of the celestial arch, the eternal light of
those luminaries that roll so high over his head, the won144
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drous and fearful motions of that infinite ocean, should be
established and continue so many ages for his service and
convenience? Can any thing be imagined so ridiculous, that
this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as
master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things,
should call himself master and emperor of the world, of
which he has not power to know the least part, much less to
command the whole? And the privilege which he attributes
to himself of being the only creature in this vast fabric who
has the understanding to discover the beauty and the paris
of it; the only one who can return thanks to the architect,
and keep account of the revenues and disbursements of the
world; who, I wonder, sealed him this patent? Let us see
his commission for this great employment Was it granted
in favour of the wise only? Few people will be concerned
in it. Are fools and wicked persons worthy so extraordinary a favour, and, being the worst part of the world, to be
preferred before the rest? Shall we believe this man?–“For
whose sake shall we, therefore, conclude that the world was
made? For theirs who have the use of reason: these are gods
and men, than whom certainly nothing can be better:” we
can never sufficiently decry the impudence of this conjunction. But, wretched creature, what has he in himself worthy
of such an advantage? Considering the incorruptible existence of the celestial bodies; beauty; magnitude, and continual revolution by so exact a rule;
Cum suspicimus mæni cælestia mundi
Templa super, stellisque micantibus arthera fiium,
El venit in mcntem lunæ solisque viarurn.
“When we the heavenly arch above behold.
And the vast sky adorned with stars of gold.
And mark the r’eglar course? that the sun
And moon in their alternate progress run.”
considering the dominion and influence those
bodies have, not only over our lives and fortunes;
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Facta etenim et vitas hominum suspendit ab aatris;
“Men’s lives and actions on the stars depend.”
but even over our inclinations, our thoughts
and wills, which they govern, incite and agitate at the mercy of their influences, as our
reason teaches us;
“Contemplating the stars he finds that they
Rule by a secret and a silent sway;
And that the enamell’d spheres which roll above
Do ever by alternate causes move.
And, studying these, he can also foresee,
By certain signs, the turns of destiny;”
seeing that not only a man, not only kings,
but that monarchies, empires, and all this
lower world follow the influence of the celestial motions,
“How great a change a little motion brings!
So great this kingdom is that governs kings:”
If our virtue, our vices, our knowledge, and this
very discourse we are upon of the power of
the stars, and the comparison we are making
betwixt them and us, proceed, as our reason
supposes, from their favour;
“One mad in love may cross the raging main,
To level lofty Ilium with the plain;
Another’s fate inclines him more by far
To study laws and statutes for the bar.
Sons kill their father, fathers kill their sons,
And one arm’d brother ‘gainst another runs..
This war’s not their’s, but fate’s, that spurs them
on
To shed the blood which, shed, they must bemoan;
And I ascribe it to the will of fate
That on this theme I now expatiate:”
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if we derive this little portion of reason we have from the
bounty of heaven, how is it possible that reason should ever
make us equal to it? How subject its essence and condition to our knowledge? Whatever we see in those bodies
astonishes us: quæ molitio, qua ferramenta, qui vectes, quæ
machina, qui ministri tanti operis fuerunt? “What contrivance,
what tools, what materials, what engines, were employed
about so stupendous a work?” Why do we deprive them
of soul, of life, and discourse? Have we discovered in them
any immoveable or insensible stupidity, we who have no
commerce with them but by obedience? Shall we say that
we have discovered in no other creature but man the use
of a reasonable soul? What! have we seen any thing like
the sun? Does he cease to be, because we have seen nothing like him? And do his motions cease, because there are
no other like them? If what we have not seen is not, our
knowledge is marvellously contracted: quæ sunt tantæ animi angustiæ! “How narrow are our understandings!” Are
they not dreams of human vanity, to make the moon a celestial earth? there to fancy mountains and vales, as Anaxagoras did? there to fix habitations and human abodes, and
plant colonies for our convenience, as Plato and Plutarch
have done? And of our earth to make a luminous and resplendent star? “Amongst the other inconveniences of mortality this is one, that darkness of the understanding which
leads men astray, not so much from a necessity of erring, but
from a love of error. The corruptible body stupifies the soul,
and the earthly habitation dulls the faculties of the imagination.”
Presumption is our natural and original disease. The
most wretched and frail of all creatures is man, and withal
the proudest. He feels and sees himself lodged here in the
dirt and filth of the world, nailed and rivetted to the worst
and deadest part of the universe, in the lowest story of the
house, the most remote from the heavenly arch, with animals of the worst condition of the three; and yet in his
imagination will be placing himself above the circle of the
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moon, and bringing the heavens under his feet. ‘Tis by the
same vanity of imagination that he equals himself to God,
attributes to himself divine qualities, withdraws and separates himself from the the crowd of other creatures, cuts
out the shares of the animals, his fellows and companions,
and distributes to them portions of faculties and force, as
himself thinks fit How does he know, by the strength of his
understanding, the secret and internal motions of animals?–
from what comparison betwixt them and us does he conclude the stupidity he attributes to them? When I play with
my cat who knows whether I do not make her more sport
than she makes me? We mutually divert one another with
our play. If I have my hour to begin or to refusç, she also has
hers. Plato, in his picture of the golden age under Saturn,
reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had,
his communication with beasts, of whom, inquiring and informing himself, he knew the true qualities and differences
of them all, by which he acquired a very perfect intelligence
and prudence, and led his life more happily than we could
do. Need we a better proof to condemn human impudence
in the concern of beasts? This great author was of opinion
that nature, for the most part in the corporal form she gave
them, had only regard to the use of prognostics that were
derived thence in his time. The defect that hinders communication betwixt them and us, why may it not be in our
part as well as theirs? ‘Tis yet to determine where the fault
lies that we understand not one another,–for we understand
them no more than they do us; and by the same reason they
may think us to be beasts as we think them. ‘Tis no great
wonder if we understand not them, when we do not understand a Basque or a Troglodyte. And yet some have boasted
that they understood them, as Apollonius Tyanaus, Melampus, Tiresias, Thales, and others. And seeing, as cusmographers report, that there are nations that have a dog for
their king, they must of necessity be able to interpret his
voice and motions. We must observe the parity betwixt us,
have some tolerable apprehension of their meaning, and so
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have beasts of ours,–much about the same. They caress us,
threaten us, and beg of us, and we do the same to them.
As to the rest, we manifestly discover that they have a
full and absolute communication amongst themselves, and
that they perfectly understand one another, not only those
of the same, but of divers kinds:
“The tamer herds, and wilder sort of brutes.
Though we of higher race conclude them mutes.
Yet utter dissonant and various notes,
From gentler lungs or more distended throats,
As fear, or grief, or anger, do them move,
Or as they do approach the joys of love.”
In one kind of barking of a dog the horse knows there is
anger, of another sort of bark he is not afraid. Even in the
very beasts that have no voice at all, we easily conclude,
from the society of offices we observe amongst them, some
other sort of communication: their very motions discover it:
“As infants who, for want of words, devise
Expressive motions with their hands and eyes.”
And why not, as well as our dumb people, dispute, argue,
and tell stories by signs? Of whom I have seen some, by
practice, so clever and active that way that, in fact, they
wanted nothing of the perfection of making themselves understood. Lovers are angry, reconciled, intreat, thank, appoint, and, in short, speak all things by their eyes:
“Even silence in a lover
Love and passion can discover.”
What with the hands? We require, promise, call, dismiss,
threaten, pray, supplicate, deny, refuse, interrogate, admire,
number, confess, repent, fear, express confusion, doubt, instruct, command, incite, encourage, swear, testify, accuse,
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condemn, absolve, abuse, despise, defy, provoke, flatter, applaud, bless, submit, mock, reconcile, recommend, exalt, entertain, congratulate, complain, grieve, despair, wonder, exclaim, and what not! And all this with a variety and multiplication, even emulating speech. With the head we invite, remand, confess, deny, give the lie, welcome, honour,
reverence, disdain, demand, rejoice, lament, reject, caress,
rebuke, submit, huff, encourage, threaten, assure, and inquire. What with the eyebrows?–what with the shoulders!
There is not a motion that does not speak, and in an intelligible language without discipline, and a public language
that every one understands: whence it should follow, the
variety and use distinguished from others considered, that
these should rather be judged the property of human nature. I omit what necessity particularly does suddenly suggest to those who are in need;–the alphabets upon the fingers, grammars in gesture, and the sciences which are only
by them exercised and expressed; and the nations that Pliny
reports have no other language. An ambassador of the city
of Abdera, after a long conference with Agis, King of Sparta,
demanded of him, “Well, sir, what answer must I return to
my fellow-citizens?” “That I have given thee leave,” said he,
“to say what thou wouldest, and as much as thou wouldest,
without ever speaking a word.” is not this a silent speaking,
and very easy to be understood?
As to the rest, what is there in us that we do not see in
the operations of animals? Is there a polity better ordered,
the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed
and maintained, than that of bees? Can we imagine that
such, and so regular, a distribution of employments can be
carried on without reasoning and deliberation?
“Hence to the bee some sages have assign’d
Some portion of the god and heavenly wind.”
The swallows that we see at the return of the spring, searching all the corners of our houses for the most commodious
places wherein to build their nest; do they seek without
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judgment, and amongst a thousand choose out the most
proper for their purpose, without discretion? And in that
elegant and admirable contexture of their buildings, can
birds rather make choice of a square figure than a round,
of an obtuse than of a right angle, without knowing their
properties and effects? Do they bring water, and then clay,
without knowing that the hardness of the latter grows softer
by being wetted? Do they mat their palace with moss or
down without foreseeing that their tender young will lie
more safe and easy? Do they secure themselves from the
wet and rainy winds, and place their lodgings against the
east, without knowing the different qualities of the winds,
and considering that one is more wholesome than another?
Why does the spider make her web tighter in one place,
and slacker in another; why now make one sort of knot,
and then another, if she has not deliberation, thought, and
conclusion? We sufficiently discover in most of their works
how much animals excel us, and how unable our art is to
imitate them. We see, nevertheless, in our rougher performances, that we employ all our faculties, and apply the utmost power of our souls; why do we not conclude the same
of them?
Why should we attribute to I know not what natural
and servile inclination the works that excel all we can do
by nature and art? wherein, without being aware, we give
them a mighty advantage over us in making nature, with
maternal gentleness and love, accompany and learn them,
as it were, by the hand to all the actions and commodities
of their life, whilst she leaves us to chance and fortune, and
to seek out by art the things that are necessary to our conservation, at the same time denying us the means of being
able, by any instruction or effort of understanding, to arrive at the natural sufficiency of beasts; so that their brutish
stupidity surpasses, in all conveniences, all that our divine
intelligence can do. Really, at this rate, we might with great
reason call her an unjust stepmother: but it is nothing so,
our polity is not so irregular and unformed.
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Nature has universally cared for all her creatures, and
there is not one she has not amply furnished with all means
necessary for the conservation of its being. For the common
complaints I hear men make (as the license of their opinions
one while lifts them up above the clouds, and then again depresses them to the antipodes), that we are the only animal
abandoned naked upon the bare earth, tied and bound, not
having wherewithal to arm and clothe us but by the spoil of
others; whereas nature has covered all other creatures either
with shells, husks, bark, hair, wool, prickles, leather, down,
feathers, scales, or silk, according to the necessities of their
being; has armed them with talons, teeth, or horns, wherewith to assault and defend, and has herself taught them that
which is most proper for them, to swim, to run, to fly, and
sing, whereas man neither knows how to walk, speak, eat,
or do any thing but weep, without teaching;
“Like to the wretched mariner, when toss’d
By raging seas upon the desert coast,
The tender babe lies naked on the earth,
Of all supports of life stript by his birth;
When nature first presents him to the day,
Freed from the cell wherein before he lay,
He fills the ambient air with doleful cries.
Foretelling thus life’s future miseries;
But beasts, both wild and tame, greater and less,
Do of themselves in strength and bulk increase;
They need no rattle, nor the broken chat,
Ay which the nurse first teaches boys to prate
They look not out for different robes to wear,
According to the seasons of the year;
And need no arms nor walls their goods to save,
Since earth and liberal nature ever have,
And will, in all abundance, still produce
All things whereof they can have need or
use:”
these complaints are false; there is in the polity of the world
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a greater equality and more uniform relation. Our skins are
as sufficient to defend us from the injuries of the weather as
theirs are; witness several nations that yet know not the use
of clothes. Our ancient Gauls were but slenderly clad, any
more than the Irish, our neighbours, though in so cold a climate; but we may better judge of this by ourselves: for all
those parts that we are pleased to expose to the air are found
very able to endure it: the face, the feet, the hands, the arms,
the head, according to the various habit; if there be a tender
part about us, and that would seem to be in danger from
cold, it should be the stomach where the digestion is; and
yet our forefathers were there always open, and our ladies,
as tender and delicate as they are, go sometimes half-bare as
low as the navel. Neither is the binding or swathing of infants any more necessary; and the Lacedæmoman mothers
brought theirs in all liberty of motion of members, without
any ligature at all. Our crying is common with the greatest
part of other animals, and there are but few creatures that
are not observed to groan, and bemoan themselves a long
time after they come into the world; forasmuch as it is a behaviour suitable to the weakness wherein they find themselves. As to the custom of eating, it is in us, as in them,
natural, and without instruction;
“For every one soon finds his natural force.
Which he, or better may employ, or worse.”
Who doubts but an infant, arrived to the strength of feeding himself, may make shift to find something to eat And
the earth produces and offers him wherewithal to supply
his necessity, without other culture and artifice; and if not
at all times, no more does she do it to beasts, witness the
provision we see ants and other creatures hoard up against
the dead seasons of the year. The late discovered nations, so
abundantly furnished with natural meat and drink, without
care, or without cookery, may give us to understand that
bread is not our only food, and that, without tillage, our
mother nature has provided us sufficiently of all we stand
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in need of: nay, it appears more fully and plentifully than
she does at present, now that we have added our own industry:
“The earth did first spontaneously afford
Choice fruits and wines to furnish out the board;
With herbs and flow’rs unsown in verdant
fields.
But scarce by art so good a harvest yields;
Though men and oxen mutually have strove,
With all their utmost force the soil t’ improve,”
the debauchery and irregularity of our appetites outstrips all the inventions we can
contrive to satisfy it.
As to arms, we have more natural ones than than most other
animals more various motions of limbs, and naturally and
without lesson extract more service from them. Those that
are trained to fight naked are seen to throw themselves into
the like hazards that we do. If some beasts surpass us in
this advantage, we surpass many others. And the industry
of fortifying the body, and covering it by acquired means,
we have by instinct and natural precept? That it is so, the
elephant shows who sharpen, and whets the teeth he makes
use of in war (for he has particular ones for that service,
which he spares, and never employs them at all to any other
use); when bulls go to fight, they toss and throw the dust
about them; boars whet their tusks; and the ichneumon,
when he is about to engage with the crocodile, fortifies his
body, and covers and crusts it all over with close-wrought
and well-tempered slime, as with a cuirass. Why shall we
not say that it is also natural for us to arm ourselves with
wood and iron?
As to speech, it is certain that if it be not natural it is
not necessary. Nevertheless I believe that a child which had
been brought up in an absolute solitude, remote from all
society of men (which would be an experiment very hard
to make), would have some kind of speech to express his
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meaning by. And ‘tis not to be supposed that nature should
have denied that to us which she has given to several other
animals: for what is this faculty we observe in them, of complaining, rejoicing, calling to one another for succour, and
inviting each other to love, which they do with the voice,
other than speech? And why should they not speak to one
another? They speak to us, and we to them. In how many
several sorts of ways do we speak to our dogs, and they
answer us? We converse with them in another sort of language, and use other appellations, than we do with birds,
hogs, oxen, horses, and alter the idiom according to the
kind.
“Thus from one swarm of ants some sally out.
To spy another’s stock or mark its rout.”
Lactantius seems to attribute to beasts not only speech, but
laughter also. And the difference of language which is seen
amongst us, according to the difference of countries, is also
observed in animals of the same kind. Aristotle, in proof of
this, instances the Various calls of partridges, according to
the situation of places:
“And various birds do from their warbling
throats
At various times, utter quite different notes,
And some their hoarse songs with the seasons
change.”
But it is yet to be known what language this child would
speak; and of that what is said by guess has no great appearance. If a man will allege to me, in opposition to this
opinion, that those who are naturally deaf speak not, I answer that this is not only because they could not receive the
instruction of speaking by ear, but rather because the sense
of hearing, of which they are deprived, relates to that of
speaking, and that these hold together by a natural and inseparable tie, in such manner that what we speak we must
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first speak to ourselves within, and make it sound in our
own ears, before we can utter it to others.
All this I have said to prove the resemblance there is
in human things, and to bring us back and join us to the
crowd. We are neither above nor below the rest All that is
under heaven, says the sage, runs one law and one fortune:
“All things remain
Bound and entangled in one fatal chain.”
There is, indeed, some difference,–there are several orders
and degrees; but it is under the aspect of one and the same
nature:
“All things by their own rites proceed, and draw
Towards their ends, by nature’s certain law.”
Man must be compelled and restrained within the bounds
of this polity. Miserable creature! he is not in a condition really to step over the rail. He is fettered and circumscribed,
he is subjected to the same necessity that the other creatures
of his rank and order are, and of a very mean condition,
without any prerogative of true and real pre-eminence. That
which he attributes to himself, by vain fancy and opinion,
has neither body nor taste. And if it be so, that he only, of all
the animals, has this liberty of imagination and irregularity
of thoughts, representing to him that which is, that which
is not, and that he would have, the false and the true, ‘tis
an advantage dearly bought, and of which he has very little reason to be proud; for thence springs the principal and
original fountain of all the evils that befal him,–sin, sickness, irresolution, affliction, despair. I say, then, to return
to my subject, that there is no appearance to induce a man
to believe that beasts should, by a natural and forced inclination, do the same things that we do by our choice and
industry. We ought from like effects to conclude like faculties, and from greater effects greater faculties; and consequently confess that the same reasoning, and the same ways
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by which we operate, are common with them, or that they
have others that are better. Why should we imagine this
natural constraint in them, who experience no such effect in
ourselves? added that it is more honourable to be guided
and obliged to act regularly by a natural and inevitable condition, and nearer allied to the divinity, than to act regularly by a temerarious and fortuitous liberty, and more safe
to entrust the reins of our conduct in the hands of nature
than our own. The vanity of our presumption makes us prefer rather to owe our sufficiency to our own exertions than
to her bounty, and to enrich the other animals with natural
goods, and abjure them in their favour, in order to honour
and ennoble ourselves with goods acquired, very foolishly
in my opinion; for I should as much value parts and virtues
naturally and purely my own as those I had begged and obtained from education. It is not in our power to obtain a
nobler reputation than to be favoured of God and nature.
For instance, take the fox, the people of Thrace make
use of when they wish to pass over the ice of some frozen
river, and turn him out before them to that purpose; when
we see him lay his ear upon the bank of the river, down to
the ice, to listen if from a more remote or nearer distance
he can hear the noise of the waters’ current, and, according
as he finds by that the ice to be of a less or greater thickness, to retire or advance,–have we not reason to believe
thence that the same rational thoughts passed through his
head that we should have upon the like occasions; and that
it is a ratiocination and consequence, drawn from natural
sense, that that which makes a noise runs, that which runs
is not frozen, what is not frozen is liquid, and that which is
liquid yields to impression! For to attribute this to a mere
quickness of the sense of hearing, without reason and consequence, is a chimæra that cannot enter into the imagination.
We are to suppose the same of the many sorts of subtleties
and inventions with which beasts secure themselves from,
and frustrate, the enterprizes we plot against them.
And if we will make an advantage even of this, that it
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is in our power to seize them, to employ them in our service, and to use them at our pleasure, ‘tis still but the same
advantage we have over one another. We have our slaves
upon these terms: the Climacidæ, were they not women in
Syria who, squat on all fours, served for a ladder or footstool, by which the ladies mounted their coaches? And the
greatest part of free persons surrender, for very trivial conveniences, their life and being into the power of another.
The wives and concubines of the Thracians contended who
should be chosen to be slain upon their husband’s tomb.
Have tyrants ever failed of finding men enough vowed to
their devotion? some of them moreover adding this necessity, of accompanying them in death as well as life? Whole
armies have bound themselves after this manner to their
captains. The form of the oath in the rude school of gladiators was in these words: “We swear to suffer ourselves
to be chained, burnt, wounded, and killed with the sword,
and to endure all that true gladiators suffer from their master, religiously engaging both body and soul in his service.”
Uire meum, si vis, flamma caput, et pete ferro
Corpus, et iutorto verbere terga seca.
“Wound me with steel, or burn my head with
fire.
Or scourge my shoulders with well-twisted
wire.”
This was an obligation indeed, and yet there, in one year,
ten thousand entered into it, to their destruction. When the
Scythians interred their king they strangled upon his body
the most beloved of his concubines, his cup-bearer, the master of his horse, his chamberlain, the usher of his chamber,
and his cook. And upon the anniversary thereof they killed
fifty horses, mounted by fifty pages, that they had impaled
all up the spine of the back to the throat, and there left them
fixed in triumph about his tomb. The men that serve us
do it cheaper, and for a less careful and favourable usage
than what we treat our hawks, horses and dogs withal. To
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what solicitude do we not submit for the conveniences of
these? I do not think that servants of the most abject condition would willingly do that for their masters that princes
think it an honour to do for their beasts. Diogenes seeing his
relations solicitous to redeem, him from servitude: “They
are fools,” said he; “‘tis he that keeps and nourishes me
that in reality serves me.” And they who entertain beasts
ought rather to be said to serve them, than to be served by
them. And withal in this these have something more generous in that one lion never submitted to another lion, nor
one horse to another, for want of courage. As we go to the
chase of beasts, so do tigers and lions to the chase of men,
and do the same execution upon one another; dogs upon
hares, pikes upon tench, swallows upon grass-hoppers, and
sparrow-hawks upon blackbirds and larks:
“The stork with snakes and lizards from the
wood
And pathless wilds supports her callow brood,
While Jove’s own eagle, bird of noble blood,
Scours the wide country for undaunted food;
Sweeps the swift hare or swifter fawn away,
And feeds her nestlings with the generous
prey.”
We divide the quarry, as well as the pains and labour of the
chase, with our hawks and hounds. And about Amphipolis,
in Thrace, the hawkers and wild falcons equally divide the
prey in the half. As also along the lake Mæotis, if the fisherman does not honestly leave the wolves an equal share of
what he has caught, they presently go and tear his nets in
pieces. And as we have a way of sporting that is carried on
more by subtlety than force, as springing hares, and angling
with line and hook, there is also the like amongst other animals. Aristotle says that the cuttle-fish casts a gut out of her
throat as long as a line, which she extends and draws back
at pleasure; and as she perceives some little fish approach
her she lets it nibble upon the end of this gut, lying herself
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concealed in the sand or mud, and by little and little draws
it in, till the little fish is so near her that at one spring she
may catch it.
As to strength, there is no creature in the world exposed
to so many injuries as man. We need not a whale, elephant,
or a crocodile, nor any such-like animals, of which one alone
is sufficient to dispatch a great number of men, to do our
business; lice are sufficient to vacate Sylla’s dictatorship;
and the heart and life of a great and triumphant emperor
is the breakfast of a little contemptible worm!
Why should we say that it is only for man, or knowledge built up by art and meditation, to distinguish the
things useful for his being, and proper for the cure of his
diseases, and those which are not; to know the virtues of
rhubarb and polypody. When we see the goats of Candia,
when wounded with an arrow, among a million of plants
choose out dittany for their cure; and the tortoise, when
she has eaten a viper, immediately go out to look for origanum to purge her; the dragon to rub and clear his eyes
with fennel; the storks to give themselves clysters of seawater; the elephants to draw not only out of their own bodies, and those of their companions, but out of the bodies of
their masters too (witness the elephant of King Porus whom
Alexander defeated), the darts and javelins thrown at them
in battle, and that so dexterously that we ourselves could
not do it with so little pain to the patient;–why do we not
say here also that this is knowledge and reason? For to allege, to their disparagement, that ‘tis by the sole instruction
and dictate of nature that they know all this, is not to take
from them the dignity of knowledge and reason, but with
greater force to attribute it to them than to us, for the honour of so infallible a mistress. Chrysippus, though in other
things as scornful a judge of the condition of animals as any
other philosopher whatever, considering the motions of a
dog, who coming to a place where three ways met, either to
hunt after his master he has lost, or in pursuit of some game
that flies before him, goes snuffing first in one of the ways,
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and then in another, and, after having made himself sure
of two, without finding the trace of what he seeks, dashes
into the third without examination, is forced to confess that
this reasoning is in the dog: “I have traced my master to
this place; he must of necessity be gone one of these three
ways; he is not gone this way nor that, he must then infallibly be gone this other;” and that assuring himself by this
conclusion, he makes no use of his nose in the third way, nor
ever lays it to the ground, but suffers himself to be carried
on there bv the force of reason. This sally, purely logical,
and this use of propositions divided and conjoined, and the
right enumeration of parts, is it not every whit as good that
the dog knows all this of himself as well as from Trapezuntius?
Animals are not incapable, however, of being instructed after our method. We teach blackbirds, ravens,
pies, and parrots, to speak: and the facility wherewith we
see they lend us their voices, and render both them and
their breath so supple and pliant, to be formed and confined within a certain number of letters and syllables, does
evince that they have a reason within, which renders them
so docile and willing to learn. Everybody, I believe, is glutted with the several sorts of tricks that tumblers teach their
dogs; the dances, where they do not miss any one cadence of
the sound they hear; the several various motions and leaps
they make them perform by the command of a word. But I
observe this effect with the greatest admiration, which nevertheless is very common, in the dogs that lead the blind,
both in the country and in cities: I have taken notice how
they stop at certain doors, where they are wont to receive
alms; how they avoid the encounter of coaches and carts,
even there where they have sufficient room to pass; I have
seen them, by the trench of a town, forsake a plain and
even path and take a worse, only to keep their masters
further from the ditch;–how could a man have made this
dog understand that it was his office to look to his master’s
safely only, and to despise his own conveniency to serve
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him? And how had he the knowledge that a way was wide
enough for him that was not so for a blind man? Can all this
be apprehended without ratiocination!
I must not omit what Plutarch says he saw of a dog at
Rome with the Emperor Vespasian, the father, at the theatre
of Marcellus. This dog served a player, that played a farce of
several parts and personages, and had therein his part. He
had, amongst other things, to counterfeit himself for some
time dead, by reason of a certain drug he was supposed to
eat After he had swallowed a piece of bread, which passed
for the drug, he began after awhile to tremble and stagger,
as if he was taken giddy: at last, stretching himself out stiff,
as if dead, he suffered himself to be drawn and dragged
from place to place, as it was his part to do; and afterward,
when he knew it to be time, he began first gently to stir, as
if awaking out of a profound sleep, and lifting up his head
looked about him after such a manner as astonished all the
spectators.
The oxen that served in the royal gardens of Susa, to
water them, and turn certain great wheels to draw water for
that purpose, to which buckets were fastened (such as there
are many in Languedoc), being ordered every one to draw a
hundred turns a day, they were so accustomed to this number that it was impossible by any force to make them draw
one turn more; but, their task being performed, they would
suddenly stop and stand still. We are almost men before we
can count a hundred, and have lately discovered nations
that have no knowledge of numbers at all.
There is more understanding required in the teaching
of’ others than in being taught. Now, setting aside what
Democritus held and proved, “That most of the arts we
have were taught us by other animals,” as by the spider
to weave and sew; by the swallow to build; by the swan
and nightingale music; and by several animals to make
medicines:–Aristotle is of opinion “That the nightingales
teach their young ones to sing, and spend a great deal of
time and care in it;” whence it happens that those we bring
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up in cages, and which have not had the time to learn
of their parents, want much of the grace of their singing:
we may judge by this that they improve by discipline and
study; and, even amongst the wild, it is not all and every
one alike–every one has learnt to do better or worse, according to their capacity. And so jealous are they one of another,
whilst learning, that they contention with emulation, and
by so vigorous a contention that sometimes the vanquished
fall dead upon the place, the breath rather failing than the
voice. The younger ruminate pensively and begin to mutter some broken notes; the disciple listens to the master’s
lesson, and gives the best account he is able; they are silent
oy turns; one may hear faults corrected and observe some
reprehensions of the teacher. ”Ï have formerly seen,” says
Arrian, “an elephant having a cymbal hung at each leg, and
another fastened to his trunk, at the sound of which all the
others danced round about him, rising and bending at certain cadences, as they were guided by the instrument; and
‘twas delightful to hear this harmony.” In the spectacles of
Rome there were ordinarily seen elephants taught to move
and dance to the sound of the voice, dances wherein were
several changes and cadences very hard to learn. And some
have been known so intent upon their lesson as privately
to practice it by themselves, that they might not be chidden
nor beaten by their masters.
But this other story of the pie, of which we have
Plutarch himself for a warrant, is very strange. She lived
in a barber’s shop at Rome, and did wonders in imitating
with her voice whatever she heard. It happened one day
that certain trumpeters stood a good while sounding before
the shop. After that, and all the next day, the pie was pensive, dumb, and melancholic; which every body wondered
at, and thought the noise of the trumpets had so stupified
and astonished her that her voice was gone with her hearing. But they found at last that it was a profound meditation and a retiring into herself, her thoughts exercising and
preparing her voice to imitate the sound of those trumpets,
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so that the first voice she uttered was perfectly to imitate
their strains, stops, and changes; having by this new lesson
quitted and taken in disdain all she had learned before.
I will not omit this other example of a dog, also, which
the same Plutarch (I am sadly confounding all order, but I
do not propose arrangement here any more than elsewhere
throughout my book) which Plutarch says he saw on board
a ship. This dog being puzzled how to get the oil that was
in the bottom of a jar, which he could not reach with his
tongue by reason of the narrow mouth of the vessel, went
and fetched stones and let them fall into the jar till he made
the oil rise so high that he could reach it. What is this but
an effect of a very subtle capacity! ‘Tis said that the ravens
of Barbary do the same, when the water they would drink
is too low. This action is somewhat akin to what Juba, a
king of their nation relates of the elephants: “That when,
by the craft of the hunter, one of them is trapped in certain
deep pits prepared for them, and covered over with brush
to deceive them, all the rest, in great diligence, bring a great
many stones and logs of wood to raise the bottom so that he
may get out.” But this animal, in several other effects, comes
so near to human capacity that, should I particularly relate
all that experience hath delivered to us, I should easily have
what I usually maintain granted: namely, that there is more
difference betwixt such and such a man than betwixt such
a beast and such a man. The keeper of an elephant in a private house of Syria robbed him every meal of the half of
his allowance. One day his master would himself feed him,
and poured the full measure of barley he had ordered for
his allowance into his manger which the elephant, casting
an angry look at the keeper, with his trunk separated the
one-half from the other, and thrust it aside, by that declaring the wrong was done him. And another, having a keeper
that mixed stones with his corn to make up the measure,
came to the pot where he was boiling meat for his own dinner, and filled it with ashes. These are particular effects: but
that which all the world has seen, and all the world knows,
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that in all the armies of the Levant one of the greatest force
consisted in elephants, with whom they did, without comparison, much greater execution than we now do with our
artillery; which takes, pretty nearly, their place in a day of
battle (as may easily be supposed by such as are well read
in ancient history);
“The sires of these huge animals were wont
The Carthaginian Hannibal to mount;
Our leaders also did these beasts bestride,
And mounted thus Pyrrhus his foes defied;
Nay, more, upon their backs they used to bear
Castles with armed cohorts to the war.”
They must necessarily have very confidently relied upon
the fidelity and understanding of these beasts when they
entrusted them with the vanguard of a battle, where the
least stop they should have made, by reason of the bulk and
heaviness of their bodies, and the least fright that should
have made them face about upon their own people, had
been enough to spoil all: and there are but few examples
where it has happened that they have fallen foul upon their
own troops, whereas we ourselves break into our own battalions and rout one another. They had the charge not of
one simple movement only, but of many several things to
be performed in the battle: as the Spaniards did to their
dogs in their new conquest of the Indies, to whom they gave
pay and allowed them a share in the spoil; and those animals showed as much dexterity and judgment in pursuing
the victory and stopping the pursuit; in charging and retiring, as occasion required; and in distinguishing their friends
from their enemies, as they did ardour and fierceness.
We more admire and value things that are unusual and
strange than those of ordinary observation. I had not else
so long insisted upon these examples: for I believe whoever shall strictly observe what we ordinarily see in those
animals we have amongst us may there find as wonderful
effects as those we seek in remote countries and ages. ‘Tis
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one and the same nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things,
might certainly conclude as to both the future ana the past.
I have formerly seen men, brought hither by sea from very
distant countries, whose language not being understood by
us, and moreover their mien, countenance, and habit, being
quite differing from ours; which of us did not repute them
savages and brutes! Who did not attribute it to stupidity
and want of common sense to see them mute, ignorant of
the French tongue, ignorant of our salutations and cringes,
our port and behaviour, from which all human nature must
by all means take its pattern and example. All that seems
strange to us, and that we do not understand, we condemn.
The same thing happens also in the judgments we make
of beasts. They have several conditions like to ours; from
those we may, by comparison, draw some conjecture: but
by those qualities that are particular to themselves, what
know we what to make of them! The horses, dogs, oxen,
sheep, birds, and most of the animals that live amongst us,
know our voices, and suffer themselves to be governed by
them: so did Crassus’s lamprey, and came when he called
it; as also do the eels that are found in the Lake Arethusa;
and I have seen several ponds where the fishes come to eat
at a certain call of those who use to feed them.
“They every one have names, and one and all
Straightway appear at their own master’s call:”
We may judge of that. We may also say that the elephants
have some participation of religion forasmuch as after several washings and purifications they are observed to lift up
their trunk like arms, and, fixing their eyes towards the rising of the sun, continue long in meditation and contemplation, at certain hours of the days, of their own motion;
without instruction or precept But because we do not see
any such signs in other animals, we cannot for that conclude that they are without religion, nor make any judgment of what is concealed from us. As we discern something in this action which the philosopher Cleanthes took
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notice of, because it something resembles our own. He saw,
he says, “Ants go from their ant-hill, carrying the dead body
of an ant towards another ant-hill, whence several other
ants came out to meet them, as if to speak with them; where,
after having been a while together, the last returned to consult, you may suppose, with their fellow-citizens, and so
made two or three journeys, by reason of the difficulty of
capitulation. In the conclusion, the last comers brought the
first a worm out of their burrow, as it were for the ransom
of the defunct, which the first laid upon their backs and
carried home, leaving the dead body to the others.” This
was the interpretation that Cleanthes gave of this transaction, giving us by that to understand that those creatures
that have no voice are not, nevertheless, without intercourse
and mutual communication, whereof ‘tis through our own
defect that we do not participate; and for that reason foolishly take upon us to pass our censure. But they yet produce
either effects far beyond our capacity, to which we are so
far from being able to arrive by imitation that we cannot so
much as by imitation conceive it. Many are of opinion that
in the great and last naval engagement that Antony lost to
Augustus, his admiral galley was stayed in the middle of
her course by the little fish the Latins call remora, by reason of the property she has of staying all sorts of vessels to
which she fastens herself. And the Emperor Caligula, sailing with a great navy upon the coast of Romania, his galley only was suddenly stayed by the same fish, which, he
caused to be taken, fastened as it was to the keel of his ship,
very angry that such a little animal could resist both the sea,
the wind, and the force of all his oars, by being only fastened by the beak to his galley (for it is a shell-fish); and was
moreover, not without great reason, astonished that, being
brought to him in the vessel, it had no longer the strength
it had without. A citizen of Cyzicus formerly acquired the
reputation of a good mathematician for having learnt the
quality of the hedge-hog: he has his burrow open in divers
places, and to several winds, and, foreseeing the wind that
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is to come, stops the hole on that side, which that citizen observing, gave the city certain predictions of the wind which
was presently to blow. The caméléon takes her colour from
the place upon which she is laid; but the polypus gives himself what colour he pleases, according to occasion, either to
conceal himself from what he fears, or from what he has a
design to seize: in the caméléon ‘tis a passive, but in the
polypus ‘tis an active, change. We have some changes of
colour, as in fear, anger, shame, and other passions, that alter our complexions; but it is by the effect of suffering, as
with the caméléon. It is in the power of the jaundice, indeed,
to make us turn yellow, but ‘tis not in the power of our own
will. Now these effects that we discover in other animals,
much greater than ours, seem to imply some more excellent
faculty in them unknown to us; as ‘tis to be presumed there
are several other qualities and abilities of theirs, of which no
appearances have arrived at us.
Amongst all the predictions of elder times, the most ancient and the most certain were those taken from the flight
of birds; we have nothing certain like it, nor any thing to
be so much admired. That rule and order of the moving
of the wing, whence they derived the consequences of future things, must of necessity be guided by some excellent
means to so noble an operation: for to attribute this great
effect to any natural disposition, without the intelligence,
consent, and meditation of him by whom it is produced,
is an opinion evidently false. That it is so, the cramp-fish
has this quality, not only to benumb all the members that
touch her, but even through the nets transmit a heavy dulness into the hands of those that move and handle them;
nay, it is further said that if one pour water upon her, he
will feel this numbness mount up the water to the hand,
and stupefy the feeling through the water. This is a miraculous force; but ‘tis not useless to the cramp-fish; she knows
it, and makes use on’t; for, to catch the prey she desires, she
will bury herself in the mud, that other fishes swimming
over her, struck and benumbed with this coldness of hers,
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may fall into her power. Cranes, swallows, and other birds
of passage, by shifting their abode according to the seasons,
sufficiently manifest the knowledge they have of their divining faculty, and put it in use. Huntsmen assure us that
to cull out from amongst a great many puppies that which
ought to be preserved as the best, the best way is to refer
the choice to the mother; as thus, take them and carry them
out of the kennel, and the first she brings back will certainly
be the best; or if you make a show as if you would environ
the kennel with fire, that one she first catches up to save. By
which it appears they have a sort of prognostic which we
have not; or that they have some virtue in judging of their
whelps other and more certain than we have.
The manner of coming into the world, of engendering,
nourishing, acting, moving, living and dying of beasts, is so
near to ours that whatever we retrench from their moving
causes, and add to our own condition above theirs, can by
no means proceed from any meditation of our own reason.
For the regimen of our health, physicians propose to us the
example of the beasts’ manners and way of living; for this
saying (out of Plutarch) has in all times been in the mouth
of these people: “Keep warm thy feet and head, as to the
rest, live like a beast.”
The chief of all natural actions is generation; we have a
certain disposition of members which is the most proper for
us to that end; nevertheless, we are ordered by Lucretius to
conform to the gesture and posture of the brutes as the most
effectual:–
More ferarum,
Quadrupedumque magis ritu, plerumque
putantur
Concipere uxores:
Quia sic loca sumere possunt,
Pectoribus positis, sublatis semina lumbis;
and the same authority condemns, as hurtful, those indiscreet and impudent motions which the women have added
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of their own invention, to whom it proposes the more temperate and modest pattern and practice of the beasts of their
own sex:–
Nam mulier prohibet se concipere atque
répugnât,
Clunibus ipsa viri Venerem si læta retractet,
Atque exossato ciet omni pectore fluctua.
Ejicit enim sulci recta regione viaque
Vomerem, atque locis avertit seminis ictum.
If it be justice to render to every one their due, the beasts
that serve, love, and defend their benefactors, and that pursue and fall upon strangers and those who offend them, do
in this represent a certain air of our justice; as also in observing a very equitable equality in the distribution of what they
have to their young. And as to friendship, they have it without comparison more lively and constant than men have.
King Lysimachus’s dog, Hyrcanus, master being dead, lay
on his bed, obstinately refusing either to eat or drink; and,
the day that his body was burnt, he took a run and leaped
into the fire, where he was consumed, As also did the dog
of one Pyrrhus, for he would not stir from off his master’s
bed from the time he died; and when they carried him away
let himself be carried with him, and at last leaped into the
pile where they burnt his master’s body. There are inclinations of affection which sometimes spring in us, without the
consultation of reason; and by a fortuitous temerity, which
others call sympathy; of which beasts are as capable as we.
We see horses take such an acquaintance with one another
that we have much ado to make them eat or travel, when
separated; we observe them to fancy a particular colour in
those of their own kind, and, where they meet it, run to it
with great joy and demonstrations of good will, and have
a dislike and hatred for some other colour. Animals have
choice, as well as we, in their amours, and cull out their
mistresses; neither are they exempt from our jealousies and
implacable malice.
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Desires are either natural and necessary, as to eat and
drink; or natural and not necessary, as the coupling with females; or neither natural nor necessary; of which last sort
are almost all the desires of men; they are all superfluous
and artificial. For ‘tis marvellous how little will satisfy nature, how little she has left us to desire; our ragouts and
kickshaws are not of her ordering. The Stoics say that a
man may live on an olive a day. The delicacy of our wines is
no part of her instruction, nor the refinements we introduce
into the indulgence of our amorous appetites:–
Neque ilia
Magno prognatum deposcit consule cunnum.
“Nature, in her pursuit of love, disclaims
The pride of titles, and the pomp of names.”
These irregular desires, that the ignorance of good and a
false opinion have infused into us, are so many that they almost exclude all the natural; just as if there were so great a
number of strangers in the city as to thrust out the natural
inhabitants, or, usurping upon their ancient rights and privileges, should extinguish their authority and introduce new
laws and customs of their own. Animals are much more
regular than we, and keep themselves with greater moderation within the limits nature has prescribed; but yet not
so exactly that they have not sometimes an analogy with
our debauches. And as there have been furious desires that
have impelled men to the love of beasts, so there have been
examples of beasts that have fallen in love with us, and been
seized with monstrous affection betwixt kinds; witness the
elephant who was rival to Aristophanes the grammarian in
the love of a young herb-wench in the city of Alexandria,
who was nothing behind him in all the offices of a very
passionate suitor; for going through the market where they
sold fruit, he would take some in his trunk and carry them
to her. He would as much as possible keep her always in his
sight, and would sometimes put his trunk under her handkerchief into her bosom, to feel her breasts. They tell also
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of a dragon in love with a girl, and of a goose enamoured
of a child; of a ram that was suitor to the minstrelless Glaucia, in the town of Asopus; and we see not unfrequently
baboons furiously in love with women. We see also certain
male animals that are fond of the males of their own kind.
Oppian and others give us some examples of the reverence
that beasts have to their kindred in their copulations; but
experience often shows us the contrary:–
Nec habetur turpe juvencæ
Ferre patrem tergo; fit equo sua filia conjux;
Quasque creavit, init pecudes caper; ipsaque cujus
Semine concepta est, ex illo concipit ales.
“The heifer thinks it not a shame to take
Her lusty sire upon her willing back:
The horse his daughter leaps, goats scruple not
T’ increase the herd by those they have begot;
And birds of all sorts do in common live,
And by the seed they have conceived conceive.”
And for subtle cunning, can there be a more pregnant example than in the philosopher Thales’s mule? who, fording
a river, laden with salt, and by accident stumbling there, so
that the sacks he carried were all wet, perceiving that by
the melting of the salt his burden was something lighter,
he never failed, so oft as he came to any river, to lie down
with his load; till his master, discovering the knavery, ordered that he should be laden with wood? wherein, finding
himself mistaken, he ceased to practise that device. There
are several that very vividly represent the true image of our
avarice; for we see them infinitely solicitus to get all they
can, and hide it with that exceeding great care, though they
never make any use of it at all. As to thrift, they surpass
us not only in the foresight and laying up, and saving for
the time to come, but they have, moreover, a great deal of
the science necessary thereto. The ants bring abroad into
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the sun their grain and seed to air, refresh and dry them
when they perceive them to mould and grow musty, lest
they should decay and rot. But the caution and prevention
they use in gnawing their grains of wheat surpass all imagination of human prudence; for by reason that the wheat
does not always continue sound and dry, but grows soft,
thaws and dissolves as if it were steeped in milk, whilst
hasting to germination; for fear lest it should shoot and lose
the nature and property of a magazine for their subsistence,
they nibble off the end by which it should shoot and sprout.
As to what concerns war, which is the greatest and
most magnificent of human actions, I would very fain know
whether we would use it for an argument of some prerogative or, on contrary, for a testimony of our weakness and
imperfection; as, in truth, the science of undoing and killing
one another, and of ruining and destroying our own kind,
has nothing in it so tempting as to make it be coveted by
beasts who have it not.
Quando leoni Fortior eripuit vitam leo? quo
nemore unquam
Expiravit aper majoris dentibus apri?
“No lion drinks a weaker lion’s gore,
No boar expires beneath a stronger boar.”
Yet are they not universally exempt; witness the furious encounters of bees, and the enterprises of the princes of the
contrary armies:–
Sæpe duobus Regibus incessit magno discordia
motu;
Continuoque animos vulgi et trepidantia bello
Gorda licet longé præsciscere.
“But if contending factions arm the hive,
When rival kings in doubtful battle strive,
Tumultuous crowds the dread event prepare,
And palpitating hearts that beat to war.”
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I never read this divine description but that, methinks, I
there see human folly and vanity represented in their true
and lively colours. For these warlike movements, that so
ravish us with their astounding noise and horror, this rattle
of guns, drums, and cries,
Fulgur ibi ad coelum se tollit, totaque circum
Ære renidescit tellus, subterque virûm vi
Excitur pedibus sonitus, clamoreque montes
Icti rejectant voces ad sidera mundi;
“When burnish’d arms to heaven dart their rays,
And many a steely beam i’ th’ sunlight plays,
When trampled is the earth by horse and man,
Until the very centre groans again,
And that the rocks, struck by the various cries,
Reverberate the sound unto the skies;”
in the dreadful embattling of so many thousands of armed
men, and so great fury, ardour, and courage, ‘tis pleasant
to consider by what idle occasions they are excited, and by
how light ones appeased:–
Paridis propter narratur amorem
Greciæ Barbariæ diro collisa duello:
“Of wanton Paris the illicit love
Did Greece and Troy to ten years’ warfare
move:”
all Asia was ruined and destroyed for the lust of Paris; the
envy of one single man, a despite, a pleasure, a domestic
jealousy, causes that ought not to set two oyster-wenches
by the ears, is the mover of all this mighty bustle. Shall we
believe those very men who are themselves the principal
authors of these mischiefs? Let us then hear the greatest, the
most powerful, the most victorious emperor that ever was,
turning into a jest, very pleasantly and ingeniously, several
battles fought both by sea and land, the blood and lives of
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five hundred thousand men that followed his fortune, and
the strength and riches of two parts of the world drained for
the expense of his expeditions:–
Quod futuit Glaphyran Antonius, hanc mihi
poenam
Fulvia constituit, se quoqne uti futuam.
Fulviam ego ut futuam! quid, si me Manius oret
Podicem, faciam? Non puto, si sapiam.
Aut futue, aut pugnemus, ait
Quid, si mihi vitii
Charior est ipsâ mentula? Signa canant.
Qui? moi, que je serve Fulvie!
Sufflt-il quelle en ait envie?
A ce compte, on verrait se retirer von moi
Mille épouses mal satisfaites.
Aime-moi, me dit elle, ou combattons. Mais
quoi?
Elle est bien laide! Allons, sonnes trompettes.
‘Cause Anthony is fired with Glaphire’s charms
Fain would his Fulvia tempt me to her arms
If Anthony be false, what then? must I
Be slave to Fulvia’s lustful tyranny?
Then would a thousand wanton, waspish wives,
(I use my Latin with the liberty of conscience
you are pleased to allow me.) Now this great
body, with so many fronts, and so many motions, which seems to threaten heaven and
earth:–
Quam multi Lybico volvuntur marmore fluctus,
Sævus ubi Orion hibemis conditur undis,
Vel quam solo novo densæ torrentur Aristæ,
Aut Hermi campo, aut Lyciæ flaventibus arvis;
Scuta sonant, pulsuque pedum tremit excita tellus:
“Not thicker billows beat the Lybian main,
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When pale Orion sits in wintry rain;
Nor thicker harvests on rich Hermus rise,
Or Lycian fields, when Phobus burns the skies,
Than stand these troops: their bucklers ring
around;
Their trampling turns the turf and shakes the
solid ground:”
this furious monster, with so many heads and arms, is yet
man–feeble, calamitous, and miserable man! ‘Tis but an anthill disturbed and provoked:–
It nigrum campis agmen:
“The black troop marches to the field:”
“Swarm to my bed like bees into their hives.
Declare for love, or war, she said; and frown’d:
No love I’ll grant: to arms bid trumpets sound.”
Hi motus animorum, atque hoc certamina tanta,
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent.
“Yet at thy will these dreadful conflicts cease,
Throw but a little dust and all is peace.”
Let us but slip our flies after them, and they will have the
force and courage to defeat them. Of fresh memory, the Portuguese having besieged the city of Tamly, in the territory of
Xiatine, the inhabitants of the place brought a great many
hives, of which are great plenty in that place, upon the wall;
and with fire drove the bees so furiously upon the enemy
that they gave over the enterprise, not being able to stand
their attacks and endure their stings; and so the citizens, by
this new sort of relief, gained liberty and the victory with
so wonderful a fortune, that at the return of their defenders from the battle they found they had not lost so much
as one. The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the
same mould; the weight and importance of the actions of
princes considered, we persuade ourselves that they must
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be produced by some as weighty and important causes; but
we are deceived; for they are pushed on, and pulled back
in their motions, by the same springs that we are in our little undertakings. The same reason that makes us wrangle
with a neighbour causes a war betwixt princes; the same
reason that makes us whip a lackey, falling into the hands
of a king makes him ruin a whole province. They are as
lightly moved as we, but they are able to do more. In a gnat
and an elephant the passion is the same.
As to fidelity, there is no animal in the world so treacherous as man. Our histories have recorded the violent pursuits that dogs have made after the murderers of their masters. King Pyrrhus observing a dog that watched a dead
man’s body, and understanding that he had for three days
together performed that office, commanded that the body
should be buried, and took the dog along with him. One
day, as he was at a general muster of his army, this dog,
seeing his master’s murderers, with great barking and extreme signs of anger flew upon them, and by this first accusation awakened the revenge of this murder, which was
soon after perfected by form of justice. As much was done
by the dog of the wise Hesiod, who convicted the sons of
Ganictor of Naupactus of the murder committed on the person of his master. Another dog being to guard a temple at
Athens, having spied a sacrilegious thief carrying away the
finest jewels, fell to barking at him with all his force, but the
warders not awaking at the noise, he followed him, and day
being broke, kept off at a little distance, without losing sight
of him; if he offered him any thing to eat he would not take
it, but would wag his tail at all the passengers he met, and
took whatever they gave him; and if the thief laid down to
sleep, he likewise stayed upon the same place. The news of
this dog being come to the warders of the temple they put
themselves upon the pursuit, inquiring of the colour of the
dog, and at last found him in the city of Cromyon, and the
thief also, whom they brought back to Athens, where he got
his reward; and the judges, in consideration of this good of177
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fice, ordered a certain measure of corn for the dog’s daily
sustenance, at the public charge, and the priests to take care
of it. Plutarch delivers this story for a certain truth, and that
it happened in the age wherein he lived.
As to gratitude (for I think we need bring this word
into a little repute), this one example, which Apion reports
himself to have been an eye-witness of, shall suffice.
“One day,” says he, “at Rome, they entertained the people with the sight of the fighting of several strange beasts,
and principally of lions of an unusual size; there was one
amongst the rest who, by his furious deportment, by the
strength and largeness of his limbs, and by his loud and
dreadful roaring, attracted the eyes of all the spectators.
Amongst other slaves that were presented to the people in
this combat of beasts there was one Androdus, of Dacia, belonging to a Roman lord of consular dignity. This lion having seen him at a distance first made a sudden stop, as it
were in a wondering posture, and then softly approached
nearer in a gentle and peaceable manner, as if it were to enter into acquaintance with him. This being done, and being
now assured of what he sought for, he began to wag his tail,
as dogs do when they flatter their masters, and to kiss and
lick the hands and thighs of the poor wretch, who was beside himself, and almost dead with fear. Androdus being by
this kindness of the lion a little come to himself, and having
taken so much heart as to consider and know him, it was a
singular pleasure to see the joy and caresses that passed betwixt them. At which the people breaking into loud acclamations of joy, the emperor caused the slave to be called, to
know from him the cause of so strange an event; who thereupon told him a new and a very strange story: “My master,” said he, “being pro-consul in Africa, I was constrained,
by his severity and cruel usage, being daily beaten, to steal
from him and run away; and, to hide myself secretly from
a person of so great authority in the province, I thought it
my best way to fly to the solitudes, sands, and uninhabitable parts of that country, resolving that in case the means
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of supporting life should chance to fail me, to make some
shift or other to kill myself. The sun being excessively hot
at noon, and the heat intolerable, I lit upon a private and
almost inaccessible cave, and went into it Soon after there
came in to me this lion, with one foot wounded and bloody,
complaining and groaning with the pain he endured. At his
coming I was exceeding afraid; but he having spied me hid
in the comer of his den, came gently to me, holding out and
showing me his wounded foot, as if he demanded my assistance in his distress. I then drew out a great splinter he
had got there, and, growing a little more familiar with him,
squeezing the wound thrust out the matter, dirt, and gravel
which was got into it, and wiped and cleansed it the best
I could. He, finding himself something better, and much
eased of his pain, laid him down to rest, and presently fell
asleep with his foot in my hand. From that time forward he
and I lived together in this cave three whole years upon one
and the same diet; for of the beasts that he killed in hunting he always brought me the best pieces, which I roasted
in the sun for want of fire, and so ate it. At last, growing
weary of this wild and brutish life, the lion being one day
gone abroad to hunt for our ordinary provision, I departed
thence, and the third day after was taken by the soldiers,
who brought me from Africa to this city to my master, who
presently condemned me to die, and to be thus exposed to
the wild beasts. Now, by what I see, this lion was also taken
soon after, who has now sought to recompense me for the
benefit and cure that he received at my hands.” This is the
story that Androdus told the emperor, which he also conveyed from hand to hand to the people; wherefore, at the
general request, he was absolved from his sentence and set
at liberty, and the lion was, by order of the people, presented
to him. “We afterwards saw,” says Apion, “Androdus leading this lion, in nothing but a small leash, from tavern to tavern at Rome, and receiving what money every body would
give him, the lion being so gentle as to suffer himself to be
covered with the flowers that the people threw upon him,
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every one that met him saying, ‘There goes the lion that entertained the man; there goes the man that cured the lion.”’
We often lament the loss of beasts we love, and so do
they the loss of us:–
Post, bellator equus, positis insignibus, Æthon
It lacrymans, guttisque humectât grandibus ora.
To close the pomp, Æthon, the steed of state.
Is led, the fun’ral of his lord to wait.
Stripped of his trappings, with a sullen pace
He walks, and the big tears run rolling down his
face.”
As some nations have their wives in common, and some
others have every one his own, is not the same seen among
beasts, and marriages better kept than ours? As to the society and confederation they make amongst themselves, to
league together and to give one another mutual assistance,
is it not known that oxen, hogs, and other animals, at the
cry of any of their kind that we offend, all the herd run to
his aid and embody for his defence? The fish Scarus, when
he has swallowed the angler’s hook, his fellows all crowd
about him and gnaw the line in pieces; and if, by chance,
one be got into the bow net, the others present him their
tails on the outside, which he holding fast with his teeth,
they after that manner disengage and draw him out.
Mullets, when one of their companions is engaged,
cross the line over their back, and, with a fin they have
there, indented like a saw, cut and saw it asunder. As to
the particular offices that we receive from one another for
the service of life, there are several like examples amongst
them. ‘Tis said that the whale never moves that she has not
always before her a little fish like the sea-gudgeon, for this
reason called the guide-fish, whom the whale follows, suffering himself to be led and turned with as great facility as
the rudder guides the ship; in recompense of which service
also, whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel,
that enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster’s mouth,
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are immediately lost and swallowed up, this little fish retires into it in great security, and there sleeps, during which
time the whale never stirs; but so soon as ever it goes out
he immediately follows it; and if by accident he loses the
sight of his little guide, he goes wandering here and there,
and strikes his sides against the rocks like a ship that has
lost her helm; which Plutarch affirms to have seen in the
island of Anticyra. There is a like society betwixt the little bird called the wren and the crocodile. The wren serves
for a sentinel over this great animal; and if the ichneumon,
his mortal enemy, approach to fight him, this little bird, for
fear lest he should surprise him asleep, both with his voice
and bill rouses him and gives him notice of his danger. He
feeds of this monster’s leavings, who receives him familiarly into his mouth, suffering him to peck in his jaws and
betwixt his teeth, and thence to pick out the bits of flesh
that remain; and when he has a mind to shut his mouth,
he first gives the bird warning to go out by closing it by little and little, and without bruising or doing it any harm at
all. The shell-fish called the naker, lives in the same intelligence with the shrimp, a little sort of animal of the lobster
kind, which serves him in the nature of a porter, sitting at
the opening of the shell, which the naker keeps always gaping and open till the shrimp sees some little fish, proper for
their prey, within the hollow of the shell, where she enters
too, and pinches the naker so to the quick that she is forced
to close her shell, where they two together devour the prey
they have trapped in their fort. In the manner of living of
the tunnies we observe a singular knowledge of the three
parts of mathematics. As to astrology, they teach it men,
for they stay in the place where they are surprised by the
brumal solstice, and never stir thence till the next equinox;
for which reason Aristotle himself attributes to them this
science. As to geometry and arithmetic, they always form
their numbers in the figure of a cube, every way square, and
make up the body of a battalion, solid, close, and environed
round with six equal sides, and swim in this square order, as
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large behind as before; so that whoever in seeing them can
count one rank may easily number the whole troop, by reason that the depth is equal to the breadth, and the breadth
to the length.
As to magnanimity, it will be hard to exhibit a better
instance of it than in the example of the great dog sent to
Alexander the Great from the Indies. They first brought
him a stag to encounter, next a boar, and after that a bear,
all which he slighted, and disdained to stir from his place;
but when he saw a lion he then immediately roused himself,
evidently manifesting that he declared that alone worthy to
enter the lists with him. Touching repentance and the acknowledgment of faults, ‘tis reported of an elephant that,
having in the impetuosity of his rage killed his keeper, he
fell into so extreme a sorrow that he would never after eat,
but starved himself to death. And as to clemency, ‘tis said
of a tiger, the most cruel of all beasts, that a kid having been
put in to him, he suffered a two days’ hunger rather than
hurt it, and the third broke the grate he was shut up in, to
seek elsewhere for prey; so unwilling he was to fall upon
the kid, his familiar and his guest, And as to the laws of
familiarity and agreement, formed by conversation, it ordinarily happens that we bring up cats, dogs, and hares, tame
together.
But that which seamen by experience know, and particularly in the Sicilian Sea, of the quality of the halcyons,
surpasses all human thought of what kind of animal has
nature even so much honoured the birth? The poets indeed
say that one only island, Delos, which was before a floating
island, was fixed for the service of Latona’s lying-in; but
God has ordered that the whole ocean should be stayed,
made stable and smooth, without waves, without winds
or rain, whilst the halcyon produces her young, which is
just about the solstice, the shortest day of the year; so that
by her privilege we have seven days and seven nights in
the very heart of winter wherein we may sail without danger. Their females never have to do with any other male
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but their own, whom they serve and assist all their lives,
without ever forsaking him. If he becomes weak and broken with age, they take him upon their shoulders and carry
him from place to place, and serve him till death. But the
most inquisitive into the secrets of nature could never yet
arrive at the knowledge of the wonderful fabric wherewith
the halcyon builds her nest for her little ones, nor guess at
the materials. Plutarch, who has seen and handled many of
them, thinks it is the bones of some fish which she joins and
binds together, interlacing them, some lengthwise and others across, and adding ribs and hoops in such manner that
she forms at last a round vessel fit to launch; which being
done, and the building finished, she carries it to the beach,
where the sea beating gently against it shows where she is
to mend what is not well jointed and knit, and where better
to fortify the seams that are leaky, that open at the beating
of the waves; and, on the contrary, what is well built and
has had the due finishing, the beating of the waves does so
close and bind together that it is not to be broken or cracked
by blows either of stone or iron without very much ado.
And that which is more to be admired is the proportion and
figure of the cavity within, which is composed and proportioned after such a manner as not to receive or admit any
other thing than the bird that built it; for to any thing else
it is so impenetrable, close, and shut, nothing can enter, not
so much as the water of the sea. This is a very dear description of this building, and borrowed from a very good hand;
and yet me-thinks it does not give us sufficient light into the
difficulty of this architecture. Now from what vanity can it
proceed to despise and look down upon, and disdainfully
to interpret, effects that we can neither imitate nor comprehend?
To pursue a little further this equality and correspondence betwixt us and beasts, the privilege our soul so much
glorifies herself upon, of things she conceives to her own
law, of striping all things that come to her of their mortal
and corporeal qualities, of ordering and placing things she
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conceives worthy her taking notice of, stripping and divesting them of their corruptible qualities, and making them
to lay aside length, breadth, depth, weight, colour, smell,
roughness, smoothness, hardness, softness, and all sensible
accidents, as mean and superfluous vestments, to accommodate them to her own immortal and spiritual condition;
as Rome and Paris, for example, that I have in my fancy,
Paris that I imagine, I imagine and comprehend it without
greatness and without place, without stone, without plaster,
and without wood; this very same privilege, I say, seems
evidently to be in beasts; for a courser accustomed to trumpets, to musket-shots, and battles, whom we see start and
tremble in his sleep and stretched upon his litter, as if he
were in a fight; it is almost certain that he conceives in his
soul the beat of a drum without noise, and an army without
arms and without body:–
Quippe videbis equos fortes, cum membra jacebunt
In somnis, sudare tamen, spirareque sæpe,
Et quasi de palmâ summas contendere vires:
“You shall see maneg’d horses in their sleep
Sweat, snort, start, tremble, and a clutter keep
As if with all their force they striving were
The victor’s palm proudly away to bear:”
the hare, that a greyhound imagines in his sleep, after which
we see him pant so whilst he sleeps, stretch out his tail,
shake his legs, and perfectly represents all the motions of
a course, is a hare without fur and without bones:–
Venantumque canes in molli sæpe quiete
Jactant crura tamen subito, vocesque repente
Mittunt, et crebras reducunt naribus auras,
Ut vestigia si teneant inventa ferarum:
Expergefætique sequuntur inania sæpe
Cervorum simulacra, fagæ quasi dedita cernant;
Donee discussis redeant erroribus ad se:
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“And hounds stir often in their quiet rest,
Spending their mouths, as if upon a quest,
Snuff, and breathe quick and short, as if they
went
In a full chase upon a burning scent:
Nay, being wak’d, imagin’d stags pursue,
As if they had them in their real view,
Till, having shook themselves more broad
awake,
They do at last discover the mistake:”
the watch-dogs, that we often observe to snarl in their
dreams, and afterwards bark out, and start up as if they perceived some stranger at hand; the stranger that their soul
discerns is a man spiritual and imperceptible, without dimension, without colour, and without being:–
Consueta domi catulorum blanda propago
Degere, sæpe levem ex oculis volucremque soporem
Discutere, et corpus de terra corripere instant,
Proinde quasi ignotas facies atque ora tuantur.
“The fawning whelps of household curs will
rise,
And, shaking the soft slumber from their eyes,
Oft bark and stare at ev’ry one within,
As upon faces they had never seen.”
Turpis Romano Belgicus ore color:
“A German hue ill suits, a Roman face.”
The Indians paint it black and tawny, with great swelled
lips, wide flat noses and load the cartilage betwixt the nostrils with great rings of gold, to make it hang down to the
mouth; as also the under lip with great hoops, enriched
with precious stones, that weigh them down to fall upon the
chin, it being with them a singular grace to show their teeth,
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even below the roots. In Peru the greatest ears are the most
beautiful, which they stretch out as far as they can by art.
And a man now living says that he has seen in an eastern
nation this care of enlarging them in so great repute, and
the ear loaded with so ponderous jewels, that he did with
great ease put his arm, sleeve and all, through the hole of an
ear. There are elsewhere nations that take great care to black
their teeth, and hate to see them white, whilst others paint
them red. The women are reputed more beautiful, not only
in Biscay, but elsewhere, for having their heads shaved; and,
which is more, in certain frozen countries, as Pliny reports.
The Mexicans esteem a low forehead a great beauty, and
though they shave all other parts, they nourish hair on the
forehead and increase it by art, and have great breasts in so
great reputation that they affect to give their children suck
over their shoulders. We should paint deformity so. The
Italians fashion it gross and massy; the Spaniards gaunt and
slender; and amongst us one has it white, another brown;
one soft and delicate, another strong and vigorous; one will
have his mistress soft and gentle, others haughty and majestic. Just as the preference in beauty that Plato attributes to
the spherical figure the Epicureans gave rather to the pyramidal or square, and cannot swallow a god in the form of
a bowl. But, be it how it will, nature has no more privileged us in this from her common laws than in the rest And
if we will judge ourselves aright, we shall find that, if there
be some animals less favoured in this than we, there are others, and in greater number, that are more; a multis animalibus
decore vincimur “Many animals surpass us in beauty,” even
among the terrestrial, our compatriots; for as to those of sea,
setting the figure aside, which cannot fall into any manner
of proportion, being so much another thing in colour, clearness, smoothness, and arrangement, we sufficiently give
place to them; and no less, in all qualities, to the aerial. And
this prerogative that the poets make such a mighty matter
of, our erect stature, looking towards heaven our original,
Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terrain,
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Os homini sublime dédit, columque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus,
“Whilst all the brutal creatures downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
He set man’s face aloft, that, with his eyes
Uplifted, he might view the starry skies,”
is truly poetical; for there are several little beasts who have
their sight absolutely turned towards heaven; and I find
the gesture of camels and ostriches much higher raised and
more erect than ours. What animals have not their faces
above and not before, and do not look opposite, as we do;
and that do not in their natural posture discover as much of
heaven and earth as man? And what qualities of our bodily constitution, in Plato and Cicero, may not indifferently
serve a thousand sorts of beasts? Those that most resemble us are the most despicable and deformed of all the herd;
for those, as to outward appearance and form of visage, are
baboons:–
Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis?
“How like to man, in visage and in shape, Is,
of all beasts the most uncouth, the ape?”
as to the internal and vital parts, the hog. In earnest, when I
consider man stark naked, even in that sex which seems to
have greatest share of beauty, his defects, natural subjection,
and imperfections, I find that we have more reason than any
other animal, to cover ourselves; and are to be excused from
borrowing of those to whom nature has in this been kinder
than to us, to trick ourselves out with their beauties, and
hide ourselves under their spoils, their wool, feathers, hair,
and silk. Let us observe, as to the rest, that man is the sole
animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the
only one who in his natural actions withdraws and hides
himself from his own kind. And really ‘tis also an effect
worth consideration, that they who are masters in the trade
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prescribe, as a remedy for amorous passions, the full and
free view of the body a man desires; for that to cool the ardour there needs no more but freely and fully to see what
he loves:–
Ille quod obscænas in aperto corpore partes
Viderat, in cursu qui fuit, hæsit amor.
‘The love that’s tilting when those parts appear
Open to view, flags in the hot career,”
And, although this receipt may peradventure proceed from
a nice and cold humour, it is notwithstanding a very great
sign of our deficiencies that use and acquaintance should
make us disgust one another. It is not modesty, so much
as cunning and prudence, that makes our ladies so circumspect to refuse us admittance into their cabinets before they
are painted and tricked up for the public view:–
Nec Veneres nostras hoc fallit; quo magis ipsæ
Omnia summopere hos vitæ postscenia celant,
Quos retinere volunt, adstrictoque esse in
amore:
“Of this our ladies are full well aware,
Which make them, with such privacy and care
Behind the scene all those defects remove,
Likely to check the flame of those they love,”
whereas, in several animals there is nothing that we do
not love, and that does not please our senses; so that from
their very excrements we do not only extract wherewith to
heighten our sauces, but also our richest ornaments and
perfumes. This discourse reflects upon none but the ordinary sort of women, and is not so sacrilegious as to comprehend those divine, supernatural, and extraordinary beauties, which we see shine occasionally among us like stars
under a corporeal and terrestrial veil.
As to the rest, the very share that we allow to beasts of
the bounty of nature, by our own confession, is very much
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to their advantage. We attribute to ourselves imaginary and
fantastic good, future and absent good, for which human
capacity cannot of herself be responsible; or good, that we
falsely attribute to ourselves by the license of opinion, as
reason, knowledge, and honour, and leave to them for their
dividend, essential, durable, and palpable good, as peace,
repose, security, innocence, and health; health, I say, the
fairest and richest present that nature can make us. Insomuch that philosophy, even the Stoic, is so bold as to say,
“That Heraclitus and Pherecides, could they have trucked
their wisdom for health, and have delivered themselves, the
one of his dropsy, and the other of the lousy disease that
tormented him, they had done well.” By which they set a
greater value upon wisdom, comparing and putting it into
the balance with health, than they do with this other proposition, which is also theirs; they say that if Circe had presented Ulysses with the two potions, the one to make a fool
become a wise man, and the other to make a wise man become a fool, that Ulysses ought rather to have chosen the
last, than consent to that by which Circe changed his human figure into that of a beast; and say that wisdom itself
would have spoke to him after this manner: “Forsake me,
let me alone, rather than lodge me under the body and figure of an ass.” How! the philosophers, then will abandon
this great and divine wisdom for this corporeal and terrestrial covering? It is then no more by reason, by discourse,
and by the soul, that we excel beasts; ‘tis by our beauty, our
fair complexion, and our fine symmetry of parts, for which
we must quit our intelligence, our prudence, and all the rest.
Well, I accept this open and free confession; certainly they
knew that those parts, upon which we so much value ourselves, are no other than vain fancy. If beasts then had all
the virtue, knowledge, wisdom, and stoical perfection, they
would still be beasts, and would not be comparable to man,
miserable, wicked, mad, man. For, in short, whatever is not
as we are is nothing worth; and God, to procure himself an
esteem among us, must put himself into that shape, as we
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shall show anon. By which it appears that it is not upon
any true ground of reason, but by a foolish pride and vain
opinion, that we prefer ourselves before other animals, and
separate ourselves from their society and condition.
But to return to what I was upon before; we have for
our part inconstancy, irresolution, incertitude, sorrow, superstition, solicitude of things to come, even after we shall
be no more, ambition, avarice, jealousy, envy, irregular,
frantic, and untamed appetites, war, lying, disloyalty, detraction, and curiosity. Doubtless, we have strangely overpaid this fine reason, upon which we so much glorify ourselves, and this capacity of judging and knowing, if we
have bought it at the price of this infinite number of passions to which we are eternally subject. Unless we shall also
think fit, as even Socrates does, to add to the counterpoise
that notable prerogative above beasts, That whereas nature
has prescribed them certain seasons and limits for the delights of Venus, she has given us the reins at all hours and
all seasons.” Ut vinum ogrotis, quia prodest rarô, nocet sopissime, melius est non adhibere omnino, quam, spe dubio salutis,
in apertam per-niciem incurrere; sic, haud scio an melius fuerit
humano generi motum istum celerem cogitationis, acumen, solertiam, quam rationem vocamus, quoniam pestifera sint multis,
ad-modum paucis saluiaria, non dari omnino, quam tam muniice et tam large dari? As it falls out that wine often hurting
the sick, and very rarely doing them good, it is better not
to give them any at all than to run into an apparent danger
out of hope of an uncertain benefit, so I know not whether
it had not been better for mankind that this quick motion,
this penetration, this subtlety that we call reason, had not
been given to man at all; considering how pestiferous it is
to many, and useful but to few, than to have been conferred
in so abundant manner, and with so liberal a hand.” Of
what advantage can we conceive the knowledge of so many
things was to Yarro and Aristotle? Did it exempt them from
human inconveniences? Were they by it freed from the accidents that lay heavy upon the shoulders of a porter? Did
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they extract from their logic any consolation for the gout?
Or, for knowing how this humour is lodged in the joints,
did they feel it the less? Did they enter into composition
with death by knowing that some nations rejoice at his approach; or with cuckoldry, by knowing that in some parts
of the world wives are in common? On the contrary, having been reputed the greatest men for knowledge, the one
amongst the Romans and the other amongst the Greeks,
and in a time when learning did most flourish, we have not
heard, nevertheless, that they had any particular excellence
in their lives; nay, the Greek had enough to do to clear himself from some notable blemishes in his. Have we observed
that pleasure and health have a better relish with him that
understands astrology and grammar than with others?
Illiterati num minus nervi rigent?
“Th’ illiterate ploughman is as fit
For Venus’ service as the wit:”
or shame and poverty less troublesome to the first than to
the last?
Scilicet et morbis et debilitate carebis,
Et luctum et curam effugies, et tempora vitæ
Longa tibi post hæc fato meliore dabuntur.
“Disease thy couch shall flee,
And sorrow and care; yes, thou, be sure, wilt see
Long years of happiness, till now unknown.”
I have known in my time a hundred artisans, a hundred
labourers, wiser and more happy than the rectors of the
university, and whom I had much rather have resembled.
Learning, methinks, has its place amongst the necessary,
things of life, as glory, nobility, dignity, or at the most, as
beauty, riches, and such other qualities, which indeed are
useful to it, but remotely, and more by opinion than by nature. We stand very little more in need of offices, rules,
and laws of living in our society, than cranes and ants do
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in theirs; and yet we see that these carry themselves very
regularly without erudition. If man was wise, he would
take the true value of every thing according as it was useful
and proper to his life. Whoever will number us by our actions and deportments will find many more excellent men
amongst the ignorant than among the learned; aye, in all
sorts of virtue. Old Rome seems to me to have been of much
greater value, both for peace and war, than that learned
Rome that ruined itself. And, though all the rest should be
equal, yet integrity and innocency would remain to the ancients, for they cohabit singularly well with simplicity. But
I will leave this discourse, that would lead me farther than I
am willing to follow; and shall only say this further, ‘tis only
humility and submission that can make a complete good
man. We are not to leave the knowledge of his duty to every
man’s own judgment; we are to prescribe it to him, and not
suffer him to choose it at his own discretion; otherwise, according to the imbecility, and infinite variety of our reasons
and opinions, we should at large forge ourselves duties that
would, as Epicurus says, enjoin us to eat one another.
The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of
pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple,
wherein man had nothing to inquire after, nor to dispute;
forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul,
acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From
obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin
does from selfopinion. And, on the contrary, the first temptation that by the devil was offered to human nature, its first
poison insinuated itself into us by the promise made us of
knowledge and wisdom; Eritis sicut Dii, scientes bonum et
malum. “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And
the sirens, in Homer, to allure Ulysses, and draw him within
the danger of their snares, offered to give him knowledge.
The plague of man is the opinion of wisdom; and for this
reason it is that ignorance is so recommended to us, by our
religion, as proper to faith and obedience; Cavete ne quis vos
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menta mundi. “Take heed, lest any man deceive you by philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and the
rudiments of the world.” There is in this a general consent
amongst all sorts of philosophers, that the sovereign good
consists in the tranquillity of the soul and body; but where
shall we find it?
Ad summum, sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives,
Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex deniqne regum;
Præcipue sanus, nisi cum pituita molesta est:
“In short, the wise is only less than Jove,
Rich, free, and handsome; nay, a king above
All earthly kings; with health supremely blest,
Excepting when a cold disturbs his rest!”
It seems, in truth, that nature, for the consolation of our
miserable and wretched state, has only given us presumption for our inheritance. ‘Tis as Epictetus says, that man
has nothing properly his own, but the use of his opinion;
we have nothing but wind and smoke for our portion. The
gods have health in essence, says philosophy, and sickness
in intelligence. Man, on the contrary, possesses his goods
by fancy, his ills in essence. We have reason to magnify
the power of our imagination; for all our goods are only
in dream. Hear this poor calamitous animal huff! “There
is nothing,” says Cicero, “so charming as the employment
of letters; of letters, I say, by means whereof the infinity of
things, the immense grandeur of nature, the heavens even
in this world, the earth, and the seas are discovered to us;
‘tis they that have taught us religion, moderation, and the
grandeur of courage, and that have rescued our souls from
darkness, to make her see all things, high, low, first, last,
and middling; ‘tis they that furnish us wherewith to live
happily and well, and conduct us to pass over our lives
without displeasure, and without offence.” Does not this
man seem to speak of the condition of the ever-living and
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women have lived lives more equal, more sweet, and constant than his.
Deus ille fuit, deus, inclyte Memmi
Qui princeps vitæ rationem invenit earn, quæ
Nunc appellatur sapientia; quique per artem
Fluctibus è tantis vitam, tantisque tenebris,
In tam tranquilla et tam clara luce locavit:
“That god, great Memmus, was a god no doubt
Who, prince of life, first found that reason out
Now wisdom called; and by his art, who did
That life in tempests tost, and darkness hid,
Place in so great a calm, and clear a light:”
here are brave ranting words; but a very slight accident put
this man’s understanding in a worse condition than that
of the meanest shepherd, notwithstanding this instructing
god, this divine wisdom. Of the same stamp and impudence is the promise of Democritus’s book: “I am going
to speak of all things;” and that foolish title that Aristotle
prefixes to one of his, order only afforded him a few lucid
intervals which he employed in composing his book, and at
last made him kill himself,–Eusebius’s Chronicon.
Of the Mortal Gods; and the judgment of Chrysippus,
that “Dion was as virtuous as God;” and my Seneca himself
says, that “God had given him life; but that to live well was
his own;” conformably to this other: In virtute vere gloriamur;
quod non contingeret, si id donum à Deo, non à nobis haberemus:
“We truly glory in our virtue; which would not be, if it was
given us of God, and not by ourselves;” this is also Seneca’s
saying; “that the wise man hath fortitude equal with God,
but that his is in spite of human frailty, wherein therefore
he more than equals God.” There is nothing so ordinary as
to meet with sallies of the like temerity; there is none of us,
who take so much offence to see himself equalled with God,
as he does to see himself undervalued by being ranked with
other creatures; so much more are we jealous of our own
interest than that of our Creator.
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But we must trample under foot this foolish vanity, and
briskly and boldly shake the ridiculous foundation upon
which these false opinions are founded. So long as man
shall believe he has any means and power of himself, he
will never acknowledge what he owes to his Maker; his
eggs shall always be chickens, as the saying is; we must
therefore strip him to his shirt. Let us see some notable examples of the effects of his philosophy: Posidonius being
tormented with a disease so painful as made him writhe his
arms and gnash his teeth, thought he sufficiently scorned
the dolour, by crying out against it: “Thou mayst do thy
worst, I will not confess that thou art an evil.” He was as
sensible of the pain as my footman, but he made a bravado
of bridling his tongue, at least, and restraining it within the
laws of his sect: Re succumbere non oportebat, verbis gloriantem. “It did not become him, that spoke so big, to confess his frailty when he came to the test.” Arcesilas being ill
of the gout, and Car-neades, who had come to see him, going away troubled at his condition, he called him back, and
showing him his feet and breast: “There is nothing comes
thence hither,” said he. This has something a better grace,
for he feels himself in pain, and would be disengaged from
it; but his heart, notwithstanding, is not conquered nor subdued by it. The other stands more obstinately to his point,
but, I fear, rather verbally than really. And Dionysius Heracleotes, afflicted with a vehement smarting in his eyes, was
reduced to quit these stoical resolutions. But even though
knowledge should, in effect, do as they say, and could blunt
the point, and dull the edge, of the misfortunes that attend
us, what does she, more than what ignorance does more
purely and evidently?–The philosopher Pyrrho, being at sea
in very great danger, by reason of a mighty storm, presented
nothing to the imitation of those who were with him, in that
extremity, but a hog they had on board, that was fearless
and unconcerned at the tempest. Philosophy, when she has
said all she can, refers us at last to the example of a gladiator,
wrestler, or muleteer, in which sort of people we commonly
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observe much less apprehension of death, sense of pain, and
other inconveniences, and more of endurance, than ever
knowledge furnished any one withal, that was not bom and
bred to hardship. What is the cause that we make incisions,
and cut the tender limbs of an infant, and those of a horse,
more easily than our own–but ignorance only? How many
has mere force of imagination made sick? We often see men
cause themselves to be let blood, purged, and physicked, to
be cured of diseases they only feel in opinion.–When real
infirmities fail us, knowledge lends us her’s; that colour,
that complexion, portend some catarrhous defluxion; this
hot season threatens us with a fever; this breach in the lifeline of your left hand gives you notice of some near and
dangerous indisposition; and at last she roundly attacks
health itself; saying, this sprightliness and vigour of youth
cannot continue in this posture; there must be blood taken,
and the heat abated, lest it turn against yourself. Compare
the life of a man subjected to such imaginations, to that of
a labourer that suffers himself to be led by his natural appetite, measuring things only by the present sense, without
knowledge, and without prognostic, that feels no pain or
sickness, but when he is really ill. Whereas the other has
the stone in his soul, before he has it in his bladder; as if it
were not time enough to suffer the evil when it shall come,
he must anticipate it by fancy, and run to meet it.
What I say of physic may generally serve in example
for all other sciences. Thence is derived that ancient opinion of the philosophers that placed the sovereign good in
the discovery of the weakness of our judgment My ignorance affords me as much occasion of hope as of fear; and
having no other rule for my health than that of the examples of others, and of events I see elsewhere upon the like
occasion, I find of all sorts, and rely upon those which by
comparison are most favourable to me. I receive health with
open arms, free, full, and entire, and by so much the more
whet my appetite to enjoy it, by how much it is at present
less ordinary and more rare; so far am I from troubling its
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repose and sweetness with the bitterness of a new and constrained manner of living. Beasts sufficiently show us how
much the agitation of our minds brings infirmities and diseases upon us. That which is told us of those of Brazil, that
they never die but of old age, is attributed to the serenity
and tranquillity of the air they live in; but I rather attribute
it to the serenity and tranquillity of their souls, free from all
passion, thought, or employment, extended or unpleasing,
a people that pass over their lives in a wonderful simplicity
and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king,
or any manner of religion. And whence comes that, which
we find by experience, that the heaviest and dullest men are
most able; and the most to be desired in amorous performances; and that the love of a muleteer often renders itself
more acceptable than that of a gentleman, if it be not that
the agitation of the soul in the latter disturbs his physical
ability, dissolves and tires it, as it also ordinarily troubles
and tires itself. What puts the soul beside itself, and more
usually throws it into madness, but her own promptness,
vigour, and agility, and, finally, her own proper force? Of
what is the most subtle folly made, but of the most subtle
wisdom? As great friendships spring from great enmities,
and vigorous health from mortal diseases, so from the rare
and vivid agitations of our souls proceed the most wonderful and most distracted frenzies; ‘tis but half a turn of the
toe from the one to the other. In the actions of madmen we
see how infinitely madness resembles the most vigorous operations of the soul. Who does not know how indiscernible
the difference is betwixt folly and the sprightly elevations of
a free soul, and the effects of a supreme and extraordinary
virtue? Plato says that melancholy persons are the most capable of discipline, and the most excellent; and accordingly
in none is there so great a propension to madness. Great
wits are ruined by their own proper force and pliability; into
what a condition, through his own agitation and promptness of fancy, is one of the most judicious, ingenious, and
nearest formed, of any other Italian poet, to the air of the
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ancient and true poesy, lately fallen! Has he not vast obligation to this vivacity that has destroyed him? to this light
that has blinded him? to this exact and subtle apprehension
of reason that has put him beside his own? to this curious
and laborious search after sciences, that has reduced him to
imbecility? and to this rare aptitude to the exercises of the
soul, that has rendered him without exercise and without
soul? I was more angry, if possible, than compassionate, to
see him at Ferrara in so pitiful a condition surviving himself, forgetting both himself and his works, which, without
his knowledge, though before his face, have been published
unformed and incorrect.
Would you have a man healthy, would you have him
regular, and in a steady and secure posture? Muffle him
up in the shades of stupidity and sloth. We must be made
beasts to be made wise, and hoodwinked before we are fit
to be led. And if one shall tell me that the advantage of
having a cold and dull sense of pain and other evils, brings
this disadvantage along with it, to render us consequently
less sensible also in the fruition of good and pleasure, this
is true; but the misery of our condition is such that we have
not so much to enjoy as to avoid, and that the extremest
pleasure does not affect us to the degree that a light grief
does: Segnius homines bona quam mala sentiunt. We are not
so sensible of the most perfect health as we are of the least
sickness.
Pungit
In cute vix sum ma violatum plagula corpus;
Quando valere nihil quemquam movet. Hoc juvat unum,
Quod me non torquet latus, aut pes;
Cætera quisquam Vix queat aut sanum sese, aut
sentire valentem.
“The body with a little sting is griev’d,
When the most perfect health is not perceiv’d,
This only pleases me, that spleen nor gout
Neither offend my side nor wring my foot;
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Excepting these, scarce any one can tell,
Or e’er observes, when he’s in health and
well.”
Our well-being is nothing but the not being ill. Which is the
reason why that sect of philosophers, which sets the greatest
value upon pleasure, has yet fixed it chiefly in unconsciousness of pain. To be freed from ill is the greatest good that
man can hope for or desire; as Ennius says,–
Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali;
for that every tickling and sting which are in certain pleasures, and that seem to raise us above simple health and
passiveness, that active, moving, and, I know not how, itching, and biting pleasure; even that very pleasure itself aims
at nothing but insensibility as its mark. The appetite that
carries us headlong to women’s embraces has no other end
but only to cure the torment of our ardent and furious desires, and only requires to be glutted and laid at rest, and
delivered from the fever. And so of the rest. I say, then, that
if simplicity conducts us to a state free from evil, she leads
us to a very happy one according to our condition. And yet
we are not to imagine it so stupid an insensibility as to be
totally without sense; for Crantor had very good reason to
controvert the insensibility of Epicurus, if founded so deep
that the very first attack and birth of evils were not to be
perceived: “I do not approve such an insensibility as is neither possible nor to be desired. I am very well content not
to be sick; but if I am, I would know that I am so; and if a
caustic be applied, or incisions made in any part, I would
feel them.” In truth, whoever would take away the knowledge and sense of evil, would at the same time eradicate the
sense of pleasure, and finally annihilate man himself: Istud
nihil dolere, non sine magnâ mercede contingit, immanitatis in
animo, stuporis in corpore. “An insensibility that is not to be
purchased but at the price of inhumanity in the soul, and
of stupidity of the body.” Evil appertains to man of course.
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Neither is pain always to be avoided, nor pleasure always
pursued.
‘Tis a great advantage to the honour of ignorance that
knowledge itself throws us into its arms, when she finds
herself puzzled to fortify us against the weight of evil; she is
constrained to come to this composition, to give us the reins,
and permit us to fly into the lap of the other, and to shelter
ourselves under her protection from the strokes and injuries
of fortune. For what else is her meaning when she instructs
us to divert our thoughts from the ills that press upon us,
and entertain them with the meditation of pleasures past
and gone; to comfort ourselves in present afflictions with
the remembrance of fled delights, and to call to our succour
a vanished satisfaction, to oppose it to the discomfort that
lies heavy upon us? Levationes ægritudinum in avocatione a
cogitandâ molestiâ, et revocation ad contemplandas voluptates,
ponit; “He directs us to alleviate our grief and pains by rejecting unpleasant thoughts, and recalling agreeable ideas;”
if it be not that where her power fails she would supply it
with policy, and make use of sleight of hand where force of
limbs will not serve her turn? For not only to a philosopher,
but to any man in his right wits, when he has upon him the
thirst of a burning fever, what satisfaction can it be to him
to remember the pleasure he took in drinking Greek wine
a month ago? It would rather only make matters worse to
him:–
Che ricordarsi il ben doppia la noia.
‘The thinking of pleasure doubles trouble.”
Of the same stamp is this other counsel that philosophy
gives, only to remember the happiness that is past, and
to forget the misadventures we have undergone; as if we
had the science of oblivion in our own power, and counsel,
wherein we are yet no more to seek.
Suavis laborum est præteritorum ræmoria.
“Sweet is the memory of by-gone pain.”
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How does philosophy, that should arm me to contend with
fortune, and steel my courage to trample all human adversities under foot, arrive to this degree of cowardice to make
me hide my head at this rate, and save myself by these pitiful and ridiculous shifts? For the memory represents to us
not what we choose, but what she pleases; nay, there is nothing that so much imprints any thing in our memory as a
desire to forget it. And ‘tis a good way to retain and keep
any thing safe in the soul to solicit her to lose it. And this
is false: Est situm in nobis, ut et adversa quasi perpetua oblivione obruamus, et secunda jucunde et suaviter meminerimus; “it
is in our power to bury, as it were, in a perpetual oblivion,
all adverse accidents, and to retain a pleasant and delightful memory of our successes;” and this is true: Memini etiam
quo nolo; oblivisci non possum quo volo. “I do also remember
what I would not; but I cannot forget what I would.” And
whose counsel is this? His, qui se unies sapiervtem profiteri sit
ausus; “who alone durst profess himself a wise man.”
Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et
omnes
Præstinxit stellas, exortus uti æthereus Sol.
“Who from mankind the prize of knowledge
won,
And put the stars out like the rising sun.”
To empty and disfurnish the memory, is not this the true
way to ignorance?
Iners malorum remedium ignorantia est.
“Ignorance is but a dull remedy for evils.”
We find several other like precepts, whereby we are permitted to borrow frivolous appearances from the vulgar, where
we find the strongest reason will not answer the purpose,
provided they administer satisfaction and comfort Where
they cannot cure the wound, they are content to palliate and
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benumb it I believe they will not deny this, that if they could
add order and constancy in a state of life that could maintain itself in ease and pleasure by some debility of judgment, they would accept it:–
Potare, et spargere flores
Incipiam, patiarque vel inconsultus haberI
“Give me to drink, and, crown’d with flowers,
despise
The grave disgrace of being thought unwise.”
There would be a great many philosophers of Lycas’s mind
this man, being otherwise of very regular manners, living
quietly and contentedly in his family, and not failing in any
office of his duty, either towards his own or strangers, and
very carefully preserving himself from hurtful things, became, nevertheless, by some distemper in his brain, possessed with a conceit that he was perpetually in the theatre, a spectator of the finest sights and the best comedies in
the world; and being cured by the physicians of his frenzy,
was hardly prevented from endeavouring by suit to compel
them to restore him again to his pleasing imagination:–
Pol I me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error;
“By heaven! you’ve killed me, friends, outright,
And not preserved me; since my dear delight
And pleasing error, by my better sense
Unhappily return’d, is banished hence;”
with a madness like that of Thrasylaus the son of
Pythodorus, who made himself believe that all the ships
that weighed anchor from the port of Piræus, and that came
into the haven, only made their voyages for his profit; congratulating them upon their successful navigation, and receiving them with the greatest joy; and when his brother
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Crito caused him to be restored to his better understanding, he infinitely regretted that sort of condition wherein he
had lived with so much delight and free from all anxiety of
mind. ‘Tis according to the old Greek verse, that “there is a
great deal of convenience in not being over-wise.”
And Ecclesiastes, “In much wisdom there is much sorrow;” and “Who gets wisdom gets labour and trouble.”
Even that to which philosophy consents in general, that
last remedy which she applies to all sorts of necessities, to
put an end to the life we are not able to endure. Placet?–
Pare. Non placet?–Quâcumque vis, exi. Pungit dolor?–Vel fodiat
sane. Si nudus es, da jugulum; sin tectus armis Vulcaniis, id est
fortitudine, résisté; “Does it please?–Obey it. Not please?–Go
where thou wilt. Does grief prick thee,–nay, stab thee?–If
thou art naked, present thy throat; if covered with the arms
of Vulcan, that is, fortitude, resist it.” And this word, so
used in the Greek festivals, aut bibat, aut abeat, “either drink
or go,” which sounds better upon the tongue of a Gascon,
who naturally changes the h into v, than on that of Cicero:–
Vivere si recte nescis, decede peritis.
Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti;
Tempus abire tibi est, ne potum largius æquo
Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius ætas.
“If to live well and right thou dost not know,
Give way, and leave thy place to those that do.
Thou’st eaten, drunk, and play’d to thy content,
Tis time to make thy parting compliment,
Lest youth, more decent in their follies, scoff
The nauseous scene, and hiss thee reeling off;”
What is it other than a confession of his impotency, and a
sending back not only to ignorance, to be there in safety,
but even to stupidity, insensibility, and nonentity?
Democritum postquam matura vetustas
Admonuit memorem motus languescere mentis;
Sponte sua letho caput obvius obtulit ipse.
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“Soon as, through age, Democritus did find
A manifest decadence in his mind,
He thought he now surviv’d to his own wrong,
And went to meet his death, that stay’d too
long.”
‘Tis what Antisthenes said, “That a man should either make
provision of sense to understand, or of a halter to hang himself;” and what Chrysippus alleged upon this saying of the
poet Tyrtæus:–
“Or to arrive at virtue or at death;”
and Crates said, “That love would be cured by hunger, if
not by time; and whoever disliked these two remedies, by
a rope.” That Sextius, of whom both Seneca and Plutarch
speak with so high an encomium, having applied himself,
all other things set aside, to the study of philosophy, resolved to throw himself into the sea, seeing the progress of
his studies too tedious and slow. He ran to find death, since
he could not overtake knowledge. These are the words
of the law upon the subject: “If peradventure some great
inconvenience happen, for which there is no remedy, the
haven is near, and a man may save himself by swimming
out of his body as out of a leaky skiff; for ‘tis the fear of
dying, and not the love of life, that ties the fool to his body.”
As life renders itself by simplicity more pleasant, so
more innocent and better, also it renders it as I was saying before: “The simple and ignorant,” says St. Paul, “raise
themselves up to heaven and take possession of it; and we,
with all our knowledge, plunge ourselves into the infernal
abyss.” I am neither swayed by Valentinian, a professed
enemy to all learning and letters, nor by Licinius, both Roman emperors, who called them the poison and pest of all
political government; nor by Mahomet, who, as ‘tis said,
interdicted all manner of learning to his followers; but the
example of the great Lycurgus, and his authority, with the
reverence of the divine Lacedemonian policy, so great, so
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admirable, and so long flourishing in virtue and happiness,
without any institution or practice of letters, ought certainly
to be of very great weight. Such as return from the new
world discovered by the Spaniards in our fathers’ days, testify to us how much more honestly and regularly those nations live, without magistrate and without law, than ours
do, where there are more officers and lawyers than there
are of other sorts of men and business:–
Di cittatorie piene, e di libelli,
D’esamine, e di carte di procure,
Hanno le mani e il seno, e gran fastelli
Di chioge, di consigli, et di letture:
Per cui le faculta de* poverelli
Non sono mai nelle città sicure;
Hanno dietro e dinanzi, e d’ambi i lati,
Notai, procuratori, ed avvocatI
“Their bags were full of writs, and of citations,
Of process, and of actions and arrests,
Of bills, of answers, and of replications,
In courts of delegates, and of requests
To grieve the simple sort with great vexations;
They had resorting to them as their guests,
Attending on their circuit, and their journeys,
Scriv’ners, and clerks, and lawyers, and attorneys.”
It was what a Roman senator of the latter ages said, that
their predecessors’ breath stunk of garlic, but their stomachs were perfumed with a good conscience; and that, on
the contrary, those of his time were all sweet odour without,
but stunk within of all sorts of vices; that is to say, as I interpret it, that they abounded with learning and eloquence, but
were very defective in moral honesty. Incivility, ignorance,
simplicity, roughness, are the natural companions of innocence; curiosity, subtlety, knowledge, bring malice in their
train; humility, fear, obedience, and affability, which are the
principal things that support and maintain human society,
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require an empty and docile soul, and little presuming upon
itself.
Christians have a particular knowledge, how natural
and original an evil curiosity is in man; the thirst of knowledge, and the desire to become more wise, was the first ruin
of man, and the way by which he precipitated himself into
eternal damnation. Pride was his ruin and corruption. ‘Tis
pride that diverts him from the common path, and makes
him embrace novelties, and rather choose to be head of a
troop, lost and wandering in the path of error; to be a master and a teacher of lies, than to be a disciple in the school of
truth, suffering himself to be led and guided by the hand of
another, in the right and beaten road. ‘Tis, peradventure, the
meaning of this old Greek saying, that superstition follows
pride, and obeys it as if it were a father:127 Ah, presumption, how much dost thou hinder us?
After that Socrates was told that the god of wisdom
had assigned to him the title of sage, he was astonished
at it, and, searching and examining himself throughout,
could find no foundation for this divine judgment. He knew
others as just, temperate, valiant, and learned, as himself;
and more eloquent, more handsome, and more profitable
to their country than he. At last he concluded that he was
not distinguished from others, nor wise, but only because
he did not think himself so; and that his God considered the
opinion of knowledge and wisdom as a singular absurdity
in man; and that his best doctrine was the doctrine of ignorance, and simplicity his best wisdom. The sacred word
declares those miserable among us who have an opinion of
themselves: “Dust and ashes,” says it to such, “what hast
thou wherein to glorify thyself?” And, in another place,
“God has made man like unto a shadow,” of whom who
can judge, when by removing the light it shall be vanished!
Man is a thing of nothing.
Our force is so far from being able to comprehend the
divine height, that, of the works of our Creator, those best
127 Greek
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bear his mark, and are with better title his, which we the
least understand. To meet with an incredible thing is an occasion to Christians to believe; and it is so much the more
according to reason, by how much it is against human reason. If it were according to reason, it would be no more
a miracle; and if it were according to example, it would
be no longer a singular thing. Melius scitur Deus nesdendo:
“God is better known by not knowing him,” says St. Austin:
and Tacitus, Sanctius est ac reverentius de actis Deorum credere,
quam scire; “it is more holy and reverent to believe the works
of God than to know them;” and Plato thinks there is something of impiety in inquiring too curiously into God, the
world, and the first causes of things: Atque illum quidem
parentem hujus universitaiis invenire, difficile; et, quum jam inveneris, indicare in vulgtis, nefas: “to find out the parent of the
world is very difficult; and when found out, to reveal him
to the vulgar is sin,” says Cicero. We talk indeed of power,
truth, justice; which are words that signify some great thing;
but that thing we neither see nor conceive at all. We say that
God fears, that God is angry, that God loves,
Immortalia mortali sermone notantes:
“Giving to things immortal mortal names.”
These are all agitations and emotions that cannot be in God,
according to our form, nor can we imagine them, according
to his. It only belongs to God to know himself, and to interpret his own works; and he does it in our language, going
out of himself, to stoop to us who grovel upon the earth.
How can prudence, which is the choice between good and
evil, be properly attributed to him whom no evil can touch?
How can reason and intelligence, which we make use of,
to arrive by obscure at apparent things; seeing that nothing
is obscure to him? How justice, which distributes to every
one what appertains to him, a thing begot by the society and
community of men, how is that in God? How temperance,
which is the moderation of corporal pleasures, that have no
place in the Divinity? Fortitude to support pain, labour, and
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dangers, as little appertains to him as the rest; these three
things have no access to him. For which reason Aristotle
holds him equally exempt from virtue and vice: Neque gratia, neque ira teneri potest; quod quo talia essent, imbecilla essent
omnia? “He can neither be affected with favour nor indignation, because both these are the effects of frailty.”
The participation we have in the knowledge of truth,
such as it is, is not acquired by our own force: God has sufficiently given us to understand that, by the witnesses he
has chosen out of the common people, simple and ignorant
men, that he has been pleased to employ to instruct us in his
admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring; ‘tis
purely the gift of another’s bounty: ‘tis not by meditation,
or by virtue of our own understanding, that we have acquired our religion, but by foreign authority and command
wherein the imbecility of our own judgment does more assist us than any force of it; and our blindness more than
our clearness of sight: ‘tis more by the mediation of our
ignorance than of our knowledge that we know any thing
of the divine wisdom. ‘Tis no wonder if our natural and
earthly parts cannot conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge: let us bring nothing of our own, but obedience and subjection; for, as it is written, “I will destroy
the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is
the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not
God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that,
in the wisdom of God, the world knew not God, it pleased
God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”
Finally, should I examine whether it be in the power
of man to find out that which he seeks and if that quest,
wherein he has busied himself so many ages, has enriched
him with any new force, or any solid truth; I believe he will
confess, if he speaks from his conscience, that all he has got
by so long inquiry is only to have learned to know his own
weakness. We have only by a long study confirmed and
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verified the natural ignorance we were in before. The same
has fallen out to men truly wise, which befalls the ears of
corn; they shoot and raise their heads high and pert, whilst
empty; but when full and swelled with grain in maturity,
begin to flag and droop. So men, having tried and sounded
all things, and having found in that mass of knowledge,
and provision of so many various things, nothing solid and
firm, and nothing but vanity, have quitted their presumption, and acknowledged their natural condition. ‘Tis what
Velleius reproaches Cotta withal and Cicero, “that they had
learned of Philo, that they had learned nothing.” Pherecydes, one of the seven sages, writing to Thales upon his
death-bed; “I have,” said he, “given order to my people,
after my interment, to carry my writings to thee. If they
please thee and the other sages, publish; if not, suppress
them. They contain no certainty with which I myself am
satisfied. Neither do I pretend to know the truth, or to attain to it. I rather open than discover things.” The wisest
man that ever was, being asked what he knew, made answer, “He knew this, that he knew nothing.” By which he
verified what has been said, that the greatest part of what
we know is the least of what we do not; that is to say, that
even what we think we know is but a piece, and a very little one, of our ignorance. We know things in dreams, says
Plato, and are ignorant of them in truth. Ormes pene veteres
nihil cognosci, nihil percipi, nihil sciri posse dixerunt; angustos
sensus, imbecilles animos, brevia curricula vito. “Almost all the
ancients have declared that there is nothing to be known,
nothing to be perceived or understood; the senses are too
limited, men’s minds too weak, and the course of life too
short.” And of Cicero himself, who stood indebted to his
learning for all he was worth, Valerius says, “That he began to disrelish letters in his old age; and when at his studies, it was with great independency upon any one party;
following what he thought probable, now in one sect, and
then in another, evermore wavering under the doubts of the
academy.” Dicendum est, sed ita ut nihil affirment, quceram om-
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nia, dubitans plerumque, et mihi diffidens. “Something I must
say, but so as to affirm nothing; I inquire into all things, but
for the most part in doubt and distrust of myself.”
I should have too fair a game should I consider man in
his common way of living and in gross; yet I might do it by
his own rule, who judges truth not by weight, but by the
number of votes. Let us set the people aside,
Qui vigilans stertit,....
Mortua cui vita est prope jam vivo atque videnti;
“Half of his life by lazy sleep’s possess’d,
And when awake his soul but nods at best;”
who neither feel nor judge, and let most of their natural faculties lie idle; I will take man in his highest ground. Let
us consider him in that little number of men, excellent and
culled out from the rest, who, having been endowed with
a remarkable and particular natural force, have moreover
hardened and whetted it by care, study, and art, and raised
it to the highest pitch of wisdom to which it can possibly
arrive. They have adjusted their souls to all ways and all
biases; have propped and supported them with all foreign
helps proper for them, and enriched and adorned them with
all they could borrow for their advantage, both within and
without the world; ‘tis in these is placed the utmost and
most supreme height to which human nature can attain.
They have regulated the world with policies and laws. They
have instructed it with arts and sciences, and by the example of their admirable manners. I shall make account
of none but such men as these, their testimony and experience. Let us examine how far they have proceeded, and
where they stopped. The errors and defects that we shall
find amongst these men the world may boldly avow as their
own.
Whoever goes in search of any thing must come to this,
either to say that he has found it, or that it is not to be found,
or that he is yet upon the search. All philosophy is divided
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into these three kinds; her design is to seek out truth, knowledge, and certainty. The Peripatetics, Epicureans, Stoics,
and others, have thought they have found it. These established the sciences we have, and have treated of them as of
certain knowledge. Clitomachus, Carneades, and the Academics, have despaired in their search, and concluded that
truth could not be conceived by our understandings. The
result of these is weakness and human ignorance. This sect
has had the most and the most noble followers. Pyrrho, and
other skeptics or epechists, whose dogmas are held by many
of the ancients to be taken from Homer, the seven sages,
and from Archilochus and Euripides, and to whose number
these are added, Zeno, Democritus, and Xenophanes, say
that they are yet upon the inquiry after truth. These conclude that the others, who think they have found it out, are
infinitely deceived; and that it is too daring a vanity in the
second sort to determine that human reason is not able to
attain unto it; for this establishing a standard of our power,
to know and judge the difficulty of things, is a great and
extreme knowledge, of which they doubt whether man is
capable:–
Nil sciri quisquis putat, id quoque nescit,
An sciri possit; quam se nil scire fatetur.
“He that says nothing can be known, o’erthrows
His own opinion, for he nothing knows,
So knows not that.”
The ignorance that knows itself, judges and condemns itself, is not an absolute ignorance; to be such, it must be ignorant of itself; so that the profession of the Pyrrhonians is
to waver, doubt, and inquire, not to make themselves sure
of, or responsible to themselves for any thing. Of the three
actions of the soul, imaginative, appetitive, and consentive,
they receive the two first; the last they kept ambiguous,
without inclination or approbation, either of one thing or
another, so light as it is. Zeno represented the motion of
his imagination upon these divisions of the faculties of the
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soul thus: “An open and expanded hand signified appearance; a hand half shut, and the fingers a little bending, consent; a clenched fist, comprehension; when with the left he
yet thrust the right fist closer, knowledge.” Now this situation of their judgment upright and inflexible, receiving all
objects without application or consent, leads them to their
ataraxy, which is a peaceable condition of life, temperate,
and exempt from the agitations we receive by the impression of opinion and knowledge that we think we have of
things; whence spring fear, avarice, envy, immoderate desires, ambition, pride, superstition, love of novelty, rebellion, disobedience, obstinacy, and the greatest part of bodily ills; nay, and by that they are exempt from the jealousy
of their discipline; for they debate after a very gentle manner; they fear no requital in their disputes; when they affirm
that heavy things descend they would be sorry to be believed, and love tobe contradicted, to engender doubt and
suspense of judgment, which is their end. They only put
forward their propositions to contend with those they think
we have in our belief. If you take their arguments, they will
as readily maintain the contrary; ‘tis all one to them, they
have no choice. If you maintain that snow is black, they
will argue on the contrary that it is white; if you say it is
neither the one nor the other, they will maintain that it is
both. If you hold, of certain judgment, that you know nothing, they will maintain that you do. Yea, and if by an affirmative axiom you assure them that you doubt, they will
argue against you that you doubt not; or that you cannot
judge and determine that you doubt. And by this extremity of doubt, which jostles itself, they separate and divide
themselves from many opinions, even of those they have
several ways maintained, both concerning doubt and ignorance. “Why shall not they be allowed to doubt,” say they,
“as well as the dogmatists, one of whom says green, another yellow? Can any thing be proposed to us to grant,
or deny, which it shall not be permitted to consider as ambiguous?” And where others are carried away, either by the
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custom of their country, or by the instruction of parents, or
by accident, as by a tempest, without judgment and without
choice, nay, and for the most part before the age of discretion, to such and such an opinion, to the sect whether Stoic
or Epicurean, with which they are prepossessed, enslaved,
and fast bound, as to a thing they cannot forsake: Ad quamcumque disciplinant, velut tempestate, delati, ad earn, tanquam
ad saxum, adhorescunt; “every one cleaves to the doctrine he
has happened upon, as to a rock against which he has been
thrown by tempest;” why shall not these likewise be permitted to maintain their liberty, and consider things without obligation or slavery? hoc liberiores et solutiores, quod integra illis est judicandi potestas: “in this more unconstrained
and free, because they have the greater power of judging.”
Is it not of some advantage to be disengaged from the necessity that curbs others? Is it not better to remain in suspense than to entangle one’s self in the innumerable errors
that human fancy has produced? Is it not much better to
suspend one’s persuasion than to intermeddle with these
wrangling and seditious divisions: “What shall I choose?”
“What you please, provided you will choose.” A very foolish answer; but such a one, nevertheless, as all dogmatism
seems to point at, and by which we are not permitted to be
ignorant of what we are ignorant of.
Take the most eminent side, that of the greatest reputation; it will never be so sure that you shall not be forced to
attack and contend with a hundred and a hundred adversaries to defend it. Is it not better to keep out of this hurlyburly? You are permitted to embrace Aristotle’s opinions
of the immortality of the soul with as much zeal as your
honour and life, and to give the lie to Plato thereupon, and
shall they be interdicted to doubt him? If it be lawful for
Panætius to maintain his opinion about augury, dreams, oracles, vaticinations, of which the Stoics made no doubt at
all; why may not a wise man dare to do the same in all
things that he dared to do in those he had learned of his
masters, established by the common consent of the school,
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whereof he is a professor and a member? If it be a child
that judges, he knows not what it is; if a wise man, he is
prepossessed. They have reserved for themselves a marvellous advantage in battle, having eased themselves of the
care of defence. If you strike them, they care not, provided
they strike too, and they turn every thing to their own use.
If they overcome, your argument is lame; if you, theirs; if
they fall short, they verify ignorance; if you fall short, you
do it; if they prove that nothing is known, ‘tis well; if they
cannot prove it, ‘tis also well: Ut quurn in eadem re paria contrariis in partibus momenta inveniuntur, facilius ab utraque parte
assertio sustineatur: “That when like sentiments happen pro
and con in the same thing, the assent may on both sides be
more easily suspended.” And they make account to find
out, with much greater facility, why a thing is false, than
why ‘tis true; that which is not, than that which is; and what
they do not believe, than what they do. Their way of speaking is: “I assert nothing; it is no more so than so, or than
neither one nor t’other; I understand it not. Appearances
are everywhere equal; the law of speaking, pro or con, is the
same. Nothing seems true, that may not seem false.” Their
sacramental word is that is to say, “I hold, I stir not.” This
is the burden of their song, and others of like stuff. The effect of which is a pure, entire, perfect, and absolute suspension of judgment. They make use of their reason to inquire
and debate, but not to fix and determine. Whoever shall
imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment
without bias, propension, or inclination, upon any occasion
whatever, conceives a true idea of Pyrrhonism. I express
this fancy as well as I can, by reason that many find it hard
to conceive, and the authors themselves represent it a little
variously and obscurely.
As to what concerns the actions of life, they are in this
of the common fashion. They yield and give up themselves
to their natural inclinations, to the power and impulse of
passions, to the constitution of laws and customs, and to
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tummodo uti, voluit. “For God would not have us know, but
only use those things.” They suffer their ordinary actions
to be guided by those things, without any dispute or judgment. For which reason I cannot consent to what is said of
Pyrrho, by those who represent him heavy and immovable,
leading a kind of savage and unsociable life, standing the
jostle of carts, going upon the edge of precipices, and refusing to accommodate himself to the laws. This is to enhance
upon his discipline; he would never make himself a stock or
a stone, he would show himself a living man, discoursing,
reasoning, enjoying all reasonable conveniences and pleasures, employing and making use of all his corporal and
spiritual faculties in rule and reason. The fantastic, imaginary, and false privileges that man had usurped of lording
it, ordaining, and establishing, he has utterly quitted and renounced. Yet there is no sect but is constrained to permit her
sage to follow several things not comprehended, perceived,
or consented to, if he means to live. And if he goes to sea, he
follows that design, not knowing whether his voyage shall
be successful or no; and only insists upon the tightness of
the vessel, the experience of the pilot, and the convenience
of the season, and such probable circumstances; after which
he is bound to go, and suffer himself to be governed by appearances, provided there be no express and manifest contrariety in them. He has a body, he has a soul; the senses
push them, the mind spurs them on. And although he does
not find in himself this proper and singular sign of judging, and that he perceives that he ought not to engage his
consent, considering that there may be some false, equal to
these true appearances, yet does he not, for all that, fail of
carrying on the offices of his life with great liberty and convenience. How many arts are there that profess to consist
more in conjecture than knowledge; that decide not on true
and false, and only follow that which seems so! There are,
say they, true and false, and we have in us wherewith to
seek it; but not to make it stay when we touch it. We are
much more prudent, in letting ourselves be regulated by the
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order of the world, without inquiry. A soul clear from prejudice has a marvellous advance towards tranquillity and
repose. Men that judge and control their judges, do never
duly submit to them.
How much more docile and easy to be governed, both
by the laws of religion and civil polity, are simple and incurious minds, than those over-vigilant wits, that will still be
prating of divine and human causes! There is nothing in human invention that carries so great a show of likelihood and
utility as this; this presents man, naked and empty, confessing his natural weakness, fit to receive some foreign force
from above, unfurnished of human, and therefore more apt
to receive into him the divine knowledge, making nought
of his own judgment, to give more room to faith; neither
disbelieving nor establishing any dogma against common
observances; humble, obedient, disciplinable, and studious;
a sworn enemy of heresy; and consequently freeing himself from vain and irreligious opinions, introduced by false
sects. ‘Tis a blank paper prepared to receive such forms
from the finger of God as he shall please to write upon
it. The more we resign and commit ourselves to God, and
the more we renounce ourselves, of the greater value we
are. “Take in good part,” says Ecclesiastes, “the things that
present themselves to thee, as they seem and taste from
hand to mouth; the rest is out of thy knowledge.” Dominus
novit cogitationes hominum, quoniam vanæ sunt: “The Lord
knoweth the hearts of men, that they are but vanity.”
Thus we see that of the three general sects of philosophy, two make open profession of doubt and ignorance; and
in that of the Dogmatists, which is the third, it is easy to discover that the greatest part of them only assume this face of
confidence and assurance that
they may produce the better effect; they have not so
much thought to establish any certainty for us, as to show us
how far they have proceeded in their search of truth: quam
docti jingunt magis quam nôrunt: “Which the learned rather
feign than know.” Timæus, being to instruct Socrates in
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what he knew of the gods, the world, and men, proposes to
speak to him as a man to a man; and that it is sufficient, if his
reasons are probable as those of another; for that exact reasons were neither in his nor any other mortal hand; which
one of his followers has thus imitated: Ut potero, explicabo:
nec tamen, ut Pythius Apollo, certa ut sint et fixa quæ dixero; sed,
ut homunculus, probabilia conjecturâ sequens: “I will, as well as
I am able, explain; affirming, yet not as the Pythian oracle,
that what I say is fixed and certain, but like a mere man,
that follows probabilities by conjecture.” And this, upon
the natural and common subject of the contempt of death;
he has elsewhere translated from the very words of Plato:
Si forte, de Deorum naturâ ortuque mundi disserentes, minus id
quod habemiis in animo consequi-mur, haud erit mirum; oquum
est enim meminisse, et me, qui disseram, hominem esse, et vos,
qui judicetis, ut, si probabilia dicentur, nihil ultra requiratis? “If
perchance, when we discourse of the nature of God, and the
world’s original, we cannot do it as we desire, it will be no
great wonder. For it is just you should remember that both
I who speak and you who are to judge, are men; so that if
probable things are delivered, you shall require and expect
no more.” Aristotle ordinarily heaps up a great number of
other men’s opinions and beliefs, to compare them with his
own, and to let us see how much he has gone beyond them,
and how much nearer he approaches to the likelihood of
truth; for truth is not to be judged by the authority and testimony of others; which made Epicurus religiously avoid
quoting them in his writings. This is the prince of all dogmatists, and yet we are told by him that the more we know
the more we have room for doubt. In earnest, we sometimes see him shroud and muffle up himself in so thick and
so inextricable an obscurity that we know not what to make
of his advice; it is, in effect, a Pyrrhonism under a resolutive form. Hear Cicero’s protestation, who expounds to us
another’s fancy by his own: qui requirunt quid de quâque re
ipsi sentiamus, curiosius id faciunt quam necesse est,... Hoc in
philosophiâ ratio, contra omnia disserendi, nuttamque rem aperte
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judicandi, profecta a Socrate, repetita ab Arcesila, conjirmata a
Gameade, usquê ad nostram viget cetatem..........Hi sumus, qui
omnibus veris falsa quodam adjuncta esse dicamus, tanta similitudine, ut in iis nulla insit certe judicandi et assentiendi nota.
“They who desire to know what we think of every thing
are therein more inquisitive than is necessary. This practice
in philosophy of disputing against every thing, and of absolutely concluding nothing, begun by Socrates, repeated
by Arcesilaus, and confirmed by Cameades, has continued
in use even to our own times. We are they who declare
that there is so great a mixture of things false amongst all
that are true, and they so resemble one another, that there
can be in them no certain mark to direct us either to judge
or assent.” Why hath not Aristotle only, but most of the
philosophers, affected difficulty, if not to set a greater value
upon the vanity of the subject, and amuse the curiosity of
our minds by giving them this hollow and fleshless bone to
pick? Clitomachus affirmed “That he could never discover
by Carneades’s writings what opinion he was of.” This was
it that made Epicurus affect to be abstruse, and that procured Heraclitus the epithet of128 Difficulty is a coin the
learned make use of, like jugglers, to conceal the vanity of
their art, and which human sottishness easily takes for current pay.
Claras, ob obscuram linguam, magis inter
manes...
Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque
Inversis quæ sub verbis latitantia cemunt.
“Bombast and riddle best do puppies please,
For fools admire and love such things as these;
And a dull quibble, wrapt in dubious phrase,
Up to the height doth their wise wonder raise.”
Cicero reprehends some of his friends for giving more of
their time to the study of astrology, logic, and geometry,
128 Greek
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than they were really worth; saying that they were by these
diverted from the duties of life, and more profitable and
proper studies. The Cyrenaick philosophers, in like manner, despised physics and logic. Zeno, in the very beginning of the books of the commonwealth, declared all the
liberal arts of no use. Chrysippus said “That what Plato and
Aristotle had writ, concerning logic, they had only done in
sport, and by way of exercise;” and could not believe that
they spoke in earnest of so vain a thing. Plutarch says the
same of metaphysics. And Epicurus would have said as
much of rhetoric, grammar, poetry, mathematics, and, natural philosophy excepted, of all the sciences; and Socrates
of them all, excepting that which treats of manners and of
life. Whatever any one required to be instructed in, by him,
he would ever, in the first place, demand an account of the
conditions of his life present and past, which he examined
and judged, esteeming all other learning subsequent to that
and supernumerary: Parum mihi placeant eæ littero quo ad virtutem doctoribus nihil pro-fuerunt. “That learning is in small
repute with me which nothing profited the teachers themselves to virtue.” Most of the arts have been in like manner
decried by the same knowledge; but they did not consider
that it was from the purpose to exercise their wits in those
very matters wherein there was no solid advantage.
As to the rest, some have looked upon Plato as a dogmatist, others as a doubter, others in some things the one,
and in other things the other. Socrates, the conductor of his
dialogues, is eternally upon questions and stirring up disputes, never determining, never satisfying, and professes to
have no other science but that of opposing himself. Homer,
their author, has equally laid the foundations of all the sects
of philosophy, to show how indifferent it was which way we
should choose. ‘Tis said that ten several sects sprung from
Plato; yet, in my opinion, never did any instruction halt and
stumble, if his does not.
Socrates said that midwives, in taking upon them the
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ing forth themselves; and that by the title of a wise man or
sage, which the gods had conferred upon him, he was disabled, in his virile and mental love, of the faculty of bringing forth, contenting himself to help and assist those that
could; to open their nature, anoint the passes, and facilitate
their birth; to judge of the infant, baptize, nourish, fortify,
swath, and circumcise it, exercising and employing his understanding in the perils and fortunes of others.
It is so with the most part of this third sort of authors, as
the ancients have observed in the writings of Anaxagoras,
Democritus, Parmenides, Xenophanes, and others. They
have a way of writing, doubtful in substance and design,
rather inquiring than teaching, though they mix their style
with some dogmatical periods. Is not the same thing seen in
Seneca and Plutarch? How many contradictions are there to
be found if a man pry narrowly into them! So many that the
reconciling lawyers ought first to reconcile them every one
to themselves. Plato seems to have affected this method of
philosophizing in dialogues; to the end that he might with
greater decency, from several mouths, deliver the diversity
and variety of his own fancies. It is as well to treat variously of things as to treat of them conformably, and better,
that is to say, more copiously and with greater profit. Let
us take example from ourselves: judgments are the utmost
point of all dogmatical and determinative speaking; and
yet those arrets that our parliaments give the people, the
most exemplary of them, and those most proper to nourish in them the reverence due to that dignity, principally
through the sufficiency of the persons acting, derive their
beauty not so much from the conclusion, which with them is
quotidian and common to every judge, as from the dispute
and heat of divers and contrary arguments that the matter of law and equity will permit And the largest field for
reprehension that some philosophers have against others is
drawn from the diversities and contradictions wherein every one of them finds himself perplexed, either on purpose
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ery thing, or ignorantly compelled by the volubility and incomprehensibility of all matter; which is the meaning of the
maxim–“In a slippery and sliding place let us suspend our
belief;” for, as Euripides says,–
“God’s various works perplex the thoughts of
men.”
Like that which Empedocles, as if transported with a
divine fury, and compelled by truth, often strewed here and
there in his writings: “No, no, we feel nothing, we see nothing; all things are concealed from us; there is not one thing
of which we can positively say what it is;” according to the
divine saying: Cogitationes mortalium timidæ, et incertæ adinventiones nostro et providentice. “For the thoughts of mortal
men are doubtful; and our devices are but uncertain.” It
is not to be thought strange if men, despairing to overtake
what they hunt after, have not however lost the pleasure of
the chase; study being of itself so pleasant an employment;
and so pleasant that amongst the pleasures, the Stoics forbid that also which proceeds from the exercise of the mind,
will have it curbed, and find a kind of intemperance in too
much knowledge.
Democritus having eaten figs at his table that tasted of
honey, fell presently to considering with himself whence
they should derive this unusual sweetness; and to be satisfied in it, was about to rise from the table to see the place
whence the figs had been gathered; which his maid observing, and having understood the cause, smilingly told him
that “he need not trouble himself about that, for she had
put them into a vessel in which there had been honey.” He
was vexed at this discovery, and that she had deprived him
of the occasion of this inquiry, and robbed his curiosity of
matter to work upon: “Go thy way,” said he, “thou hast
done me an injury; but, for all that, I will seek out the cause
as if it were natural;” and would willingly have found out
some true reason for a false and imaginary effect. This story
of a famous and great philosopher very clearly represents
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to us that studious passion that puts us upon the pursuit
of things, of the acquisition of which we despair. Plutarch
gives a like example of some one who would not be satisfied
in that whereof he was in doubt, that he might not lose the
pleasure of inquiring into it; like the other who would not
that his physician should allay the thirst of his fever, that
he might not lose the pleasure of quenching it by drinking. Satius est supervacua discere, quam nihil. “‘Tis better to
learn more than necessary than nothing at all.” As in all
sorts of feeding, the pleasure of eating is very often single
and alone, and that what we take, which is acceptable to
the palate, is not always nourishing or wholesome; so that
which our minds extract from science does not cease to be
pleasant, though there be nothing in it either nutritive or
healthful. Thus they say: “The consideration of nature is a
diet proper for our minds, it raises and elevates us, makes
us disdain low and terrestrial things, by comparing them
with those that are celestial and high. The mere inquisition into great and occult things is very pleasant, even to
those who acquire no other benefit than the reverence and
fear of judging it.” This is what they profess. The vain image of this sickly curiosity is yet more manifest in this other
example which they so often urge. “Eudoxus wished and
begged of the gods that he might once see the sun near at
hand, to comprehend the form, greatness, and beauty of it;
even though he should thereby be immediately burned.”
He would at the price of his life purchase a knowledge, of
which the use and possession should at the same time be
taken from him; and for this sudden and vanishing knowledge lose all the other knowledge he had in present, or
might afterwards have acquired.
I cannot easily persuade myself that Epicurus, Plato,
and Pytagoras, have given us their atom, idea and numbers,
for current pay. They were too wise to establish their articles of faith upon things so disputable and uncertain. But
in that obscurity and ignorance in which the world then
was, every one of these great men endeavoured to present
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some kind of image or reflection of light, and worked their
brains for inventions that might have a pleasant and subtle
appearance; provided that, though false, they might make
good their ground against those that would oppose them.
Unicuique ista pro ingenio finguntur, non ex scientiæ vi. “These
things every one fancies according to his wit, and not by
any power of knowledge.”
One of the ancients, who was reproached, “That he
professed philosophy, of which he nevertheless in his own
judgment made no great account,” made answer, “That this
was truly to philosophize.”
They wished to consider all, to balance every thing, and
found that an employment well suited to our natural curiosity. Some things they wrote for the benefit of public society,
as their religions; and for that consideration it was but reasonable that they should not examine public opinions to the
quick, that they might not disturb the common obedience to
the laws and customs of their country.
Plato treats of this mystery with a raillery manifest
enough; for where he writes according to his own method
he gives no certain rule. When he plays the legislator he
borrows a magisterial and positive style, and boldly there
foists in his most fantastic inventions, as fit to persuade the
vulgar, as impossible to be believed by himself; knowing
very well how fit we are to receive all sorts of impressions,
especially the most immoderate and preposterous; and yet,
in his Laws, he takes singular care that nothing be sung in
public but poetry, of which the fiction and fabulous relations tend to some advantageous end; it being so easy to
imprint all sorts of phantasms in human minds, that it were
injustice not to feed them rather with profitable untruths
than with untruths that are unprofitable and hurtful. He
says very roundly, in his Republic, “That it is often necessary, for the benefit of men, to deceive them.” It is very easy
to distinguish that some of the sects have more followed
truth, and the others utility, by which the last have gained
their reputation. ‘Tis the misery of our condition that often
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that which presents itself to our imagination for the truest
does not appear the most useful to life. The boldest sects,
as the Epicurean, Pyrrhonian, and the new Academic, are
yet constrained to submit to the civil law at the end of the
account.
There are other subjects that they have tumbled and
tossed about, some to the right and others to the left, every
one endeavouring, right or wrong, to give them some kind
of colour; for, having found nothing so abstruse that they
would not venture to speak of, they are very often forced to
forge weak and ridiculous conjectures; not that they themselves looked upon them as any foundation, or establishing
any certain truth, but merely for exercise. Non tam id sensisse quod dicerent, quam exercere ingénia materio difficultate videntur voluisse. “They seem not so much themselves to have
believed what they said, as to have had a mind to exercise
their wits in the difficulty of the matter.” And if we did not
take it thus, how should we palliate so great inconstancy,
variety, and vanity of opinions, as we see have been produced by those excellent and admirable men? As, for example, what can be more vain than to imagine, to guess at
God, by our analogies and conjectures? To direct and govern him and the world by our capacities and our laws? And
to serve ourselves, at the expense of the divinity, with what
small portion of capacity he has been pleased to impart to
our natural condition; and because we cannot extend our
sight to his glorious throne, to have brought him down to
our corruption and our miseries?
Of all human and ancient opinions concerning religion, that seems to me the most likely and most excusable,
that acknowledged God as an incomprehensible power, the
original and preserver of all things, all goodness, all perfection, receiving and taking in good part the honour and
reverence that man paid him, under what method, name,
or ceremonies soever–
Jupiter omnipotens,
deûmque,
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rerum,
regumque,
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Progenitor, genitrixque.
“Jove, the almighty, author of all things,
The father, mother, of both gods and kings.”
This zeal has universally been looked upon from heaven
with a gracious eye. All governments have reaped fruit
from their devotion; impious men and actions have everywhere had suitable events. Pagan histories acknowledge
dignity, order, justice, prodigies, and oracles, employed for
their profit and instruction in their fabulous religions; God,
through his mercy, vouchsafing, by these temporal benefits,
to cherish the tender principles of a kind of brutish knowledge that natural reason gave them of him, through the deceiving images of their dreams. Not only deceiving and
false, but impious also and injurious, are those that man has
forged from his own invention: and of all the religions that
St. Paul found in repute at Athens, that which they had dedicated “to the unknown God” seemed to him the most to be
excused.
Pythagoras shadowed the truth a little more closely,
judging that the knowledge of this first cause and being of
beings ought to be indefinite, without limitation, without
declaration; that it was nothing else than the extreme effort
of our imagination towards perfection, every one amplifying the idea according to the talent of his capacity. But if
Numa attempted to conform the devotion of his people to
this project; to attach them to a religion purely mental, without any prefixed object and material mixture, he undertook
a thing of no use; the human mind could never support itself floating in such an infinity of inform thoughts; there is
required some certain image to be presented according to
its own model. The divine majesty has thus, in some sort,
suffered himself to be circumscribed in corporal limits for
our advantage. His supernatural and celestial sacraments
have signs of our earthly condition; his adoration is by sensible offices and words; for ‘tis man that believes and prays.
I shall omit the other arguments upon this subject; but a
man would have much ado to make me believe that the
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sight of our crucifixes, that the picture of our Saviour’s passion, that the ornaments and ceremonious motions of our
churches, that the voices accommodated to the devotion of
our thoughts, and that emotion of the senses, do not warm
the souls of the people with a religious passion of very advantageous effect.
Of those to whom they have given a body, as necessity
required in that universal blindness, I should, I fancy, most
incline to those who adored the sun:–
La Lumière commune,
L’oil du monde; et si Dieu au chef porte des
yeux,
Les rayons du soleil sont ses yeulx radieux,
Qui donnent vie à touts, nous maintiennent et
gardent,
Et les faictsdes humains en ce monde regardent:
Ce beau, ce grand soleil qui nous faict les
saisons,
Selon qu’il entre ou sort de ses douze maisons;
Qui remplit l’univers de ses vertus cognues;
Qui d’un traict de ses yeulx nous dissipe les
nues;
L’esprit, l’ame du monde, ardent et flamboyant,
En la course d’un jour tout le Ciel tournoyant;
Plein d’immense grandeur, rond, vagabond, et
ferme;
Lequel tient dessoubs luy tout le monde pour
terme:
En repos, sans repos; oysif, et sans séjour;
Fils aisné de nature, et le père du jour:
“The common light that equal shines on all,
Diffused around the whole terrestrial ball;
And, if the almighty Ruler of the skies
Has eyes, the sunbeams are his radiant eyes,
That life and safety give to young and old,
And all men’s actions upon earth behold.
his great, this beautiful, the glorious sun,
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Who makes their course the varied seasons
run;
That with his virtues fills the universe,
And with one glance can sullen clouds disperse;
Earth’s life and soul, that, flaming in his sphere,
Surrounds the heavens in one day’s career;
Immensely great, moving yet firm and round,
Who the whole world below has made his
bound;
At rest, without rest, idle without stay,
Nature’s first son, and father of the day:”
forasmuch as, beside this grandeur and beauty of his, ‘tis
the only piece of this machine that we discover at the remotest distance from us; and by that means so little known
that they were pardonable for entering into so great admiration and reverence of it.
Thales, who first inquired into this sort of matter, believed God to be a Spirit that made all things of water;
Anaximander, that the gods were always dying and entering into life again; and that there were an infinite number
of worlds; Anaximines, that the air was God, that he was
procreate and immense, always moving. Anaxagoras the
first, was of opinion that the description and manner of
all things were conducted by the power and reason of an
infinite spirit. Alcmæon gave divinity to the sun, moon,
and stars, and to the soul. Pythagoras made God a spirit,
spread over the nature of all things, whence our souls are
extracted; Parmenides, a circle surrounding the heaven, and
supporting the world by the ardour of light. Empedocles
pronounced the four elements, of which all things are composed, to be gods; Protagoras had nothing to say, whether
they were or were not, or what they were; Democritus was
one while of opinion that the images and their circuitions
were gods; another while, the nature that darts out those
images; and then, our science and intelligence. Plato divides his belief into several opinions; he says, in his Timæus,
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that the Father of the World cannot be named; in his Laws,
that men are not to inquire into his being; and elsewhere,
in the very same books, he makes the world, the heavens,
the stars, the earth, and our souls, gods; admitting, moreover, those which have been received by ancient institution
in every republic.
Xenophon reports a like perplexity in Socrates’s doctrine; one while that men are not to inquire into the form
of God, and presently makes him maintain that the sun
is God, and the soul God; that there is but one God, and
then that there are many. Speusippus, the nephew of Plato,
makes God a certain power governing all things, and that
he has a soul. Aristotle one while says it is the spirit, and
another the world; one while he gives the world another
master, and another while makes God the heat of heaven.
Zenocrates makes eight, five named amongst the planets;
the sixth composed of all the fixed stars, as of so many
members; the seventh and eighth, the sun and moon. Heraclides Ponticus does nothing but float in his opinion, and
finally deprives God of sense, and makes him shift from one
form to another, and at last says that it is heaven and earth.
Theophrastus wanders in the same irresolution amongst his
fancies, attributing the superintendency of the world one
while to the understanding, another while to heaven, and
then to the stars. Strato says that ‘tis nature, she having
the power of generation, augmentation, and diminution,
without form and sentiment Zeno says ‘tis the law of nature, commanding good and prohibiting evil; which law is
an animal; and takes away the accustomed gods, Jupiter,
Juno, and Vesta. Diogenes Apolloniates, that ‘tis air. Zenophanes makes God round, seeing and hearing, not breathing, and having nothing in common with human nature.
Aristo thinks the form of God to be incomprehensible, deprives him of sense, and knows not whether he be an animal or something else; Cleanthes, one while supposes it
to be reason, another while the world, another the soul of
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vironing all. Perseus, Zeno’s disciple, was of opinion that
men have given the title of gods to such as have been useful, and have added any notable advantage to human life,
and even to profitable things themselves. Chrysippus made
a confused heap of all the preceding theories, and reckons,
amongst a thousand forms of gods that he makes, the men
also that have been deified. Diagoras and Theodoras flatly
denied that there were any gods at all. Epicurus makes the
gods shining, transparent, and perflable, lodged as betwixt
two forts, betwixt two worlds, secure from blows, clothed in
a human figure, and with such members as we have; which
members are to them of no use:–
Ego Deum genus esse semper duxi, et dicam colitum;
Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum
genus.
“I ever thought that gods above there were,
But do not think they care what men do here.”
Trust to your philosophy, my masters; and brag that you
have found the bean in the cake when you see what a rattle is here with so many philosophical heads! The perplexity of so many worldly forms has gained this over me, that
manners and opinions contrary to mine do not so much displease as instruct me; nor so much make me proud as they
humble me, in comparing them. And all other choice than
what comes from the express and immediate hand of God
seems to me a choice of very little privilege. The policies
of the world are no less opposite upon this subject than the
schools, by which we may understand that fortune itself is
not more variable and inconstant, nor more blind and inconsiderate, than our reason. The things that are most unknown are most proper to be deified; wherefore to make
gods of ourselves, as the ancients did, exceeds the extremest
weakness of understanding. I would much rather have
gone along with those who adored the serpent, the dog, or
the ox; forasmuch as their nature and being is less known to
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us, and that we have more room to imagine what we please
of those beasts, and to attribute to them extraordinary faculties. But to have made gods of our own condition, of whom
we ought to know the imperfections; and to have attributed
to them desire, anger, revenge, marriages, generation, alliances, love, jealousy, our members and bones, our fevers
and pleasures, our death and obsequies; this must needs
have proceeded from a marvellous inebriety of the human
understanding;
Quæ procul usque adeo divino ab numine distant,
Inque Deûm numéro quæ sint indigna videri;
“From divine natures these so distant are,
They are unworthy of that character.”
Formo, otates, vestitus, omatus noti sunt; genera, conjugia, cognationes, omniaque traducta ad similitudinem imbellitar tis humano: nam et perturbatis animis inducuntur; accipimus enim deorurn cupiditates, cegritudines, iracundias; “Their forms, ages,
clothes, and ornaments are known: their descents, marriages, and kindred, and all adapted to the similitude of
human weakness; for they are represented to us with anxious minds, and we read of the lusts, sickness, and anger
of the gods;” as having attributed divinity not only to faith,
virtue, honour, concord, liberty, victory, and piety; but also
to voluptuousness, fraud, death, envy, old age, misery; to
fear, fever, ill fortune, and other injuries of our frail and
transitory life:–
Quid juvat hoc, templis nostros inducere mores?
O curvæ in terris animæ et colestium inanes!
“O earth-born souls! by earth-born passions led,
To every spark of heav’nly influence dead!
Think ye that what man values will inspire
In minds celestial the same base desire?”
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The Egyptians, with an impudent prudence, interdicted,
upon pain of hanging, that any one should say that their
gods, Serapis and Isis, had formerly been men; and yet no
one was ignorant that they had been such; and their effigies, represented with the finger upon the mouth, signified,
says Varro, that mysterious decree to their priests, to conceal
their mortal original, as it must by necessary consequence
cancel all the veneration paid to them. Seeing that man so
much desired to equal himself to God, he had done better, says Cicero, to have attracted those divine conditions to
himself, and drawn them down hither below, than to send
his corruption and misery up on high; but, to take it right,
he has several ways done both the one and the other, with
like vanity of opinion.
When philosophers search narrowly into the hierarchy
of their gods, and make a great bustle about distinguishing their alliances, offices, and power, I cannot believe they
speak as they think. When Plato describes Pluto’s orchard
to us, and the bodily conveniences or pains that attend us
after the ruin and annihilation of our bodies, and accommodates them to the feeling we have in this life:–
Secreti celant calles, et myrtea circum
Sylva tegit; curæ non ipsâ in morte relinquunt;
“In secret vales and myrtle groves they lie,
Nor do cares leave them even when they die.”
when Mahomet promises his followers a Paradise hung
with tapestry, gilded and enamelled with gold and precious stones, furnished with wenches of excelling beauty,
rare wines, and delicate dishes; it is easily discerned that
these are deceivers that accommodate their promises to our
sensuality, to attract and allure us by hopes and opinions
suitable to our mortal appetites. And yet some amongst
us are fallen into the like error, promising to themselves after the resurrection a terrestrial and temporal life, accompanied with all sorts of worldly conveniences and pleasures.
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Can we believe that Plato, he who had such heavenly conceptions, and was so well acquainted with the Divinity as
thence to derive the name of the Divine Plato, ever thought
that the poor creature, man, had any thing in him applicable to that incomprehensible power? and that he believed
that the weak holds we are able to take were capable, or
the force of our understanding sufficient, to participate of
beatitude or eternal pains? We should then tell him from
human reason: “If the pleasures thou dost promise us in
the other life are of the same kind that I have enjoyed here
below, this has nothing in common with infinity; though all
my five natural senses should be even loaded with pleasure,
and my soul full of all the contentment it could hope or desire, we know what all this amounts to, all this would be
nothing; if there be any thing of mine there, there is nothing divine; if this be no more than what may belong to our
present condition, it cannot be of any value. All contentment of mortals is mortal. Even the knowledge of our parents, children, and friends, if that can affect and delight us
in the other world, if that still continues a satisfaction to us
there, we still remain in earthly and finite conveniences. We
cannot as we ought conceive the greatness of these high and
divine promises, if we could in any sort conceive them; to
have a worthy imagination of them we must imagine them
unimaginable, inexplicable, and incomprehensible, and absolutely another thing than those of our miserable experience.” “Eye hath not seen,” saith St. Paul, “nor ear heard,
neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things that
God hath prepared for them that love him.” And if, to render us capable, our being were reformed and changed (as
thou, Plato, sayest, by thy purifications), it ought to be so
extreme and total a change, that by physical doctrine it be
no more us;–
Hector erat tunc cum bello certabat; at ille
Tractus ab Æmonio non erat Hector eqao;
He Hector was whilst he could fight, but when
Dragg’d by Achilles’ steeds, no Hector then;
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it must be something else that must receive these
recompenses:–
Quod mutatur... dissolvitur; interit ergo;
Trajiciuntur enim partes, atque ordine migrant.
“Things changed dissolved are, and therefore
die;
Their parts are mix’d, and from their order fly.”
For in Pythagoras’s metempsychosis, and the change of
habitation that he imagined in souls, can we believe that the
lion, in whom the soul of Cæsar is enclosed, does espouse
Cæsar’s passions, or that the lion is he? For if it was still
Cæsar, they would be in the right who, controverting this
opinion with Plato, reproach him that the son might be seen
to ride his mother transformed into a mule, and the like absurdities. And can we believe that in the mutations that are
made of the bodies of animals into others of the same kind,
the new comers are not other than their predecessors? From
the ashes of a phoenix, a worm, they say, is engendered,
and from that another phoenix; who can imagine that this
second phoenix is no other than the first? We see our silkworms, as it were, die and wither; and from this withered
body a butterfly is produced; and from that another worm;
how ridiculous would it be to imagine that this was still the
first! That which once has ceased to be is no more:–
Nec, si materiam nostram collegerit ætas
Post obitum, rursumque redegerit, ut sita nunc
est,
Atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitæ,
Pertineat quidquam tamen ad nos id quoque
factum,
Interrupta semel cum sit repetentia nostra.
“Neither tho’ time should gather and restore
Our matter to the form it was before,
And give again new light to see withal,
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Would that new figure us concern at all;
Or we again ever the same be seen,
Our being having interrupted been.”
And, Plato, when thou sayest in another place that it shall
be the spiritual part of man that will be concerned in the
fruition of the recompense of another life, thou tellest us a
thing wherein there is as little appearance of truth:–
Scilicet, avolsis radicibus, ut nequit ullam
Dispicere ipsa oculus rem, seorsum corpore toto;
“No more than eyes once from their optics torn,
Can ever after any thing discern;”
for, by this account, it would no more be man, nor consequently us, who would be concerned in this enjoyment; for
we are composed of two principal essential parts, the separation of which is the death and ruin of our being:–
Inter enim jecta est vital pausa, vageque
Deerrarunt passim motus ab sensibus omnes;
“When once that pause of life is come between,
‘Tis just the same as we had never been;”
we cannot say that the man suffers when the worms feed
upon his members, and that the earth consumes them:–
Et nihil hoc ad nos, qui coltu conjugioque
Corporis atque animæ consistimus uniter aptI
“What’s that to us? for we are only we,
While soul and body in one frame agree.”
Moreover, upon what foundation of their justice can the
gods take notice of or reward man after his death and virtuous actions, since it was themselves that put them in the
way and mind to do them? And why should they be offended at or punish him for wicked ones, since themselves
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have created in him so frail a condition, and when, with one
glance of their will, they might prevent him from falling?
Might not Epicurus, with great colour of human reason, object this to Plato, did he not often save himself with this sentence: “That it is impossible to establish any thing certain
of the immortal nature by the mortal?” She does nothing
but err throughout, but especially when she meddles with
divine things. Who does more evidently perceive this than
we? For although we have given her certain and infallible
principles; and though we have enlightened her steps with
the sacred lamp of truth that it has pleased God to communicate to us; we daily see, nevertheless, that if she swerve
never so little from the ordinary path; and that she stray
from, or wander out of the way set out and beaten by the
church, how soon she loses, confounds and fetters herself,
tumbling and floating in this vast, turbulent, and waving
sea of human opinions, without restraint, and without any
determinate end; so soon as she loses that great and common road, she enters into a labyrinth of a thousand several
paths.
Man cannot be any thing but what he is, nor imagine
beyond the reach of his capacity. “Tis a greater presumption,” says Plutarch, “in them who are but men to attempt
to speak and discourse of the gods and demi-gods than it
is in a man utterly ignorant of music to give an opinion
of singing; or in a man who never saw a camp to dispute
about arms and martial affairs, presuming by some light
conjecture to understand the effects of an art he is totally
a stranger to.” Antiquity, I believe, thought to put a compliment upon, and to add something to, the divine grandeur
in assimilating it to man, investing it with his faculties, and
adorning it with his ugly humours and most shameful necessities; offering it our aliments to eat, presenting it with
our dances, mummeries, and farces, to divert it; with our
vestments to cover it, and our houses to inhabit, coaxing it
with the odour of incense and the sounds of music, with festoons and nosegays; and to accommodate it to our vicious
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passions, flattering its justice with inhuman vengeance, and
with the ruin and dissipation of things by it created and preserved as Tiberius Sempronius, who burnt the rich spoils
and arms he had gained from the enemy in Sardinia for a
sacrifice to Vulcan; and Paulus Æmilius, those of Macedonia, to Mars and Minerva; and Alexander, arriving at the Indian Ocean, threw several great vessels of gold into the sea,
in honour of Thetes; and moreover loading her altars with
a slaughter not of innocent beasts only, but of men also, as
several nations, and ours among the rest, were commonly
used to do; and I believe there is no nation under the sun
that has not done the same:–
Sulmone creatos
Quatuor hîc juvenes, totidem quos educat
Ufens,
Viventes rapit, inferias quos immolet umbris.
“Four sons of Sulmo, four whom Ufens bred,
He took in flight, and living victims led,
To please the ghost of Pallas, and expire
In sacrifice before his fun’ral pyre.”
The Getæ hold themselves to be immortal, and that their
death is nothing but a journey to their god Zamolxis. Every five years they dispatch some one among them to him,
to entreat of him such necessaries as they stand in need of.
This envoy is chosen by lot, and the form of dispatching
him, after he has been instructed by word of mouth what he
is to deliver, is that of the assistants, three hold up as many
javelins, upon which the rest throw his body with all their
force. If he happen to be wounded in a mortal part, and that
he immediately dies, ‘tis held a certain argument of divine
favour; but if he escapes, he is looked upon as a wicked and
execrable wretch, and another is dismissed after the same
manner in his stead. Amestris, the mother of Xerxes, being
grown old, caused at once fourteen young men, of the best
families of Persia, to be buried alive, according to the religion of the country, to gratify some infernal deity. And even
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to this day the idols of Themixtitan are cemented with the
blood of little children, and they delight in no sacrifice but
of these pure and infantine souls; a justice thirsty of innocent blood:–
Tantum religio potuit suadere maloram.
‘Such impious use was of religion made,
So many demon acts it could persuade.”
The Carthaginians immolated their own children to Saturn;
and those who had none of their own bought of others, the
father and mother being in the mean time obliged to assist
at the ceremony with a gay and contented countenance.
It was a strange fancy to think to gratify the divine
bounty with our afflictions; like the Lacedemonians, who
regaled their Diana with the tormenting of young boys,
whom they caused to be whipped for her sake, very often
to death. It was a savage humour to imagine to gratify the
architect by the subversion of his building, and to think to
take away the punishment due to the guilty by punishing
the innocent; and that poor Iphigenia, at the port of Aulis,
should by her death and immolation acquit, towards God,
the whole army of the Greeks from all the crimes they had
committed;
Et casta inceste, nubendi tempore in ipso,
Hostia concideret mactatu mosta parentis;
“That the chaste virgin in her nuptial band
Should die by an unnat’ral father’s hand;”
and that the two noble and generous souls of the two Decii,
the father and the son, to incline the favour of the gods to be
propitious to the affairs of Rome, should throw themselves
headlong into the thickest of the enemy: quo fuit tanta deorum iniquitas, ut placari populo Romano non possent, nisi tales
viri occidissent? “How great an injustice in the gods was it
that they could not be reconciled to the people of Rome unless such men perished!” To which may be added, that it
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is not for the criminal to cause himself to be scourged according to his own measure nor at his own time, but that it
purely belongs to the judge, who considers nothing as chastisements but the penalty that he appoints, and cannot call
that punishment which proceeds from the consent of him
that suffers. The divine vengeance presupposes an absolute
dissent in us, both for its justice and for our own penalty.
And therefore it was a ridiculous humour of Polycrates,
tyrant of Samos, who, to interrupt the continued course of
his good fortune, and to balance it, went and threw the dearest and most precious jewel he had into the sea, believing
that by this voluntary and antedated mishap he bribed and
satisfied the revolution and vicissitude of fortune; and she,
to mock his folly, ordered it so that the same jewel came
again into his hands, found in the belly of a fish. And then
to what end were those tearings and dismemberments of
the Corybantes, the Menades, and, in our times, of the Mahometans, who slash their faces, bosoms, and limbs, to gratify their prophet; seeing that the offence lies in the will, not
in the breast, eyes, genitals, roundness of form, the shoulders, or the throat? Tantus est perturbâto mentis, et sedibus
suis pilso, furor, ut sic dii placentur, quemadmodum ne homines
quidem soviunt. “So great is the fury and madness of troubled minds when once displaced from the seat of reason, as
if the gods should be appeased with what even men are not
so cruel as to approve.” The use of this natural contexture
has not only respect to us, but also to the service of God
and other men; ‘tis as unjust for us voluntarily to wound
or hurt it as to kill ourselves upon any pretence whatever;
it seems to be great cowardice and treason to exercise cruelty upon, and to destroy, the functions of the body that are
stupid and servile, to spare the soul the solicitude of governing them according to reason: Ubi iratos deos timent, qui sic
propitios habere merentur? In regiæ libidinis voluptatem castrati
sunt quidam; sed nemo sibi, ne vir esset, jubente domino, mantis
intulit. “Where are they so afraid of the anger of the gods as
to merit their favour at that rate? Some, indeed, have been
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made eunuchs for the lust of princes: but no man at his master’s command has put his own hand to unman himself.” So
did they fill their religion with several ill effects:–
Sæpius olim Religio peperit scelerosa atque
impia facta.
“In elder times Religion did commit most fearful
crimes.”
Now nothing of ours can in any sort be compared or likened
unto the divine nature, which will not blemish and stain it
with much imperfection.
How can that infinite beauty, power, and goodness,
admit of any correspondence or similitude to such abject
things as we are, without extreme wrong and manifest dishonour to his divine greatness? Infirmum dei fortius est hominibs; et stultum dei sapientius est hominibus. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God
is stronger than men.” Stilpo, the philosopher, being asked,
“Whether the gods were delighted with our adorations and
sacrifices?”–“You are indiscreet,” answered he; “let us withdraw apart, if you would talk of such things.” Nevertheless,
we prescribe him bounds, we keep his power besieged by
our reasons (I call our ravings and dreams reason, with the
dispensation of philosophy, which says, “That the wicked
man, and even the fool, go mad by reason, but a particular
form of reason”), we would subject him to the vain and feeble appearances of our understandings,–him who has made
both us and our knowledge. Because that nothing is made
of nothing, God therefore could not make the world without matter. What! has God put into our hands the keys and
most secret springs of his power? Is he obliged not to exceed the limits of our knowledge? Put the case, O man! that
thou hast been able here to mark some footsteps of his effects; dost thou therefore think that he has employed all he
can, and has crowded all his forms and ideas in this work?
Thou seest nothing but the order and revolution of this little
cave in which thou art lodged, if, indeed, thou dost see so
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much; whereas his divinity has an infinite jurisdiction beyond. This part is nothing in comparison of the whole:–
Omnia cum colo, terràque, manque,
Nil sunt ad summam summal totius omnem.
“The earth, the sea, and skies, from pole to pole,
Are small, nay, nothing to the mighty whole.”
‘Tis a municipal law that thou allegest, thou knowest not
what is universal Tie thyself to that to which thou art subject, but not him; he is not of thy brotherhood, thy fellowcitizen, or companion. If he has in some sort communicated
himself unto thee, ‘tis not to debase himself unto thy littleness, nor to make thee comptroller of his power; the human
body cannot fly to the clouds; rules are for thee. The sun
runs every day his ordinary course; the bounds of the sea
and the earth cannot be confounded; the water is unstable
and without firmness; a wall, unless it be broken, is impenetrable to a solid body; a man cannot preserve his life in
the flames; he cannot be both in heaven and upon earth,
and corporally in a thousand places at once. ‘Tis for thee
that he has made these rules; ‘tis thee that they concern; he
has manifested to Christians that he has enfranchised himself from them all when it pleased him. And, in truth, why,
almighty as he is, should he have limited his power within
any certain bounds? In favour of whom should he have renounced his privilege? Thy reason has in no other thing
more of likelihood and foundation than in that wherein it
persuades thee that there is a plurality of worlds:–
Terramque et solem, lunam, mare, estera quo
rant,
Non esse unica, sed numéro magis innumeralI
“That earth, sun, moon, sea, and the rest that
are, Not single, but innumerable were.”
The most eminent minds of elder times believed it; and
some of this age of ours, compelled by the appearances of
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human reason, do the same; forasmuch as in this fabric that
we behold there is nothing single and one,
Cum in summà res nulla sit una,
Unica quo gignatur, et unica solaque crescat;
“Since nothing’s single in this mighty place,
That can alone beget, alone increase;”
and that all the kinds are multiplied in some number; by
which it seems not to be likely that God should have made
this work only without a companion; and that the matter of
this form should have been totally drained in this individual.
Quare etiam atque etiam tales fateare necesse est
Esse alios alibi congressus materiali;
Qualis hic est, avido complexu quem tenet
æther.
“Wherefore ‘tis necessary to confess
That there must elsewhere be the like congress
Of the like matter, which the airy space
Holds fast within its infinite embrace.”
Especially if it be a living creature, which its motions render
so credible that Plato affirms it, and that many of our people do either confirm, or dare not deny it; no more than that
ancient opinion that the heavens, the stars, and other members of the world, are creatures composed of body and soul,
mortal in respect of their composition, but immortal by the
determination of the Creator. Now if there be many worlds,
as Democritus, Epicurus, and almost all philosophy has believed, what do we know that the principles and rules of
this of ours in like manner concern the rest? They may peradventure have another form and another polity. Epicurus
supposes them either like or unlike. We see in this world
an infinite difference and variety, only by distance of places;
neither com, wine, nor any of our animals are to be seen in
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that new comer of the world discovered by our fathers; ‘tis
all there another thing; and in times past, do but consider
in how many parts of the world they had no knowledge either of Bacchus or Ceres. If Pliny and Herodotus are to be
believed, there are in certain places kinds of men very little resembling us, mongrel and ambiguous forms, betwixt
the human and brutal natures; there are countries where
men are bom without heads, having their mouth and eyes
in their breast; where they are all hermaphrodites; where
they go on all four; where they have but one eye in the forehead, and a head more like a dog than like ours; where they
are half fish the lower part, and live in the water; where the
women bear at five years old, and live but eight; where the
head and the skin of the forehead is so hard that a sword
will not touch it, but rebounds again; where men have no
beards; nations that know not the use of fire; others that
eject seed of a black colour. What shall we say of those that
naturally change themselves into wolves, colts, and then
into men again? And if it be true, as Plutarch says, that
in some place of the Indies there are men without mouths,
who nourish themselves with the smell of certain odours,
how many of our descriptions are false? He is no longer
risible, nor, perhaps, capable of reason and society. The disposition and cause of our internal composition would then
for the most part be to no purpose, and of no use.
Moreover, how many things are there in our own
knowledge that oppose those fine rules we have cut out
for and prescribe to nature? And yet we must undertake
to circumscribe thereto God himself! How many things do
we call miraculous, and contrary to nature? This is done
by every nation and by every man, according to the proportion of his ignorance. How many occult properties and
quintessences do we daily discover? For, for us to go “according to nature,” is no more but to go “according to our
understanding,” as far as that is able to follow, and as far
as we are able to see into it; all beyond that is, forsooth,
monstrous and irregular. Now, by this account, all things
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shall be monstrous to the wisest and most understanding
men; for human reason has persuaded them that there was
no manner of ground nor foundation, not so much as to be
assured that snow is white, and Anaxagoras affirmed it to
be black; if there be any thing, or if there be nothing; if there
be knowledge or ignorance, which Metrodorus of Chios denied that man was able to determine; or whether we live, as
Euripides doubts whether the life we live is life, or whether
that we call death be not life,129 and not without some appearance. For why do we derive the title of being from this
instant, which is but a flash in the infinite course of an eternal night, and so short an interruption of our perpetual and
natural condition, death possessing all the before and after this moment, and also a good part of the moment itself.
Others swear there is no motion at all, as followers of Melissus, and that nothing stirs. For if there be but one, neither
can that spherical motion be of any use to him, nor motion
from one place to another, as Plato proves: “That there is
neither generation nor corruption in nature.” Protagoras
says that there is nothing in nature but doubt; that a man
may equally dispute of all things; and even of this, whether
a man can equally dispute of all things; Nausiphanes, that
of things which seem to be, nothing is more than it is not;
that there is nothing certain but uncertainty; Parmenides,
that of that which seems, there is no one thing in general;
that there is but one thing; Zeno, that one same is not, and
that there is nothing; if there were one thing, it would either
be in another or in itself; if it be in another, they are two; if
it be in itself, they are yet two; the comprehending, and the
comprehended. According to these doctrines the nature of
things is no other than a shadow, either false or vain.
This way of speaking in a Christian man has ever
seemed to me very indiscreet and irreverent. “God cannot
die; God cannot contradict himself; God cannot do this or
that.” I do not like to have the divine power so limited by
the laws of men’s mouths; and the idea which presents itself
129 Greek
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to us in those propositions ought to be more religiously and
reverently expressed.
Our speaking has its failings and defects, as well as all
the rest. Most of the occasions of disturbance in the world
are grammatical ones; our suits only spring from disputes
as to the interpretation of laws; and most wars proceed from
the inability of ministers clearly to express the conventions
and treaties of amity of princes. How many quarrels, and of
how great importance, has the doubt of the meaning of this
syllable, hoc,130 created in the world? Let us take the clearest conclusion that logic itself presents us withal; if you say,
“It is fine weather,” and that you say true, it is then fine
weather. Is not this a very certain form of speaking? And
yet it will deceive us; that it will do so, let us follow the example: If you say, “I lie,” if you say true, you do lie. The art,
the reason, and force of the conclusion of this, are the same
with the other, and yet we are gravelled. The Pyrrhonian
philosophers, I see, cannot express their general conception
in any kind of speaking; for they would require a new language on purpose; ours is all formed of affirmative propositions, which are totally antarctic to them; insomuch that
when they say “I doubt,” they are presently taken by the
throat, to make them confess that at least they know and are
assured that they do doubt. By which means they have been
compelled to shelter themselves under this medical comparison, without which their humour would be inexplicable: when they pronounce, “I know not,” or, “I doubt,” they
say that this proposition carries off itself with the rest, no
more nor less than rhubarb, that drives out the ill humours,
and carries itself off with them. This fancy will be more certainly understood by interrogation: “What do I know?” as
I bear it with the emblem of a balance.
See what use they make of this irreverent way of speaking; in the present disputes about our religion, if you press
its adversaries too hard, they will roundly tell you, “that
130 Montaigne here refers to the controversies between the Catholics
and Protestants about transubstantiation.
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it is not in the power of God to make it so, that his body
should be in paradise and upon earth, and in several places
at once.” And see, too, what advantage the old scoffer made
of this. “At least,” says he, “it is no little consolation to
man to see that God cannot do all things; for he cannot kill
himself, though he would; which is the greatest privilege
we have in our condition; he cannot make mortal immortal, nor revive the dead; nor make it so, that he who has
lived has not; nor that he who has had honours has not had
them; having no other right to the past than that of oblivion.” And that the comparison of man to God may yet be
made out by jocose examples: “He cannot order it so,” says
he, “that twice ten shall not be twenty.” This is what he
says, and what a Christian ought to take heed shall not escape his lips. Whereas, on the contrary, it seems as if men
studied this foolish daring of language, to reduce God to
their own measure:–
Cras vel atrâ Nube polum, Pater, occupato,
Vel sole puro; non tamen irritum
Quodcumque retro est efficiet, neque
Diffinget infectumque reddet
Quod fugiens semel hora vexit.
“To-morrow, let it shine or rain,
Yet cannot this the past make vain:
Nor uncreate and render void
That which was yesterday enjoyed.”
When we say that the infinity of ages, as well past as to
come, are but one instant with God; that his goodness, wisdom, and power are the same with his essence; our mouths
speak it, but our understandings apprehend it not; and yet,
such is our vain opinion of ourselves, that we must make
the Divinity to pass through our sieve; and thence proceed
all the dreams and errors with which the world abounds,
whilst we reduce and weigh in our balance a thing so far
above our poise. Mirum quo procédat improbitas cordis humani, parvulo aliquo intritata successu. “‘Tis wonderful to
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what the wickedness of man’s heart will proceed, if elevated
with the least success.” How magisterially and insolently
does Epicurus reprove the Stoics, for maintaining that the
truly good and happy being appertained only to God, and
that the wise man had nothing but a shadow and resemblance of it! How temerariously have they bound God to
destiny (a thing which, by my consent, none that bears the
name of a Christian shall ever do again)! and Thales, Plato,
and Pythagoras have enslaved him to necessity. This arrogance of attempting to discover God with our eyes has
been the cause that an eminent person among us has attributed to the Divinity a corporal form; and is the reason of
what happens to us every day, of attributing to God important events, by a particular assignment. Because they weigh
with us, they conclude that they also weigh with him, and
that he has a more intent and vigilant regard to them than
to others of less moment to us or of ordinary course: Magna
Dii curant, parva negligunt: “The gods are concerned at great
matters, but slight the small.” Listen to him; he will clear
this to you by his reason: Nec in regnis quidem reges omnia
minima curant: “Neither indeed do kings in their administration take notice of all the least concerns.” As if to that
King of kings it were more or less to subvert a kingdom, or
to move the leaf of a tree; or as if his providence acted after
another manner in inclining the event of a battle than in the
leap of a flea. The hand of his government is laid upon every thing after the same manner, with the same power and
order; our interest does nothing towards it; our inclinations
and measures sway nothing with him. Deus ita artifex magnus in magnis, ut minor non sit in parvis: “God is so great an
artificer in great things, that he is no less in the least” Our
arrogancy sets this blasphemous comparison ever before us.
Because our employments are a burden to us, Strato has
courteously been pleased to exempt the gods from all offices, as their priests are; he makes nature produce and support all things; and with her weights and motions make up
the several parts of the world, discharging human nature
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from the awe of divine judgments: quod beatum æterumque
sit, id nec habere negotii quicquam, nec exhibere alteri: “What
is blessed and eternal has neither any business itself nor
gives any to another.” Nature will that in like things there
should be a like relation. The infinite number of mortals,
therefore, concludes a like number of immortals; the infinite
things that kill and destroy presupposes as many that preserve and profit. As the souls of the gods, without tongue,
eye, or ear, do every one of them feel amongst themselves
what the other feels, and judge our thoughts; so the souls
of men, when at liberty and loosed from the body, either by
sleep or some ecstacy, divine, foretell, and see things, which,
whilst joined to the body, they could not see. “Men,” says
St. Paul, “professing themselves to be wise, they become
fools; and change the glory of the uncorruptible God into
an image made like corruptible man.” Do but take notice
of the juggling in the ancient deifications. After the great
and stately pomp of the funeral, so soon as the fire began to
mount to the top of the pyramid, and to catch hold of the
couch where the body lay, they at the same time turned out
an eagle, which flying upward, signified that the soul went
into Paradise. We have a thousand medals, and particularly of the worthy Faustina, where this eagle is represented
carrying these deified souls to heaven with their heels upwards. ‘Tis pity that we should fool ourselves with our own
fopperies and inventions,
Quod finxere, timent,
“They fear their own inventions,”
like children who are frighted with the same face of their
playfellow, that they themselves have smeared and smutted. quasi quicquam infelicius sit homine, cui sua figmenta dominantur:
“As if any thing could be more unhappy than man,
who is insulted over by his own imagination.” ‘Tis far from
honouring him who made us, to honour him that we have
made. Augustus had more temples than Jupiter, served
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with as much religion and belief of miracles. The Thracians,
in return of the benefits they had received from Agesilaus,
came to bring him word that they had canonized him: “Has
your nation,” said he to them, “the power to make gods of
whom they please? Pray first deify some one amongst yourselves, and when I shall see what advantage he has by it, I
will thank you for your offer.” Man is certainly stark mad;
he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by
dozens. Hear Trismegistus in praise of our sufficiency: “Of
all the wonderful things, it surmounts all wonder that man
could find out the divine nature and make it.” And take
here the arguments of the school of philosophy itself:–
Nosse cui divos et coli munina soli,
Aut soli nescire, datum.
“To whom to know the deities of heaven,
Or know he knows them not, alone ‘tis given.”
“If there is a God, he is a living creature; if he be a living
creature, he has sense; and if he has sense, he is subject to
corruption. If he be without a body he is without a soul, and
consequently without action; and if he has a body, it is perishable.” Is not here a triumph? we are incapable of having
made the world; there must then be some more excellent
nature that has put a hand to the work. It were a foolish
and ridiculous arrogance to esteem ourselves the most perfect thing of the universe. There must then be something
that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately
and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is
the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for
rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the
residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?
Is not the most supreme always the most worthy? but we
are in the lowest form. Nothing without a soul and without reason can produce a living creature capable of reason.
The world produces us, the world then has soul and reason.
Every part of us is less than we. We are part of the world,
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the world therefore is endued with wisdom and reason, and
that more abundantly than we. ‘Tis a fine thing to have a
great government; the government of the world then appertains to some happy nature. The stars do us no harm; they
are then full of goodness. We have need of nourishment;
then so have the gods also, and feed upon the vapours of
the earth. Worldly goods are not goods to God; therefore
they are not goods to us; offending and being offended are
equally testimonies of imbecility; ‘tis therefore folly to fear
God. God is good by his nature; man by his industry, which
is more. The divine and human wisdom have no other distinction, but that the first is eternal; but duration is no accession to wisdom, therefore we are companions. We have life,
reason, and liberty; we esteem goodness, charity, and justice; these qualities are then in him. In conclusion, building
and destroying, the conditions of the Divinity, are forged by
man, according as they relate to himself. What a pattern,
and what a model! let us stretch, let us raise and swell human qualities as much as we please; puff up thyself, poor
man, yet more and more, and more:–
Non, si tu ruperis, inquit.
“Not if thou burst,” said he.
Profecto non Deum, quern cogitare non possunt, sed semetip pro
illo cogitantes, non ilium, sed seipsos, non illi, sed sibi comparant? “Certainly they do not imagine God, whom they
cannot imagine; but they imagine themselves in his stead;
they do not compare him, but themselves, not to him, but
to themselves.” In natural things the effects do but half relate to their causes. What’s this to the purpose? His condition is above the order of nature, too elevated, too remote,
and too mighty, to permit itself to be bound and fettered by
our conclusions. ‘Tis not through ourselves that we arrive
at that place; our ways lie too low. We are no nearer heaven
on the top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea; take
the distance with your astrolabe. They debase God even to
the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times, and so
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many generations. Paulina, the wife of Satuminus, a matron
of great reputation at Rome, thinking she lay with the god
Serapis, found herself in the arms of an amoroso of hers,
through the panderism of the priests of his temple. Varro,
the most subtle and most learned of all the Latin authors,
in his book of theology, writes, that the sexton of Hercules’s
temple, throwing dice with one hand for himself, and with
the other for Hercules, played after that manner with him
for a supper and a wench; if he won, at the expense of the
offerings; if he lost, at his own. The sexton lost, and paid the
supper and the wench. Her name was Laurentina, who saw
by night this god in her arms, who moreover told her, that
the first she met the next day, should give her a heavenly
reward; which proved to be Taruncius, a rich young man,
who took her home to his house, and in time left her his inheritrix. She, in her turn, thinking to do a thing that would
be pleasing to the god, left the people of Rome heirs to her;
and therefore had divine honours attributed to her. As if it
had not been sufficient that Plato was originally descended
from the gods by a double line, and that he had Neptune
for the common father of his race, it was certainly believed
at Athens, that Aristo, having a mind to enjoy the fair Perictione, could not, and was warned by the god Apollo, in
a dream, to leave her unpolluted and untouched, till she
should first be brought to bed. These were the father and
mother of Plato. How many ridiculous stories are there of
like cuckoldings, committed by the gods against poor mortal men! And how many husbands injuriously scandaled in
favour of the children! In the Mahometan religion there are
Merlins enough found by the belief of the people; that is to
say, children without fathers, spiritual, divinely conceived
in the wombs of virgins, and carry names that signify so
much in their language.
We are to observe that to every thing nothing is more
dear and estimable than its being (the lion, the eagle the
dolphin, prize nothing above their own kind); and that every thing assimilates the qualities of all other things to its
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own proper qualities, which we may indeed extend or contract, but that’s all; for beyond that relation and principle
our imagination cannot go, can guess at nothing else, nor
possibly go out thence, nor stretch beyond it; whence spring
these ancient conclusions: of all forms the most beautiful is
that of man; therefore God must be of that form. No one can
be happy without virtue, nor virtue be without reason, and
reason cannot inhabit anywhere but in a human shape; God
is therefore clothed in a human figure. Ita est informatum
et anticipatum mentibus nostris, ut homini, quum de Deo cogitet,
forma occurrat hu-mana. “It is so imprinted in our minds, and
the fancy is so prepossessed with it, that when a man thinks
of God, a human figure ever presents itself to the imagination.” Therefore it was that Xenophanes pleasantly said,
“That if beasts frame any gods to themselves, as ‘tis likely
they do, they make them certainly such as themselves are,
and glorify themselves in it, as we do. For why may not a
goose say thus; “All the parts of the universe I have an interest in; the earth serves me to walk upon; the sun to light
me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an
advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is
nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably
as me; I am the darling of nature! Is it not man that keeps,
lodges, and serves me? ‘Tis for me that he both sows and
grinds; if he eats me he does the same by his fellow-men,
and so do I the worms that kill and devour him.” As much
might be said by a crane, and with greater confidence, upon
the account of the liberty of his flight, and the possession of
that high and beautiful region. Tam blanda conciliatrix, et tam
sui est lena ipsa natura. “So flattering and wheedling a bawd
is nature to herself.”
Now by the same consequence, the destinies are then
for us; for us the world; it shines it thunders for us; creator and creatures, all are for us; ’‘tis the mark and point to
which the universality of things aims. Look into the records
that philosophy has kept for two thousand years and more,
of the affairs of heaven; the gods all that while have neither
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acted nor spoken but for man. She does not allow them any
other consultation or occupation. See them here against us
in war:–
Domitosque Herculeâ manu
Telluris juvenes, unde periculum
Fulgens contre mu it domus
Saturai veteris.
“The brawny sons of earth, subdu’d by hand
Of Hercules on the Phlegræan strand,
Where the rude shock did such an uproar make,
As made old Saturn’s sparkling palace shake.”
And here you shall see them participate of our troubles, to
make a return for our having so often shared in theirs:–
Neptunus muros, magnoque emota tridenti
Fundamenta quatit, totamque à sedibus urbem
Emit: hie Juno Scæas sævissima portas Prima
tenet.
“Amidst that smother Neptune holds his place,
Below the walls’ foundation drives his mace,
And heaves the city from its solid base.
See where in arms the cruel Juno stands,
Full in the Scæan gate.”
The Caunians, jealous of the authority of their own proper
gods, armed themselves on the days of their devotion, and
through the whole of their precincts ran cutting and slashing the air with their swords, by that means to drive away
and banish all foreign gods out of their territory. Their powers are limited according that the plague, that the scurf,
that the phthisic; one cures one sort of itch, another another: Adeo minimis etiam rebus prava religio inserit Deos? “At
such a rate does false religion create gods for the most contemptible uses.” This one makes grapes grow, that onions;
this has the presidence over lechery, that over merchandise;
for every sort of artisan a god; this has his province and reputation in the east; that his in the west:–
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“Here lay her armour, here her chariot stood.”
O sancte Apollo, qui umbilicum certum terrarum obtines!
“O sacred Phoebus, who with glorious ray,
From the earth’s centre, dost thy light display.”
Pallada Cecropidæ, Minola Creta Dianam,
Vulcanum tellus Hypsipylea colit,
Junonem Sparte, Pelopeladesque Mycenæ;
Pinigerum Fauni Mænalis ora caput;
Mars Latio venerandus.
“Th’ Athenians Pallas, Cynthia Crete adore,
Vulcan is worshipped on the Lemnian shore.
Proud Juno’s altars are by Spartans fed,
Th’ Arcadians worship Faunus, and ‘tis said
To Mars, by Italy, is homage paid.” to our necessity; this cures horses, that men,
Hic illius arma, Hic currus fuit.
This has only one town or family in his possession; that lives
alone; that in company, either voluntary or upon necessity:–
Junctaque sunt magno templa nepotis avo.
“And temples to the nephew joined are,
To those were reared to the greatgrandfather.”
In here are some so wretched and mean (for the number
amounts to six and thirty thousand) that they must pack
five or six together, to produce one ear of corn, and thence
take their several names; three to a door–that of the plank,
that of the hinge, and that of the threshold. Four to a child–
protectors of his swathing-clouts, his drink, meat, and sucking. Some certain, some uncertain and doubtful, and some
that are not yet entered Paradise:–
Quos, quoniam coli nondum dignamur honore,
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Quas dedimus certè terras habitare sinanras:
“Whom, since we yet not worthy think of
heaven,
We suffer to possess the earth we’ve given.”
There are amongst them physicians, poets, and civilians.
Some of a mean betwixt the divine and human nature; mediators betwixt God and us, adorned with a certain second
and diminutive sort of adoration; infinite in titles and offices; some good; others ill; some old and decrepit, and
some that are mortal. For Chrysippus was of opinion that in
the last conflagration of the world all the gods were to die
but Jupiter. Man makes a thousand pretty societies betwixt
God and him; is he not his countryman?
Ovis incunabula Creten.
“Crete, the cradle of Jupiter.”
And this is the excuse that, upon consideration of this subject, Scævola, a high priest, and Varro, a great theologian
in their times, make us: “That it is necessary that the people
should be ignorant of many things that are true, and believe
many things that are false.” quum veritatem qua liberetur inquirat credatur ei expedire quod fallitur. “Seeing he inquires
into the truth, by which he would be made free, ‘tis fit he
should be deceived.” Human eyes cannot perceive things
but by the forms they know; and we do not remember what
a leap miserable Phæton took for attempting to guide his
father’s horses with a mortal hand. The mind of man falls
into as great a depth, and is after the same manner bruised
and shattered by his own rashness. If you ask of philosophy of what matter the heavens and the sun are? what answer will she return, if not that it is iron, or, with Anaxagoras, stone, or some other matter that she makes use of? If
a man inquire of Zeno what nature is? “A fire,” says he,
“an artisan, proper for generation, and regularly proceeding.” Archimedes, master of that science which attributes
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to itself the precedency before all others for truth and certainty; “the sun,” says he, “is a god of red-hot iron.” Was
not this a fine imagination, extracted from the inevitable necessity of geometrical demonstrations? Yet not so inevitable
and useful but that Socrates thought it was enough to know
so much of geometry only as to measure the land a man
bought or sold; and that Polyænus, who had been a great
and famous doctor in it, despised it, as full of falsity and
manifest vanity, after he had once tasted the delicate fruits
of the lozelly gardens of Epicurus. Socrates in Xenophon,
concerning this affair, says of Anaxagoras, reputed by antiquity learned above all others in celestial and divine matters, “That he had cracked his brain, as all other men do
who too immoderately search into knowledges which nothing belong to them:” when he made the sun to be a burning
stone, he did not consider that a stone does not shine in the
fire; and, which is worse, that it will there consume; and
in making the sun and fire one, that fire does not turn the
complexions black in shining upon them; that we are able
to look fixedly upon fire; and that fire kills herbs and plants.
‘Tis Socrates’s opinion, and mine too, that the best judging
of heaven is not to judge of it at all. Plato having occasion,
in his Timous, to speak of the demons, “This undertaking,”
says he, “exceeds my ability.” We are therefore to believe
those ancients who said they were begotten by them; ‘tis
against all reason to refuse a man’s faith to the children of
the gods, though what they say should not be proved by
any necessary or probable reasons; seeing they engage to
speak of domestic and familiar things.
Let us see if we have a little more light in the knowledge of human and natural things. Is it not a ridiculous
attempt for us to forge for those to whom, by our own confession, our knowledge is not able to attain, another body,
and to lend a false form of our own invention; as is manifest
in this motion of the planets; to which, seeing our wits cannot possibly arrive, nor conceive their natural conduct, we
lend them material, heavy, and substantial springs of our
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own by which to move:–
Temo aureus, aurea summæ
Curvatura rotæ, radiorum argenteus ordo.
“Gold was the axle, and the beam was gold;
The wheels with silver spokes on golden circles
roll’d.”
You would say that we had had coachmakers, carpenters,
and painters, that went up on high to make engines of various motions, and to range the wheelwork and interfacings
of the heavenly bodies of differing colours about the axis of
necessity, according to Plato:–
Mundus domus est maxima rerum,
Quam quinque altitonæ fragmine zonæ
Cingunt, per quam limbus pictus bis sex signi
Stellimicantibus, altus in obliquo æthere,
lunæ
Bigas acceptat.
“The world’s a mansion that doth all things
hold,
hich thundering zones, in number five, enfold,
Through which a girdle, painted with twelve
signs,
And that with sparkling constellations,
shines,
In heaven’s arch marks the diurnal course
For the sun’s chariot and his fiery horse.”
These are all dreams and fanatic follies. Why will not nature
please for once to lay open her bosom to us, and plainly
discover to us the means and conduct of her movements,
and prepare our eyes to see them? Good God, what abuse,
what mistakes should we discover in our poor science! I
am mistaken if that weak knowledge of ours holds any one
thing as it really is, and I shall depart hence more ignorant
of all other things than my own ignorance.
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Have I not read in Plato this divine saying, that “nature
is nothing but enigmatic poesy!” As if a man might perhaps
see a veiled and shady picture, breaking out here and there
with an infinite variety of false lights to puzzle our conjectures: Latent ista omnia crassis occullata et circumfusa tenebris;
ut nulla acies humani ingenii tanta sit, quæ penetrare in coelum,
terram intrare, possit. “All those things lie concealed and involved in so dark an obscurity that no point of human wit
can be so sharp as to pierce heaven or penetrate the earth.”
And certainly philosophy is no other than sophisticated poetry. Whence do the ancient writers extract their authorities
but from the poets? and the first of them were poets themselves, and writ accordingly. Plato is but a poet unripped.
Timon calls him, insultingly, “a monstrous forger of miracles.” All superhuman sciences make use of the poetic style.
Just as women make use of teeth of ivory where the natural are wanting, and instead of their true complexion make
one of some artificial matter; as they stuff themselves out
with cotton to appear plump, and in the sight of every one
do paint, patch, and trick up themselves with a false and
borrowed beauty; so does science (and even our law itself
has, they say, legitimate fictions, whereon it builds the truth
of its justice); she gives us in presupposition, and for current pay, things which she herself informs us were invented;
for these epicycles, eccentrics, and concentrics, which astrology
makes use of to carry on the motions of the stars, she gives
us for the best she could invent upon that subject; as also, in
all the rest, philosophy presents us not that which really is,
or what she really believes, but what she has contrived with
the greatest and most plausible likelihood of truth, and the
quaintest invention. Plato, upon the discourse of the state
of human bodies and those of beasts, says, “I should know
that what I have said is truth, had I the confirmation of an
oracle; but this I will affirm, that what I have said is the most
likely to be true of any thing I could say.”
‘Tis not to heaven only that art sends her ropes, engines, and wheels; let us consider a little what she says of
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us ourselves, and of our contexture.
There is not more retrogradation, trepidation, accession, recession, and astonishment, in the stars and celestial
bodies, than they have found out in this poor little human
body. In earnest, they have good reason, upon that very account, to call it the little world, so many tools and parts have
they employed to erect and build it. To assist the motions
they see in man, and the various functions that we find in
ourselves, in how many parts have they divided the soul,
in how many places lodged it? in how many orders have
they divided, and to how many stories have they raised
this poor creature, man, besides those that are natural and
to be perceived? And how many offices and vocations have
they assigned him? They make it an imaginary public thing.
‘Tis a subject that they hold and handle; and they have full
power granted to them to rip, place, displace, piece, and
stuff it, every one according to his own fancy, and yet they
possess it not They cannot, not in reality only, but even in
dreams, so govern it that there will not be some cadence
or sound that will escape their architecture, as enormous
as it is, and botched with a thousand false and fantastic
patches. And it is not reason to excuse them; for though we
are satisfied with painters when they paint heaven, earth,
seas, mountains, and remote islands, that they give us some
slight mark of them, and, as of things unknown, are content
with a faint and obscure description; yet when they come
and draw us after life, or any other creature which is known
and familiar to us, we then require of them a perfect and exact representation of lineaments and colours, and despise
them if they fail in it.
I am very well pleased with the Milesian girl, who observing the philosopher Thales to be always contemplating
the celestial arch, and to have his eyes ever gazing upward,
laid something in his way that he might stumble over, to put
him in mind that it would be time to take up his thoughts
about things that are in the clouds when he had provided
for those that were under his feet. Doubtless she advised
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him well, rather to look to himself than to gaze at heaven;
for, as Democritus says, by the mouth of Cicero,–
Quod est ante pedes, nemo spectat: coeli scrutantur plagas.
“No man regards what is under his feet;
They are always prying towards heaven.”
But our condition will have it so, that the knowledge of
what we have in hand is as remote from us, and as much
above the clouds, as that of the stars. As Socrates says, in
Plato, “That whoever meddles with philosophy may be reproached as Thales was by the woman, that he sees nothing of that which is before him. For every philosopher is
ignorant of what his neighbour does; aye, and of what he
does himself, and is ignorant of what they both are, whether
beasts or men.”
Those people, who find Sebond’s arguments too weak,
that are ignorant of nothing, that govern the world, that
know all,–
Quæ mare compescant causæ; quid temperet
annum;
Stellæ sponte suâ, jussæve, vagentur et errent;
Quid premat obscurum lunæ, quid proférât
orbem;
Quid velit et posait rerum concordia discors;
“What governs ocean’s tides,
And through the various year the seasons
guides;
Whether the stars by their own proper force,
Or foreign power, pursue their wand’ring
course;
Why shadows darken the pale queen of night;
Whence she renews her orb and spreads her
light;–
What nature’s jarring sympathy can mean;”
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have they not sometimes in their writings sounded the difficulties they have met with of knowing their own being?
We see very well that the finger moves, that the foot moves,
that some parts assume a voluntary motion of themselves
without our consent, and that others work by our direction; that one sort of apprehension occasions blushing; another paleness; such an imagination works upon the spleen
only, another upon the brain; one occasions laughter, another tears; another stupefies and astonishes all our senses,
and arrests the motion of all our members; at one object the
stomach will rise, at another a member that lies something
lower; but how a spiritual impression should make such a
breach into a massy and solid subject, and the nature of the
connection and contexture of these admirable springs and
movements, never yet man knew: Omnia incerta ratione, et
in naturæ majestate abdita. “All uncertain in reason, and concealed in the majesty of nature,” says Pliny. And St Augustin, Modus quo corporibus adhorent spiritus.... omnino minis est, nec comprehendi ab homine potest; et hoc ipse homo est,
“The manner whereby souls adhere to bodies is altogether
wonderful, and cannot be conceived by man, and yet this is
man.” And yet it is not so much as doubted; for the opinions of men are received according to the ancient belief, by
authority and upon trust, as if it were religion and law. ‘Tis
received as gibberish which is commonly spoken; this truth,
with all its clutter of arguments and proofs, is admitted as a
firm and solid body, that is no more to be shaken, no more
to be judged of; on the contrary, every one, according to the
best of his talent, corroborates and fortifies this received belief with the utmost power of his reason, which is a supple
utensil, pliable, and to be accommodated to any figure; and
thus the world comes to be filled with lies and fopperies.
The reason that men doubt of divers things is that they
never examine common impressions; they do not dig to the
root, where the faults and defects lie; they only debate upon
the branches; they do not examine whether such and such
a thing be true, but if it has been so and so understood; it is
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not inquired into whether Galen has said any thing to purpose, but whether he has said so or so. In truth it was very
good reason that this curb to the liberty of our judgments
and that tyranny over our opinions, should be extended to
the schools and arts. The god of scholastic knowledge is
Aristotle; ‘tis irreligion to question any of his decrees, as it
was those of Lucurgus at Sparta; his doctrine is a magisterial law, which, peradventure, is as false as another. I do not
know why I should not as willingly embrace either the ideas
of Plato, or the atoms of Epicurus, or the plenum or vacuum of Leucippus and Democritus, or the water of Thales,
or the infinity of nature of Anaximander, or the air of Diogenes, or the numbers and symmetry of Pythagoras, or the
infinity of Parmenides, or the One of Musæus, or the water
and fire of Apollodorus, or the similar parts of Anaxagoras,
or the discord and friendship of Empedocles, or the fire of
Heraclitus, or any other opinion of that infinite confusion
of opinions and determinations, which this fine human reason produces by its certitude and clearsightedness in every
thing it meddles withal, as I should the opinion of Aristotle
upon this subject of the principles of natural things; which
principles he builds of three pieces–matter, form, and privation. And what can be more vain than to make inanity
itself the cause of the production of things? Privation is a
negative; of what humour could he then make the cause
and original of things that are? And yet that were not to be
controverted but for the exercise of logic; there is nothing
disputed therein to bring it into doubt, but to defend the
author of the school from foreign objections; his authority is
the non-ultra, beyond which it is not permitted to inquire.
It is very easy, upon approved foundations, to build
whatever we please; for, according to the law and ordering of this beginning, the other parts of the structure are
easily carried on without any failure. By this way we find
our reason well-grounded, and discourse at a venture; for
our masters prepossess and gain beforehand as much room
in our belief as is necessary towards concluding afterwards
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what they please, as geometricians do by their granted demands, the consent and approbation we allow them giving them wherewith to draw us to the right and left, and
to whirl us about at their pleasure. Whatever springs from
these presuppositions is our master and our God; he will
take the level of his foundations so ample and so easy that
by them he may mount us up to the clouds, if he so please.
In this practice and negotiation of science we have taken the
saying of Pythagoras, “That every expert person ought to
be believed in his own art” for current pay. The logician
refers the signification of words to the grammarians; the
rhetorician borrows the state of arguments from the logician; the poet his measure from the musician: the geometrician his proportions from the arithmetician, and the metaphysicians take physical conjectures for their foundations;
for every science has its principle presupposed, by which
human judgment is everywhere kept in check. If you come
to rush against the bar where the principal error lies, they
have presently this sentence in their mouths, “That there is
no disputing with persons who deny principles.” Now men
can have no principles if not revealed to them by the divinity; of all the rest the beginning, the middle, and the end,
is nothing but dream and vapour. To those that contend
upon presupposition we must, on the contrary, presuppose
to them the same axiom upon which the dispute is. For every human presupposition and declaration has as much authority one as another, if reason do not make the difference.
Wherefore they are all to be put into the balance, and first
the generals and those that tyrannize over us. The persuasion of certainty is a certain testimony of folly and extreme
incertainty; and there are not a more foolish sort of men, nor
that are less philosophers, than the Philodoxes of Plato; we
must inquire whether fire be hot? whether snow be white?
if there be any such things as hard or soft within our knowledge?
And as to those answers of which they make old stories, as he that doubted if there was any such thing as heat,
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whom they bid throw himself into the fire; and he that denied the coldness of ice, whom they bid to put ice into his
bosom;–they are pitiful things, unworthy of the profession
of philosophy. If they had let us alone in our natural being,
to receive the appearance of things without us, according as
they present themselves to us by our senses, and had permitted us to follow our own natural appetites, governed by
the condition of our birth, they might then have reason to
talk at that rate; but ‘tis from them we have learned to make
ourselves judges of the world; ‘tis from them that we derive
this fancy, “That human reason is controller-general of all
that is without and within the roof of heaven; that comprehends every thing, that can do every thing; by the means
of which every thing is known and understood.” This answer would be good among the cannibals, who enjoy the
happiness of a long, quiet, and peaceable life, without Aristotle’s precepts, and without the knowledge of the name of
physics; this answer would perhaps be of more value and
greater force than all those they borrow from their reason
and invention; of this all animals, and all where the power
of the law of nature is yet pure and simple, would be as capable as we, but as for them they have renounced it. They
need not tell us, “It is true, for you see and feel it to be so;”
they must tell me whether I really feel what I think I do; and
if I do feel it, they must then tell me why I feel it, and how,
and what; let them tell me the name, original, the parts and
junctures of heat and cold, the qualities of the agent and patient; or let them give up their profession, which is not to
admit or approve of any thing but by the way of reason;
that is their test in all sorts of essays; but, certainly, ‘tis a test
full of falsity, error, weakness, and defect.
Which way can we better prove it than by itself? If
we are not to believe her when speaking of herself, she can
hardly be thought fit to judge of foreign things; if she know
any thing, it must at least be her own being and abode; she
is in the soul, and either a part or an effect of it; for true and
essential reason, from which we by a false colour borrow the
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name, is lodged in the bosom of the Almighty; there is her
habitation and recess; ‘tis thence that she imparts her rays,
when God is pleased to impart any beam of it to mankind,
as Balias issued from her father’s head, to communicate herself to the world.
Now let us see what human reason tells us of herself
and of the soul, not of the soul in general, of which almost
all philosophy makes the celestial and first bodies participants; nor of that which Thales attributed to things which
themselves are reputed inanimate, lead thereto by the consideration of the loadstone; but of that which appertains to
us, and that we ought the best to know:–
Ignoratur enim, quæ sit natura animai;
Nata sit; an, contra, nascentibus insinuetur;
Et simnel intereat nobiscum morte dirempta;
An tenebras Orci visat, vastasque lacunas,
An pecudes alias divinitns insinuet se.
“For none the nature of the soul doth know,
Whether that it be born with us, or no;
Or be infused into us at our birth,
And dies with us when we return to earth,
Or then descends to the black shades below,
Or into other animals does go.”
Crates and Dicæarchus were of opinion that there was no
soul at all, but that the body thus stirs by a natural motion; Plato, that it was a substance moving of itself; Thales,
a nature without repose; Aedepiades, an exercising of the
senses; Hesiod and Anaximander, a thing composed of
earth and water; Parmenides, of earth and fire; Empedocles,
of blood:–
Sanguineam vomit ille animam;
“He vomits up his bloody soul.”
Posidonius, Cleanthes, and Galen, that it was heat or a hot
complexion–
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Igneus est ollis vigor, et colestis origo;
“Their vigour of fire and of heavenly race.”
Hippocrates, a spirit diffused all over the body; Varro, that
it was an air received at the mouth, heated in the lungs,
moistened in the heart, and diffused throughout the whole
body; Zeno, the quintessence of the four elements; Heraclides Ponticus, that it was the light; Zenocrates and the
Egyptians, a mobile number; the Chaldeans, a virtue without any determinate form:–
Habitum quemdam vitalem corporis esse,
Harmoniam Græci quam dicunt.
“A certain vital habit in man’s frame,
Which harmony the Grecian sages name.”
Let us not forget Aristotle, who held the soul to be that
which naturally causes the body to move, which he calls
entelechia, with as cold an invention as any of the rest; for
he neither speaks of the essence, nor of the original, nor of
the nature of the soul, but only takes notice of the effect
Lactantius, Seneca, and most of the Dogmatists, have confessed that it was a thing they did not understand; after all
this enumeration of opinions, Harum sententiarum quo vera
sit, Deus aliquis viderit: “Of these opinions which is the true,
let some god determine,” says Cicero. “I know by myself,”
says St Bernard, “how incomprehensible God is, seeing I
cannot comprehend the parts of my own being.”
Heraclitus, who was of opinion that every being was
full of souls and demons, did nevertheless maintain that no
one could advance so far towards the knowledge of the soul
as ever to arrive at it; so profound was the essence of it.
Neither is there less controversy and debate about seating of it. Hippocrates and Hierophilus place it in the ventricle of the brain; Democritus and Aristotle throughout the
whole body;–
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Ut bona sæpe valetudo cum dicitur esse
Corporis, et non est tamen hæc pars ulla ralentis;
“As when the body’s health they do it call,
When of a sound man, that’s no part at all.”
Epicurus in the stomach;
Hic exsultat enim pavor ac metus
Hæc loca circum Lætitiæ mulcent.
“For this the seat of horror is and fear,
And joys in turn do likewise triumph here.”
The Stoics, about and within the heart; Erasistratus, adjoining the membrane of the epicranium; Empedocles, in the
blood; as also Moses, which was the reason why he interdicted eating the blood of beasts, because the soul is there
seated; Galen thought that every part of the body had its
soul; Strato has placed it betwixt the eyebrows; quâ facie
quidem sit animus, aut ubi habitet, ne quorendum quidem est:
“What figure the soul is of, or what part it inhabits, is not to
be inquired into,” says Cicero. I very willingly deliver this
author to you in his own words; for should I alter eloquence
itself? Besides, it were but a poor prize to steal the matter
of his inventions; they are neither very frequent, nor of any
great weight, and sufficiently known. But the reason why
Chrysippus argues it to be about the heart, as all the rest of
that sect do, is not to be omitted; “It is,” says he, “because
when we would affirm any things we lay our hand upon
our breasts; and when we would pronounce èyù, which signifies I, we let the lower jaw fall towards the stomach.” This
place ought not to be passed over without a remark upon
the vanity of so great a man; for besides that these considerations are infinitely light in themselves, the last is only a
proof to the Greeks that they have their souls lodged in that
part. No human judgment is so sprightly and vigilant that
it does not sometimes sleep. Why do we fear to say? The
Stoics, the fathers of human prudence, think that the soul
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of a man, crushed under a ruin, long labours and strives to
get out, like a mouse caught in a trap, before it can disengage itself from the burden. Some hold that the world was
made to give bodies, by way of punishment, to the spirits
fallen, by their own fault, from the purity wherein they had
been created, the first creation having been incorporeal; and
that, according as they are more or less depraved from their
spirituality, so are they more or less jocundly or dully incorporated; and that thence proceeds all the variety of so
much created matter. But the spirit that for his punishment
was invested with the body of the sun must certainly have
a very rare and particular measure of change.
The extremities of our perquisition do all fall into astonishment and blindness; as Plutarch says of the testimony
of histories, that, according to charts and maps, the utmost
bounds of known r countries are taken up with marshes,
impenetrable forests, deserts, and uninhabitable places; this
is the reason why the most gross and childish ravings were
most found in those authors who treat of the most elevated
subjects, and proceed the furthest in them, losing themselves in their own curiosity and presumption. The beginning and end of knowledge are equally foolish; observe to
what a pitch Plato flies in his poetic clouds; do but take
notice there of the gibberish of the gods; but what did he
dream of when he defined a man to be “a two-legged animal
without feathers: giving those who had a mind to deride
him a pleasant occasion; for, having pulled a capon alive,
they went about calling it the man of Plato.”
And what did the Epicureans think of, out of what
simplicity did they first imagine that their atoms that they
said were bodies having some weight, and a natural motion downwards, had made the world; till they were put
in mind, by their adversaries, that, according to this description, it was impossible they should unite and join to
one another, their fall being so direct and perpendicular,
and making so many parallel lines throughout? Wherefore
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itous and sideways motion, and that they should moreover
accoutre their atoms with hooked tails, by which they might
unite and cling to one another. And even then do not those
that attack them upon this second consideration put them
hardly to it? “If the atoms have by chance formed so many
sorts of figures, why did it never fall out that they made a
house or a shoe? Why at the same rate should we not believe that an infinite number of Greek letters, strewed all
over a certain place, might fall into the contexture of the
Iliad?”–“Whatever is capable of reason,” says Zeno, “is better than that which is not capable; there is nothing better
than the world; the world is therefore capable of reason.”
Cotta, by this way of argumentation, makes the world a
mathematician; ‘and tis also made a musician and an organist by this other argumentation of Zeno: “The whole is
more than a part; we are capable of wisdom, and are part
of the world; therefore the world is wise.” There are infinite like examples, not only of arguments that are false in
themselves, but silly ones, that do not hold in themselves,
and that accuse their authors not so much of ignorance as
imprudence, in the reproaches the philosophers dash one
another in the teeth withal, upon their dissensions in their
sects and opinions.
Whoever should bundle up a lusty faggot of the fooleries of human wisdom would produce wonders. I willingly muster up these few for a pattern, by a certain meaning not less profitable to consider than the most sound and
moderate instructions. Let us judge by these what opinion
we are to have of man, of his sense and reason, when in
these great persons that have raised human knowledge so
high, so many gross mistakes and manifest errors are to be
found.
For my part, I am apt to believe that they have treated
of knowledge casually, and like a toy, with both hands; and
have contended about reason as of a vain and frivolous instrument, setting on foot all sorts of fancies and inventions,
sometimes more sinewy, and sometimes weaker. This same
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Plato, who defines man as if he were a cock, says elsewhere,
after Socrates, “That he does not, in truth, know what man
is, and that he is a member of the world the hardest to understand.” By this variety and instability of opinions, they
tacitly lead us, as it were by the hand, to this resolution of
their irresolution. They profess not always to deliver their
opinions barefaced and apparent to us; they have one while
disguised them in the fabulous shadows of poetry, and at
another in some other vizor; for our imperfection carries
this also along with it, that crude meat is not always proper
for our stomachs; we must dry, alter, and mix it; they do the
same; they sometimes conceal their real opinions and judgments, and falsify them to accommodate themselves to the
public use. They will not make an open profession of ignorance, and of the imbecility of human reason, that they may
not fright children; but they sufficiently discover it to us under the appearance of a troubled and inconstant science.
I advised a person in Italy, who had a great mind to
speak Italian, that provided he only had a desire to make
himself understood, without being ambitious in any other
respect to excel, that he should only make use of the first
word that came to the tongue’s end, whether Latin, French,
Spanish, or Gascon, and that, by adding the Italian termination, he could not fail of hitting upon some idiom of the
country, either Tuscan, Roman, Venetian, Piedmontese, or
Neapolitan, and so fall in with some one of those many
forms. I say the same of Philosophy; she has so many faces,
so much variety, and has said so many things, that all our
dreams and ravings are there to be found. Human fancy
can conceive nothing good or bad that is not there: Nihil
tam absurde did potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum. “Nothing can be said so absurd, that has not been said
before by some of the philosophers.” And I am the more
willing to expose my whimsies to the public; forasmuch as,
though they are spun out of myself, and without any pattern, I know they will be found related to some ancient humour, and some will not stick to say, “See whence he took
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it!” My manners are natural, I have not called in the assistance of any discipline to erect them; but, weak as they are,
when it came into my head to lay them open to the world’s
view, and that to expose them to the light in a little more
decent garb I went to adorn them with reasons and examples, it was a wonder to myself accidentally to find them
conformable to so many philosophical discourses and examples. I never knew what regimen my life was of till it
was near worn out and spent; a new figure–an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher.
But to return to the soul. Inasmuch as Plato has placed
reason in the brain, anger in the heart, and concupiscence in
the liver; ‘tis likely that it was rather an interpretation of the
movements of
the soul, than that he intended a division and separation of it, as of a body, into several members. And the most
likely of their opinions is that ‘tis always a soul, that by its
faculty, reasons, remembers, comprehends, judges, desires,
and exercises all its other operations by divers instruments
of the body; as the pilot guides his ship according to his experience, one while straining or slacking the cordage, one
while hoisting the mainyard, or removing the rudder, by
one and the same power carrying on several effects; and
that it is lodged in the brain; which appears in that the
wounds and accidents that touch that part do immediately
offend the faculties of the soul; and ‘tis not incongruous that
it should thence diffuse itself through the other parts of the
body
Medium non deserit unquam
Coeli Phoebus iter; radiis tamen omnia lustrât.
“Phoebus ne’er deviates from the zodiac’s way;
Yet all things doth illustrate with his ray.”
As the sun sheds from heaven its light and influence, and
fills the world with them:–
Cætera pars animas, per totum dissita corpus,
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Paret, et ad numen mentis momenque movetur.
“The other part o’ th’ soul diffus’d all o’er
The body, does obey the reason’s lore.”
Some have said that there was a general soul, as it were a
great body, whence all the particular souls were extracted,
and thither again return, always restoring themselves to
that universal matter:–
Deum namque ire per omnes
Terrasque, tractusque maris, columque profundum;
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas:
Scilicet hue reddi deinde, ac resoluta referri
Omnia; nec morti esse locum:
“For God goes forth, and spreads throughout
the whole Heaven, earth, and sea, the universal soul;
Each at its birth, from him all beings share,
Both man and brute, the breath of vital air;
To him return, and, loos’d from earthly chain,
Fly whence they sprung, and rest in God again,
Spurn at the grave, and, fearless of decay,
Dwell in high heaven, and star th’ ethereal way.”
Others, that they only rejoined and reunited themselves to
it; others, that they were produced from the divine substance; others, by the angels of fire and air; others, that they
were from all antiquity; and some that they were created
at the very point of time the bodies wanted them; others
make them to descend from the orb of the moon, and return thither; the generality of the ancients believed that they
were begotten from father to son, after a like manner, and
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produced with all other natural things; taking their argument from the likeness of children to their fathers;
Instillata patris virtus tibi;
Fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis;
“Thou hast thy father’s virtues with his blood:
For still the brave spring from the brave and
good;”
and that we see descend from fathers to their children
not only bodily marks, but moreover a resemblance of humours, complexions, and inclinations of the soul:–
Denique cur acris violentia triste leonum
Seminium sequitur? dolus vulpibus, et fuga,
cervis
A patribus datur, et patrius pavor incitât artus?
Si non certa suo quia semine seminioque
Vis animi pariter crescit cum corpore toto.
“For why should rage from the fierce lion’s seed,
Or from the subtle fox’s craft, proceed;
Or why the tim’rous and flying hart
His fear and trembling to his race impart;
But that a certain force of mind does grow,
And still increases as the bodies do?”
That thereupon the divine justice is grounded, punishing in
the children the faults of their fathers; forasmuch as the contagion of paternal vices is in some sort imprinted in the soul
of children, and that the ill government of their will extends
to them; moreover, that if souls had any other derivation
than a natural consequence, and that they had been some
other thins out of the body, they would retain some memory of their first being, the natural faculties that are proper
to them of discoursing, reasoning, and remembering, being
considered:–
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Si in corpus nascentibus insinuatur,
Cur super anteactam ætatem meminisse
nequimus,
Nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus?
“For at our birth if it infused be,
Why do we then retain no memory
Of our foregoing life, and why no more
Remember any thing we did before?”
for, to make the condition of our souls such as we would
have it to be, we must suppose them all-knowing, even in
their natural simplicity and purity; by these means they had
been such, being free from the prison of the body, as well before they entered into it, as we hope they shall be after they
are gone out of it; and from this knowledge it should follow
that they should remember, being got in the body, as Plato
said, “That what we learn is no other than a remembrance
of what we knew before;” a thing which every one by experience may maintain to be false. Forasmuch, in the first
place, as that we do not justly remember any thing but what
we have been taught, and that if the memory did purely
perform its office it would at least suggest to us something
more than what we have learned. Secondly, that which she
knew being in her purity, was a true knowledge, knowing
things as they are by her divine intelligence; whereas here
we make her receive falsehood and vice when we instruct
her; wherein she cannot employ her reminiscence, that image and conception having never been planted in her. To
say that the corporal prison does in such sort suffocate her
natural faculties, that they are there utterly extinct, is first
contrary to this other belief of acknowledging her power
to be so great, and the operations of it that men sensibly
perceive in this life so admirable, as to have thereby concluded that divinity and eternity past, and the immortality
to come:–
Nam si tantopere est anirai mutata potestas,
Omnia ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum,
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Non, ut opinor, ea ab letho jam longior errat.
“For if the mind be changed to that degree
As of past things to lose all memory,
So great a change as that, I must confess,
Appears to me than death but little less.”
Furthermore, ‘tis here with us, and not elsewhere, that the
force and effects of the soul ought to be considered; all the
rest of her perfections are vain and useless to her; ‘tis by her
present condition that all her immortality is to be rewarded
and paid, and of the life of man only that she is to render
an account It had been injustice to have stripped her of her
means and powers; to have disarmed her in order, in the
time of her captivity and imprisonment in the flesh, of her
weakness and infirmity in the time wherein she was forced
and compelled, to pass an infinite and perpetual sentence
and condemnation, and to insist upon the consideration of
so short a time, peradventure but an hour or two, or at the
most but a century, which has no more proportion with infinity than an instant; in this momentary interval to ordain
and definitively to determine of her whole being; it were an
unreasonable disproportion, too, to assign an eternal recompense in consequence of so short a life. Plato, to defend
himself from this inconvenience, will have future payments
limited to the term of a hundred years, relatively to human duration; and of us ourselves there are enough who
have given them temporal limits. By this they judged that
the generation of the soul followed the common condition
of human things, as also her life, according to the opinion
of Epicurus and Democritus, which has been the most received; in consequence of these fine appearances that they
saw it bom, and that, according as the body grew more capable, they saw it increase in vigour as the other did; that its
feebleness in infancy was very manifest, and in time its better strength and maturity, and after that its declension and
old age, and at last its decrepitude:–
Gigni pariter cum corpore, et una
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Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere
mentem.
“Souls with the bodies to be born we may
Discern, with them t’ increase, with them decay.”
They perceived it to be capable of divers passions, and agitated with divers painful motions, whence it fell into lassitude and uneasiness; capable of alteration and change, of
cheerfulness, of stupidity and languor, and subject to diseases and injuries, as the stomach or the foot;
Mentem sanari, corpus ut ægrum,
Ceraimus, et flecti medicinâ posse videmus;
“Sick minds, as well as bodies, we do see
By Med’cine’s virtue oft restored to be;”
dazzled and intoxicated with the fumes of wine, jostled
from her seat by the vapours of a burning fever, laid asleep
by the application of some medicaments, and roused by
others,–
Corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est,
Corporeis quoniam telis ictuque laborat;
“There must be of necessity, we find,
A nature that’s corporeal of the mind,
Because we evidently see it smarts
And wounded is with shafts the body darts;”
they saw it astonished and overthrown in all its faculties
through the mere bite of a mad dog, and in that condition
to have no stability of reason, no sufficiency, no virtue, no
philosophical resolution, no resistance that could exempt it
from the subjection of such accidents; the slaver of a contemptible cur shed upon the hand of Socrates, to shake all
his wisdom and all his great and regulated imaginations,
and so to annihilate them, ad that there remained no trace
of his former knowledge,–
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Vis... animal Conturbatur, et... divisa seorsum
Disjectatur, eodem illo distracta veneno;
“The power of the soul’s disturbed; and when
That once is but sequestered from her, then
By the same poison ‘tis dispersed abroad;”
and this poison to find no more resistance in that great soul
than in an infant of four years old; a poison sufficient to
make all philosophy, if it were incarnate, become furious
and mad; insomuch that Cato, who ever disdained death
and fortune, could not endure the sight of a looking-glass,
or of water, overwhelmed with horror and affright at the
thought of falling, by the contagion of a mad dog, into the
disease called by physicians hydrophobia:–
Vis morbi distracta per artus
Turbat agens animam, spumantes æquore
salso
Ventorum ut validis fervescunt viribus undæ.
“Throughout the limbs diffused, the fierce disease
Disturbs the soul, as in the briny seas,
The foaming waves to swell and boil we see,
Stirred by the wind’s impetuosity.”
Now, as to this particular, philosophy has sufficiently armed
man to encounter all other accidents either with patience, or,
if the search of that costs too dear, by an infallible defeat, in
totally depriving himself of all sentiment; but these are expedients that are only of use to a soul being itself, and in its
full power, capable of reason and deliberation; but not at all
proper for this inconvenience, where, in a philosopher, the
soul becomes the soul of a madman, troubled, overturned,
and lost; which many occasions may produce, as a too vehement agitation that any violent passion of the soul may
beget in itself; or a wound in a certain part of the person,
or vapours from the stomach, any of which may stupefy the
understanding and turn the brain.
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Morbis in corporis avius errat
Sæpe animus; dementit enim, deliraque fatur;
Interdumque gravi lethargo fertur in altum
Æternumque soporem, oculis mi tuque cadenti:
“For when the body’s sick, and ill at ease,
The mind doth often share in the disease;
Wonders, grows wild, and raves, and sometimes
by
A heavy and a stupid lethargy,
Is overcome and cast into a deep,
A most profound and everlasting sleep.”
The philosophers, methinks, have not much touched this
string, no more than another of equal importance; they have
this dilemma continually in their mouths, to console our
mortal condition: “The soul is either mortal or immortal;
if mortal, it will suffer no pain; if immortal, it will change
for the better.”–They never touch the other branch, “What if
she change for the worse?” and leave to the poets the menaces of future torments. But thereby they make themselves
a good game. These are two omissions that I often meet
with in their discourses. I return to the first.
This soul loses the use of the sovereign stoical good, so
constant and so firm. Our fine human wisdom must here
yield, and give up her arms. As to the rest, they also considered, by the vanity of human reason, that the mixture and
association of two so contrary things as the mortal and the
immortal, was unimaginable:–
Quippe etenim mortale æterao jungere, et una
Consentire putare, et fungi mutua posse,
Desipere est. Quid enim diversius esse putandum est,
Aut magis inter se disjunctum discrepitansque,
Quam, mortale quod est, immortali atque
perenni
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Junctum, in concilio, sævas tolerare procellas?
“The mortal and th’ eternal, then, to blend,
And think they can pursue one common end,
Is madness: for what things more diff’rent are.
Distinct in nature, and disposed to jar?
How can it then be thought that these should
bear,
When thus conjoined, of harms an equal
share?”
Moreover, they perceived the soul tending towards death as
well as the body:–
Simul ovo fessa fatiscit:
“Fatigued together with the weight of years:”
which, according to Zeno, the image of sleep does sufficiently demonstrate to us; for he looks upon it “as a fainting
and fall of the soul, as well as of the body:” Contrahi animum
et quasi labi putat atque decidere: and, what they perceived in
some, that the soul maintained its force and vigour to the
last gasp of life, they attributed to the variety of diseases, as
it is observable in men at the last extremity, that some retain
one sense, and some another; one the hearing, and another
the smell, without any manner of defect or alteration; and
that there is not so universal a deprivation that some parts
do not remain vigorous and entire:–
Non alio pacto, quam si, pes cum dolet ægri,
In nullo caput interea sit forte dolore.
“So, often of the gout a man complains,
Whose head is, at the same time, free from
pains.”
The sight of our judgment is, to truth, the same that the
owl’s eyes are to the splendour of the sun, says Aristotle.
By what can we better convince him, than by so gross blindness in so apparent a light? For the contrary opinion of the
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immortality of the soul, which, Cicero says, was first introduced, according to the testimony of books at least, by
Pherecydes
Syrius, in the time of King Tullus (though some attribute it to Thales, and others to others), ‘tis the part of human science that is treated of with the greatest doubt and
reservation. The most positive dogmatists are fain, in this
point principally, to fly to the refuge of the Academy. No
one doubts what Aristotle has established upon this subject, no more than all the ancients in general, who handle it
with a wavering belief: Rem gratissimam promittentium magis
quam probantium: “A thing more acceptable in the promisors
than the provers.” He conceals himself in clouds of words
of difficult, unintelligible sense, and has left to those of his
sect as great a dispute about his judgment as about the matter itself.
Two things rendered this opinion plausible to them;
one, that, without the immortality of souls, there would be
nothing whereon to ground the vain hopes of glory, which
is a consideration of wonderful
repute in the world; the other, that it is a very profitable
impression, as Plato says, that vices, when they escape the
discovery and cognizance of human justice, are still within
the reach of the divine, which will pursue them even after the death of the guilty. Man is excessively solicitous to
prolong his being, and has to the utmost of his power provided for it; there are monuments for the conservation of the
body, and glory to preserve the name. He has employed all
his wit and opinion to the rebuilding of himself, impatient
of his fortune, and to prop himself by his inventions. The
soul, by reason of its anxiety and impotence, being unable
to stand by itself, wanders up and down to seek out consolations, hopes, and foundations, and alien circumstances,
to which she adheres and fixes; and how light or fantastic
soever invention delivers them to her, relies more willingly,
and with greater assurance, upon them than upon herself.
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stinate maintainers of this just and clear persuasion of the
immortality of the soul fall short, and how weak their arguments are, when they go about to prove it by human reason: Somnia sunt non docentis, sed optantis: “They are dreams,
not of the teacher, but wisher,” says one of the ancients. By
which testimony man may know that he owes the truth he
himself finds out to fortune and accident; since that even
then, when it is fallen into his hand, he has not wherewith
to hold and maintain it, and that his reason has not force
to make use of it. All things produced by our own meditation and understanding, whether true or false, are subject to
incertitude and controversy. ‘Twas for the chastisement of
our pride, and for the instruction of our miserable condition
and incapacity, that God wrought the perplexity and confusion of the tower of Babel. Whatever we undertake without his assistance, whatever we see without the lamp of his
grace, is but vanity and folly. We corrupt the very essence
of truth, which is uniform and constant, by our weakness,
when fortune puts it into our possession. What course soever man takes of himself, God still permits it to come to
the same confusion, the image whereof he so lively represents to us in the just chastisement wherewith he crushed
Nimrod’s presumption, and frustrated the vain attempt of
his proud structure; Perdam sapientiam sapientium, et prudentiam prudentium reprobabo. “I will destroy the wisdom of the
wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the
prudent.” The diversity of idioms and tongues, with which
he disturbed this work, what are they other than this infinite
and perpetual alteration and discordance of opinions and
reasons, which accompany and confound the vain building
of human wisdom, and to very good effect too; for what
would hold us, if we had but the least grain of knowledge?
This saint has very much obliged me: Ipsa veritatis occultatio
ant humili-tatis exercitatio est, aut elationis attritio “The very
concealment of the truth is either an exercise of humility or
a quelling of presumption.” To what a pitch of presumption
and insolence do we raise our blindness and folly!
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But to return to my subject. It was truly very good
reason that we should be beholden to God only, and to
the favour of his grace, for the truth of so noble a belief,
since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude.
Let us ingenuously confess that God alone has dictated it
to us, and faith; for ‘tis no lesson of nature and our own
reason. And whoever will inquire into his own being and
power, both within and without, without this divine privilege; whoever shall consider man impartially, and without flattery, will see in him no efficacy or faculty that relishes of any thing but death and earth. The more we give
and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the
greater Christianity. That which this Stoic philosopher says
he holds from the fortuitous consent of the popular voice;
had it not been better that he had held it from God? Cum
de animarum otemitate disserimus, non leve momentum apud
nos habet consensus hominum aut timentium inferos, aut colentium. Utor hâc publicâ persuasione. “When we discourse of
the immortality of souls, the consent of men that either fear
or adore the infernal powers, is of no small advantage. I
make use of this public persuasion.” Now the weakness
of human arguments upon this subject is particularly manifested by the fabulous circumstances they have superadded
as consequences of this opinion, to find out of what condition this immortality of ours was. Let us omit the Stoics, (usuram nobis largiuntur tanquam cornicibus; diu mansuros
aiunt animos; semper, negant. “They give us a long life, as
also they do to crows; they say our soul shall continue long,
but that it shall continue always they deny,”) who give to
souls a life after this, but finite. The most universal and received fancy, and that continues down to our times in various places, is that of which they make Pythagoras the author; not that he was the original inventor, but because it
received a great deal of weight and repute by the authority of his approbation: “That souls, at their departure out
of us, did nothing but shift from one body to another, from
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a lion to a horse, from a horse to a king, continually travelling at this rate from habitation to habitation;” and he
himself said that he remembered he had been Ætha-lides,
since that Euphorbus, afterwards Hermotimus, and, finally,
from Pyrrhus was passed into Pythagoras; having a memory of himself of two hundred and six years. And some
have added that these very souls sometimes mount up to
heaven, and come down again:–
O pater, aime aliquas ad colum hinc ire putandum est
Sublimes animas, iterumque ad tarda reverti
Corpora?
Quæ lucis miseris tam dira cupido?
“O, father, is it then to be conceiv’d
That any of these spirits, so sublime,
Should hence to the celestial regions climb,
And thence return to earth to reassume
Their sluggish bodies rotting in a tomb?
For wretched life whence does such fondness
come?”
Origen makes them eternally to go and come from a better
to a worse estate. The opinion that Varro mentions is that,
after four hundred and forty years’ revolution, they should
be reunited to their first bodies; Chrysippus held that this
would happen after a certain space of time unknown and
unlimited. Plato, who professes to have embraced this belief from Pindar and the ancient poets, that we are to undergo infinite vicissitudes of mutation, for which the soul
is prepared, having neither punishment nor reward in the
other world but what is temporal, as its life here is but temporal, concludes that it has a singular knowledge of the affairs of heaven, of hell, of the world, through all which it
has passed, repassed, and made stay in several voyages,
are matters for her memory. Observe her progress elsewhere: “The soul that has lived well is reunited to the stars
to which it is assigned; that which has lived ill removes into
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a woman, and if it do not there reform, is again removed
into a beast of condition suitable to its vicious manners, and
shall see no end of its punishments till it be returned to its
natural constitution, and that it has, by the force of reason,
purged itself from those gross, stupid, and elementary qualities it was polluted with.” But I will not omit the objection
the Epicureans make against this transmigration from one
body to another; ‘tis a pleasant one; they ask what expedient would be found out if the number of the dying should
chance to be greater than that of those who are coming into
the world. For the souls, turned out of their old habitation,
would scuffle and crowd which should first get possession
of their new lodging; and they further demand how they
shall pass away their time, whilst waiting till new quarters
are made ready for them? Or, on the contrary, if more animals should be born than die, the body, they say, would be
but in an ill condition whilst waiting for a soul to be infused
into it; and it would fall out that some bodies would die
before they had been alive.
Denique comrabia ad Veneris, partusque ferarum
Esse animas præsto, deridiculum esse videtur;
Et spectare immortales mortalia membra
Innumero numéro, certareque præproperanter
Inter se, quæ prima potissimaqæ insinueter.
“Absurd to think that whilst wild beasts beget,
Or bear their young, a thousand souls do wait,
Expect the falling body, fight and strive
Which first shall enter in and make it live.”
Others have arrested the soul in the body of the deceased,
with it to animate serpents, worms, and other beasts, which
are said to be bred out of the corruption of our members,
and even out of our ashes; others divide them into two
parts, the one mortal, the other immortal; others make it
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corporeal, and nevertheless immortal. Some make it immortal, without
sense or knowledge. There are others, even among
ourselves, who have believed that devils were made of the
souls of the damned; as Plutarch thinks that gods were
made of those that were saved; for there are few things
which that author is so positive in as he is in this; maintaining elsewhere a doubtful and ambiguous way of expression. “We are told,” says he, “and steadfastly should believe, that the souls of virtuous men, both according to nature and the divine justice, become saints, and from saints
demigods, and from demigods, after they are perfectly, as
in sacrifices of purgation, cleansed and purified, being delivered from all passibility and all mortality, they become,
not by any civil decree, but in real truth, and according to
all probability of reason, entire and perfect gods, in receiving a most happy and glorious end.” But who desires to
see him–him, who is yet the most sober and moderate of
the whole gang of philosophers, lay about him with greater
boldness, and relate his miracles upon this subject, I refer
him to his treatise of the Moon, and of the Demon of Socrates,
where he may, as evidently as in any other place whatever,
satisfy himself that the mysteries of philosophy have many
strange things in common with those of poetry; human understanding losing itself in attempting to sound and search
all things to the bottom; even as we, tired and worn out
with a long course of life, return to infancy and dotage. See
here the fine and certain instructions which we extract from
human knowledge concerning the soul.
Neither is there less temerity in what they teach us
touching our corporal parts. Let us choose out one or
two examples; for otherwise we should lose ourselves in
this vast and troubled ocean of medical errors. Let us
first know whether, at least, they agree about the matter
whereof men produce one another; for as to their first production it is no wonder if, in a thing so high and so long
since past, human understanding finds itself puzzled and
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perplexed. Archelaus, the physician, whose disciple and
favourite Socrates was, according to Aristoxenus, said that
both men and beasts were made of a lacteous slime, expressed by the heat of the earth; Pythagoras says that our
seed is the foam or cream of our better blood; Plato, that it
is the distillation of the marrow of the backbone; raising his
argument from this, that that part is first sensible of being
weary of the work; Alcmeon, that it is part of the substance
of the brain, and that it is so, says he, is proved by the weakness of the eyes in those who are immoderate in that exercise; Democritus, that it is a substance extracted from the
whole mass of the body; Epicurus, an extract from soul and
body; Aristotle, an excrement drawn from the aliment of
the blood, the last which is diffused over our members; others, that it is a blood concocted and digested by the heat of
the genitals, which they judge, by reason that in excessive
endeavours a man voids pure blood; wherein there seems
to be more likelihood, could a man extract any appearance
from so infinite a confusion. Now, to bring this seed to do
its work, how many contrary opinions do they set on foot?
Aristotle and Democritus are of opinion that women have
no sperm, and that ‘tis nothing but a sweat that they distil in
the heat of pleasure and motion, and that contributes nothing at all to generation. Galen, on the contrary, and his followers, believe that without the concurrence of seeds there
can be no generation. Here are the physicians, the philosophers, the lawyers, and divines, by the ears with our wives
about the dispute, “For what term women carry their fruit?”
and I, for my part, by the example of myself, stick with those
that maintain a woman goes eleven months with child. The
world is built upon this experience; there is no so commonplace a woman that cannot give her judgment in all these
controversies; and yet we cannot agree.
Here is enough to verify that man is no better instructed in the knowledge of himself, in his corporal than
in his spiritual part We have proposed himself to himself,
and his reason to his reason, to see what she could say. I
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think I have sufficiently demonstrated how little she understands herself in herself; and who understands not himself
in himself, in what can he? quasi vero mensuram ullius rei
possit agere, qui sui nesciat. “As if he could understand the
measure of any other thing, that knows not his own.” In
earnest, Protagoras told us a pretty flam in making man the
measure of all things, that never knew so much as his own;
and if it be not he, his dignity will not permit that any other
creature should have this advantage; now he being so contrary in himself, and one judgment so incessantly subverting another, this favourable proposition was but a mockery, which induced us necessarily to conclude the nullity of
the compass and the compasser. When Thales reputes the
knowledge of man very difficult for man to comprehend,
he at the same time gives him to understand that all other
knowledge is impossible.
You,* for whom I have taken the pains, contrary to my
custom, to write so long a discourse, will not refuse to support your Sebond by the ordinary forms of arguing, wherewith you are every day instructed, and in this will exercise both your wit and learning; for this last fencing trick
is never to be made use of but as an extreme remedy; ‘tis
a desperate thrust, wherein you are to quit your own arms
to make your adversary abandon his; and a secret sleight,
which must be very rarely, and then very reservedly, put in
practice. ‘Tis great temerity to lose yourself that you may
destroy another; you must not die to be revenged, as Gobrias did; for, being closely grappled in combat with a lord
of Persia, Darius coming in sword in hand, and fearing to
strike lest he should kill Gobrias, he called out to him boldly
to fall on,131 though he should run them both through at
once. I have known desperate weapons, and conditions of
single combat, and wherein he that offered them put himself and his adversary upon terms of inevitable death to
them both, censured for unjust. The Portuguese, in the In131 The author, as we have already mentioned, is addressing Margaret de Valois.
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dian Sea, took certain Turks prisoners, who, impatient of
their captivity, resolved, and it succeeded, by striking the
nails of the ship one against another, and making a spark
to fall into the barrels of powder that were set in the place
where they were guarded, to blow up and reduce themselves, their masters, and the vessel to ashes. We here touch
the out-plate and utmost limits of sciences, wherein the extremity is vicious, as in virtue. Keep yourselves in the common road; it is not good to be so subtle and cunning. Remember the Tuscan proverb:–
Chi troppo s’assottiglia, si scavezza.
“Who makes himself too wise, becomes a fool.”
I advise you that, in all your opinions and discourses, as
well as in your manners and all other things, you keep yourself moderate and temperate, and avoid novelty; I am an
enemy to all extravagant ways. You, who by the authority
of your grandeur, and yet more by the advantages which
those qualities give you that are more your own, may with
the twinkle of an eye command whom you please, ought to
have given this charge to some one who made profession of
letters, who might after a better manner have proved and
illustrated these things to you. But here is as much as you
will stand in need of.
Epicurus said of the laws, “That the worst were so necessary for us that without them men would devour one another.” And Plato affirms, “That without laws we should
live like beasts.” Our wit is a wandering, dangerous, and
temerarious utensil; it is hard to couple any order or measure to it; in those of our own time, who are endued with
any rare excellence above others, or any extraordinary vivacity of understanding, we see them almost all lash out
into licentiousness of opinions and manners; and ‘tis almost
a miracle to find one temperate and sociable. ‘Tis all the
reason in the world to limit human wit within the strictest
limits imaginable; in study, as in all the rest, we ought to
have its steps and advances numbered and fixed, and that
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the limits of its inquisition be bounded by art. It is curbed
and fettered by religions, laws, customs, sciences, precepts,
mortal and immortal penalties. And yet we see that it escapes from all these bonds by its volubility and dissolution;
*tis a vain body which has nothing to lay hold on or to seize;
a various and difform body, incapable of being either bound
or held. In earnest, there are few souls so regular, firm, and
well descended, as are to be trusted with their own conduct,
and that can with moderation, and without temerity, sail in
the liberty of their own judgments, beyond the common and
received opinions; *tis more expedient to put them under
pupilage. Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly; and there is not
a beast to whom a headboard is more justly to be given, to
keep his looks down and before his feet, and to hinder him
from wandering here and there out of the tracks which custom and the laws have laid before him. And therefore it will
be better for you to keep yourself in the beaten path, let it
be what it will, than to fly out at a venture with this unbridled liberty. But if any of these new doctors will pretend to
be ingenious in your presence, at the expense both of your
soul and his own, to avoid this dangerous plague, which is
every day laid in your way to infect you, this preservative,
in the extremest necessity, will prevent the danger and hinder the contagion of this poison from offending either you
or your company.
The liberty, then, and frolic forwardness of these ancient wits produced in philosophy and human sciences several sects of different opinions, every one undertaking to
judge and make choice of what he would stick to and maintain. But now that men go all one way, qui certis quibusdam
destinatisque sententiis addicti et consecrati sunt, ut etiam, quæ
non probant, cogantur defendere, “Who are so tied and obliged
to certain opinions that they are bound to defend even those
they do not approve,” and that we receive the arts by civil
authority and decree, so that the schools have but one pattern, and a like circumscribed institution and discipline, we
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no more take notice what the coin weighs, and is really
worth, but every one receives it according to the estimate
that common approbation and use puts upon it; the alloy
is not questioned, but how much it is current for. In like
manner all things pass; we take physic as we do geometry;
and tricks of hocus-pocus, enchantments, and love-spells,
the correspondence of the souls of the dead, prognostications, domifications, and even this ridiculous pursuit of the
philosophers’ stone, all things pass for current pay, without
any manner of scruple or contradiction. We need to know
no more but that Mars’ house is in the middle of the triangle
of the hand, that of Venus in the thumb, and that of Mercury
in the little finger; that when the table-line cuts the tubercle
of the forefinger ‘tis a sign of cruelty, that when it falls short
of the middle finger, and that the natural median-line makes
an angle with the vital in the same side, ‘tis a sign of a miserable death; that if in a woman the natural line be open,
and does not close the angle with the vital, this denotes that
she shall not be very chaste. I leave you to judge whether
a man qualified with such knowledge may not pass with
reputation and esteem in all companies.
Theophrastus said that human knowledge, guided by
the senses, might judge of the causes of things to a certain
degree; but that being arrived to first and extreme causes, it
must stop short and retire, by reason either of its own infirmity or the difficulty of things. ‘Tis a moderate and gentle
opinion, that our own understandings may conduct us to
the knowledge of some things, and that it has certain measures of power, beyond which ‘tis temerity to employ it; this
opinion is plausible, and introduced by men of well composed minds, but ‘tis hard to limit our wit, which is curious
and greedy, and will no more stop at a thousand than at
fifty paces; having experimentally found that, wherein one
has failed, the other has hit, and that what was unknown
to one age, the age following has explained; and that arts
and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and
perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as
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bears leisurely lick their cubs into form; what my force cannot discover, I do not yet desist to sound and to try; and
by handling and kneading this new matter over and over
again, by turning and heating it, I lay open to him that shall
succeed me, a kind of facility to enjoy it more at his ease,
and make it more maniable and supple for him,
Ut hymettia sole
Cera remollescit, tractataque poll ice multas
Vertitur in facies, ipsoque fit utilis usu;
“As wax doth softer in the sun become,
And, tempered ‘twixt the finger and the
thumb,
Will varions forms, and several shapes admit,
Till for the present use ‘tis rendered fit;”
as much will the second do for the third; which is the cause
that the difficulty ought not to make me despair, and my
own incapacity as little; for ‘tis nothing but my own.
Man is as capable of all things as of some; and if he confesses, as Theophrastus says, the ignorance of first causes,
let him at once surrender all the rest of his knowledge; if he
is defective in foundation, his reason is aground; disputation and inquiry have no other aim nor stop but principles;
if this aim do not stop his career, he runs into an infinite irresolution. Non potest aliud alio magis minusve comprehendi,
quoniam omnium rerum una est dejinitio comprehendendi:
“One thing can no more or less be comprehended than
another, because the definition of comprehending all things
is the same.” Now ‘tis very likely that, if the soul knew any
thing, it would in the first place know itself; and if it knew
any thing out of itself, it would be its own body and case,
before any thing else. If we see the gods of physic to this
very day debating about our anatomy,
Mulciber in Trojam, pro Trojâ stabat Apollo;
“Vulcan against, for Troy Apollo stood;”
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when are we to expect that they will be agreed? We are
nearer neighbours to ourselves than whiteness to snow, or
weight to stones. If man do not know himself, how should
he know his force and functions? It is not, perhaps, that
we have not some real knowledge in us; but ‘tis by chance;
forasmuch as errors are received into our soul by the same
way, after the same manner, and by the same conduct, it
has not wherewithal to distinguish them, nor wherewithal
to choose the truth from falsehood.
The Academics admitted a certain partiality of judgment, and thought it too crude to say that it was not more
likely to say that snow was white than black; and that we
were no more assured of the motion of a stone, thrown by
the hand, than of that of the eighth sphere. And to avoid this
difficulty and strangeness, that can in truth hardly lodge in
our imagination, though they concluded that we were in
no sort capable of knowledge, and that truth is engulfed in
so profound an abyss as is not to be penetrated by human
sight; yet they acknowledged some things to be more likely
than others, and received into their judgment this faculty,
that they had a power to incline to one appearance more
than another, they allowed him this propension, interdicting all resolution. The Pyrrhonian opinion is more bold,
and also somewhat more likely; for this academic inclination, and this propension to one proposition rather than another, what is it other than a recognition of some more apparent truth in this than in that? If our understanding be
capable of the form, lineaments, port, and face of truth, it
might as well see it entire as by halves, springing and imperfect This appearance of likelihood, which makes them
rather take the left hand than the right, augments it; multiply this ounce of verisimilitude that turns the scales to a
hundred, to a thousand, ounces; it will happen in the end
that the balance will itself end the controversy, and determine one choice, one entire truth. But why do they suffer
themselves to incline to and be swayed by verisimilitude, if
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itude of that whereof they do not know the essence? Either
we can absolutely judge, or absolutely we cannot If our intellectual and sensible faculties are without foot or foundation, if they only pull and drive, ‘tis to no purpose that we
suffer our judgments to be carried away with any part of
their operation, what appearance soever they may seem to
present us; and the surest and most happy seat of our understanding would be that where it kept itself temperate,
upright, and inflexible, without tottering, or without agitation: Inter visa, vera aut falsa, ad animi assensum, nihil interest:
“Amongst things that seem, whether true or false, it signifies nothing to the assent of the mind.” That things do not
lodge in us in their form and essence, and do not there make
their entry by their own force and authority, we sufficiently
see; because, if it were so, we should receive them after the
same manner; wine would have the same relish with the
sick as with the healthful; he who has his finger chapt or
benumbed would find the same hardness in wood or iron
that he handles that another does; foreign subjects then surrender themselves to our mercy, and are seated in us as we
please. Now if on our part we received any thing without
alteration, if human grasp were capable and strong enough
to seize on truth by our own means, these means being common to all men, this truth would be conveyed from hand
to hand, from one to another; and at least there would be
some one thing to be found in the world, amongst so many
as there are, that would be believed by men with an universal consent; but this, that there is no one proposition that is
not debated and controverted amongst us, or that may not
be, makes it very manifest that our natural judgment does
not very clearly discern what it embraces; for my judgment
cannot make my companions approve of what it approves;
which is a sign that I seized it by some other means than by
a natural power that is in me and in all other men.
Let us lay aside this infinite confusion of opinions,
which we see even amongst the philosophers themselves,
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edge of things; for this is truly presupposed, that men, I
mean the most knowing, the best bom, and of the best parts,
are not agreed about any one thing, not that heaven is over
our heads; for they that doubt of every thing, do also doubt
of that; and they who deny that we are able to comprehend any thing, say that we have not comprehended that
the heaven is over our heads, and these two opinions are,
without comparison, the stronger in number.
Besides this infinite diversity and division, through the
trouble that our judgment gives ourselves, and the incertainty that every one is sensible of in himself, ‘tis easy to
perceive that its seat is very unstable and insecure. How
variously do we judge of things?–How often do we alter
our opinions? What I hold and believe to-day I hold and
believe with my whole belief; all my instruments and engines seize and take hold of this opinion, and become responsible to me for it, at least as much as in them lies; I
could not embrace nor conserve any truth with greater confidence and assurance than I do this; I am wholly and entirely possessed with it; but has it not befallen me, not only
once, but a hundred, a thousand times, every day, to have
embraced some other thing with all the same instruments,
and in the same condition, which I have since judged to be
false? A man must at least become wise at his own expense;
if I have often found myself betrayed under this colour; if
my touch proves commonly false, and my balance unequal
and unjust, what assurance can I now have more than at
other times? Is it not stupidity and madness to suffer myself to be so often deceived by my guide? Nevertheless, let
fortune remove and shift us five hundred times from place
to place, let her do nothing but incessantly empty and fill
into our belief, as into a vessel, other and other opinions;
yet still the present and the last is the certain and infallible
one; for this we must abandon goods, honour, life, health,
and all.
Posterior.... res ilia reperta
Perdit, et immutat sensus ad pristina qnæqne.
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“The last things we find out are always best,
And make us to disrelish all the rest.”
Whatever is preached to us, and whatever we learn, we
should still remember that it is man that gives and man
that receives; ‘tis a mortal hand that presents it to us; ‘tis a
mortal hand that accepts it The things that come to us from
heaven have the sole right and authority of persuasion, the
sole mark of truth; which also we do not see with our own
eyes, nor receive by our own means; that great and sacred
image could not abide in so wretched a habitation if God for
this end did not prepare it, if God did not by his particular
and supernatural grace and favour fortify and reform it. At
least our frail and defective condition ought to make us behave ourselves with more reservedness and moderation in
our innovations and changes; we ought to remember that,
whatever we receive into the understanding, we often receive things that are false, and that it is by the same instruments that so often give themselves the lie and are so often
deceived.
Now it is no wonder they should so often contradict
themselves, being so easy to be turned and swayed by very
light occurrences. It is certain that our apprehensions, our
judgment, and the faculties of the soul in general, suffer
according to the movements and alterations of the body,
which alterations are continual. Are not our minds more
sprightly, ouï memories more prompt and quick, and our
thoughts more lively, in health than in sickness? Do not
joy and gayety make us receive subjects that present themselves to our souls quite otherwise than care and melancholy? Do you believe that Catullus’s verses, or those of
Sappho, please an old doting miser as they do a vigorous,
amorous young man? Cleomenes, the son of Anexandridas,
being sick, his friends reproached him that he had humours
and whimsies that were new and unaccustomed; “I believe
it,” said he; “neither am I the same man now as when I am
in health; being now another person, my opinions and fancies are also other than they were before.” In our courts of
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justice this word is much in use, which is spoken of criminals when they find the judges in a good humour, gentle,
and mild, Gaudeat de bonâ fortunâ ; “Let him rejoice in his
good fortune;” for it is most certain that men’s judgments
are sometimes more prone to condemnation, more sharp
and severe, and at others more facile, easy, and inclined to
excuse; he that carries with him from his house the pain of
the gout, jealousy, or theft by his man, having his whole
soul possessed with anger, it is not to be doubted but that
his judgment will lean this way. That venerable senate of
the Areopagites used to hear and determine by night, for
fear lest the sight of the parties might corrupt their justice.
The very air itself, and the serenity of heaven, will cause
some mutation in us, according to these verses in Cicero:–
Tales sunt hominnm mentes, quali pater ipse
Jupiter auctiferâ lustravit lampade terras.
“Men’s minds are influenc’d by th’ external
air,
Dark or serene, as days are foul or fair.”
‘Tis not only fevers, debauches, and great accidents, that
overthrow our judgments,–the least things in the world will
do it; and we are not to doubt, though we may not be sensible of it, that if a continued fever can overwhelm the soul,
a tertian will in some proportionate measure alter it; if an
apoplexy can stupefy and totally extinguish the sight of our
understanding, we are not to doubt but that a great cold will
dazzle it; and consequently there is hardly one single hour
in a man’s whole life wherein our judgment is in its due
place and right condition, our bodies being subject to so
many continual mutations, and stuffed with so many several sorts of springs, that I believe the physicians, that it is
hard but that there must be always some one or other out of
order.
As to what remains, this malady does not very easily
discover itself, unless it be extreme and past remedy; forasmuch as reason goes always lame, halting, and that too as
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well with falsehood as with truth; and therefore ‘tis hard to
discover her deviations and mistakes. I always call that appearance of meditation which every one forges in himself
reason; this reason, of the condition of which there may be
a hundred contrary ones about one and the same subject,
is an instrument of lead and of wax, ductile, pliable, and
accommodate to all sorts of biases, and to all measures; so
that nothing remains but the art and skill how to turn and
mould it. How uprightly soever a judge may mean, if he
does not look well to himself, which few care to do, his inclination to friendship, to relationship, to beauty or revenge,
and not only things of that weight, but even the fortuitous
instinct that makes us favour one thing more than another,
and that, without reason’s permission, puts the choice upon
us in two equal subjects, or some shadow of like vanity, may
insensibly insinuate into his judgment the recommendation
or disfavour of a cause, and make the balance dip.
I, that watch myself as narrowly as I can, and that have
my eyes continually bent upon myself, like one that has no
great business to do elsewhere,
Quis sub Arcto Rex gelidæ metuatur oræ,
Quid Tyridatem terreat, unice Securus,
“I care not whom the northern clime reveres,
Or what’s the king that Tyridates fears,”
dare hardly tell the vanity and weakness I find in myself
My foot is so unstable and unsteady, I find myself so apt to
totter and reel, and my sight so disordered, that, fasting, I
am quite another man than when full; if health and a fair
day smile upon me, I am a very affable, good-natured man;
if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humour, and
not to be seen. The same pace of a horse seems to me one
while hard, and another easy; and the same way one while
shorter, and another longer; and the same form one while
more, another less agreeable: I am one while for doing every thing, and another for doing nothing at all; and what
pleases me now would be a trouble to me at another time. I
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have a thousand senseless and casual actions within myself;
either I am possessed by melancholy or swayed by choler;
now by its own private authority sadness predominates in
me, and by and by, I am as merry as a cricket. When I take
a book in hand I have then discovered admirable graces in
such and such passages, and such as have struck my soul;
let me light upon them at another time, I may turn and toss,
tumble and rattle the leaves to no purpose; ‘tis then to me
an inform and undiscovered mass. Even in my own writings I do not always find the air of my first fancy; I know
not what I would have said, and am often put to it to correct and pump for a new sense, because I have lost the first
that was better. I do nothing but go and come; my judgment
does not always advance–it floats and roams:–
Velut minuta magno
Deprensa navis in mari vesaniente vento.
‘Like a small bark that’s tost upon the main.
When winds tempestuous heave the liquid
plain.”
Very often, as I am apt to do, having for exercise taken to
maintain an opinion contrary to my own, my mind, bending and applying itself that way, does so engage me that
way that I no more discern the reason of my former belief,
and forsake it I am, as it were, misled by the side to which
I incline, be it what it will, and carried away by my own
weight. Every one almost would say the same of himself,
if he considered himself as I do. Preachers very well know
that the emotions which steal upon them in speaking animate them towards belief; and that in passion we are more
warm in the defence of our proposition, take ourselves a
deeper impression of it, and embrace it with greater vehemence and approbation than we do in our colder and more
temperate state. You only give your counsel a simple brief
of your cause; he returns you a dubious and uncertain answer, by which you find him indifferent which side he takes.
Have you feed him well that he may relish it the better, does
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he begin to be really concerned, and do you find him interested and zealous in your quarrel? his reason and learning
will by degrees grow hot in your cause; behold an apparent and undoubted truth presents itself to his understanding; he discovers a new light in your business, and does in
good earnest believe and persuade himself that it is so. Nay,
I do not know whether the ardour that springs from spite
and obstinacy, against the power and violence of the magistrate and danger, or the interest of reputation, may not have
made some men, even at the stake, maintain the opinion for
which, at liberty, and amongst friends, they would not have
burned a finger. The shocks and jostles that the soul receives
from the body’s passions can do much in it, but its own can
do a great deal more; to which it is so subjected that perhaps
it may be made good that it has no other pace and motion
but from the breath of those winds, without the agitation of
which it would be becalmed and without action, like a ship
in the middle of the sea, to which the winds hare denied
their assistance. And whoever should maintain this, siding
with the Peripatetics, would do us no great wrong, seeing it
is very well known that the greatest and most noble actions
of the soul proceed from, and stand in need of, this impulse
of the passions. Valour, they say, cannot be perfect without
the assistance of anger; Semper Ajax fortis, fortissimus tamen
in furore; “Ajax was always brave, but most when in a fury:”
neither do we encounter the wicked and the enemy vigorously enough if we be not angry; nay, the advocate, it is said,
is to inspire the judges with indignation, to obtain justice.
Irregular desires moved Themistocles, and Demosthenes, and have pushed on the philosophers to watching, fasting, and pilgrimages; and lead us to honour, learning, and health, which are all very useful ends. And this
meanness of soul, in suffering anxiety and trouble, serves
to breed remorse and repentance in the conscience, and to
make us sensible of the scourge of God, and politic correction for the chastisement of our offences; compassion is a
spur to clemency; and the prudence of preserving and gov298
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erning ourselves is roused by our fear; and how many brave
actions by ambition! how many by presumption! In short,
there is no brave and spiritual virtue without some irregular
agitation. May not this be one of the reasons that moved the
Epicureans to discharge God from all care and solicitude of
our affairs; because even the effects of his goodness could
not be exercised in our behalf without disturbing its repose,
by the means of passions which are so many spurs and instruments pricking on the soul to virtuous actions; or have
they thought otherwise, and taken them for tempests, that
shamefully hurry the soul from her tranquillity? Ut maris
tranquillitas intettigitur, nullâ, ne minima quidem, aura fluctus
commovente: Sic animi quietus et placatus status cemitur, quum
perturbatis nulla est, qua moveri queat.. “As it is understood
to be a calm sea when there is not the least breath of air
stirring; so the state of the soul is discerned to be quiet and
appeased when there is no perturbation to move it.”
What varieties of sense and reason, what contrariety of
imaginations does the diversity of our passions inspire us
with! What assurance then can we take of a thing so mobile
and unstable, subject by its condition to the dominion of
trouble, and never going other than a forced and borrowed
pace? If our judgment be in the power even of sickness and
perturbation; if it be from folly and rashness that it is to receive the impression of things, what security can we expect
from it?
Is it not a great boldness in philosophy to believe that
men perform the greatest actions, and nearest approaching
the Divinity, when they are furious, mad, and beside themselves? We better ourselves by the privation of our reason,
and drilling it. The two natural ways to enter into the cabinet of the gods, and there to foresee the course of destiny,
are fury and sleep.
This is pleasant to consider; by the dislocation that passions cause in our reason, we become virtuous; by its extirpation, occasioned by madness or the image of death, we
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lieve philosophy in any thing as this. ‘Tis a pure enthusiasm
wherewith sacred truth has inspired the spirit of philosophy, which makes it confess, contrary to its own proposition, that the most calm, composed, and healthful estate ef
the soul that philosophy can seat it in is not its best condition; our waking is more a sleep than sleep itself, our
wisdom less wise than folly; our dreams are worth more
than our meditation; and the worst place we can take is in
ourselves. But does not philosophy think that we are wise
enough to consider that the voice that the spirit utters, when
dismissed from man, so clear-sighted, so great, and so perfect, and whilst it is in man so terrestrial, ignorant, and dark,
is a voice proceeding from the spirit of dark, terrestrial, and
ignorant man, and for this reason a voice not to be trusted
and believed?
I, being of a soft and heavy complexion, have no great
experience of these vehement agitations, the most of which
surprise the soul on a sudden, without giving it leisure to
recollect itself. But the passion that is said to be produced
by idleness in the hearts of young men, though it proceed
leisurely, and with a measured progress, does evidently
manifest, to those who have tried to oppose its power, the
violence our judgment suffers in this alteration and conversion. I have formerly attempted to withstand and repel it;
for I am so far from being one of those that invite vices, that
I do not so much as follow them, if they do not haul me
along; I perceived it to spring, grow, and increase, in spite of
my resistance; and at last, living and seeing as I was, wholly
to seize and possess me. So that, as if rousing from drunkenness, the images of things began to appear to me quite
other than they used to be; I evidently saw the advantages
of the object I desired, grow, and increase, and expand by
the influence of my imagination, and the difficulties of my
attempt to grow more easy and smooth; and both my reason
and conscience to be laid aside; but this fire being evaporated in an instant, as from a flash of lightning, I was aware
that my soul resumed another kind of sight, another state,
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and another judgment; the difficulties of retreat appeared
great and invincible, and the same things had quite another
taste and aspect than the heat of desire had presented them
to me; which of the two most truly? Pyrrho knows nothing
about it. We are never without sickness. Agues have their
hot and cold fits; from the effects of an ardent passion we
fall again to shivering; as much as I had advanced, so much
I retired:–
Qualis ubi alterno procurrens gurgite pontus,
Nunc ruit ad terras, scopulosque superjacit undam
Spumeus, extremamque sinu perfundit arenam;
Nunc rapidus retro, atque æstu revoluta
resorbens Saxa, fugit, littusque vado
labente relihquit.
“So swelling surges, with a thundering roar,
Driv’n on each others’ backs, insult the shore,
Bound o’er the rocks, encroach upon the land,
And far upon the beach heave up the sand;
Then backward rapidly they take their way,
Repulsed from upper ground, and seek the
sea.”
Now, from the knowledge of this volubility of mine, I have
accidentally begot in myself a certain constancy of opinions, and have not much altered those that were first and
natural in me; for what appearance soever there may be
in novelty, I do not easily change, for fear of losing by the
bargain; and, as I am not capable of choosing, I take other
men’s choice, and keep myself in the station wherein God
has placed me; I could not otherwise keep myself from perpetual rolling. Thus have I, by the grace of God, preserved
myself entire, without anxiety or trouble of conscience, in
the ancient faith of our religion, amidst so many sects and
divisions as our age has produced. The writings of the ancients, the best authors I mean, being full and solid, tempt
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and carry me which way almost they will; he that I am reading seems always to have the most force; and I find that every one in his turn is in the right, though they contradict
one another. The facility that good wits have of rendering
every thing likely they would recommend, and that nothing is so strange to which they do not undertake to give
colour enough to deceive such simplicity as mine, this evidently shows the weakness of their testimony. The heavens and the stars have been three thousand years in motion;
all the world were of that belief till Cleanthes the Samian,
or, according to Theophrastus, Nicetas of Syracuse, took it
into his head to maintain that it was the earth that moved,
turning about its axis by the oblique circle of the zodiac.
And Copernicus has in our times so grounded this doctrine
that it very regularly serves to all astrological consequences;
what use can we make of this, if not that we ought not much
to care which is the true opinion? And who knows but that
a third, a thousand years hence, may over throw the two
former.
Sic volvenda ætas commutât tempora rerum:
Quod fuit in pretio, fit nullo denique honore;
Porro aliud succedit, et e contemptibus exit,
Inque dies magis appetitur, floretque repertum
Laudibus, et miro est mortales inter honore.
“Thus ev’ry thing is changed in course of time,
What now is valued passes soon its prime;
To which some other thing, despised before,
Succeeds, and grows in vogue still more and
more;
And once received, too faint all praises seem,
So highly it is rais’d in men’s esteem.”
So that when any new doctrine presents itself to us, we have
great reason to mistrust, and to consider that, before that
was set on foot, the contrary had been generally received;
and that, as that has been overthrown by this, a third invention, in time to come, may start up which may damn the
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second. Before the principles that Aristotle introduced were
in reputation, other principles contented human reason, as
these satisfy us now. What patent have these people, what
particular privilege, that the career of our invention must
be stopped by them, and that the possession of our whole
future belief should belong to them? They are no more exempt from being thrust out of doors than their predecessors
were. When any one presses me with a new argument, I
ought to believe that what I cannot answer another can; for
to believe all likelihoods that a man cannot confute is great
simplicity; it would by that means come to pass that all the
vulgar (and we are all of the vulgar) would have their belief as tumable as a weathercock; for their souls, being so
easy to be imposed upon, and without any resistance, must
of force incessantly receive other and other impressions, the
last still effacing all footsteps of that which went before. He
that finds himself weak ought to answer, according to practice, that he will speak with his counsel, or refer himself
to the wiser, from whom he received his instruction. How
long is it that physic has been practised in the world? ‘Tis
said that a new comer, called Paracelsus, changes and overthrows the whole order of ancient rules, and maintains that,
till now, it has been of no other use but to kill men. I believe
he will easily make this good, but I do not think it were
wisdom to venture my life in making trial of his own experience. We are not to believe every one, says the precept,
because every one can say all things. A man of this profession of novelties and physical reformations not long since
told me that all the ancients were notoriously mistaken in
the nature and motions of the winds, which he would evidently demonstrate to me if I would give him the hearing. After I had with some patience heard his arguments,
which were all full of likelihood of truth: “What, then,” said
I, “did those that sailed according to Theophrastus make
way westward, when they had the prow towards the east?
did they go sideward or backward?” “That’s fortune,” answered he, “but so it is that they were mistaken.” I replied
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that I had rather follow effects than reason. Now these are
things that often interfere with one another, and I have been
told that in geometry (which pretends to have gained the
highest point of certainty of all science) there are inevitable
demonstrations found which subvert the truth of all experience; as Jacques Pelletier told me, at my own house, that
he had found out two lines stretching themselves one towards the other to meet, which nevertheless he affirmed,
though extended to infinity, could never arrive to touch one
another. And the Pyrrhonians make no other use of their
arguments and their reason than to ruin the appearance of
experience; and ‘tis a wonder how far the suppleness of our
reason has followed them in this design of controverting the
evidence of effects; for they affirm that we do not move,
that we do not speak, and that there is neither weight nor
heat, with the same force of argument that we affirm the
most likely things. Ptolemy, who was a great man, had established the bounds of this world of ours; all the ancient
philosophers thought they had the measure of it, excepting
some remote isles that might escape their knowledge; it had
been Pyrrhonism, a thousand years ago, to doubt the science of cosmography, and the opinions that every one had
received from it; it was heresy to admit the antipodes; and
behold, in this age of ours, there is an infinite extent of terra
firma discovered, not an island or single country, but a division of the world, nearly equal in greatness to that we knew
before. The geographers of our time stick not to assure us
that now all is found; all is seen:–
Nam quod adest prosto, placet, et pollere videtur;
“What’s present pleases, and appears the best;”
but it remains to be seen whether, as Ptolemy was therein
formerly deceived upon the foundation of his reason, it
were not very foolish to trust now in what these people say?
And whether it is not more likely that this great body, which
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we call the world, is not quite another thing than what we
imagine.
Plato says that it changes countenance in all respects;
that the heavens, the stars, and the sun, have all of them
sometimes motions retrograde to what we see, changing
east into west The Egyptian priests told Herodotus that
from the time of their first king, which was eleven thousand and odd years since (and they showed him the effigies
of all their kings in statues taken from the life), the sun had
four times altered his course; that the sea and the earth did
alternately change into one another; that the beginning of
the world is undetermined; Aristotle and Cicero both say
the same; and some amongst us are of opinion that it has
been from all eternity, is mortal, and renewed again by several vicissitudes; calling Solomon and Isaiah to witness; to
evade those oppositions, that God has once been a creator
without a creature; that he has had nothing to do, that he
got rid of that idleness by putting his hand to this work;
and that consequently he is subject to change. In the most
famous of the Greek schools the world is taken for a god,
made by another god greater than he, and composed of a
body, and a soul fixed in his centre, and dilating himself
by musical numbers to his circumference; divine, infinitely
happy, and infinitely great, infinitely wise and eternal; in
him are other gods, the sea, the earth, the stars, who entertain one another with an harmonious and perpetual agitation and divine dance, sometimes meeting, sometimes retiring from one another; concealing and discovering themselves; changing their order, one while before, and another
behind. Heraclitus was positive that the world was composed of fire; and, by the order of destiny, was one day to
be enflamed and consumed in fire, and then to be again renewed. And Apuleius says of men: Sigillatim mortales, cunctim perpetui. “That they are mortal in particular, and immortal in general.” Alexander writ to his mother the narration
of an Egyptian priest, drawn from their monuments, testifying the antiquity of that nation to be infinite, and compris305
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ing the birth and progress of other countries. Cicero and
Diodorus say that in their time the Chaldees kept a register
of four hundred thousand and odd years, Aristotle, Pliny,
and others, that Zoroaster flourished six thousand years before Plato’s time. Plato says that they of the city of Sais have
records in writing of eight thousand years; and that the city
of Athens was built a thousand years before the said city of
Sais; Epicurus, that at the same time things are here in the
posture we see, they are alike and in the same manner in
several other worlds; which he would have delivered with
greater assurance, had he seen the similitude and concordance of the new discovered world of the West Indies with
ours, present and past, in so many strange examples.
In earnest, considering what is come to our knowledge
from the course of this terrestrial polity, I have often wondered to see in so vast a distance of places and times such a
concurrence of so great a number of popular and wild opinions, and of savage manners and beliefs, which by no means
seem to proceed from our natural meditation. The human
mind is a great worker of miracles! But this relation has,
moreover, I know not what of extraordinary in it; ‘tis found
to be in names, also, and a thousand other things; for they
found nations there (that, for aught we know, never heard of
us) where circumcision was in use; where there were states
and great civil governments maintained by women only,
without men; where our fasts and Lent were represented,
to which was added abstinence from women; where our
crosses were several ways in repute; here they were made
use of to honour and adorn their sepultures, there they were
erected, and particularly that of St Andrew, to protect themselves from nocturnal visions, and to lay upon the cradles of
infants against enchantments; elsewhere there was found
one of wood, of very great height, which was adored for
the god of rain, and this a great way in the interior; there
was seen an express image of our penance priests, the use
of mitres, the celibacy of priests, the art of divination by
the entrails of sacrificed beasts, abstinence from all sorts
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of flesh and fish in their diet, the manner of priests officiating in a particular and not a vulgar language; and this
fancy, that the first god was driven away by a second, his
younger brother; that they were created with all sorts of necessaries and conveniences, which have since been in a degree taken from them for their sins, their territory changed,
and their natural condition made worse; that they were of
old overwhelmed by the inundation of water from heaven;
that but few families escaped, who retired into caves on
high mountains, the mouths of which they stopped so that
the waters could not get in, having shut up, together with
themselves, several sorts of animals; that when they perceived the rain to cease they sent out dogs, which returning
clean and wet, they judged that the water was not much
abated; afterwards sending out others, and seeing them return dirty, they issued out to repeople the world, which
they found only full of serpents. In one place we met with
the belief of a day of judgment; insomuch that they were
marvellously displeased at the Spaniards for discomposing
the bones of the dead, in rifling the sepultures for riches,
saying that those bones so disordered could not easily rejoin; the traffic by exchange, and no other way; fairs and
markets for that end; dwarfs and deformed people for the
ornament of the tables of princes; the use of falconry, according to the nature of their hawks; tyrannical subsidies;
nicety in gardens; dancing, tumbling tricks, music of instruments, coats of arms, tennis-courts, dice and lotteries,
wherein they are sometimes so eager and hot as to stake
themselves and their liberty; physic, no otherwise than by
charms; the way of writing in cypher; the belief of only one
first man, the father of all nations; the adoration of one God,
who formerly lived a man in perfect virginity, fasting, and
penitence, preaching the laws of nature, and the ceremonies
of religion, and that vanished from the world without a
natural death; the theory of giants; the custom of making
themselves drunk with their beverages, and drinking to the
utmost; religious ornaments painted with bones and dead
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men’s skulls; surplices, holy water sprinkled; wives and servants, who present themselves with emulation, burnt and
interred with the dead husband or master; a law by which
the eldest succeeds to all the estate, no part being left for the
younger but obedience; the custom that, upon promotion
to a certain office of great authority, the promoted is to take
upon him a new name, and to leave that which he had before; another to strew lime upon the knee of the new-born
child, with these words:
“From dust thou earnest, and to dust thou must return;” as also the art of augury. The vain shadows of our religion, which are observable in some of these examples, are
testimonies of its dignity and divinity. It is not only in some
sort insinuated into all the infidel nations on this side of the
world, by a certain imitation, but in these barbarians also,
as by a common and supernatural inspiration; for we find
there the belief of purgatory, but of a new form; that which
we give to the fire they give to the cold, and imagine that
souls are purged and punished by the rigour of an excessive coldness. And this example puts me in mind of another
pleasant diversity; for as there were there some people who
delighted to unmuffle the ends of their instruments, and
clipped off the prepuce after the Mahometan and Jewish
manner; there were others who made so great conscience
of laying it bare, that they carefully pursed it up with little
strings to keep that end from peeping into the air; and of
this other diversity, that whereas we, to honour kings and
festivals, put on the best clothes we have; in some regions,
to express their disparity and submission to their king, his
subjects present themselves before him in their vilest habits,
and entering his palace, throw some old tattered garment
over their better apparel, to the end that all the lustre and
ornament may solely be in him. But to proceed:–
If nature enclose within the bounds of her ordinary
progress the beliefs, judgments, and opinions of men, as
well as all other things; if they have their revolution, their
season, their birth and death, like cabbage plants; if the
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heavens agitate and rule them at their pleasure, what magisterial and permanent authority do we attribute to them? If
we experimentally see that the form of our beings depends
upon the air, upon the climate, and upon the soil, where we
are bom, and not only the colour, the stature, the complexion, and the countenances, but moreover the very faculties
of the soul itself: Et plaga codi non solum ad robor corporum, sed etiam anirum facit: “The climate is of great efficacy, not only to the strength of bodies, but to that of souls
also,” says Vegetius; and that the goddess who founded
the city of Athens chose to situate it in a temperature of
air fit to make men prudent, as the Egyptian priests told
Solon: Athenis tenue colum; ex quo etiam acutiores putantur Attici; crassum Thebis; itaque pingues Thebani, et valentes: “The
air of Athens is subtle and thin; whence also the Athenians are reputed to be more acute; and at Thebes more gross
and thick; wherefore the Thebans are looked upon as more
heavy-witted and more strong.” In such sort that, as fruits
and animals grow different, men are also more or less warlike, just, temperate, and docile; here given to wine, elsewhere to theft or uncleanness; here inclined to superstition,
elsewhere to unbelief; in one place to liberty, in another to
servitude; capable of one science or of one art, dull or ingenious, obedient or mutinous, good or bad, according as
the place where they are seated inclines them; and assume
a new complexion, if removed, like trees, which was the reason why Cyrus would not grant the Persians leave to quit
their rough and craggy country to remove to another more
pleasant and even, saying, that fertile and tender soils made
men effeminate and soft. If we see one while one art and one
belief flourish, and another while another, through some celestial influence; such an age to produce such natures, and
to incline mankind to such and such a propension, the spirits of men one while gay and another gray, like our fields,
what becomes of all those fine prerogatives we so soothe
ourselves withal? Seeing that a wise man may be mistaken,
and a hundred men and a hundred nations, nay, that even
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human nature itself, as we believe, is many ages wide in one
thing or another, what assurances have we that she should
cease to be mistaken, or that in this very age of ours she is
not so?
Methinks that amongst other testimonies of our imbecility, this ought not to be forgotten, that man cannot, by his
own wish and desire, find out what he wants; that not in
fruition only, but in imagination and wish, we cannot agree
about what we would have to satisfy and content us. Let
us leave it to our own thought to cut out and make up at
pleasure; it cannot so much as covet what is proper for it,
and satisfy itself:–
Quid enim ratione timemus,
Aut cupimus? Quid tain dextro pede concipis,
ut te
Conatus non poniteat, votique peracti?
“For what, with reason, do we speak or shun,
What plan, how happily soe’r begun,
That, when achieved, we do not wish undone?”
And therefore it was that Socrates only begged of the gods
that they would give him what they knew to be best for
him; and the private and public prayer of the Lacedemonians was simply for good and useful things, referring the
choice and election of them to the discretion of the Supreme
Power:–
Conjugium petimus, partumqué uxoris; at illis
Notum, qui pueri, qualisque futura sit uxor:
“We ask for Wives and children; they above
Know only, when we have them, what they’ll
prove;”
and Christians pray to God, “Thy will be done,” that they
may not fall into the inconvenience the poet feigns of King
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Midas. He prayed to the gods that all he touched might
be turned into gold; his prayer was heard; his wine was
gold, his bread was gold, the feathers of his bed, his shirt,
his clothes, were all gold, so that he found himself overwhelmed with the fruition of his desire, and endowed with
an intolerable benefit, and was fain to unpray his prayers.
Attonitus novitate mali, divesque, miserque,
Effugere optât opes, et, quæ modo voverat,
odit.
“Astonished at the strangeness of the ill,
To be so rich, yet miserable still;
He wishes now he could his wealth evade,
And hates the thing for which before he
prayed.”
To instance in myself: being young, I desired of fortune,
above all things, the order of St. Michael, which was then
the utmost distinction of honour amongst the French nobles, and very rare. She pleasantly gratified my longing;
instead of raising me, and lifting me up from my own place
to attain to it, she was much kinder to me; for she brought
it so low, and made it so cheap, that it stooped down to
my shoulders, and lower. Cleobis and Bito, Trophonius
and Agamedes, having requested, the first of their goddess,
the last of their god, a recompense worthy of their piety,
had death for a reward; so differing from ours are heavenly
opinions concerning what is fit for us. God might grant us
riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for
every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us.
If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a
cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. “Thy
rod and thy staff have comforted me,” he does it by the rule
of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns
what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take
it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly
hand
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Si consilium vis:
Permittee ipsis expendere numinibus, quid
Conveniat nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris...
Carior est illis homo quam sibi;
“If thou’lt be rul’d, to th’ gods thy fortunes trust,
Their thoughts are wise, their dispensations
just.
What best may profit or delight they know,
And real good, for fancied bliss, bestow;
With eyes of pity, they our frailties scan,
More dear to them, than to himself, is man;”
for to require of him honours and commands, is to require
‘that he may throw you into a battle, set you upon a cast at
dice, or something of the like nature, whereof the issue is to
you unknown, and the fruit doubtful.
There is no dispute so sharp and violent amongst the
philosophers, as about the question of the sovereign good of
man; whence, by the calculation of Varro, rose two hundred
and eighty-eight sects. qui autem de summo bono dissentit, de
totâ philosophies ratione disputât. “For whoever enters into
controversy concerning the supreme good, disputes upon
the whole matter of philosophy.”
Très mihi convivæ prope dissentire videntur,
Poscentes vario mul turn divers a palato;
Quid dem? Quid non dem? Renuis tu quod jubet alter;
Quod petis, id sane est invisum acidumque
duobus;
“I have three guests invited to a feast,
And all appear to have a different taste;
What shall I give them? What shall I refuse?
What one dislikes the other two shall choose;
And e’en the very dish you like the best
Is acid or insipid to the rest:”
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nature should say the same to their contests and debates.
Some say that our well-being lies in virtue, others in pleasure, others in submitting to nature; one in knowledge, another in being exempt from pain, another in not suffering
ourselves to be carried away by appearances; and this fancy
seems to have some relation to that of the ancient Pythagoras,
Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici,
Solaque, quæ possit facere et servare beatum:
“Not to admire’s the only art I know
Can make us happy, and can keep us so;”
which is the drift of the Pyrrhonian sect; Aristotle attributes
the admiring nothing to magnanimity; and Arcesilaus said,
that constancy and a right inflexible state of judgment were
the true good, and consent and application the sin and evil;
and there, it is true, in being thus positive, and establishing a certain axiom, he quitted Pyrrhonism; for the’ Pyrrhonians, when they say that ataraxy, which is the immobility of judgment, is the sovereign good, do not design to
speak it affirmatively; but that the same motion of soul
which makes them avoid precipices, and take shelter from
the cold, presents them such a fancy, and makes them refuse
another.
How much do I wish that, whilst I live, either some
other or Justus Lipsius, the most learned man now living, of
a most polite and judicious understanding, truly resembling
my Turnebus, had both the will and health, and leisure sufficient, carefully and conscientiously to collect into a register, according to their divisions and classes, as many as
are to be found, of the opinions of the ancient philosophers,
about the subject of our being and manners, their controversies, the succession and reputation of sects; with the application of the lives of the authors and their disciples to
their own precepts, in memorable accidents, and upon exemplary occasions. What a beautiful and useful work that
would be!
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As to what remains, if it be from ourselves that we are
to extract the rules of our manners, upon what a confusion
do we throw ourselves! For that which our reason advises
us to, as the most likely, is generally for every one to obey
the laws of his country, as was the advice of Socrates, inspired, as he says, by a divine counsel; and by that, what
would it say, but that our duty has no other rule but what
is accidental? Truth ought to have a like and universal visage; if man could know equity and justice that had a body
and a true being, he would not fetter it to the conditions of
this country or that; it would not be from the whimsies of
the Persians or Indians that virtue would receive its form.
There is nothing more subject to perpetual agitation than
the laws; since I was born, I have known those of the English, our neighbours, three or four times changed, not only
in matters of civil regimen, which is the only thing wherein
constancy may be dispensed with, but in the most important subject that can be, namely, religion, at which I am
the more troubled and ashamed, because it is a nation with
whom those of my province have formerly had so great familiarity and acquaintance, that there yet remains in my
house some footsteps of our ancient kindred; and here with
us at home, I have known a thing that was capital to become lawful; and we that hold of others are likewise, according to the chance of war, in a possibility of being one
day found guilty of high-treason, both divine and human,
should the justice of our arms fall into the power of injustice, and, after a few years’ possession, take a quite contrary
being. How could that ancient god more clearly accuse the
ignorance of human knowledge concerning the divine Being, and give men to understand that their religion was but
a thing of their own contrivance, useful as a bond to their
society, than declaring as he did to those who came to his
tripod for instruction, that every one’s true worship was
that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to
be? O God, what infinite obligation have we to the bounty
of our sovereign Creator, for having disabused our belief
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from these wandering and arbitrary devotions, and for having seated it upon the eternal foundation of his holy word?
But what then will philosophers say to us in this necessity?
“That we follow the laws of our country;” that is to say, this
floating sea of the opinions of a republic, or a prince, that
will paint out justice for me in as many colours, and form
it as many ways as there are changes of passions in themselves; I cannot suffer my judgment to be so flexible. What
kind of virtue is that which I see one day in repute, and
that to-morrow shall be in none, and which the crossing of
a river makes a crime? What sort of truth can that be, which
these mountains limit to us, and make a lie to all the world
beyond them?
But they are pleasant, when, to give some certainty to
the laws, they say, that there are some firm, perpetual, and
immovable, which they call natural, that are imprinted in
human kind by the condition of their own proper being; and
of these some reckon three, some four, some more, some
less; a sign that it is a mark as doubtful as the rest Now they
are so unfortunate, (for what can I call it else but misfortune
that, of so infinite a number of laws, there should not be
found one at least that fortune and the temerity of chance
has suffered to be universally received by the consent of all
nations?) they are, I say, so miserable, that of these three
or four select laws, there is not so much as one that is not
contradicted and disowned, not only by one nation, but by
many. Now, the only likely sign, by which they can argue or
infer some natural laws, is the universality of approbation;
for we should, without doubt, follow with a common consent that which nature had truly ordained us; and not only
every nation, but every private man, would resent the force
and violence that any one should do him who would tempt
him to any thing contrary to this law. But let them produce
me one of this condition. Proctagoras and Aristo gave no
other essence to the justice of laws than the authority and
opinion of the legislator; and that, these laid aside, the honest and the good lost their qualities, and remained empty
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names of indifferent things; Thrasymachus, in Plato, is of
opinion that there is no other right but the convenience of
the superior. There is not any thing wherein the world is so
various as in laws and customs; such a thing is abominable
here which is elsewhere in esteem, as in Lacedemon dexterity in stealing; marriages between near relations, are capitally interdicted amongst us; they are elsewhere in honour:–
Gentes esse ferantur,
In quibus et nato genitrix, et nata parenti
Jungitur, et pietas geminato crescit amore;
“There are some nations in the world, ‘tis said,
Where fathers daughters, sons their mothers
wed;
And their affections thereby higher rise,
More firm and constant by these double ties;”
the murder of infants, the murder of fathers, the community
of wives, traffic of robberies, license in all sorts of voluptuousness; in short, there is nothing so extreme that is not
allowed by the custom of some nation or other.
It is credible that there are natural laws for us, as we
see them in other creatures; but they are lost in us, this fine
human reason everywhere so insinuating itself to govern
and command, as to shuffle and confound the face of things,
according to its own vanity and inconstancy: Nihil itaque
amplius nostrum est; quod nostrum dico, artis est: “Therefore
nothing is any more truly ours; what we call ours belongs to
art.” Subjects have divers lustres and divers considerations,
and thence the diversity of opinions principally proceeds;
one nation considers a subject in one aspect, and stops there:
another takes it in a different point of view.
There is nothing of greater horror to be imagined than
for a man to eat his father; and yet the people, whose ancient custom it was so to do, looked upon it as a testimony
of piety and affection, seeking thereby to give their progenitors the most worthy and honourable sepulture; storing up
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in themselves, and as it were in their own marrow, the bodies and relics of their fathers; and in some sort regenerating them by transmutation into their living flesh, by means
of nourishment and digestion. It is easy to consider what
a cruelty and abomination it must have appeared to men
possessed and imbued with this snperstition to throw their
fathers’ remains to the corruption of the earth, and the nourishment of beasts and worms.
Lycurgus considered in theft the vivacity, diligence,
boldness, and dexterity of purloining any thing from our
neighbours, and the benefit that redounded to the public
that every one should look more narrowly to the conservation of what was his own; and believed that, from this double institution of assaulting and defending, advantage was
to be made for military discipline (which was the principal
science and virtue to which he would inure that nation), of
greater consideration than the disorder and injustice of taking another man’s goods.
Dionysius, the tyrant, offered Plato a robe of the Persian fashion, long, damasked, and perfumed; Plato refused
it, saying, “That being born a man, he would not willingly
dress himself in women’s clothes;” but Aristippus accepted
it with this answer, “That no accoutrement could corrupt a
chaste courage.” His friends reproaching him with meanness of spirit, for laying it no more to heart that Dionysius
had spit in his face, “Fishermen,” said he, “suffer themselves to be drenched with the waves of the sea from head
to foot to catch a gudgeon.” Diogenes was washing cabbages, and seeing him pass by, “If thou couldst live on cabbage,” said he, “thou wouldst not fawn upon a tyrant;” to
whom Aristippus replied, “And if thou knewest how to
live amongst men, thou wouldst not be washing cabbages.”
Thus reason finds appearances for divers effects; ‘tis a pot
with two ears that a man may take by the right or left:–
Bellum, o terra hospita, portas:
Bello armantur eqni; bellum hæc armenta minantur
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Sed tamen idem olim curru succedere sueti
Quadrupedes, et frena jugo concordia ferre;
Spes est pacis.
“War, war is threatened from this foreign
ground (My father cried), where warlike
steeds are found.
Yet, since reclaimed, to chariots they submit,
And bend to stubborn yokes, and champ the bit,
Peace may succeed to war.”
Solon, being lectured by his friends not to shed powerless
and unprofitable tears for the death of his son, “It is for that
reason that I the more justly shed them,” said he, “because
they are powerless and unprofitable.” Socrates’s wife exasperated her grief by this circumstance: “Oh, how unjustly
do these wicked judges put him to death!” “Why,” replied
he, “hadst thou rather they should execute me justly?” We
have our ears bored; the Greeks looked upon that as a mark
of slavery. We retire in private to enjoy our wives; the Indians do it in public. The Scythians immolated strangers in
their temples; elsewhere temples were a refuge:–
Inde furor vulgi, quod numina vicinorum
Odit quisque locus, cum solos credat habendos
Esse deos, quos ipse colit.
“Thus ‘tis the popular fury that creates
That all their neighbours’ gods each nation
hates;
Each thinks its own the genuine; in a word,
The only deities to be adored.”
I have heard of a judge who, coming upon a sharp conflict
betwixt Bartolus and Aldus, and some point controverted
with many contrarieties, writ in the margin of his book, “a
question for a friend;” that is to say, that truth was there
so controverted and disputed that in a like cause he might
favour which of the parties he thought fit ‘Twas only for
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want of wit that he did not write “a question for a friend”
throughout. The advocates and judges of our times find
bias enough in all causes to accommodate them to what
they themselves think fit. In so infinite a science, depending upon the authority of so many opinions, and so arbitrary a subject, it cannot be but that of necessity an extreme confusion of judgments must arise; there is hardly
any suit so clear wherein opinions do not very much differ; what one court has determined one way another determines quite contrary, and itself contrary to that at another
time. Of which we see very frequent examples, owing to
that practice admitted amongst us, and which is a marvellous blemish to the ceremonious authority and lustre of our
justice, of not abiding by one sentence, but running from
judge to judge, and court to court, to decide one and the
same cause.
As to the liberty of philosophical opinions concerning vice and virtue, ‘tis not necessary to be insisted upon;
therein are found many opinions that are better concealed
than published to weak minds. Arcesilaus said, “That in
venery it was no matter where, or with whom, it was committed:” Et obsccenas voluptates, si natura requirit, non genere,
aut loco, aut ordine, sed forma, otate, jigurâ, metiendas Epicurus
putat.... ne amores quidem sanctos a sapiente alienos esse arbitrantur.... Queeramus, ad quam usque otatem juvenes amandi
sint. “And obscene pleasures, if nature requires them,” Epicurus thinks, “are not to be measured either by race, kind,
place, or rank, but by age, shape, and beauty.... Neither are
sacred loves thought to be foreign to wise men;... we are to
inquire till what age young men are to be loved.” These last
two stoical quotations, and the reproach that Dicæarchus
threw into the teeth of Plato himself, upon this account,
show how much the soundest philosophy indulges licenses
and excesses very remote from common custom.
Laws derive their authority from possession and custom. ‘Tis dangerous to trace them back to their beginning;
they grow great, and ennoble themselves, like our rivers, by
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running on; but follow them upward to their source, ‘tis but
a little spring, scarce discernable,
that swells thus, and thus fortifies itself by growing old.
Do but consult the ancient considerations that gave the first
motion to this famous torrent, so full of dignity, awe, and
reverence, you will find them so light and weak that it is no
wonder if these people, who weigh and reduce every thing
to reason, and who admit nothing by authority, or upon
trust, have their judgments often very remote, and differing
from those of the public. It is no wonder if people, who take
their pattern from the first image of nature, should in most
of their opinions swerve from the common path; as, for
example, few amongst them would have approved of the
strict conditions of our marriages, and most of them have
been for having wives in common, and without obligation;
they would refuse our ceremonies. Chrysippus said, “That
a philosopher would make a dozen somersaults, aye, and
without his breeches, for a dozen of olives.” That philosopher would hardly have advised Clisthenes to have refused
Hippoclides the fair Agarista his daughter, for having seen
him stand on his head upon a table. Metrocles somewhat
indiscreetly broke wind backwards while in disputation, in
the presence of a great auditory in his school, and kept himself hid in his own house for shame, till Crates coming to
visit him, and adding to his consolations and reasons the
example of his own liberty, by falling to try with him who
should sound most, cured him of that scruple, and withal
drew him to his own stoical sect, more free than that more
reserved one of the Peripatetics, of which he had been till
then. That which we call decency, not to dare to do that in
public which is decent enough to do in private, the Stoics
call foppery; and to mince it, and to be so modest as to conceal and disown what nature, custom, and our desires publish and proclaim of our actions, they reputed a vice. The
other thought it was to undervalue the mysteries of Venus
to draw them out of the private oratory, to expose them to
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hind the curtain was to debase them. Modesty is a thing of
weight; secrecy, reservation, and circumspection, are parts
of esteem. Pleasure did very ingeniously when, under the
mask of virtue, she sued not to be prostituted in the open
streets, trodden under foot, and exposed to the public view,
wanting the dignity and convenience of her private cabinets. Hence some say that to put down public stews is not
only to disperse fornication into all places, that was confined to one, but moreover, by the difficulty, to incite wild
and idle people to this vice:–
Mochus es Aufidiæ, qui vir,
Scævine, fuisti:
Rivalis fuerat qui tuus, ille vir est.
Cur aliéna placet tibi, quæ tua non placet uxor?
Numquid securus non potes arrigere?
This experience diversifies itself in a thousand examples:–
Nullus in urbe fuit totâ, qui tangere vellet
Uxorem gratis, Cæciliane, tuam,
Dum licuit: sed nunc, positis custodibus, ingens
Turba fututorum est. Ingeniosus homo es.
A philosopher being taken in the very act, and asked what
he was doing, coldly replied, “I am planting man;” no more
blushing to be so caught than if they had found him planting garlic.
It is, I suppose, out of tenderness and respect to the
natural modesty of mankind that a great and religious author is of opinion that this act is so necessarily obliged to
privacy and shame that he cannot persuade himself there
could be any absolute performance in those impudent embraces of the Cynics, but that they contented themselves to
represent lascivious gestures only, to maintain the impudence of their school’s profession; and that, to eject what
shame had withheld and restrained, it was afterward necessary for them to withdraw into the shade. But he had not
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thoroughly examined their debauches; for Diogenes, playing the beast with himself in public, wished, in the presence
of all that saw him, that he could fill his belly by that exercise. To those who asked him why he did not find out a
more commodious place to eat in than in the open street,
he made answer, “Because I am hungry in the open street.”
The women philosophers who mixed with their sect, mixed
also with their persons, in all places, without reservation;
and Hipparchia was not received into Crates’s society, but
upon condition that she should, in all things, follow the
practice and customs of his rule. These philosophers set a
great price upon virtue, and renounce all other discipline
but the moral; and yet, in all their actions, they attributed
the sovereign authority to the election of their sage, and
above the laws; and gave no other curb to voluptuousness
but moderation only, and the conservation of the liberty of
others.
Heraclitus and Protagoras, forasmuch as wine seemed
bitter to the sick, and pleasant to the sound, the rudder
crooked in the water, and straight when out, and such
like contrary appearances as are found in subjects, argued
thence that all subjects had, in themselves, the causes of
these appearances; and there was some bitterness in the
wine which had some sympathy with the sick man’s taste,
and the rudder some bending quality sympathizing with
him that looks upon it in the water; and so of all the rest;
which is to say, that all is in all things, and, consequently,
nothing in any one; for, where all is, there is nothing.
This opinion put me in mind of the experience we have
that there is no sense or aspect of any thing, whether bitter or sweet, straight or crooked, that the human mind does
not find out in the writings it undertakes to tumble over.
Into the cleanest, purest, and most perfect words that can
possibly be, how many lies and falsities have we suggested!
What heresy has not there found ground and testimony sufficient to make itself embraced and defended! ‘Tis for this
that the authors of such errors will never depart from proof
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of the testimony of the interpretation of words. A person of
dignity, who would approve to me, by authority, the search
of the philosopher’s stone, wherein he was head over ears
engaged, lately alleged to me at least five or six passages of
the Bible upon which, he said, he first founded his attempt,
for the discharge of his conscience (for he is a divine); and,
in truth, the idea was not only pleasant, but, moreover, very
well accommodated to the defence of this fine science.
By this way the reputation of divining fables is acquired. There is no fortune-teller, if we have this authority,
but, if a man will take the pains to tumble and toss, and
narrowly to peep into all the folds and glosses of his words,
he may make him, like the Sibyls, say what he will. There
are so many ways of interpretation that it will be hard but
that, either obliquely or in a direct line, an ingenious wit
will find out, in every subject, some air that will serve for his
purpose; therefore we find a cloudy and ambiguous style in
so frequent and ancient use. Let the author but make himself master of that, to busy posterity about his predictions,
which not only his own parts, but the accidental favour of
the matter itself, may do for him; and, as to the rest, express
himself, whether after a foolish or a subtle manner, somewhat obscurely or contradictorily, ‘tis no matter;–a number
of wits, shaking and sifting him, will bring out a great many
several forms, either according to his meaning, or collateral,
or contrary, to it, which will all redound to his honour; he
will see himself enriched by the means of his disciples, like
the regents of colleges by their pupils yearly presents. This
it is which has given reputation to many things of no worth
at all; that has brought several writings in vogue, and given
them the fame of containing all sorts of matter can be desired; one and the same thing receiving a thousand and a
thousand images and various considerations; nay, as many
as we please.
Is it possible that Homer could design to say all that
we make him say, and that he designed so many and so
various figures, as that the divines, law-givers, captains,
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philosophers, and all sorts of men who treat of sciences,
how variously and opposite soever, should indifferently
quote him, and support their arguments by his authority,
as the sovereign lord and master of all offices, works, and
artisans, and counsellor-general of all enterprises? Whoever has had occasion for oracles and predictions has there
found sufficient to serve his turn. ‘Tis a wonder how many
and how admirable concurrences an intelligent person, and
a particular friend of mine, has there found out in favour
of our religion; and cannot easily be put out of the conceit
that it was Homer’s design; and yet he is as well acquainted
with this author as any man whatever of his time. And what
he has found in favour of our religion there, very many anciently have found in favour of theirs. Do but observe how
Plato is tumbled and tossed about; every one ennobling his
own opinions by applying him to himself, and making him
take what side they please. They draw him in, and engage him in all the new opinions the world receives; and
make him, according to the different course of things, differ
from himself; every one makes him disavow, according to
his own sense, the manners and customs lawful in his age,
because they are unlawful in ours; and all this with vivacity
and power, according to the force and sprightliness of the
wit of the interpreter. From the same foundation that Heraclitus and this sentence of his had, “that all things had in
them those forms that we discern,” Democritus drew quite
a contrary conclusion,–“that objects have in them nothing
that we discern in them;” and because honey is sweet to
one and bitter to another, he thence argued that it was neither sweet nor bitter. The Pyrrhonians would say that they
knew not whether it is sweet or bitter, or whether the one or
the other, or both; for these always gained the highest point
of dubitation. The Cyrenaics held that nothing was perceptible from without, and that that only was perceptible that
inwardly touched us, as pain and pleasure; acknowledging
neither sound nor colour, but certain affections only that we
receive from them; and that man’s judgment had no other
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seat Protagoras believed that “what seems true to every one,
is true to every one.” The Epicureans lodged all judgment in
the senses, and in the knowledge of things, and in pleasure.
Plato would have the judgment of truth, and truth itself, derived from opinions and the senses, to belong to the wit and
cogitation.
This discourse has put me upon the consideration of
the senses, in which lies the greatest foundation and Pro◦ f
of our ignorance. Whatsoever is known, is doubtless known
by the faculty of the knower; for, seeing the judgment proceeds from the operation of him that judges, ‘tis reason
that this operation be performed by his means and will,
not by the constraint of another; as it would happen if we
knew things by the power, and according to the law of
their essence. Now all knowledge is conveyed to us by the
senses; they are our masters:–
Via qua munita fidei
Proxima fert humanum in pectus, templaque
mentis;
“It is the surest path that faith can find
By which to enter human heart and mind.”
Science begins by them, and is resolved into them. After all,
we should know no more than a stone if we did not know
there is sound, odour, light, taste, measure, weight, softness, hardness, sharpness, colour, smoothness, breadth, and
depth; these are the platforms and principles of the structure of all our knowledge; and, according to some, science
is nothing else but sense. He that could make me contradict
the senses, would have me by the throat; he could not make
me go further back. The senses are the beginning and the
end of human knowledge:–
Invenies primis ab sensibns esse creatam
Notitiam veil; neque sensus posse refelli...
Quid majore fide porro, quam sensus, haberi
Debet?
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“Of truth, whate’er discoveries are made,
Are by the senses to us first conveyed;
Nor will one sense be baffled; for on what
Can we rely more safely than on that?”
Let us attribute to them the least we can, we must, however, of necessity grant them this, that it is by their means
and mediation that all our instruction is directed. Cicero
says, that Chrysippus having attempted to extenuate the
force and virtue of the senses, presented to himself arguments and so vehement oppositions to the contrary that
he could not satisfy himself therein; whereupon Cameades,
who maintained the contrary side, boasted that he would
make use of the very words and arguments of Chrysippus
to controvert and confute him, and therefore thus cried out
against him: “O miserable! thy force has destroyed thee.”
There can be nothing absurd to a greater degree than to
maintain that fire does not warm, that light does not shine,
and that there is no weight nor solidity in iron, which are
things conveyed to us by the senses; neither is there belief
nor knowledge in man that can be compared to that for certainty.
The first consideration I have upon the subject of the
senses is that I make a doubt whether or no man be furnished with all natural senses. I see several animals who
live an entire and perfect life, some without sight, others
without hearing; who knows whether to us also one, two,
three, or many other senses may not be wanting? For if any
one be wanting, our examination cannot discover the defect. ‘Tis the privilege of the senses to be the utmost limit of
our discovery; there is nothing beyond them that can assist
us in exploration, not so much as one sense in the discovery
of another:–
An poterunt oculos aures reprehendere? an aures
Tactus an hunc porro tactum sapor argnet oris?
An confutabunt nares, oculive revincent?
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“Can ears the eyes, the touch the ears, correct?
Or is that touch by tasting to be check’d?
Or th’ other senses, shall the nose or eyes
Confute in their peculiar faculties?”
They all make the extremest limits of our ability:–
Seorsum cuique potestas Divisa est, sua vis
cuique est,
“Each has its power distinctly and alone,
And every sense’s power is its own.”
It is impossible to make a man naturally blind conceive that
he does not see; impossible to make him desire sight, or to
regret his defect; for which reason we ought not to derive
any assurance from the soul’s being contented and satisfied
with those we have; considering that it cannot be sensible
herein of its infirmity and imperfection, if there be any such
thing. It is impossible to say any thing to this blind man,
either by reasoning, argument, or similitude, that can possess his imagination with any apprehension of light, colour,
or sight; there’s nothing remains behind that can push on
the senses to evidence. Those that are born blind, whom
we hear wish they could see, it is not that they understand
what they desire; they have learned from us that they want
something; that there is something to be desired that we
have, which they can name indeed and speak of its effect
and consequences; but yet they know not what it is, nor apprehend it at all.
I have seen a gentleman of a good family who was born
blind, or at least blind from such an age that he knows not
what sight is; who is so little sensible of his defect that he
makes use as we do of words proper for seeing, and applies
them after a manner wholly particular and his own. They
brought him a child to which he was god-father, which, having taken into his arms, “Good God,” said he, “what a fine
child! How beautiful to look upon! what a pretty face it
has!” He will say, like one of us, “This room has a very fine
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prospect;–it is clear weather;–the sun shines bright.” And
moreover, being that hunting, tennis, and butts are our exercises, and he has heard so, he has taken a liking to them,
will ride a-hunting, and believes he has as good share of
the sport as we have; and will express himself as angry or
pleased as the best of us all, and yet knows nothing of it but
by the ear. One cries out to him, “Here’s a hare!” when he is
upon some even plain where he may safely ride; and afterwards, when they tell him, “The hare is killed,” he will be
as overjoyed and proud of it as he hears others say they are.
He will take a tennis-ball in his left hand and strike it away
with the racket; he will shoot with a harquebuss at random,
and is contented with what his people tell him, that he is
over, or wide.
Who knows whether all human kind commit not the
like absurdity, for want of some sense, and that through this
default the greatest part of the face of things is concealed
from us? What do we know but that the difficulties which
we find in several works of nature proceed hence; and that
several effects of animals, which exceed our capacity, are
not produced by faculty of some sense that we are defective
in? and whether some of them have not by this means a
life more full and entire than ours? We seize an apple with
all our senses; we there find redness, smoothness, odour,
and sweetness; but it may have other virtues besides these,
as to heat or binding, which no sense of ours can have any
reference unto. Is it not likely that there are sensitive faculties in nature that are fit to judge of and to discern those
which we call the occult properties in several things, as for
the loadstone to attract iron; and that the want of such faculties is the cause that we are ignorant of the true essence of
such things? ‘Tis perhaps some particular sense that gives
cocks to understand what hour it is at midnight, and when
it grows to be towards day, and that makes them crow accordingly; that teaches chickens, before they have any experience of the matter, to fear a sparrow-hawk, and not a
goose or a peacock, though birds of a much larger size; that
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cautions them against the hostile quality the cat has against
them, and makes them not to fear a dog; to arm themselves
against the mewing, a kind of flattering voice, of the one,
and not against the barking, a shrill and threatening voice,
of the other; that teaches wasps, ants, and rats, to fall upon
the best pear and the best cheese before they have tasted
them, and inspires the stag, elephant, and serpent, with the
knowledge of a certain herb proper for their cure. There is
no sense that has not a mighty dominion, and that does not
by its power introduce an infinite number of knowledges. If
we were defective in the intelligence of sounds, of harmony,
and of the voice, it would cause an unimaginable confusion in all the rest of our science; for, besides what belongs
to the proper effect of every sense, how many arguments,
consequences, and conclusions do we draw to other things,
by comparing one sense with another? Let an understanding man imagine human nature originally produced without the sense of seeing, and consider what ignorance and
trouble such a defect would bring upon him, what a darkness and blindness in the soul; he will then see by that of
how great importance to the knowledge of truth the privation of such another sense, or of two or three, should we be
so deprived, would be. We have formed a truth by the consultation and concurrence of our five senses; but perhaps
we should have the consent and contribution of eight or ten
to make a certain discovery of it in its essence.
The sects that controvert the knowledge of man do it
principally by the uncertainty and weakness of our senses;
for since all knowledge is by their means and mediation
conveyed unto us, if they fail in their report, if they corrupt
or alter what they bring us from without, if the light which
by them creeps into the soul be obscured in the passage, we
have nothing else to hold by. From this extreme difficulty
all these fancies proceed: “That every subject has in itself all
we there find. That it has nothing in it of what we think we
there find;” and that of the Epicureans, “That the sun is no
bigger than ‘tis judged by our sight to be:–”
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Quidquid id est, nihilo fertur majore figura,
Quam nostris oculis quam cemimus, esse videtur:
“But be it what it will in our esteems,
It is no bigger than to us it seems:”
that the appearances which represent a body great to him
that is near, and less to him that is more remote, are both
true:–
Nee tamen hic oculos falli concedimus hilum...
Proinde animi vitium hoc oculis adfingere noli:
“Yet that the eye’s deluded we deny;
Charge not the mind’s faults, therefore, on the
eye:”
“and, resolutely, that there is no deceit in the senses; that we
are to lie at their mercy, and seek elsewhere reasons to excuse the difference and contradictions we there find, even to
the inventing of lies and other flams, if it come to that, rather
than accuse the senses.” Timagoras vowed that, by pressing
or turning his eye, he could never perceive the light of the
candle to double, and that the seeming so proceeded from
the vice of opinion, and not from the instrument. The most
absurd of all absurdities, with the Epicureans, is to deny the
force and effect of the senses:–
Proinde, quod in quoquo est his visum tempore,
verum est
Et, si non potuit ratio dissolvere causam,
Cur ea, quæ fuerint juxtim quadrata, procul sint
Visa rotunda; tamen præstat rationis egentem
Beddere mendose causas utriusque figuræ,
Quam manibus manifesta suis emittere
quæquam,
Et violare fidem primam, et convellere tota Fundamenta, quibus nixatur vita salusque:
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Non modo enim ratio ruat omnis, vita quoque
ipsa
Concidat extemplo, nisi credere sensibus ausis,
Procipitesque locos vitare, et cætera, quæ sint
In genere hoc fugienda.
“That what we see exists I will maintain,
And if our feeble reason can’t explain
Why things seem square when they are very
near,
And at a greater distance round appear
‘Tis better yet, for him that’s at a pause,
‘T’ assign to either figure a false cause,
Than shock his faith, and the foundations rend
On which our safety and our life depend:
For reason not alone, but life and all,
Together will with sudden ruin fall;
Unless we trust our senses, nor despise
To shun the various dangers that arise.”
This so desperate and unphilosophical advice expresses
only this,–that human knowledge cannot support itself but
by reason unreasonable, foolish, and mad; but that it is
yet better that man, to set a greater value upon himself,
make use of any other remedy, how fantastic soever, than
to confess his necessary ignorance–a truth so disadvantageous to him. He cannot avoid owning that the senses are
the sovereign lords of his knowledge; but they are uncertain, and falsifiable in all circumstances; ‘tis there that he is
to fight it out to the last; and if his just forces fail him, as
they do, to supply that defect with obstinacy, temerity, and
impudence. In case what the Epicureans say be true, viz:
“that we have no knowledge if the senses’ appearances be
false;” and if that also be true which the Stoics say, “that the
appearances of the senses are so false that they can furnish
us with no manner of knowledge,” we shall conclude, to the
disadvantage of these two great dogmatical sects, that there
is no science at all.
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As to the error and uncertainty of the operation of the
senses, every one may furnish himself with as many examples as he pleases; so ordinary are the faults and tricks they
put upon us. In the echo of a valley the sound of a trumpet
seems to meet us, which comes from a place behind:–
Exstantesque procul medio de gurgite montes,
Classibus inter qnos liber patet exitus, idem
Apparent, et longe divolsi licet, ingens
Insula conjunctis tamen ex his ana videtur...
Et fugere ad puppim colies campique videntur,
Qnos agimns proter navim, velisque volamus....
Ubi in medio nobis equus acer obhæsit
Flamine, equi corpus transversum ferre videtur
Vis, et in adversum flumen contrudere raptim.
“And rocks i’ th’ seas that proudly raise their
head
Though far disjoined, though royal navies
spread,
Their sails between; yet if from distance
shown,
They seem an island all combin’d in one.
Thus ships, though driven by a prosperous gale,
Seem fix’d to sailors; those seem under sail
That ride at anchor safe; and all admire,
As they row by, to see the rocks retire.
Thus, when in rapid streams my horse hath
stood,
And I look’d downward on the rolling flood;
Though he stood still, I thought he did divide
The headlong streams, and strive against the
tide,
And all things seem’d to move on every side.”
Take a musket-ball under the forefinger, the middle finger
being lapped over it, it feels so like two that a man will
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have much ado to persuade himself there is but one; the
end of the two fingers feeling each of them one at the same
time; for that the senses are very often masters of our reason,
and constrain it to receive impressions which it judges and
knows to be false, is frequently seen. I set aside the sense of
feeling, that has its functions nearer, more lively, and substantial, that so often, by the effects of the pains it helps the
body to, subverts and overthrows all those fine Stoical resolutions, and compels him to cry out of his belly, who has resolutely established this doctrine in his soul–“That the colic,
and all other pains and diseases, are indifferent things, not
having the power to abate any thing of the sovereign felicity
wherein the wise man is seated by his virtue.” There is no
heart so effeminate that the rattle and sound of our drums
and trumpets will not inflame with courage; nor so sullen
that the harmony of our music will not rouse and cheer;
nor so stubborn a soul that will not feel itself struck with
some reverence in considering the gloomy vastness of our
churches, the variety of ornaments, and order of our ceremonies; and in hearing the solemn music of our organs, and
the grace and devout harmony of our voices. Even those
that come in with contempt feel a certain shivering in their
hearts, and something of dread that makes them begin to
doubt their opinions. For my part I do not think myself
strong enough to hear an ode of Horace or Catullus sung by
a beautiful young mouth without emotion; and Zeno had
reason to say “that the voice was the flower of beauty.” One
would once make me believe that a certain person, whom
all we Frenchmen know, had imposed upon me in repeating some verses that he had made; that they were not the
same upon paper that they were in the air; and that my
eyes would make a contrary judgment to my ears; so great a
power has pronunciation to give fashion and value to works
that are left to the efficacy and modulation of the voice. And
therefore Philoxenus was not so much to blame, hearing one
giving an ill accent to some composition of his, in spurning
and breaking certain earthen vessels of his, saying, “I break
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what is thine, because thou corruptest what is mine.” To
what end did those men who have, with a firm resolution,
destroyed themselves, turn away their faces that they might
not see the blow that was by themselves appointed? And
that those who, for their health, desire and command incisions to be made, and cauteries to be applied to them, cannot endure the sight of the preparations, instruments, and
operations of the surgeon, being that the sight is not in any
way to participate in the pain? Are not these proper examples to verify the authority the senses have over the imagination? ‘Tis to much purpose that we know these tresses
were borrowed from a page or a lackey; that this rouge came
from Spain, and this pearl-powder from the Ocean Sea. Our
sight will, nevertheless, compel us to confess their subject
more agreeable and more lovely against all reason; for in
this there is nothing of its own:–
Auferinrar cultu; gemmis, auroque teguntur
Crimina; pars minima est ipsa puella sni.
Sæpe, ubi sit quod ames, inter tarn multa requiras:
Decipit hac oculos ægide dives Amor.
“By dress we’re won; gold, gems, and rich brocades
Make up the pageant that your heart invades;
In all that glittering figure which you see
The far least part of her own self is she;
In vain for her you love amidst such cost
You search, the mistress in such dress is lost.”
What a strange power do the poets attribute to
the senses, that make Narcissus so desperately in love with his own shadow,
Cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse;
Se cupit imprudens, et, qui probat, ipse probatur;
Dumque petit, petitur; pariterque accendit, et
ardet:
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“Admireth all; for which to be admired;
And inconsiderately himself desir’d.
The praises which he gives his beauty claim’d,
Who seeks is sought, th’ inflamer is inflam’d:”
and Pygmalion’s judgment so troubled by the impression of
the sight of his ivory statue that he loves and adores it as if
it were a living woman!
Oscnla dat, reddique putat: sequi turque,
tenetque,
Et credit tactis digitos insidere membris;
Et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus.
“He kisses, and believes he’s kissed again;
Seizes, and ‘twixt his arms his love doth strain,
And thinks the polish’d ivory thus held
Doth to his fingers amorous pressure yield,
And has a timorous fear, lest black and blue
Should in the parts with ardour press’d ensue.”
Put a philosopher into a cage of small thin set bars of iron,
hang him on the top of the high tower of Notre Dame at
Paris; he will see, by manifest reason, that he cannot possibly fall, and yet he will find (unless he has been used to
the plumber’s trade) that he cannot help but the sight of
the excessive height will fright and astound him; for we
have enough to do to assure ourselves in the galleries of
our steeples, if they are made with open work, although
they are of stone; and some there are that cannot endure so
much as to think of it. Let there be a beam thrown over betwixt these two towers, of breadth sufficient to walk upon,
there is no philosophical wisdom so firm that can give us the
courage to walk over it as we should do upon the ground. I
have often tried this upon our mountains in these parts; and
though I am one who am not the most subject to be afraid, I
was not able to endure to look into that infinite depth without horror and trembling, though I stood above my length
from the edge of the precipice, and could not have fallen
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unless I would. Where I also observed that, what height
soever the precipice was, provided there were some tree,
or some jutting out of a rock, a little to support and divide the sight, it a little eases our fears, and gives greater
assurance; as if they were things by which in falling we
might have some relief; but that direct precipices we are
not to look upon without being giddy; Ut despici vine vertigine timid ocvlorum animique non possit: “‘To that one cannot
look without dizziness;” which is a manifest imposture of
the sight. And therefore it was that that fine philosopher
put out his own eyes, to free the soul from being diverted
by them, and that he might philosophize at greater liberty;
but, by the same rule, he should have dammed up his ears,
that Theophrastus says are the most dangerous instruments
about us for receiving violent impressions to alter and disturb us; and, finally, should have deprived himself of all his
other senses, that is to say, of his life and being; for they
have all the power to command our soul and reason: Fit
etiam sope specie quâdam, sope vocum gravitate et cantibus, ut
pettantur animi vehementius; sope etiam cura et timoré, “For it
often falls out that the minds are more vehemently struck
by some sight, by the quality and sound of the voice, or
by singing; and ofttimes also by grief and fear.” Physicians
hold that there are certain complexions that are agitated by
the same sounds and instruments even to fury. I have seen
some who could not hear a bone gnawed under the table
without impatience; and there is scarce any man who is not
disturbed at the sharp and shrill noise that the file makes in
grating upon the iron; as also to hear chewing near them,
or to hear any one speak who has an impediment in the
throat or nose, will move some people even to anger and
hatred. Of what use was that piping prompter of Gracchus,
who softened, raised, and moved his master’s voice whilst
he declaimed at Rome, if the movements and quality of the
sound had not the power to move and alter the judgments
of the auditory? In earnest, there is wonderful reason to
keep such a clutter about the firmness of this fine piece, that
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suffers itself to be turned and twined by the motion and accidents of so light a wind.
The same cheat that the senses put upon our understanding they have in turn put upon them; the soul also
some times has its revenge; they lie and contend which
should most deceive one another. What we see and hear
when we are transported with passion, we neither see nor
hear as it is:–
Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere
Thebas.
“Thebes seems two cities, and the sun two
suns.”
The object that we love appears to us more beautiful than it
really is;
Multimodis igitur pravas turpesque videmus
Esse in deliciis, summoque in honore vigere;
“Hence ‘tis that ugly things in fancied dress
Seem gay, look fair to lovers’ eyes, and please;”
and that we hate more ugly; to a discontented and afflicted
man the light of the day seems dark and overcast. Our
senses are not only depraved, but very often stupefied by
the passions of the soul; how many things do we see that
we do not take notice of, if the mind be occupied with other
thoughts?
In rebus quoque apertis noscere possis,
Si non advertas animum, proinde esse quasi
omni
Tempore semotæ fuerint, longeque remotæ:
“Nay, even in plainest things, unless the mind
Take heed, unless she sets herself to find,
The thing no more is seen, no more belov’d,
Than if the most obscure and most remov’d:”
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it would appear that the soul retires within, and amuses the
powers of the senses. And so both the inside and the outside
of man is full of infirmity and falsehood.
They who have compared our lives to a dream were,
perhaps, more in the right than they were aware of. When
we dream, the soul lives, works, and exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake; but more
largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the difference should be as great as betwixt night and the meridian
brightness of the sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there
she sleeps, here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, ‘tis
still dark, and Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleeping, and
sleep waking. I do not see so clearly in my sleep; but as
to my being awake, I never found it clear enough and free
from clouds; moreover, sleep, when it is profound, sometimes rocks even dreams themselves asleep; but our waking is never so sprightly that it rightly purges and dissipates
those whimsies, which are waking dreams, and worse than
dreams. Our reason and soul receiving those fancies and
opinions that come in dreams, and authorizing the actions
of our dreams with the like approbation that they do those
of the day, wherefore do we not doubt whether our thought,
our action, is not another sort of dreaming, and our waking
a certain kind of sleep?
If the senses be our first judges, it is not ours that we
are alone to consult; for, in this faculty, beasts have as great,
or greater, than we; it is certain that some of them have the
sense of hearing more quick than man; others that of seeing, others that of feeling, others that of touch and taste.
Democritus said, that the gods and brutes had the sensitive
faculties more perfect than man. But betwixt the effects of
their senses and ours the difference is extreme. Our spittle
cleanses and dries up our wounds; it kills the serpent:–
Tantaque in his rebas distantia differitasque est,
Ut quod aliis cibus est, aliis fuat acre venenum.
Sæpe etenim serpens, hominis contacta salivà,
Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa:
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_V
“And in those things the difference is so great
That what’s one’s poison is another’s meat;
For serpents often have been seen, ‘tis said,
When touch’d with human spittle, to go mad,
And bite themselves to death:”
what quality shall we attribute to our spittle? as it affects
ourselves, or as it affects the serpent? By which of the two
senses shall we prove the true essence that we seek for?
Pliny says there are certain sea-hares in the Indies that
are poison to us, and we to them; insomuch that, with the
least touch, we kill them. Which shall be truly poison, the
man or the fish? Which shall we believe, the fish of the man,
or the man of the fish? One quality of the air infects a man,
that does the ox no harm; some other infects the ox, but
hurts not the man. Which of the two shall, in truth and nature, be the pestilent quality? To them who have the jaundice, all things seem yellow and paler than to us:–
Lurida præterea fiunt, quæcunque tuentur ArquatI
“Besides,
whatever jaundic’d eyes do
view Looks pale as well as those, and
yellow too.”
They who are troubled with the disease that the physicians
call hyposphagma–which is a suffusion of blood under the
skin–see all things red and bloody. What do we know but
that these humours, which thus alter the operations of sight,
predominate in beasts, and are usual with them? for we see
some whose eyes are yellow, like us who have the jaundice;
and others of a bloody colour; ‘tis likely that the colours
of objects seem other to them than to us. Which of the
two shall make a right judgment? for it is not said that
the essence of things has a relation to man only; hardness,
whiteness, depth, and sharpness, have reference to the service and knowledge of animals as well as to us, and nature
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has equally designed them for their use. When we press
down the eye, the body that we look upon we perceive to
be longer and more extended;–many beasts have their eyes
so pressed down; this length, therefore, is perhaps the true
form of that body, and not that which our eyes give it in
the usual state. If we close the lower part of the eye things
appear double to us:–
Bina lucemarum fiorentia lumina flammis...
Et duplices hominum faciès, et corpora bina.
“One lamp seems double, and the men appea
Each on two bodies double heads to bear.”
If our ears be hindered, or the passage stopped with any
thing, we receive the sound quite otherwise than we usually do; animals, likewise, who have either the ears hairy, or
but a very little hole instead of an ear, do not, consequently,
hear as we do, but receive another kind of sound. We see
at festivals and theatres that, opposing a painted glass of a
certain colour to the light of the flambeaux, all things in the
place appear to us green, yellow, or violet:–
Et vulgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela,
Et ferrugina, cum, magnis intenta theatris,
Per malos vulgata trabesque, trementia pendent;
Namque ibi consessum caveai subter, et omnem
Scenai speciem, patrum, matrumque, deorumque
Inficiunt, coguntque suo volitare colore:
“Thus when pale curtains, or the deeper red,
O’er all the spacious theatre are spread,
Which mighty masts and sturdy pillars bear,
And the loose curtains wanton in the air;
Whole streams of colours from the summit flow,
he rays divide them in their passage through,
And stain the scenes, and men, and gods below:”
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‘tis likely that the eyes of animals, which we see to be of
divers colours, produce the appearance of bodies the same
with their eyes.
We should, therefore, to make a right judgment of the
oppositions of the senses, be first agreed with beasts, and
secondly amongst ourselves; which we by no means are,
but enter into dispute every time that one hears, sees, or
tastes something otherwise than another does, and contests,
as much as upon any other thing, about the diversity of
the images that the senses represent to us. A child, by the
ordinary rule of nature, hears, sees, and talks otherwise
than a man of thirty years old; and he than one of threescore. The senses are, in some, more obscure and dusky,
and more open and quick in others. We receive things variously, according as we are, and according as they appear
to us. Those rings which are cut out in the form of feathers, which are called endless feathers, no eye can discern their
size, or can keep itself from the deception that on one side
they enlarge, and on the other contract, and come So a point,
even when the ring is being turned round the finger; yet,
when you feel them, they seem all of an equal size. Now,
our perception being so uncertain and so controverted, it is
no more a wonder if we are told that we may declare that
snow appears white to us; but that to affirm that it is in its
own essence really so is more than we are able to justify;
and, this foundation being shaken, all the knowledge in the
world must of necessity fall to ruin. What! do our senses
themselves hinder one another? A picture seems raised and
embossed to the sight; in the handling it seems flat to the
touch. Shall we say that musk, which delights the smell,
and is offensive to the taste, is agreeable or no? There are
herbs and unguents proper for one part o£ the body, that
are hurtful to another; honey is pleasant to the taste, but offensive to the sight. They who, to assist their lust, used in
ancient times to make use of magnifying-glasses to represent the members they were to employ bigger, by that ocular tumidity to please themselves the more; to which of their
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senses did they give the prize,–whether to the sight, that
represented the members as large and great as they would
desire, or to the feeling, which represented them little and
contemptible? Are they our senses that supply the subject
with these different conditions, and have the subjects themselves, nevertheless, but one? As we see in the bread we
eat, it is nothing but bread, but, by being eaten, it becomes
bones, blood, flesh, hair; and nails:–
Ut cibus in membra atque artus cum diditur
omnes,
Disperit„ atque aliam naturam sufficit ex se;
“As meats, diffus’d through all the members,
lose
Their former state, and different things compose;”
the humidity sucked up by the root of a tree becomes trunk,
leaf, and fruit; and the air, being but one, is modulated, in a
trumpet, to a thousand sorts of sounds; are they our senses,
I would fain know, that, in like manner, form these subjects
into so many divers qualities, or have they them really such
in themselves? And upon this doubt what can we determine of their true essence? Moreover, since the accidents of
disease, of raving, or sleep, make things appear otherwise
to us than they do to the healthful, the wise, and those that
are awake, is it not likely that our right posture of health
and understanding, and our natural humours, have, also,
wherewith to give a being to things that have a relation to
their own condition, and accommodate them to themselves,
as well as when they are disordered;–that health is as capable of giving them an aspect as sickness? Why has not the
temperate a certain form of objects relative to it, as well as
the intemperate? and why may it not as well stamp it with
its own character as the other? He whose mouth is out of
taste, says the wine is flat; the healthful man commends
its flavour, and the thirsty its briskness. Now, our condition always accommodating things to itself, and transform342
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ing them according to its own posture, we cannot know
what things truly are in themselves, seeing that nothing
comes to us but what is falsified and altered by the senses.
Where the compass, the square, and the rule, are crooked,
all propositions drawn thence, and all buildings erected by
those guides, must, of necessity, be also defective; the uncertainty of our senses renders every thing uncertain that
they produce:–
Denique ut in fabricâ, si prava est régula prima,
Normaque si fallax rectis regionibus exit,
Et libella aliquâ si ex parte claudicat hilum;
Omnia mendose fieri, atque obstipa necessum
est,
Prava, cubantia, prona, supina, atque absona
tecta;
Jam ruere ut quædam videantux’velle, ruantque
Prodita judiciis fallacibus omnia primis;
Sic igitur ratio tibi reram prava necesse est
Falsaque sit, falsis quæcunque ab sensibus
orta est.
“But lastly, as in building, if the line
Be not exact and straight, the rule decline,
Or level false, how vain is the design!
Uneven, an ill-shap’d and tottering wall
Must rise; this part must sink, that part must
fall,
Because the rules were false that fashion’d all;
Thus reason’s rules are false if all commence
And rise from failing and from erring sense.”
As to what remains, who can be fit to judge of and to determine those differences? As we say in controversies of
religion that we must have a judge neither inclining to the
one side nor the other, free from all choice and affection,
which cannot be amongst Christians, just so it falls out in
this; for if he be old he cannot judge of the sense of old age,
being himself a party in the case; if young, there is the same
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exception; if healthful, sick, asleep, or awake, he is still the
same incompetent judge. We must have some one exempt
from all these propositions, as of things indifferent to him;
and by this rule we must have a judge that never was.
To judge of the appearances that we receive of subjects,
we ought t have a deciding instrument; to verify this instrument we must have demonstration; to verify this demonstration an instrument; and here we are round again upon
the wheel, and no further advanced. Seeing the senses cannot determine our dispute, being full of uncertainty themselves, it must then be reason that must do it; but no reason
can be erected upon any other foundation than that of another reason; and so we run back to all infinity. Our fancy
does not apply itself to things that are strange, but is conceived by the mediation of the senses; and the senses do
not comprehend a foreign subject, but only their own passions; by which means fancy and appearance are no part of
the subject, but only of the passion and sufferance of sense;
which passion and subject are different things; wherefore
whoever judges by appearances judges by another thing
than the subject. And to say that the passions of the senses
convey to the soul the quality of foreign subjects by resemblance, how can the soul and understanding be assured of
this resemblance, having of itself no commerce with foreign
subjects? As they who never knew Socrates cannot, when
they see his picture, say it is like him. Now, whoever would,
notwithstanding, judge by appearances, if it be by all, it is
impossible, because they hinder one another by their contrarieties and discrepancies, as we by experience see: shall
some select appearances govern the rest? you must verify
this select by another select, the second by a third, and thus
there will never be any end to it. Finally, there is no constant existence, neither of the objects’ being nor our own;
both we, and our judgments, and all mortal things, are evermore incessantly running and rolling; and consequently
nothing certain can be established from the one to the other,
both the judging and the judged being in a continual motion
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and mutation.
We have no communication with being, by reason that
all human nature is always in the middle, betwixt being
bom and dying, giving but an obscure appearance and
shadow, a weak and uncertain opinion of itself; and if, perhaps, you fix your thought to apprehend your being, it
would be but like grasping water; for the more you clutch
your hand to squeeze and hold what is in its own nature
flowing, so much more you lose of what you would grasp
and hold. So, seeing that all things are subject to pass from
one change to another, reason, that there looks for a real
substance, finds itself deceived, not being able to apprehend any thing that is subsistent and permanent, because
that every thing is either entering into being, and is not yet
arrived at it, or begins to die before it is bom. Plato said,
that bodies had never any existence, but only birth; conceiving that Homer had made the Ocean and Thetis father
and mother of the gods, to show us that all things are in a
perpetual fluctuation, motion, and variation; the opinion of
all the philosophers, as he says, before his time, Parmenides
only excepted, who would not allow things to have motion,
on the power whereof he sets a mighty value. Pythagoras
was of opinion that all matter was flowing and unstable; the
Stoics, that there is no time present, and that what we call so
is nothing but the juncture and meeting of the future and the
past; Heraclitus, that never any man entered twice into the
same river; Epichar-mus, that he who borrowed money but
an hour ago does not owe it now; and that he who was invited over-night to come the next day to dinner comes nevertheless uninvited, considering that they are no more the
same men, but are become others; and that there could not
a mortal substance be found twice in the same condition;
for, by the suddenness and quickness of the change, it one
while disperses, and another reunites; it comes and goes after such a manner that what begins to be born never arrives
to the perfection of being, forasmuch as that birth is never
finished and never stays, as being at an end, but from the
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seed is evermore changing and shifting one to another; as
human seed is first in the mother’s womb made a formless
embryo, after delivered thence a sucking infant, afterwards
it becomes a boy, then a youth, then a man, and at last a
decrepit old man; so that age and subsequent generation is
always destroying and spoiling that which went before:–
Mutât enira mundi naturam totius ætas,
Ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet;
Nec manet ulla sui similis res; omnia migrant,
Omnia commutât natura, et vertere cogit.
“For time the nature of the world translates,
And from preceding gives all things new
states;
Nought like itself remains, but all do range
And nature forces every thing to change.”
“And yet we foolishly fear one kind of death, whereas we
have already passed, and do daily pass, so many others; for
not only, as Heraclitus said, the death of fire is generation of
air, and the death of air generation of water; but, moreover,
we may more manifestly discern it in ourselves; manhood
dies, and passes away when age comes on; and youth is terminated in the flower of age of a full-grown man, infancy in
youth, and the first age dies in infancy; yesterday died in today, and to-day will die in to-morrow; and there is nothing
that remains in the same state, or that is always the same
thing. And that it is so let this be the proof; if we are always
one and the same, how comes it to pass that we are now
pleased with one thing, and by and by with another? How
comes it to pass that we love or hate contrary things, that
we praise or condemn them? How comes it to pass that we
have different affections, and no more retain the same sentiment in the same thought? For it is not likely that without mutation we should assume other passions; and, that
which suffers mutation does not remain the same, and if it
be not the same it is not at all; but the same that the being is
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does, like it, unknowingly change and alter; becoming evermore another from another thing; and consequently the
natural senses abuse and deceive themselves, taking that
which seems for that which is, for want of well knowing
what that which is, is. But what is it then that truly is? That
which is eternal; that is to say, that never had beginning,
nor never shall have ending, and to which time can bring no
mutation. For time is a mobile thine, and that appears as in a
shadow, with a matter evermore flowing and running, without ever remaining stable and permanent; and to which belong those words, before and after, has been, or shall be: which
at the first sight, evidently show that it is not a thing that is;
for it were a great folly, and a manifest falsity, to say that that
is which is not ÿet being, or that has already ceased to be.
And as to these words, present, instant, and now, by which
it seems that we principally support and found the intelligence of time, reason, discovering, does presently destroy
it; for it immediately divides and splits it into the future and
past, being of necessity to consider it divided in two. The
same happens to nature, that is measured, as to time that
measures it; for she has nothing more subsisting and permanent than the other, but all things are either born, bearing, or dying. So that it were sinful to say of God, who
is he only who is, that he was, or that he shall be ; for those
are terms of declension, transmutation, and vicissitude, of
what cannot continue or remain in being; wherefore we are
to conclude that God alone is, not according to any measure
of time, but according to an immutable and an immovable
eternity, not measured by time, nor subject to any declension; before whom nothing was, and after whom nothing
shall be, either more new or more recent, but a real being,
that with one sole now fills the for ever, and that there is
nothing that truly is but he alone; without our being able
to say, he has been, or shall be; without beginning, and without end.” To this so religious conclusion of a pagan I shall
only add this testimony of one of the same condition, for
the close of this long and tedious discourse, which would
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furnish me with endless matter: “What a vile and abject
thing,” says he, “is man, if he do not raise himself above
humanity!” ‘Tis a good word and a profitable desire, but
withal absurd; for to make the handle bigger than the hand,
the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope to stride further
than our legs can reach, is both impossible and monstrous;
or that man should rise above himself and humanity; for he
cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his hold.
He shall be exalted, if God will lend him an extraordinary
hand; he shall exalt himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be
raised and elevated by means purely celestial. It belongs to
our Christian faith, and not to the stoical virtue, to pretend
to that divine and miraculous metamorphosis.
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CHAPTER XIII
OF JUDGING OF THE DEATH OF ANOTHER
we judge of another’s assurance in death, which,
W
without doubt, is the most remarkable action of human life, we are to take heed of one thing, which is that
HEN
men very hardly believe themselves to have arrived to that
period. Few men come to die in the opinion that it is their
latest hour; and there is nothing wherein the flattery of hope
more deludes us; It never ceases to whisper in our ears,
“Others have been much sicker without dying; your condition is not so desperate as ‘tis thought; and, at the worst,
God has done other miracles.” Which happens by reason
that we set too much value upon ourselves; it seems as if
the universality of things were in some measure to suffer
by our dissolution, and that it commiserates our condition,
forasmuch as our disturbed sight represents things to itself
erroneously, and that we are of opinion they stand in as
much need of us as we do of them, like people at sea, to
whom mountains, fields, cities, heaven and earth are tossed
at the same rate as they are:
“Provehimur portu, terraeque urbesque recedunt:”132
Whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past and
condemn the present time, laying the fault of his misery and
discontent upon the world and the manners of men?
“Jamque caput quassans, grandis suspirat arator.
Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert
Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis,
132 “We
sail out of port, and cities and lands recede.”
72.
349
–AEneid, iii.
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Et crepat antiquum genus ut pietate repletum.”133
We will make all things go along with us;
whence it follows that we consider our death
as a very great thing, and that does not so
easily pass, nor without the solemn consultation of the stars:
‘Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes dens,”134
and so much the more think it as we more value ourselves.
“What, shall so much knowledge be lost, with so much
damage to the world, without a particular concern of the
destinies? Does so rare and exemplary a soul cost no more
the killing than one that is common and of no use to the
public? This life, that protects so many others, upon which
so many other lives depend, that employs so vast a number
of men in his service, that fills so many places, shall it drop
off like one that hangs but by its own simple thread? None
of us lays it enough to heart that he is but one: thence proceeded those words of Caesar to his pilot, more tumid than
the sea that threatened him:
“Italiam si coelo auctore recusas,
Me pete: sola tibi causa est haec justa timoris,
Vectorem non nosce tuum; perrumpe procellas,
Tutela secure mea.”135
And these:
133 “Now the old ploughman, shaking his head, sighs, and compares present times with past, often praises his parents’ happiness,
and talks of the old race as full of piety.” –Lucretius, ii. 1165.
134 All the gods to agitation about one man.”
–Seneca, Suasor, i. 4.
135 “If you decline to sail to Italy under the God’s protection, trust
to mine; the only just cause you have to fear is, that you do not know
your passenger; sail on, secure in my guardianship.” –Lucan, V. 579.
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“Credit jam digna pericula Caesar
Fatis esse suis; tantusne evertere, dixit,
Me superis labor est, parva quern puppe
sedentem,
Tam magno petiere mari;”136
and that idle fancy of the public, that the sun bore on his
face mourning for his death a whole year:
‘Ille etiam extincto miseratus Caesare Romam,
Cum caput obscura nitidum ferrugine
texit:”137
and a thousand of the like, wherewith the world suffers itself to be so easily imposed upon, believing that our interests affect the heavens, and that their infinity is concerned
at our ordinary actions:
“Non tanta caelo societas nobiscum est, ut nostro fato mortalis sit ille quoque siderum fulgor.”138
Now, to judge of constancy and resolution in a man
who does not yet believe himself to be certainly in danger,
though he really is, is not reason; and ‘tis not enough that
he die in this posture, unless he purposely put himself into
it for this effect. It commonly falls out in most men that they
set a good face upon the matter and speak with great indifference, to acquire reputation, which they hope afterwards,
136 “Caesar now deemed these dangers worthy of his destiny:
‘What!’
said he, ‘is it for the gods so great a task to overthrow
me, that they must be fain to assail me with great seas in a poor little
bark.”’ –Lucan, v. 653.
137 “Caesar being dead, the sun in mourning clouds, pitying Rome,
clothed himself.” –Virgil, Georg., i. 466.
138 “There is no such alliance betwixt us and heaven, that the brightness of the stars should be made also mortal by our death.” –Pliny,
Nat. Hist., ii. 8.
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living, to enjoy. Of all whom I have seen die, fortune has
disposed their countenances and no design of theirs; and
even of those who in ancient times have made away with
themselves, there is much to be considered whether it were
a sudden or a lingering death. That cruel Roman Emperor
would say of his prisoners, that he would make them feel
death, and if any one killed himself in prison, “That fellow
has made an escape from me”; he would prolong death and
make it felt by torments:
“Vidimus et toto quamvis in corpore caeso
Nil anima lethale datum, moremque nefandae,
Durum saevitix, pereuntis parcere morti.”139
In plain truth, it is no such great matter for a man in health
and in a temperate state of mind to resolve to kill himself; it
is very easy to play the villain before one comes to the point,
insomuch that Heliogabalus, the most effeminate man in
the world, amongst his lowest sensualities, could forecast
to make himself die delicately, when he should be forced
thereto; and that his death might not give the lie to the rest
of his life, had purposely built a sumptuous tower, the front
and base of which were covered with planks enriched with
gold and precious stones, thence to precipitate himself; and
also caused cords twisted with gold and crimson silk to be
made, wherewith to strangle himself; and a sword with the
blade of gold to be hammered out to fall upon; and kept
poison in vessels of emerald and topaz wherewith to poison
himself according as he should like to choose one of these
ways of dying:
“Impiger... ad letum et fortis virtute coacta.”140
139 “We have seen in tortured bodies, amongst the wounds, none that
have been mortal, inhuman mode of dire cruelty, that means to kill, but
will not let men die.” –Lucan, iv. i. 78.
140 “Resolute and brave in the face of death by a forced courage.
–
“Lucan, iv. 798.
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Yet in respect of this person, the effeminacy of his
preparations makes it more likely that he would have
thought better on’t, had he been put to the test. But in those
who with greater resolution have determined to despatch
themselves, we must examine whether it were with one
blow which took away the leisure of feeling the effect for
it is to be questioned whether, perceiving life, by little and
little, to steal away the sentiment of the body mixing itself
with that of the soul, and the means of repenting being offered, whether, I say, constancy and obstinacy in so dangerous an intention would have been found.
In the civil wars of Caesar, Lucius Domitius, being
taken in the Abruzzi, and thereupon poisoning himself, afterwards repented. It has happened in our time that a certain person, being resolved to die and not having gone deep
enough at the first thrust, the sensibility of the flesh opposing his arm, gave himself two or three wounds more, but
could never prevail upon himself to thrust home. Whilst
Plautius Silvanus was upon his trial, Urgulania, his grandmother, sent him a poniard with which, not being able to
kill himself, he made his servants cut his veins. Albucilla in
Tiberius time having, to kill himself, struck with too much
tenderness, gave his adversaries opportunity to imprison
and put him to death their own way.’ And that great leader,
Demosthenes, after his rout in Sicily, did the same; and C.
Fimbria, having struck himself too weakly, entreated his
servant to despatch him. On the contrary, Ostorius, who
could not make use of his own arm, disdained to employ
that of his servant to any other use but only to hold the
poniard straight and firm; and bringing his throat to it,
thrust himself through. ‘Tis, in truth, a morsel that is to be
swallowed without chewing, unless a man be thoroughly
resolved; and yet Adrian the emperor made his physician
mark and encircle on his pap the mortal place wherein he
was to stab to whom he had given orders to kill him. For
this reason it was that Caesar, being asked what death he
thought to be the most desired, made answer, “The least
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premeditated and the shortest.”141 If Caesar dared to say
it, it is no cowardice in me to believe it.” A short death,”
says Pliny, “is the sovereign good hap of human life. “People do not much care to recognise it. No one can say that
he is resolute for death who fears to deal with it and cannot
undergo it with his eyes open: they whom we see in criminal punishments run to their death and hasten and press
their execution, do it not out of resolution, but because they
will not give them selves leisure to consider it; it does not
trouble them to be dead, but to die:
‘Emodi nolo, sed me esse mortem nihil astigmia:”142
‘tis a degree of constancy to which I have experimented, that
I can arrive, like those who plunge into dangers, as into the
sea, with their eyes shut.
There is nothing, in my opinion, more illustrious in the
life of Socrates, than that he had thirty whole days wherein
to ruminate upon the sentence of his death, to have digested
it all that time with a most assured hope, without care, and
without alteration, and with a series of words and actions
rather careless and indifferent than any way stirred or discomposed by the weight of such a thought.
That Pomponius Atticus, to whom Cicero writes so often, being sick, caused Agrippa, his son-in-law, and two
or three more of his friends, to be called to him, and told
them, that having found all means practised upon him for
his recovery to be in vain, and that all he did to prolong
his life also prolonged and augmented his pain, he was resolved to put an end both to the one and the other, desiring
them to approve of his determination, or at least not to lose
their labour in endeavouring to dissuade him. Now, having chosen to destroy himself by abstinence, his disease was
141 Tacitus,
Annals, xvi. 15
have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead.’–
Epicharmus, apud Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 8.
142 “I
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thereby cured: the remedy that he had made use of to kill
himself restored him to health. His physicians and friends,
rejoicing at so happy an event, and coming to congratulate
him, found themselves very much deceived, it being impossible for them to make him alter his purpose, he telling
them, that as he must one day die, and was now so far on
his way, he would save himself the labour of beginning another time. This man, having surveyed death at leisure, was
not only not discouraged at its approach, but eagerly sought
it; for being content that he had engaged in the combat, he
made it a point of bravery to see the end; ‘tis far beyond not
fearing death to taste and relish it.
The story of the philosopher Cleanthes is very like this:
he had his gums swollen and rotten; his physicians advised
him to great abstinence: having fasted two days, he was so
much better that they pronounced him cured, and permitted him to return to his ordinary course of diet; he, on the
contrary, already tasting some sweetness in this faintness
of his, would not be persuaded to go back, but resolved to
proceed, and to finish what he had so far advanced.
Tullius Marcellinus, a young man of Rome, having a
mind to anticipate the hour of his destiny, to be rid of a
disease that was more trouble to him than he was willing
to endure, though his physicians assured him of a certain,
though not sudden, cure, called a council of his friends to
deliberate about it; of whom some, says Seneca, gave him
the counsel that out of unmanliness they would have taken
themselves; others, out of flattery, such as they thought he
would best like; but a Stoic said this to him: “Do not concern
thyself, Marcellinus, as if thou didst deliberate of a thing of
importance; ‘tis no great matter to live; thy servants and
beasts live; but it is a great thing to die handsomely, wisely,
and firmly. Do but think how long thou hast done the same
things, eat, drink, and sleep, drink, sleep, and eat: we incessantly wheel in the same circle. Not only ill and insupportable accidents, but even the satiety of living, inclines a
man to desire to die.” Marcellinus did not stand in need
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of a man to advise, but of a man to assist him; his servants
were afraid to meddle in the business, but this philosopher
gave them to under stand that domestics are suspected even
when it is in doubt whether the death of the master were
voluntary or no; otherwise, that it would be of as ill example to hinder him as to kill him, forasmuch as:
“Invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti.”143
He then told Marcellinus that it would not be unbecoming, as what is left on the tables when we have eaten is given
to the attendants, so, life being ended, to distribute something to those who have been our servants. Now Marcellinus was of a free and liberal spirit; he, therefore, divided a
certain sum of money amongst his servants, and consoled
them. As to the rest, he had no need of steel nor of blood:
he resolved to go out of this life and not to run out of it;
not to escape from death, but to essay it. And to give himself leisure to deal with it, having forsaken all manner of
nourishment, the third day following, after having caused
himself to be sprinkled with warm water, he fainted by degrees, and not without some kind of pleasure, as he himself
declared.
In fact, such as have been acquainted with these faintings, proceeding from weakness, say that they are therein
sensible of no manner of pain, but rather feel a kind of delight, as in the passage to sleep and best. These are studied
and digested deaths.
But to the end that Cato only may furnish out the whole
example of virtue, it seems as if his good with which the
leisure to confront and struggle with death, reinforcing his
destiny had put his ill one into the hand he gave himself the
blow, seeing he had courage in the danger, instead of letting
it go less. And if I had had to represent him in his supreme
station, I should have done it in the posture of tearing out
143 “He who makes a man live against his will, ‘tis as cruel as to kill
him.” –Horat., De Arte Poet., 467
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his bloody bowels, rather than with his sword in his hand,
as did the statuaries of his time, for this second murder was
much more furious than the first.
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CHAPTER XIV
THAT OUR MIND HINDERS ITSELF
T a pleasant imagination to fancy a mind exactly bal‘never
anced betwixt two equal desires: for, doubtless, it can
pitch upon either, forasmuch as the choice and appliIS
cation would manifest an inequality of esteem; and were we
set betwixt the bottle and the ham, with an equal appetite to
drink and eat, there would doubtless be no remedy, but we
must die of thirst and hunger. To provide against this inconvenience, the Stoics, when they are asked whence the election in the soul of two indifferent things proceeds, and that
makes us, out of a great number of crowns, rather take one
than another, they being all alike, and there being no reason
to incline us to such a preference, make answer, that this
movement of the soul is extraordinary and irregular, entering into us by a foreign, accidental, and fortuitous impulse.
It might rather, methinks, he said, that nothing presents itself to us wherein there is not some difference, how little
soever; and that, either by the sight or touch, there is always some choice that, though it be imperceptibly, tempts
and attracts us; so, whoever shall presuppose a packthread
equally strong throughout, it is utterly impossible it should
break; for, where will you have the breaking to begin? and
that it should break altogether is not in nature. Whoever,
also, should hereunto join the geometrical propositions that,
by the certainty of their demonstrations, conclude the contained to be greater than the containing, the centre to be as
great as its circumference, and that find out two lines incessantly approaching each other, which yet can never meet,
and the philosopher’s stone, and the quadrature of the circle, where the reason and the effect are so opposite, might,
peradventure, find some argument to second this bold saying of Pliny:
“Solum certum nihil esse certi, et homine nihil
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miserius ant superbius.”144
144 “It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is
more miserable or more proud than man.” –Nat. Hist., ii. 7.
359
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THAT OUR DESIRES ARE AUGMENTED BY
DIFFICULTY
is no reason that has not its contrary, say the wisest
T
of the philosophers. I was just now ruminating on the
excellent saying one of the ancients alleges for the contempt
HERE
of life: “No good can bring pleasure, unless it be that for the
loss of which we are beforehand prepared.”
“In aequo est dolor amissae rei, et timor amittendae,”145
meaning by this that the fruition of life cannot be truly
pleasant to us if we are in fear of losing it. It might, however, be said, on the contrary, that we hug and embrace this
good so much the more earnestly, and with so much greater
affection, by how much we see it the less assured and fear
to have it taken from us: for it is evident, as fire burns with
greater fury when cold comes to mix with it, that our will is
more obstinate by being opposed:
“Si nunquam Danaen habuisset ahenea turris,
Non esses, Danae, de Jove facta parens;”146
and that there is nothing naturally so contrary to our taste
as satiety which proceeds from facility; nor anything that so
much whets it as rarity and difficulty:
“Omnium rerum voluptas ipso, quo debet fugare, periculo crescit.”147
145 “The grief of losing a thing, and the fear of losing it, are
equal.” –Seneca, Ep., 98.
146 “If a brazen tower had not held Danae, you would not, Danae,
have been made a mother by Jove.” –Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 27.
147 “The pleasure of all things increases by the same danger that
should deter it.” –Seneca, De Benef., vii. 9.
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“Galla, nega; satiatur amor,
torquent.”148
nisi gaudia
To keep love in breath, Lycurgus made a decree that the
married people of Lacedaemon should never enjoy one another but by stealth; and that it should be as great a shame
to take them in bed together as committing with others. The
difficulty of assignations, the danger of surprise, the shame
of the morning,
“Et languor, et silentium,
Et latere petitus imo Spiritus:”149
these are what give the piquancy to the sauce. How many
very wantonly pleasant sports spring from the most decent
and modest language of the works on love? Pleasure itself
seeks to be heightened with pain; it is much sweeter when
it smarts and has the skin rippled. The courtesan Flora said
she never lay with Pompey but that she made him wear the
prints of her teeth.150
“Quod petiere, premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem
Corporis, et dentes inlidunt saepe labellis...
Et stimuli subsunt, qui instigant laedere ad ipsum,
Quodcunque est, rabies unde illae germina
surgunt.”151
And so it is in everything: difficulty gives all things their
estimation; the people of the march of Ancona more readily
148 “Galla, refuse me; love is glutted with joys that are not attended
with trouble.” –Martial, iv. 37.
149 “And languor, and silence, and sighs, coming from the innermost
heart.” –Hor., Epod., xi. 9.
150 Plutarch, Life of Pompey, c. i.
151 “What they have sought they dress closely, and cause pain; on the
lips fix the teeth, and every kiss indents: urged by latent stimulus the
part to wound” –Lucretius, i. 4.
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make their vows to St. James, and those of Galicia to Our
Lady of Loreto; they make wonderful to-do at Liege about
the baths of Lucca, and in Tuscany about those of Aspa:
there are few Romans seen in the fencing school of Rome,
which is full of French. That great Cato also, as much as us,
nauseated his wife whilst she was his, and longed for her
when in the possession of another. I was fain to turn out
into the paddock an old horse, as he was not to be governed
when he smelt a mare: the facility presently sated him as towards his own, but towards strange mares, and the first that
passed by the pale of his pasture, he would again fall to his
importunate neighings and his furious heats as before. Our
appetite contemns and passes by what it has in possession,
to run after that it has not:
“Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat.”152
To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind
to’t:
“Nisi to servare puellam
Incipis, incipiet desinere esse mea:”153
to give it wholly up to us is to beget in us contempt. Want
and abundance fall into the same inconvenience:
“Tibi quod superest, mihi quod desit, dolet.”154
Desire and fruition equally afflict us. The rigors of mistresses are troublesome, but facility, to say truth, still more
so; forasmuch as discontent and anger spring from the esteem we have of the thing desired, heat and actuate love,
but satiety begets disgust; ‘tis a blunt, dull, stupid, tired,
and slothful passion:
152 “He slights her who is close at hand, and runs after her who flees
from him.” –Horace, Sat., i. 2, 108.
153 “Unless you begin to guard your mistress, she will soon begin to
be no longer mine.” –Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 47.
154 “Your superfluities trouble you, and what I want troubles me.
–
“Terence, Phoym., i. 3, 9.
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‘Si qua volet regnare diu, contemnat amantem.”155
“Contemnite, amantes:
Sic hodie veniet, si qua negavit heri.”156
Why did Poppea invent the use of a mask to hide the beauties of her face, but to enhance it to her lovers? Why have
they veiled, even below the heels, those beauties that every one desires to show, and that every one desires to see?
Why do they cover with so many hindrances, one over another, the parts where our desires and their own have their
principal seat? And to what serve those great bastion farthingales, with which our ladies fortify their haunches, but
to allure our appetite and to draw us on by removing them
farther from us?
“Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri.”157
“Interdum tunica duxit operta moram.”158
To what use serves the artifice of this virgin modesty, this
grave coldness, this severe countenance, this professing to
be ignorant of things that they know better than we who
instruct them in them, but to increase in us the desire to
overcome, control, and trample underfoot at pleasure all
this ceremony and all these obstacles? For there is not only
pleasure, but, moreover, glory, in conquering and debauching that soft sweetness and that childish modesty, and to
reduce a cold and matronlike gravity to the mercy of our ardent desires: ‘tis a glory, say they, to triumph over modesty,
chastity, and temperance; and whoever dissuades ladies
155 “She who would long retain her power must use her lover ill.”
–
Ovid, Amor., ii. 19, 33
156 “Slight your mistress; she will to-day come who denied you
yesterday. –“Propertius, ii. 14, 19.
157 “She flies to the osiers, and desires beforehand to be seen
going.” –Virgil, Eclog., iii. 65.
158 “The hidden robe has sometimes checked love.”
–Propertius, ii.
15, 6.
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from those qualities, betrays both them and himself. We
are to believe that their hearts tremble with affright, that the
very sound of our words offends the purity of their ears,
that they hate us for talking so, and only yield to our importunity by a compulsive force. Beauty, all powerful as it
is, has not wherewithal to make itself relished without the
mediation of these little arts. Look into Italy, where there is
the most and the finest beauty to be sold, how it is necessitated to have recourse to extrinsic means and other artifices to render itself charming, and yet, in truth, whatever it
may do, being venal and public, it remains feeble and languishing. Even so in virtue itself, of two like effects, we
notwithstanding look upon that as the fairest and most worthy, wherein the most trouble and hazard are set before us.
‘Tis an effect of the divine Providence to suffer the holy
Church to be afflicted, as we see it, with so many storms
and troubles, by this opposition to rouse pious souls, and
to awaken them from that drowsy lethargy wherein, by so
long tranquillity, they had been immerged. If we should lay
the loss we have sustained in the number of those who have
gone astray, in the balance against the benefit we have had
by being again put in breath, and by having our zeal and
strength revived by reason of this opposition, I know not
whether the utility would not surmount the damage.
We have thought to tie the nuptial knot of our marriages more fast and firm by having taken away all means
of dissolving it, but the knot of the will and affection is so
much the more slackened and made loose, by how much
that of constraint is drawn closer; and, on the contrary, that
which kept the marriages at Rome so long in honour and
inviolate, was the liberty every one who so desired had to
break them; they kept their wives the better, because they
might part with them, if they would; and, in the full liberty of divorce, five hundred years and more passed away
before any one made use on’t.
“Quod licet, ingratum est; quod non licet, acrius
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urit.”159
We might here introduce the opinion of an ancient
upon this occasion, “that executions rather whet than dull
the edge of vices: that they do not beget the care of doing
well, that being the work of reason and discipline, but only
a care not to be taken in doing ill:”
“Latius excisae pestis contagia serpunt.”160
I do not know that this is true; but I experimentally
know, that never civil government was by that means reformed; the order and regimen of manners depend upon
some other expedient.
The Greek histories make mention of the Argippians,
neighbours to Scythia, who live without either rod or stick
for offence; where not only no one attempts to attack them,
but whoever can fly thither is safe, by reason of their virtue
and sanctity of life, and no one is so bold as to lay hands
upon them; and they have applications made to them to
determine the controversies that arise betwixt men of other
countries. There is a certain nation, where the enclosures of
gardens and fields they would preserve, are made only of
a string of cotton; and, so fenced, is more firm and secure
than by our hedges and ditches.
“Furem signata sollicitant...
aperta effractarius praeterit.”161
Peradventure, the facility of entering my house, amongst
other things, has been a means to preserve it from the violence of our civil wars: defence allures attempt, and defiance provokes an enemy. I enervated the soldiers’ design
159 “What
you may, is displeasing; what is forbidden, whets
appetite. –“Ovid, Amor., ii. 19.
160 “The plague-sore being lanced, the infection spreads all the
more.” –Rutilius, Itinerar. 1, 397.
161 “Things
sealed,
up
invite
a
thief:
the
housebreaker
passes by open doors.” –Seneca, Epist., 68.
the
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by depriving the exploit of danger and all manner of military glory, which is wont to serve them for pretence and
excuse: whatever is bravely, is ever honourably, done, at a
time when justice is dead. I render them the conquest of my
house cowardly and base; it is never shut to any one that
knocks; my gate has no other guard than a porter, and he of
ancient custom and ceremony; who does not so much serve
to defend it as to offer it with more decorum and grace; I
have no other guard nor sentinel than the stars. A gentleman would play the fool to make a show of defence, if
he be not really in a condition to defend himself. He who
lies open on one side, is everywhere so; our ancestors did
not think of building frontier garrisons. The means of assaulting, I mean without battery or army, and of surprising
our houses, increases every day more and more beyond the
means to guard them; men’s wits are generally bent that
way; in invasion every one is concerned: none but the rich
in defence. Mine was strong for the time when it was built;
I have added nothing to it of that kind, and should fear that
its strength might turn against myself; to which we are to
consider that a peaceable time would require it should be
dismantled. There is danger never to be able to regain it,
and it would be very hard to keep; for in intestine dissensions, your man may be of the party you fear; and where
religion is the pretext, even a man’s nearest relations become unreliable, with some colour of justice. The public
exchequer will not maintain our domestic garrisons; they
would exhaust it: we ourselves have not the means to do it
without ruin, or, which is more inconvenient and injurious,
without ruining the people. The condition of my loss would
be scarcely worse. As to the rest, you there lose all; and even
your friends will be more ready to accuse your want of vigilance and your improvidence, and your ignorance of and
indifference to your own business, than to pity you. That
so many garrisoned houses have been undone whereas this
of mine remains, makes me apt to believe that they were
only lost by being guarded; this gives an enemy both an in-
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vitation and colour of reason; all defence shows a face of
war. Let who will come to me in God’s name; but I shall
not invite them; ‘tis the retirement I have chosen for my repose from war. I endeavour to withdraw this corner from
the public tempest, as I also do another corner in my soul.
Our war may put on what forms it will, multiply and diversify itself into new parties; for my part, I stir not. Amongst
so many garrisoned houses, myself alone amongst those of
my rank, so far as I know, in France, have trusted purely to
Heaven for the protection of mine, and have never removed
plate, deeds, or hangings. I will neither fear nor save myself by halves. If a full acknowledgment acquires the Divine
favour, it will stay with me to the end: if not, I have still continued long enough to render my continuance remarkable
and fit to be recorded. How? Why, there are thirty years
that I have thus lived.
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OF GLORY
There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice
which denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no part of
the thing, nor of the substance; ‘tis a foreign piece joined to
the thing, and outside it. God, who is all fulness in Himself
and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be augmented
and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His
exterior works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate
it in Him, forasmuch as He can have no accession of good,
we attribute to His name, which is the part out of Him that
is nearest to us. Thus is it that to God alone glory and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as
that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect,
and having continual need of amelioration, ‘tis to that we
ought to employ all our endeavour. We are all hollow and
empty; ‘tis not with wind and voice that we are to fill ourselves; we want a more solid substance to repair us: a man
starving with hunger would be very simple to seek rather to
provide himself with a gay garment than with a good meal:
we are to look after that whereof we have most need. As we
have it in our ordinary prayers:
“Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus.”
We are in want of beauty, health, wisdom, virtue, and
such like essential qualities: exterior ornaments should, be
looked after when we have made provision for necessary
things. Divinity treats amply and more pertinently of this
subject, but I am not much versed in it.
Chrysippus and Diogenes were the earliest and firmest
advocates of the contempt of glory; and maintained that,
amongst all pleasures, there was none more dangerous nor
more to be avoided than that which proceeds from the
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approbation of others. And, in truth, experience makes
us sensible of many very hurtful treasons in it. There is
nothing that so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything
whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favour
with them; nor panderism so apt and so usually made use
of to corrupt the chastity of women as to wheedle and entertain them with their own praises. The first charm the Syrens
made use of to allure Ulysses is of this nature:
“Deca vers nous, deca, o tres-louable Ulysse,
Et le plus grand honneur don’t la Grece
fleurisse.”162
These philosophers said, that all the glory of the world was
not worth an understanding man’s holding out his finger to
obtain it:
“Gloria quantalibet quid erit, si gloria tantum
est?”163
I say for it alone; for it often brings several commodities
along with it, for which it may justly be desired: it acquires
us good-will, and renders us less subject and exposed to insult and offence from others, and the like. It was also one
of the principal doctrines of Epicurus; for this precept of his
sect, Conceal thy life, that forbids men to encumber themselves with public negotiations and offices, also necessarily
presupposes a contempt of glory, which is the world’s approbation of those actions we produce in public.164 He that
bids us conceal ourselves, and to have no other concern but
for ourselves, and who will not have us known to others,
would much less have us honoured and glorified; and so
advises Idomeneus not in any sort to regulate his actions by
162 “Come hither to us, O admirable Ulysses, come hither, thou greatest ornament and pride of Greece.” –Homer, Odysseus, xii. 184.
163 “What is glory, be it as glorious as it may be, if it be no more than
glory?” –Juvenal, Sat., vii. 81.
164 Plutarch, Whether the saying, Conceal thy life, is well said.
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the common reputation or opinion, except so as to avoid the
other accidental inconveniences that the contempt of men
might bring upon him.
These discourses are, in my opinion, very true and rational; but we are, I know not how, double in ourselves,
which is the cause that what we believe we do not believe,
and cannot disengage ourselves from what we condemn.
Let us see the last and dying words of Epicurus; they are
grand, and worthy of such a philosopher, and yet they carry
some touches of the recommendation of his name and of
that humour he had decried by his precepts. Here is a letter
that he dictated a little before his last gasp:
“EPICUYUS TO HEYMACHUS, health.
“Whilst I was passing over the happy and last
day of my life, I write this, but, at the same
time, afflicted with such pain in my bladder
and bowels that nothing can be greater, but it
was recompensed with the pleasure the remembrance of my inventions and doctrines brought
to my soul. Now, as the affection thou hast ever
from thy infancy borne towards me and philosophy requires, take upon thee the protection of
Metrodorus’ children.”
This is the letter. And that which makes me interpret that
the pleasure he says he had in his soul concerning his inventions, has some reference to the reputation he hoped for
thence after his death, is the manner of his will, in which he
gives order that Amynomachus and Timocrates, his heirs,
should, every January, defray the expense of the celebration of his birthday as Hermachus should appoint; and
also the expense that should be made the twentieth of every moon in entertaining the philosophers, his friends, who
should assemble in honour of the memory of him and of
Metrodorus.165
165 Cicero,
De Finibus, ii. 30.
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Carneades was head of the contrary opinion, and maintained that glory was to be desired for itself, even as we
embrace our posthumous issue for themselves, having no
knowledge nor enjoyment of them. This opinion has not
failed to be the more universally followed, as those commonly are that are most suitable to our inclinations. Aristotle gives it the first place amongst external goods; and
avoids, as too extreme vices, the immoderate either seeking or evading it. I believe that, if we had the books Cicero
wrote upon this subject, we should there find pretty stories;
for he was so possessed with this passion, that, if he had
dared, I think he could willingly have fallen into the excess
that others did, that virtue itself was not to be coveted, but
upon the account of the honour that always attends it:
Paulum sepultae distat inertiae Celata virtus:”166
which is an opinion so false, that I am vexed it could ever
enter into the understanding of a man that was honoured
with the name of philosopher.
If this were true, men need not be virtuous but in public; and we should be no further concerned to keep the operations of the soul, which is the true seat of virtue, regular and in order, than as they are to arrive at the knowledge of others. Is there no more in it, then, but only slily
and with circumspection to do ill? “If thou knowest,” says
Carneades, “of a serpent lurking in a place where, without
suspicion, a person is going to sit down, by whose death
thou expectest an advantage, thou dost ill if thou dost not
give him caution of his danger; and so much the more because the action is to be known by none but thyself.” If
we do not take up of ourselves the rule of well-doing, if
impunity pass with us for justice, to how many sorts of
wickedness shall we every day abandon ourselves? I do
166 “Virtue
iv.
concealed little differs from dead sloth.”
9, 29.
371
–Horace, Od.,
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not find what Sextus Peduceus did, in faithfully restoring
the treasure that C. Plotius had committed to his sole secrecy and trust, a thing that I have often done myself, so
commendable, as I should think it an execrable baseness,
had we done otherwise; and I think it of good use in our
days to recall the example of P. Sextilius Rufus, whom Cicero accuses to have entered upon an inheritance contrary
to his conscience, not only not against law, but even by the
determination of the laws themselves; and M. Crassus and
Hortensius, who, by reason of their authority and power,
having been called in by a stranger to share in the succession of a forged will, that so he might secure his own part,
satisfied themselves with having no hand in the forgery, and
refused not to make their advantage and to come in for a
share: secure enough, if they could shroud themselves from
accusations, witnesses, and the cognisance of the laws:
“Meminerint Deum se habere testem, id est (ut
ego arbitror) mentem suam.”167
Virtue is a very vain and frivolous thing if it derive its
recommendation from glory; and ‘tis to no purpose that we
endeavour to give it a station by itself, and separate it from
fortune; for what is more accidental than reputation?
“Profecto fortuna in omni re dominatur: ea res
cunctas ex libidine magis, quhm ex vero, celebrat, obscuratque.”168
So to order it that actions may be known and seen is
purely the work of fortune; ‘tis chance that helps us to glory,
according to its own temerity. I have often seen her go before merit, and often very much outstrip it. He who first
167 “Let them consider they have God to witness, that is (as I interpret
it), their own consciences.” –Cicero, De Offic., iii. 10.
168 “Fortune rules in all things; it advances and depresses things
more out of its own will than of right and justice.” –Sallust, Catilina,
c. 8.
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likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware
of; they are both of them things pre-eminently vain glory
also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and
sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it. They who instruct
gentlemen only to employ their valour for the obtaining of
honour:
“Quasi non sit honestum, quod nobilitatum non
sit;”169
what do they intend by that but to instruct them never to
hazard themselves if they are not seen, and to observe well
if there be witnesses present who may carry news of their
valour, whereas a thousand occasions of well-doing present
themselves which cannot be taken notice of? How many
brave individual actions are buried in the crowd of a battle?
Whoever shall take upon him to watch another’s behaviour
in such a confusion is not very busy himself, and the testimony he shall give of his companions’ deportment will be
evidence against himself:
“Vera et sapiens animi magnitudo, honestum illud, quod maxime naturam sequitur, in factis
positum, non in gloria, judicat.”170
All the glory that I pretend to derive from my life
is that I have lived it in quiet; in quiet, not according to
Metrodorus, or Arcesilaus, or Aristippus, but according to
myself. For seeing philosophy has not been able to find out
any way to tranquillity that is good in common, let every
one seek it in particular.
To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite
grandeur of their renown but to fortune? How many men
169 “As though it were not a virtue, unless celebrated”
–Cicero De
Offic. iii. 10.
170 “The true and wise magnanimity judges that the bravery which
most follows nature more consists in act than glory.” –Cicero, De
Offic. i. 19.
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has she extinguished in the beginning of their progress,
of whom we have no knowledge, who brought as much
courage to the work as they, if their adverse hap had not cut
them off in the first sally of their arms? Amongst so many
and so great dangers I do not remember I have anywhere
read that Caesar was ever wounded; a thousand have fallen
in less dangers than the least of those he went through. An
infinite number of brave actions must be performed without witness and lost, before one turns to account. A man is
not always on the top of a breach, or at the head of an army,
in the sight of his general, as upon a scaffold; a man is often
surprised betwixt the hedge and the ditch; he must run the
hazard of his life against a henroost; he must dislodge four
rascally musketeers out of a barn; he must prick out single
from his party, and alone make some attempts, according as
necessity will have it. And whoever will observe will, I believe, find it experimentally true, that occasions of the least
lustre are ever the most dangerous; and that in the wars of
our own times there have more brave men been lost in occasions of little moment, and in the dispute about some little
paltry fort, than in places of greatest importance, and where
their valour might have been more honourably employed.
Who thinks his death achieved to ill purpose if he do
not fall on some signal occasion, instead of illustrating his
death, wilfully obscures his life, suffering in the meantime
many very just occasions of hazarding himself to slip out of
his hands; and every just one is illustrious enough, every
man’s conscience being a sufficient trumpet to him.
“Gloria nostra est testimonium conscientiae nostrae.”171
He who is only a good man that men may know it, and
that he may be the better esteemed when ‘tis known; who
will not do well but upon condition that his virtue may be
171 “For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience.”
Corinthians, i. I.
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known to men: is one from whom much service is not to be
expected:
“Credo ch ‘el reste di quel verno, cose
Facesse degne di tener ne conto;
Ma fur fin’ a quel tempo si nascose,
Che non a colpa mia s’ hor ‘non le conto
Perche Orlando a far l’opre virtuose
Piu ch’a narrar le poi sempre era pronto;
Ne mai fu alcun’ de’suoi fatti espresso,
Se non quando ebbe i testimonii appresso.”172
A man must go to the war upon the account of duty, and
expect the recompense that never fails brave and worthy
actions, how private soever, or even virtuous thoughts-the
satisfaction that a well-disposed conscience receives in itself
in doing well. A man must be valiant for himself, and upon
account of the advantage it is to him to have his courage
seated in a firm and secure place against the assaults of fortune:
“Virtus, repulsaa nescia sordidx
Intaminatis fulget honoribus
Nec sumit, aut ponit secures
Arbitrio popularis aura.”173
It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part,
but for ourselves within, where no eyes can pierce but our
own; there she defends us from the fear of death, of pain, of
172 “The rest of the winter, I believe, was spent in actions worthy of
narration, but they were done so secretly that if I do not tell them I am
not to blame, for Orlando was more bent to do great acts than to boast
of them, so that no deeds of his were ever known but those that had
witnesses.” –Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, xi. 81.
173 “Virtue, repudiating all base repulse, shines in taintless
honours, nor takes nor leaves dignity at the mere will of the vulgar.” –
Horace, Od., iii. 2, 17.
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shame itself: there she arms us against the loss of our children, friends, and fortunes: and when opportunity presents
itself, she leads us on to the hazards of war:
“Non emolumento aliquo, sed ipsius honestatis
decore.”174
This profit is of much greater advantage, and more
worthy to be coveted and hoped for, than, honour and glory,
which are no other than a favourable judgment given of us.
A dozen men must be called out of a whole nation to
judge about an acre of land; and the judgment of our inclinations and actions, the most difficult and most important
matter that is, we refer to the voice and determination of the
rabble, the mother of ignorance, injustice, and inconstancy.
Is it reasonable that the life of a wise man should depend
upon the judgment of fools?
“An quidquam stultius, quam, quos singulos contemnas, eos aliquid putare esse universes?”175
He that makes it his business to please them, will have
enough to do and never have done; ‘tis a mark that can
never be aimed at or hit:
“Nil tam inaestimabile est, quam animi multitudinis.”176
Demetrius pleasantly said of the voice of the people,
that he made no more account of that which came from
174 “Not for any profit, but for the honour of honesty itself.” –Cicero,
De Finib., i. 10.
175 “Can anything be more foolish than to think that those you despise singly, can be anything else in general.” –Cicero, Tusc. Quaes.,
v. 36.
176 “Nothing is to be so little understood as the minds of
the multitude.” –Livy, xxxi. 34.
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above than of that which came from below. He177 says
more:
“Ego hoc judico, si quando turpe non sit, tamen
non esse non turpe, quum id a multitudine
laudatur.”178
No art, no activity of wit, could conduct our steps so
as to follow so wandering and so irregular a guide; in this
windy confusion of the noise of vulgar reports and opinions that drive us on, no way worth anything can be chosen.
Let us not propose to ourselves so floating and wavering an
end; let us follow constantly after reason; let the public approbation follow us there, if it will; and as it wholly depends
upon fortune, we have no reason sooner to expect it by any
other way than that. Even though I would not follow the
right way because it is right, I should, however, follow it as
having experimentally found that, at the end of the reckoning, ‘tis commonly the most happy and of greatest utility.
“Dedit hoc providentia hominibus munus, ut
honesta magis juvarent.”179
The mariner of old said thus to Neptune, in a great tempest: “O God, thou wilt save me if thou wilt, and if thou
choosest, thou wilt destroy me; but, however, I will hold
my rudder straight.”180 I have seen in my time a thousand
men supple, halfbred, ambiguous, whom no one doubted to
be more worldly-wise than I, lose themselves, where I have
saved myself:
177 Cicero
178 “I
am of opinion, that though a thing be not foul in itself, et it
cannot but become so when commended by the multitude.” –Cicero,
De Finib., ii. 15.
179 “This gift Providence has given to men, that honest things should
be the most agreeable.” –Quintilian, Inst. Orat., i. 12.
180 Seneca, Ep., 85.
377
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Risi successus posse carere dolos.”181
Paulus AEmilius, going on the glorious expedition of
Macedonia, above all things charged the people of Rome
not to speak of his actions during his absence. Oh, the
license of judgments is a great disturbance to great affairs! forasmuch as every one has not the firmness of
Fabius against common, adverse, and injurious tongues,
who rather suffered his authority to be dissected by the vain
fancies of men, than to do less well in his charge with a
favourable reputation and the popular applause.
There is I know not what natural sweetness in hearing
one’s self commended; but we are a great deal too fond of
it:
“Laudari metuam, neque enim mihi cornea fibra
est
Sed recti finemque extremumque esse recuso
Euge tuum, et belle.”182
I care not so much what I am in the opinions of others, as
what I am in my own; I would be rich of myself, and not
by borrowing. Strangers see nothing but events and outward appearances; everybody can set a good face on the
matter, when they have trembling and terror within: they
do not see my heart, they see but my countenance. One is
right in decrying the hypocrisy that is in war; for what is
more easy to an old soldier than to shift in a time of danger, and to counterfeit the brave when he has no more heart
than a chicken? There are so many ways to avoid hazarding a man’s own person, that we have deceived the world a
thousand times before we come to be engaged in a real danger: and even then, finding ourselves in an inevitable necessity of doing something, we can make shift for that time
181 “I
have laughed to see cunning fail of success.’
–Ovid, Heroid,
i. 18.
182 “I should fear to be praised, for my heart is not made of horn; but
I deny that ‘excellent–admirably done,’ are the terms and final aim of
virtue.” –Persius, i. 47.
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to conceal our apprehensions by setting a good face on the
business, though the heart beats within; and whoever had
the use of the Platonic ring, which renders those invisible
that wear it, if turned inward towards the palm of the hand,
a great many would very often hide themselves when they
ought most to appear, and would repent being placed in so
honourable a post, where necessity must make them bold.
“Falsus honor juvat, et mendax infamia terret
Quem nisi mendosum et mendacem?”183
Thus we see how all the judgments that are founded
upon external appearances, are marvellously uncertain and
doubtful; and that there is no so certain testimony as every one is to himself. In these, how many soldiers’ boys are
companions of our glory? he who stands firm in an open
trench, what does he in that more than fifty poor pioneers
who open to him the way and cover it with their own bodies
for fivepence a day pay, do before him?
“Non quicquid turbida Roma
Elevet, accedas; examenque improbum in illa
Castiges trutina: nec to quaesiveris extra.”184
The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths,
we call making them more great; we will have them there
well received, and that this increase turn to their advantage,
which is all that can be excusable in this design. But the excess of this disease proceeds so far that many covet to have
a name, be it what it will. Trogus Pompeius says of Herostratus, and Titus Livius of Manlius Capitolinus, that they
were more ambitious of a great reputation than of a good
one. This is very common; we are more solicitous that men
183 “False honour pleases, and calumny affrights, the guilty and the
sick.”- -Horace, Ep., i. 16, 89.
184 “Do not, if turbulent Rome disparage anything, accede; nor
correct a false balance by that scale; nor seek anything beyond
thyself.” –Persius, Sat., i. 5.
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speak of us, than how they speak; and it is enough for us
that our names are often mentioned, be it after what manner it will. It should seem that to be known, is in some sort
to have a man’s life and its duration in others’ keeping. I, for
my part, hold that I am not, but in myself; and of that other
life of mine which lies in the knowledge of my friends, to
consider it naked and simply in itself, I know very well that
I am sensible of no fruit nor enjoyment from it but by the
vanity of a fantastic opinion; and when I shall be dead, I
shall be still and much less sensible of it; and shall, withal,
absolutely lose the use of those real advantages that sometimes accidentally follow it.
I shall have no more handle whereby to take hold of
reputation, neither shall it have any whereby to take hold
of or to cleave to me; for to expect that my name should
be advanced by it, in the first place, I have no name that is
enough my own; of two that I have, one is common to all
my race, and indeed to others also; there are two families
at Paris and Montpellier, whose surname is Montaigne, another in Brittany, and one in Xaintonge, De La Montaigne.
The transposition of one syllable only would suffice so to
ravel our affairs, that I shall share in their glory, and they
peradventure will partake of my discredit; and, moreover,
my ancestors have formerly been surnamed, Eyquem,185 a
name wherein a family well known in England is at this
day concerned. As to my other name, every one may take it
that will, and so, perhaps, I may honour a porter in my own
stead. And besides, though I had a particular distinction by
myself, what can it distinguish, when I am no more? Can it
point out and favour inanity?
“Non levior cippus nunc imprimit ossa?
Laudat posteritas! Nunc non e manibus illis,
Nunc non a tumulo fortunataque favilla,
Nascentur violae?”186
185 Eyquem
186 “Does
was the patronymic.
the tomb press with less weight upon my bones?
380
Do
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but of this I have spoken elsewhere. As to what remains, in
a great battle where ten thousand men are maimed or killed,
there are not fifteen who are taken notice of; it must be some
very eminent greatness, or some consequence of great importance that fortune has added to it, that signalises a private action, not of a harquebuser only, but of a great captain; for to kill a man, or two, or ten: to expose a man’s self
bravely to the utmost peril of death, is indeed something
in every one of us, because we there hazard all; but for the
world’s concern, they are things so ordinary, and so many
of them are every day seen, and there must of necessity be
so many of the same kind to produce any notable effect, that
we cannot expect any particular renown from it:
“Casus multis hic cognitus, ac jam
Tritus, et a medio fortunae ductus acervo.”187
Of so many thousands of valiant men who have died within
these fifteen hundred years in France with their swords in
their hands, not a hundred have come to our knowledge.
The memory, not of the commanders only, but of battles and
victories, is buried and gone; the fortunes of above half of
the world, for want of a record, stir not from their place, and
vanish without duration. If I had unknown events in my
possession, I should think with great ease to out-do those
that are recorded, in all sorts of examples. Is it not strange
that even of the Greeks and Romans, with so many writers
and witnesses, and so many rare and noble exploits, so few
are arrived at our knowledge:
“Ad nos vix tenuis famx perlabitur aura.”188
It will be much if, a hundred years hence, it be remembered in general that in our times there were civil wars in
comrades praise? Not from my manes, not from the tomb, not from
the ashes will violets grow.” –Persius, Sat., i. 37.
187 “The accident is known to many, and now trite; and drawn from
the midst of Fortune’s heap.” –Juvenal, Sat., xiii. 9.
188 “An obscure rumour scarce is hither come.”
–AEneid, vii. 646.
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France. The Lacedaemonians, entering into battle, sacrificed to the Muses, to the end that their actions might be
well and worthily written, looking upon it as a divine and
no common favour, that brave acts should find witnesses
that could give them life and memory. Do we expect that
at every musket-shot we receive, and at every hazard we
run, there must be a register ready to record it? and, besides, a hundred registers may enrol them whose commentaries will not last above three days, and will never come
to the sight of any one. We have not the thousandth part
of ancient writings; ‘tis fortune that gives them a shorter or
longer life, according to her favour; and ‘tis permissible to
doubt whether those we have be not the worst, not having
seen the rest. Men do not write histories of things of so little moment: a man must have been general in the conquest
of an empire or a kingdom; he must have won two-and-fifty
set battles, and always the weaker in number, as Caesar did:
ten thousand brave fellows and many great captains lost
their lives valiantly in his service, whose names lasted no
longer than their wives and children lived:
“Quos fama obscura recondit.”189
Even those whom we see behave themselves well, three
months or three years after they have departed hence, are
no more mentioned than if they had never been. Whoever
will justly consider, and with due proportion, of what kind
of men and of what sort of actions the glory sustains itself
in the records of history, will find that there are very few actions and very few persons of our times who can there pretend any right. How many worthy men have we known to
survive their own reputation, who have seen and suffered
the honour and glory most justly acquired in their youth,
extinguished in their own presence? And for three years
of this fantastic and imaginary life we must go and throw
away our true and essential life, and engage ourselves in a
189 “Whom
an obscure reputation conceals.”
382
–AEneid, v. 302.
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perpetual death! The sages propose to themselves a nobler
and more just end in so important an enterprise:
“Recte facti, fecisse merces est: officii fructus, ipsum officium est.”190
It were, peradventure, excusable in a painter or other
artisan, or in a rhetorician or a grammarian, to endeavour to
raise himself a name by his works; but the actions of virtue
are too noble in themselves to seek any other reward than
from their own value, and especially to seek it in the vanity
of human judgments.
If this false opinion, nevertheless, be of such use to the
public as to keep men in their duty; if the people are thereby
stirred up to virtue; if princes are touched to see the world
bless the memory of Trajan, and abominate that of Nero; if
it moves them to see the name of that great beast, once so
terrible and feared, so freely cursed and reviled by every
schoolboy, let it by all means increase, and be as much as
possible nursed up and cherished amongst us; and Plato,
bending his whole endeavour to make his citizens virtuous,
also advises them not to despise the good repute and esteem
of the people; and says it falls out, by a certain Divine inspiration, that even the wicked themselves oft-times, as well by
word as opinion, can rightly distinguish the virtuous from
the wicked. This person and his tutor are both marvellous
and bold artificers everywhere to add divine operations and
revelations where human force is wanting:
“Ut tragici poetae confugiunt ad deum cum explicare argumenti exitum non possunt:”191
and peradventure, for this reason it was that Timon, railing at him, called him the great forger of miracles. Seeing
190 “The reward of a thing well done is to have done it; the fruit of a
good service is the service itself.” –Seneca, Ep., 8.
191 “As tragic poets fly to some god when they cannot explain the
issue of their argument.” –Cicero, De Nat. Deor., i. 20.
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that men, by their insufficiency, cannot pay themselves well
enough with current money, let the counterfeit be superadded. ‘Tis a way that has been practised by all the legislators: and there is no government that has not some mixture
either of ceremonial vanity or of false opinion, that serves
for a curb to keep the people in their duty. ‘Tis for this
that most of them have their originals and beginnings fabulous, and enriched with supernatural mysteries; ‘tis this
that has given credit to bastard religions, and caused them
to be countenanced by men of understanding; and for this,
that Numa and Sertorius, to possess their men with a better
opinion of them, fed them with this foppery; one, that the
nymph Egeria, the other that his white hind, brought them
all their counsels from the gods. And the authority that
Numa gave to his laws, under the title of the patronage of
this goddess, Zoroaster, legislator of the Bactrians and Persians, gave to his under the name of the God Oromazis: Trismegistus, legislator of the Egyptians, under that of Mercury;
Xamolxis, legislator of the Scythians, under that of Vesta;
Charondas, legislator of the Chalcidians, under that of Saturn; Minos, legislator of the Candiots, under that of Jupiter;
Lycurgus, legislator of the Lacedaemonians, under that of
Apollo; and Draco and Solon, legislators of the Athenians,
under that of Minerva. And every government has a god at
the head of it; the others falsely, that truly, which Moses set
over the Jews at their departure out of Egypt. The religion
of the Bedouins, as the Sire de Joinville reports, amongst
other things, enjoined a belief that the soul of him amongst
them who died for his prince, went into another body more
happy, more beautiful, and more robust than the former;
by which means they much more willingly ventured their
lives:
“In ferrum mens prona viris, animaeque capaces
Mortis, et ignavum est rediturae parcere vitae.”192
192 “Men’s
minds are prone to the sword, and their souls able to bear
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This is a very comfortable belief, however erroneous. Every
nation has many such examples of its own; but this subject
would require a treatise by itself.
To add one word more to my former discourse, I would
advise the ladies no longer to call that honour which is but
their duty:
“Ut enim consuetudo loquitur, id solum dicitur honestum, quod est populari fama gloriosum;”193
their duty is the mark, their honour but the outward
rind. Neither would I advise them to give this excuse for
payment of their denial: for I presuppose that their intentions, their desire, and will, which are things wherein their
honour is not at all concerned, forasmuch as nothing thereof
appears without, are much better regulated than the effects:
“Qux quia non liceat, non facit, illa facit:”194
The offence, both towards God and in the conscience,
would be as great to desire as to do it; and, besides, they
are actions so private and secret of themselves, as would be
easily enough kept from the knowledge of others, wherein
the honour consists, if they had not another respect to their
duty, and the affection they bear to chastity, for itself. Every woman of honour will much rather choose to lose her
honour than to hurt her conscience.
death; and it is base to spare a life that will be renewed.” –Lucan, i.
461.
193 “As custom puts it, that only is called honest which is
glorious
by the public voice.” –Cicero, De Finibus, ii. 15.
194 “She who only refuses, because ‘tis forbidden, consents.” –Ovid,
Amor., ii. 4, 4.
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OF PRESUMPTION
is another sort of glory, which is the having too
T
good an opinion of our own worth. ‘Tis an inconsiderate affection with which we flatter ourselves, and that repHERE
resents us to ourselves other than we truly are: like the passion of love, that lends beauties and graces to the object,
and makes those who are caught by it, with a depraved and
corrupt judgment, consider the thing which they love other
and more perfect than it is.
I would not, nevertheless, for fear of failing on this side,
that a man should not know himself aright, or think himself
less than he is; the judgment ought in all things to maintain
its rights; ‘tis all the reason in the world he should discern in
himself, as well as in others, what truth sets before him; if it
be Caesar, let him boldly think himself the greatest captain
in the world. We are nothing but ceremony: ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things: we hold
by the branches, and quit the trunk and the body; we have
taught the ladies to blush when they hear that but named
which they are not at all afraid to do: we dare not call our
members by their right names, yet are not afraid to employ
them in all sorts of debauchery: ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we
obey it: reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and
nobody obeys it. I find myself here fettered by the laws of
ceremony; for it neither permits a man to speak well of himself, nor ill: we will leave her there for this time.
They whom fortune (call it good or ill) has made to,
pass their lives in some eminent degree, may by their public actions manifest what they are; but they whom she has
only employed in the crowd, and of whom nobody will say
a word unless they speak themselves, are to be excused if
they take the boldness to speak of themselves to such as are
interested to know them; by the example of Lucilius:
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“Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
Credebat libris, neque si male cesserat, usquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis,
Votiva pateat veluri descripta tabella
Vita senis;”195
he always committed to paper his actions and thoughts, and
there portrayed himself such as he found himself to be:
“Nec id Rutilio et Scauro citra fidem; aut obtrectationi fuit.”196
I remember, then, that from my infancy there was observed in me I know not what kind of carriage and behaviour, that seemed to relish of pride and arrogance. I will
say this, by the way, that it is not unreasonable to suppose
that we have qualities and inclinations so much our own,
and so incorporate in us, that we have not the means to feel
and recognise them: and of such natural inclinations the
body will retain a certain bent, without our knowledge or
consent. It was an affectation conformable with his beauty
that made Alexander carry his head on one side, and caused
Alcibiades to lisp; Julius Caesar scratched his head with one
finger, which is the fashion of a man full of troublesome
thoughts; and Cicero, as I remember, was wont to pucker
up his nose, a sign of a man given to scoffing; such motions
as these may imperceptibly happen in us. There are other
artificial ones which I meddle not with, as salutations and
congees, by which men acquire, for the most part unjustly,
the reputation of being humble and courteous: one may be
humble out of pride. I am prodigal enough of my hat, especially in summer, and never am so saluted but that I pay
195 “He formerly confided his secret thoughts to his books, as to tried
friends, and for good and evil, resorted not elsewhere: hence it came to
pass, that the old man’s life is there all seen as on a votive tablet.” –
Horace, Sat., ii. I, 30.
196 “Nor was this considered a breach of good faith or a disparagement to Rutilius or Scaurus.” –Tacitus, Agricola, c. I.
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it again from persons of what quality soever, unless they be
in my own service. I should make it my request to some
princes whom I know, that they would be more sparing of
that ceremony, and bestow that courtesy where it is more
due; for being so indiscreetly and indifferently conferred on
all, it is thrown away to no purpose; if it be without respect
of persons, it loses its effect. Amongst irregular deportment,
let us not forget that haughty one of the Emperor Constantius, who always in public held his head upright and stiff,
without bending or turning on either side, not so much as
to look upon those who saluted him on one side, planting
his body in a rigid immovable posture, without suffering it
to yield to the motion of his coach, not daring so much as to
spit, blow his nose, or wipe his face before people. I know
not whether the gestures that were observed in me were of
this first quality, and whether I had really any occult proneness to this vice, as it might well be; and I cannot be responsible for the motions of the body; but as to the motions of
the soul, I must here confess what I think of the matter.
This glory consists of two parts; the one in setting too
great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others. As to the one, methinks these considerations ought, in the first place, to be of some force: I feel
myself importuned by an error of the soul that displeases
me, both as it is unjust, and still more as it is troublesome; I
attempt to correct it, but I cannot root it out; and this is, that
I lessen the just value of things that I possess, and overvalue
things, because they are foreign, absent, and none of mine;
this humour spreads very far. As the prerogative of the authority makes husbands look upon their own wives with a
vicious disdain, and many fathers their children; so I, betwixt two equal merits, should always be swayed against
my own; not so much that the jealousy of my advancement
and bettering troubles my judgment, and hinders me from
satisfying myself, as that of itself possession begets a contempt of what it holds and rules. Foreign governments,
manners, and languages insinuate themselves into my es388
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teem; and I am sensible that Latin allures me by the favour
of its dignity to value it above its due, as it does with children, and the common sort of people: the domestic government, house, horse, of my neighbour, though no better
than my own, I prize above my own, because they are not
mine. Besides that I am very ignorant in my own affairs, I
am struck by the assurance that every one has of himself:
whereas there is scarcely anything that I am sure I know, or
that I dare be responsible to myself that I can do: I have not
my means of doing anything in condition and ready, and
am only instructed therein after the effect; as doubtful of my
own force as I am of another’s. Whence it comes to pass that
if I happen to do anything commendable, I attribute it more
to my fortune than industry, forasmuch as I design everything by chance and in fear. I have this, also, in general, that
of all the opinions antiquity has held of men in gross, I most
willingly embrace and adhere to those that most contemn
and undervalue us, and most push us to naught; methinks,
philosophy has never so fair a game to play as when it falls
upon our vanity and presumption; when it most lays open
our irresolution, weakness, and ignorance. I look upon the
too good opinion that man has of himself to be the nursing
mother of all the most false opinions, both public and private. Those people who ride astride upon the epicycle of
Mercury, who see so far into the heavens, are worse to me
than a tooth-drawer that comes to draw my teeth; for in my
study, the subject of which is man, finding so great a variety of judgments, so profound a labyrinth of difficulties, one
upon another, so great diversity and uncertainty, even in the
school of wisdom itself, you may judge, seeing these people
could not resolve upon the knowledge of themselves and
their own condition, which is continually before their eyes,
and within them, seeing they do not know how that moves
which they themselves move, nor how to give us a description of the springs they themselves govern and make use
of, how can I believe them about the ebbing and flowing of
the Nile? The curiosity of knowing things has been given to
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man for a scourge, says the Holy Scripture.
But to return to what concerns myself; I think it would
be very difficult for any other man to have a meaner opinion of himself; nay, for any other to have a meaner opinion
of me than of myself: I look upon myself as one of the common sort, saving in this, that I have no better an opinion of
myself; guilty of the meanest and most popular defects, but
not disowning or excusing them; and I do not value myself upon any other account than because I know my own
value. If there be any vanity in the case, ‘tis superficially infused into me by the treachery of my complexion, and has
no body that my judgment can discern: I am sprinkled, but
not dyed. For in truth, as to the effects of the mind, there is
no part of me, be it what it will, with which I am satisfied;
and the approbation of others makes me not think the better of myself. My judgment is tender and nice, especially in
things that concern myself.
I ever repudiate myself, and feel myself float and waver by reason of my weakness. I have nothing of my own
that satisfies my judgment. My sight is clear and regular
enough, but, at working, it is apt to dazzle; as I most manifestly find in poetry: I love it infinitely, and am able to give
a tolerable judgment of other men’s works; but, in good
earnest, when I apply myself to it, I play the child, and am
not able to endure myself. A man may play the fool in everything else, but not in poetry;
“Mediocribus esse poetis
Non dii, non homines, non concessere columnae.”197
I would to God this sentence was written over the doors
of all our printers, to forbid the entrance of so many
rhymesters!
197 “Neither men, nor gods, nor the pillars (on which the poets offered their writings) permit mediocrity in poets.” –Horace, De Arte
Poet., 372.
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“Verum
Nihil securius est malo poetae.”198
Why have not we such people?199 Dionysius the father valued himself upon nothing so much as his poetry; at the
Olympic games, with chariots surpassing all the others in
magnificence, he sent also poets and musicians to present
his verses, with tent and pavilions royally gilt and hung
with tapestry. When his verses came to be recited, the excellence of the delivery at first attracted the attention of the
people; but when they afterwards came to poise the meanness of the composition, they first entered into disdain, and
continuing to nettle their judgments, presently proceeded
to fury, and ran to pull down and tear to pieces all his pavilions: and, that his chariots neither performed anything to
purpose in the race, and that the ship which brought back
his people failed of making Sicily, and was by the tempest
driven and wrecked upon the coast of Tarentum, they certainly believed was through the anger of the gods, incensed,
as they themselves were, against the paltry Poem; and even
the mariners who escaped from the wreck seconded this
opinion of the people: to which also the oracle that foretold his death seemed to subscribe; which was, “that Dionysius should be near his end, when he should have overcome
those who were better than himself,” which he interpreted
of the Carthaginians, who surpassed him in power; and
having war with them, often declined the victory, not to incur the sense of this prediction; but he understood it ill; for
the god indicated the time of the advantage, that by favour
and injustice he obtained at Athens over the tragic poets,
better than himself, having caused his own play called the
Leneians to be acted in emulation; presently after which victory he died, and partly of the excessive joy he conceived at
the success.200
198 “The truth is, that nothing is more confident than a bad poet.”
–
Martial, xii. 63, 13.
199 As those about to be mentioned.
200 Diodorus Siculus, xv.
7.–The play, however, was called
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What I find tolerable of mine, is not so really and in itself, but in comparison of other worse things, that I see well
enough received. I envy the happiness of those who can
please and hug themselves in what they do; for ‘tis an easy
thing to be so pleased, because a man extracts that pleasure
from himself, especially if he be constant in his self-conceit.
I know a poet, against whom the intelligent and the ignorant, abroad and at home, both heaven and earth exclaim
that he has but very little notion of it; and yet, for all that,
he has never a whit the worse opinion of himself; but is always falling upon some new piece, always contriving some
new invention, and still persists in his opinion, by so much
the more obstinately, as it only concerns him to maintain it.
My works are so far from pleasing me, that as often as
I review them, they disgust me:
“Cum relego, scripsisse pudet; quia plurima
cerno,
Me quoque, qui feci, judice, digna lini.”201
I have always an idea in my soul, and a sort of disturbed
image which presents me as in a dream with a better form
than that I have made use of; but I cannot catch it nor fit it
to my purpose; and even that idea is but of the meaner sort.
Hence I conclude that the productions of those great and
rich souls of former times are very much beyond the utmost
stretch of my imagination or my wish; their writings do not
only satisfy and fill me, but they astound me, and ravish me
with admiration; I judge of their beauty; I see it, if not to the
utmost, yet so far at least as ‘tis possible for me to aspire.
Whatever I undertake, I owe a sacrifice to the Graces, as
Plutarch says of some one, to conciliate their favour:
the
“Ransom of Hector.” It was the games at which it was acted
that
were called Leneian; they were one of the four Dionysiac festivals.
201 “When I reperuse, I blush at what I have written; I ever see one
passage after another that I, the author, being the judge, consider
should be erased.” –Ovid, De Ponto, i. 5, 15.
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“Si quid enim placet,
Si quid dulce horninum sensibus influit,
Debentur lepidis omnia Gratiis.”202
They abandon me throughout; all I write is rude; polish and
beauty are wanting: I cannot set things off to any advantage; my handling adds nothing to the matter; for which
reason I must have it forcible, very full, and that has lustre of its own. If I pitch upon subjects that are popular and
gay, ‘tis to follow my own inclination, who do not affect a
grave and ceremonious wisdom, as the world does; and to
make myself more sprightly, but not my style more wanton,
which would rather have them grave and severe; at least if
I may call that a style which is an inform and irregular way
of speaking, a popular jargon, a proceeding without definition, division, conclusion, perplexed like that Amafanius
and Rabirius.203 I can neither please nor delight, nor even
tickle my readers: the best story in the world is spoiled by
my handling, and becomes flat; I cannot speak but in rough
earnest, and am totally unprovided of that facility which
I observe in many of my acquaintance, of entertaining the
first comers and keeping a whole company in breath, or taking up the ear of a prince with all sorts of discourse without wearying themselves: they never want matter by reason of the faculty and grace they have in taking hold of the
first thing that starts up, and accommodating it to the humour and capacity of those with whom they have to do.
Princes do not much affect solid discourses, nor I to tell stories. The first and easiest reasons, which are commonly the
best taken, I know not how to employ: I am an ill orator
to the common sort. I am apt of everything to say the extremest that I know. Cicero is of opinion that in treatises of
philosophy the exordium is the hardest part; if this be true,
202 “If anything please that I write, if it infuse delight into men’s
minds, all is due to the charming Graces.”
The verses are probably by some modern poet.
203 Cicero, Acad., i. 2.
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I am wise in sticking to the conclusion. And yet we are to
know how to wind the string to all notes, and the sharpest
is that which is the most seldom touched. There is at least
as much perfection in elevating an empty as in supporting a
weighty thing. A man must sometimes superficially handle
things, and sometimes push them home. I know very well
that most men keep themselves in this lower form from not
conceiving things otherwise than by this outward bark; but
I likewise know that the greatest masters, and Xenophon
and Plato are often seen to stoop to this low and popular
manner of speaking and treating of things, but supporting
it with graces which never fail them.
Farther, my language has nothing in it that is facile and
polished; ‘tis rough, free, and irregular, and as such pleases,
if not my judgment, at all events my inclination, but I very
well perceive that I sometimes give myself too much rein,
and that by endeavouring to avoid art and affectation I fall
into the other inconvenience:
“Brevis esse laboro,
Obscurus fio.”204
Plato says, that the long or the short are not properties,
that either take away or give value to language. Should
I attempt to follow the other more moderate, united, and
regular style, I should never attain to it; and though the
short round periods of Sallust best suit with my humour,
yet I find Caesar much grander and harder to imitate; and
though my inclination would rather prompt me to imitate
Seneca’s way of writing, yet I do nevertheless more esteem
that of Plutarch. Both in doing and speaking I simply follow
my own natural way; whence, peradventure, it falls out that
I am better at speaking than writing. Motion and action animate words, especially in those who lay about them briskly,
as I do, and grow hot. The comportment, the countenance;
204 Endeavouring
to be brief, I become obscure.”
25.
394
–Hor., Art. Poet.,
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the voice, the robe, the place, will set off some things that of
themselves would appear no better than prating. Messalla
complains in Tacitus of the straitness of some garments in
his time, and of the fashion of the benches where the orators were to declaim, that were a disadvantage to their eloquence.
My French tongue is corrupted, both in the pronunciation and otherwise, by the barbarism of my country. I never
saw a man who was a native of any of the provinces on this
side of the kingdom who had not a twang of his place of
birth, and that was not offensive to ears that were purely
French. And yet it is not that I am so perfect in my Perigordin: for I can no more speak it than High Dutch, nor do
I much care. ‘Tis a language (as the rest about me on every side, of Poitou, Xaintonge, Angoumousin, Limousin,
Auvergne), a poor, drawling, scurvy language. There is,
indeed, above us towards the mountains a sort of Gascon
spoken, that I am mightily taken with: blunt, brief, significant, and in truth a more manly and military language than
any other I am acquainted with, as sinewy, powerful, and
pertinent as the French is graceful, neat, and luxuriant.
As to the Latin, which was given me for my mother
tongue, I have by discontinuance lost the use of speaking
it, and, indeed, of writing it too, wherein I formerly had a
particular reputation, by which you may see how inconsiderable I am on that side.
Beauty is a thing of great recommendation in the correspondence amongst men; ‘tis the first means of acquiring
the favour and good liking of one another, and no man is
so barbarous and morose as not to perceive himself in some
sort struck with its attraction. The body has a great share
in our being, has an eminent place there, and therefore its
structure and composition are of very just consideration.
They who go about to disunite and separate our two principal parts from one another are to blame; we must, on the
contrary, reunite and rejoin them. We must command the
soul not to withdraw and entertain itself apart, not to de395
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spise and abandon the body (neither can she do it but by
some apish counterfeit), but to unite herself close to it, to
embrace, cherish, assist, govern, and advise it, and to bring
it back and set it into the true way when it wanders; in sum,
to espouse and be a husband to it, so that their effects may
not appear to be diverse and contrary, but uniform and concurring. Christians have a particular instruction concerning
this connection, for they know that the Divine justice embraces this society and juncture of body and soul, even to
the making the body capable of eternal rewards; and that
God has an eye to the whole man’s ways, and wills that he
receive entire chastisement or reward according to his demerits or merits. The sect of the Peripatetics, of all sects
the most sociable, attribute to wisdom this sole care equally
to provide for the good of these two associate parts: and
the other sects, in not sufficiently applying themselves to
the consideration of this mixture, show themselves to be
divided, one for the body and the other for the soul, with
equal error, and to have lost sight of their subject, which is
Man, and their guide, which they generally confess to be
Nature. The first distinction that ever was amongst men,
and the first consideration that gave some pre-eminence
over others, ‘tis likely was the advantage of beauty:
“Agros divisere atque dedere
Pro facie cujusque, et viribus ingenioque;
Nam facies multum valuit, viresque vigebant.”205
Now I am of something lower than the middle stature, a
defect that not only borders upon deformity, but carries
withal a great deal of inconvenience along with it, especially for those who are in office and command; for the authority which a graceful presence and a majestic mien beget
205 “They distributed and conferred the lands to every man according to his beauty and strength and understanding, for beauty was
much esteemed and strength was in favour.” –Lucretius, V. 1109.
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is wanting. C. Marius did not willingly enlist any soldiers
who were not six feet high. The Courtier has, indeed, reason to desire a moderate stature in the gentlemen he is setting forth, rather than any other, and to reject all strangeness
that should make him be pointed at. But if I were to choose
whether this medium must be rather below than above the
common standard, I would not have it so in a soldier. Little men, says Aristotle, are pretty, but not handsome; and
greatness of soul is discovered in a great body, as beauty is
in a conspicuous stature: the Ethiopians and Indians, says
he, in choosing their kings and magistrates, had regard to
the beauty and stature of their persons. They had reason; for
it creates respect in those who follow them, and is a terror
to the enemy, to see a leader of a brave and goodly stature
march at the head of a battalion:
“Ipse inter primos praestanti corpore Turnus
Vertitur arma, tenens, et toto vertice supra
est.”206
Our holy and heavenly king, of whom every circumstance is
most carefully and with the greatest religion and reverence
to be observed, has not himself rejected bodily recommendation,
“Speciosus forma prae filiis hominum.”207
And Plato, together with temperance and fortitude, requires beauty in the conservators of his republic. It would
vex you that a man should apply himself to you amongst
your servants to inquire where Monsieur is, and that you
should only have the remainder of the compliment of the
hat that is made to your barber or your secretary; as it happened to poor Philopoemen, who arriving the first of all his
company at an inn where he was expected, the hostess, who
206 “In the first rank marches Turnus, brandishing his weapon, taller
by a head than all the rest.” –Virgil, AEneid, vii. 783.
207 “He is fairer than the children of men.”
–Psalm xiv. 3.
397
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knew him not, and saw him an unsightly fellow, employed
him to go help her maids a little to draw water, and make
a fire against Philopoemen’s coming; the gentlemen of his
train arriving presently after, and surprised to see him busy
in this fine employment, for he failed not to obey his landlady’s command, asked him what he was doing there: “I
am,” said he, “paying the penalty of my ugliness.” The
other beauties belong to women; the beauty of stature is the
only beauty of men. Where there is a contemptible stature,
neither the largeness and roundness of the forehead, nor
the whiteness and sweetness of the eyes, nor the moderate proportion of the nose, nor the littleness of the ears and
mouth, nor the evenness and whiteness of the teeth, nor the
thickness of a well-set brown beard, shining like the husk
of a chestnut, nor curled hair, nor the just proportion of the
head, nor a fresh complexion, nor a pleasing air of a face,
nor a body without any offensive scent, nor the just proportion of limbs, can make a handsome man. I am, as to the
rest, strong and well knit; my face is not puffed, but full,
and my complexion betwixt jovial and melancholic, moderately sanguine and hot,
“Unde rigent setis mihi crura, et pectora villis;”208
my health vigorous and sprightly, even to a well advanced
age, and rarely troubled with sickness. Such I was, for I
do not now make any account of myself, now that I am engaged in the avenues of old age, being already past forty:
“Minutatim vires et robur adultum
Frangit, et in partem pejorem liquitur aetas:”209
208 “Whence ‘tis my legs and breast bristle with hair.”
–Martial, ii.
36, 5.
209 “Time by degrees breaks our strength and makes us grow
feeble. –“Lucretius, ii. 1131.
398
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what shall be from this time forward, will be but a halfbeing, and no more me: I every day escape and steal away
from myself:
“Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes.”210
Agility and address I never had, and yet am the son
of a very active and sprightly father, who continued to be
so to an extreme old age. I have scarce known any man of
his condition, his equal in all bodily exercises, as I have seldom met with any who have not excelled me, except in running, at which I was pretty good. In music or singing, for
which I have a very unfit voice, or to play on any sort of instrument, they could never teach me anything. In dancing,
tennis, or wrestling, I could never arrive to more than an ordinary pitch; in swimming, fencing, vaulting, and leaping,
to none at all. My hands are so clumsy that I cannot even
write so as to read it myself, so that I had rather do what I
have scribbled over again, than take upon me the trouble to
make it out. I do not read much better than I write, and feel
that I weary my auditors otherwise (I am) not a bad clerk. I
cannot decently fold up a letter, nor could ever make a pen,
or carve at table worth a pin, nor saddle a horse, nor carry
a hawk and fly her, nor hunt the dogs, nor lure a hawk, nor
speak to a horse. In fine, my bodily qualities are very well
suited to those of my soul; there is nothing sprightly, only
a full and firm vigour: I am patient enough of labour and
pains, but it is only when I go voluntary to work, and only
so long as my own desire prompts me to it:
“Molliter austerum studio fallente laborem.”211
otherwise, if I am not allured with some pleasure, or have
other guide than my own pure and free inclination, I am
210 “Of the fleeting years each steals something from me.”
Horace, Ep., ii. 2.
211 “Study softly beguiling severe labour.” –Horace, Sat., ii. 2, 12.
399
–
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good for nothing: for I am of a humour that, life and health
excepted, there is nothing for which I will bite my nails, and
that I will purchase at the price of torment of mind and constraint:
“Tanti mihi non sit opaci
Omnis arena Tagi, quodque in mare volvitur aurum.”212
Extremely idle, extremely given up to my own inclination
both by nature and art, I would as willingly lend a man my
blood as my pains. I have a soul free and entirely its own,
and accustomed to guide itself after its own fashion; having
hitherto never had either master or governor imposed upon
me: I have walked as far as I would, and at the pace that best
pleased myself; this is it that has rendered me unfit for the
service of others, and has made me of no use to any one but
myself.
Nor was there any need of forcing my heavy and lazy
disposition; for being born to such a fortune as I had reason
to be contented with (a reason, nevertheless, that a thousand others of my acquaintance would have rather made
use of for a plank upon which to pass over in search of
higher fortune, to tumult and disquiet), and with as much
intelligence as I required, I sought for no more, and also got
no more:
“Non agimur tumidis velis Aquilone secundo,
Non tamen adversis aetatem ducimus Austris
Viribus, ingenio, specie, virtute, loco, re,
Extremi primorum, extremis usque priores.”213
212 “I would not buy rich Tagus sands so dear, nor all the gold that
lies in the sea.” –Juvenal, Sat., iii. 54.
213 “The northern wind does not agitate our sails; nor Auster trouble
our course with storms. In strength, talent, figure, virtue, honour,
wealth, we are short of the foremost, but before the last.” –Horace,
Ep., ii. 2, 201.
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I had only need of what was sufficient to content me: which
nevertheless is a government of soul, to take it right, equally
difficult in all sorts of conditions, and that, of custom, we
see more easily found in want than in abundance: forasmuch, peradventure, as according to the course of our other
passions, the desire of riches is more sharpened by their use
than by the need of them: and the virtue of moderation
more rare than that of patience; and I never had anything
to desire, but happily to enjoy the estate that God by His
bounty had put into my hands. I have never known anything of trouble, and have had little to do in anything but
the management of my own affairs: or, if I have, it has been
upon condition to do it at my own leisure and after my own
method; committed to my trust by such as had a confidence
in me, who did not importune me, and who knew my humour; for good horsemen will make shift to get service out
of a rusty and broken-winded jade.
Even my infancy was trained up after a gentle and free
manner, and exempt from any rigorous subjection. All this
has helped me to a complexion delicate and incapable of
solicitude, even to that degree that I love to have my losses
and the disorders wherein I am concerned, concealed from
me. In the account of my expenses, I put down what my
negligence costs me in feeding and maintaining it;
“Haec nempe supersunt,
Quae dominum fallunt, quae prosunt furibus.”214
I love not to know what I have, that I may be less sensible of
my loss; I entreat those who serve me, where affection and
integrity are absent, to deceive me with something like a decent appearance. For want of constancy enough to support
the shock of adverse accidents to which we are subject, and
of patience seriously to apply myself to the management of
214 “That overplus, which the owner knows not of, but which benefits the thieves” –Horace, Ep., i. 645
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my affairs, I nourish as much as I can this in myself, wholly
leaving all to fortune “to take all things at the worst, and to
resolve to bear that worst with temper and patience”; that is
the only thing I aim at, and to which I apply my whole meditation. In a danger, I do not so much consider how I shall
escape it, as of how little importance it is, whether I escape
it or no: should I be left dead upon the place, what matter?
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them, if they will not apply themselves to me.
I have no great art to evade, escape from or force fortune,
and by prudence to guide and incline things to my own
bias. I have still less patience to undergo the troublesome
and painful care therein required; and the most uneasy condition for me is to be suspended on urgent occasions, and
to be agitated betwixt hope and fear.
Deliberation, even in things of lightest moment, is very
troublesome to me; and I find my mind more put to it to undergo the various tumblings and tossings of doubt and consultation, than to set up its rest and to acquiesce in whatever
shall happen after the die is thrown. Few passions break my
sleep, but of deliberations, the least will do it. As in roads,
I preferably avoid those that are sloping and slippery, and
put myself into the beaten track how dirty or deep soever,
where I can fall no lower, and there seek my safety: so I
love misfortunes that are purely so, that do not torment and
tease me with the uncertainty of their growing better; but
that at the first push plunge me directly into the worst that
can be expected
“Dubia plus torquent mala.”215
In events I carry myself like a man; in conduct, like a
child. The fear of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself.
The game is not worth the candle. The covetous man fares
worse with his passion than the poor, and the jealous man
215 “Doubtful
ills plague us worst.”
29.
402
–Seneca, Agamemnon, iii. 1,
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than the cuckold; and a man ofttimes loses more by defending his vineyard than if he gave it up. The lowest walk is
the safest; ‘tis the seat of constancy; you have there need of
no one but yourself; ‘tis there founded and wholly stands
upon its own basis. Has not this example of a gentleman
very well known, some air of philosophy in it? He married, being well advanced in years, having spent his youth
in good fellowship, a great talker and a great jeerer, calling to mind how much the subject of cuckoldry had given
him occasion to talk and scoff at others. To prevent them
from paying him in his own coin, he married a wife from
a place where any one finds what he wants for his money:
“Good morrow, strumpet”; “Good morrow, cuckold”; and
there was not anything wherewith he more commonly and
openly entertained those who came to see him than with
this design of his, by which he stopped the private chattering of mockers, and blunted all the point from this reproach.
As to ambition, which is neighbour, or rather daughter,
to presumption, fortune, to advance me, must have come
and taken me by the hand; for to trouble myself for an uncertain hope, and to have submitted myself to all the difficulties that accompany those who endeavour to bring themselves into credit in the beginning of their progress, I could
never have done it:
“Spem pretio non emo.”216
I apply myself to what I see and to what I have in my
hand, and go not very far from the shore,
“Alter remus aquas, alter tibi radat arenas:”217
and besides, a man rarely arrives at these advancements but
in first hazarding what he has of his own; and I am of opin216 “I will not purchase hope with ready money,” (or),
“I do not purchase hope at a price.” -Terence, Adelphi, ii. 3, 11.
217 “One oar plunging into the sea, the other raking the sands.”
Propertius, iii. 3, 23.
403
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ion that if a man have sufficient to maintain him in the condition wherein he was born and brought up, ‘tis a great folly
to hazard that upon the uncertainty of augmenting it. He to
whom fortune has denied whereon to set his foot, and to
settle a quiet and composed way of living, is to be excused
if he venture what he has, because, happen what will, necessity puts him upon shifting for himself:
“Capienda rebus in malis praeceps via est:”218
“Cui sit conditio dulcis sine pulvere palmae:”219
judging rightly enough of my own strength, that it was not
capable of any great matters; and calling to mind the saying of the late Chancellor Olivier, that the French were like
monkeys that swarm up a tree from branch to branch, and
never stop till they come to the highest, and there shew their
breech.
“Turpe est, quod nequeas, capiti committere
pondus,
Et pressum inflexo mox dare terga genu.”220
I should find the best qualities I have useless in this age; the
facility of my manners would have been called weakness
and negligence; my faith and conscience, scrupulosity and
superstition; my liberty and freedom would have been reputed troublesome, inconsiderate, and rash. Ill luck is good
for something. It is good to be born in a very depraved age;
for so, in comparison of others, you shall be reputed virtuous good cheap; he who in our days is but a parricide and a
sacrilegious person is an honest man and a man of honour:
218 “A course is to be taken in bad cases.” (or),
“A desperate case must have a desperate course.” —Seneca,
Agamemnon, ii. 1, 47.
219 “What condition can compare with that where one has gained the
palm without the dust of the course.” –Horace, Ep., i. I, 51.
220 “It is a shame to load the head so that it cannot bear the burthen,
and the knees give way.” –Propertius, iii. 9, 5.
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“Nunc, si depositum non inficiatur amicus,
Si reddat veterem cum tota aerugine follem,
Prodigiosa fides, et Tuscis digna libellis,
Quaeque coronata lustrari debeat agna:”221
and never was time or place wherein princes might propose
to themselves more assured or greater rewards for virtue
and justice. The first who shall make it his business to get
himself into favour and esteem by those ways, I am much
deceived if he do not and by the best title outstrip his competitors: force and violence can do something, but not always all. We see merchants, country justices, and artisans
go cheek by jowl with the best gentry in valour and military
knowledge: they perform honourable actions, both in public engagements and private quarrels; they fight duels, they
defend towns in our present wars; a prince stifles his special recommendation, renown, in this crowd; let him shine
bright in humanity, truth, loyalty, temperance, and especially injustice; marks rare, unknown, and exiled; ‘tis by no
other means but by the sole goodwill of the people that he
can do his business; and no other qualities can attract their
goodwill like those, as being of the greatest utility to them:
“Nil est tam populare, quam bonitas.”222
By this standard I had been great and rare, just as I
find myself now pigmy and vulgar by the standard of some
past ages, wherein, if no other better qualities concurred, it
was ordinary and common to see a man moderate in his revenges, gentle in resenting injuries, religious of his word,
neither double nor supple, nor accommodating his faith to
the will of others, or the turns of the times: I would rather
221 “Now, if a friend does not deny his trust, but restores the old
purse with all its rust; ‘tis a prodigious faith, worthy to be nrolled
in amongst the Tuscan annals, and a crowned lamb should be sacrificed to such exemplary integrity.” –Juvenal, Sat., xiii. 611.
222 “Nothing is so popular as an agreeable manner (goodness).”
–
Cicero, Pro Ligar., c. 12.
405
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see all affairs go to wreck and ruin than falsify my faith to
secure them. For as to this new virtue of feigning and dissimulation, which is now in so great credit, I mortally hate
it; and of all vices find none that evidences so much baseness and meanness of spirit. ‘Tis a cowardly and servile humour to hide and disguise a man’s self under a visor, and
not to dare to show himself what he is; ‘tis by this our servants are trained up to treachery; being brought up to speak
what is not true, they make no conscience of a lie. A generous heart ought not to belie its own thoughts; it will make
itself seen within; all there is good, or at least human. Aristotle reputes it the office of magnanimity openly and professedly to love and hate; to judge and speak with all freedom; and not to value the approbation or dislike of others
in comparison of truth. Apollonius said it was for slaves to
lie, and for freemen to speak truth: ‘tis the chief and fundamental part of virtue; we must love it for itself. He who
speaks truth because he is obliged so to do, and because it
serves him, and who is not afraid to lie when it signifies
nothing to anybody, is not sufficiently true. My soul naturally abominates lying, and hates the very thought of it. I
have an inward shame and a sharp remorse, if sometimes a
lie escapes me: as sometimes it does, being surprised by occasions that allow me no premeditation. A man must not
always tell all, for that were folly: but what a man says
should be what he thinks, otherwise ‘tis knavery. I do not
know what advantage men pretend to by eternally counterfeiting and dissembling, if not never to be believed when
they speak the truth; it may once or twice pass with men;
but to profess the concealing their thought, and to brag, as
some of our princes have done, that they would burn their
shirts if they knew their true intentions, which was a saying of the ancient Metellius of Macedon; and that they who
know not how to dissemble know not how to rule, is to give
warning to all who have anything to do with them, that all
they say is nothing but lying and deceit:
“Quo quis versutior et callidior est, hoc invi406
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sior et suspectior, detracto opinione probitatis:”223
it were a great simplicity in any one to lay any stress
either on the countenance or word of a man who has put
on a resolution to be always another thing without than
he is within, as Tiberius did; and I cannot conceive what
part such persons can have in conversation with men, seeing they produce nothing that is received as true: whoever
is disloyal to truth is the same to falsehood also.
Those of our time who have considered in the establishment of the duty of a prince the good of his affairs only, and
have preferred that to the care of his faith and conscience,
might have something to say to a prince whose affairs fortune had put into such a posture that he might for ever establish them by only once breaking his word: but it will
not go so; they often buy in the same market; they make
more than one peace and enter into more than one treaty
in their lives. Gain tempts to the first breach of faith, and
almost always presents itself, as in all other ill acts, sacrileges, murders, rebellions, treasons, as being undertaken for
some kind of advantage; but this first gain has infinite mischievous consequences, throwing this prince out of all correspondence and negotiation, by this example of infidelity.
Soliman, of the Ottoman race, a race not very solicitous of
keeping their words or compacts, when, in my infancy, he
made his army land at Otranto, being informed that Mercurino de’ Gratinare and the inhabitants of Castro were detained prisoners, after having surrendered the place, contrary to the articles of their capitulation, sent orders to have
them set at liberty, saying, that having other great enterprises in hand in those parts, the disloyalty, though it carried a show of present utility, would for the future bring on
him a disrepute and distrust of infinite prejudice.
223 “By how much any one is more subtle and cunning, by so
much is he hated and suspected, the opinion of his integrity being
withdrawn.” –Cicero, De Off., ii. 9.
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Now, for my part, I had rather be troublesome and indiscreet than a flatterer and a dissembler. I confess that there
may be some mixture of pride and obstinacy in keeping myself so upright and open as I do, without any consideration of others; and methinks I am a little too free, where I
ought least to be so, and that I grow hot by the opposition
of respect; and it may be also, that I suffer myself to follow
the propension of my own nature for want of art; using the
same liberty, speech, and countenance towards great persons, that I bring with me from my own house: I am sensible how much it declines towards incivility and indiscretion but, besides that I am so bred, I have not a wit supple
enough to evade a sudden question, and to escape by some
evasion, nor to feign a truth, nor memory enough to retain it
so feigned; nor, truly, assurance enough to maintain it, and
so play the brave out of weakness. And therefore it is that
I abandon myself to candour, always to speak as I think,
both by complexion and design, leaving the event to fortune. Aristippus was wont to say, that the principal benefit
he had extracted from philosophy was that he spoke freely
and openly to all.
Memory is a faculty of wonderful use, and without
which the judgment can very hardly perform its office: for
my part I have none at all. What any one will propound to
me, he must do it piecemeal, for to answer a speech consisting of several heads I am not able. I could not receive a
commission by word of mouth without a note-book. And
when I have a speech of consequence to make, if it be long,
I am reduced to the miserable necessity of getting by heart
word for word, what I am to say; I should otherwise have
neither method nor assurance, being in fear that my memory would play me a slippery trick. But this way is no less
difficult to me than the other; I must have three hours to
learn three verses. And besides, in a work of a man’s own,
the liberty and authority of altering the order, of changing
a word, incessantly varying the matter, makes it harder to
stick in the memory of the author. The more I mistrust it the
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worse it is; it serves me best by chance; I must solicit it negligently; for if I press it, ‘tis confused, and after it once begins
to stagger, the more I sound it, the more it is perplexed; it
serves me at its own hour, not at mine.
And the same defect I find in my memory, I find also
in several other parts. I fly command, obligation, and constraint; that which I can otherwise naturally and easily do,
if I impose it upon myself by an express and strict injunction, I cannot do it. Even the members of my body, which
have a more particular jurisdiction of their own, sometimes
refuse to obey me, if I enjoin them a necessary service at a
certain hour. This tyrannical and compulsive appointment
baffles them; they shrink up either through fear or spite,
and fall into a trance. Being once in a place where it is
looked upon as barbarous discourtesy not to pledge those
who drink to you, though I had there all liberty allowed me,
I tried to play the good fellow, out of respect to the ladies
who were there, according to the custom of the country; but
there was sport enough for this pressure and preparation,
to force myself contrary to my custom and inclination, so
stopped my throat that I could not swallow one drop, and
was deprived of drinking so much as with my meat; I found
myself gorged, and my, thirst quenched by the quantity of
drink that my imagination had swallowed. This effect is
most manifest in such as have the most vehement and powerful imagination: but it is natural, notwithstanding, and
there is no one who does not in some measure feel it. They
offered an excellent archer, condemned to die, to save his
life, if he would show some notable proof of his art, but he
refused to try, fearing lest the too great contention of his will
should make him shoot wide, and that instead of saving his
life, he should also lose the reputation he had got of being
a good marksman. A man who thinks of something else,
will not fail to take over and over again the same number
and measure of steps, even to an inch, in the place where he
walks; but if he made it his business to measure and count
them, he will find that what he did by nature and accident,
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he cannot so exactly do by design.
My library, which is a fine one among those of the village type, is situated in a corner of my house; if anything
comes into my head that I have a mind to search or to write,
lest I should forget it in but going across the court, I am
fain to commit it to the memory of some other. If I venture
in speaking to digress never so little from my subject, I am
infallibly lost, which is the reason that I keep myself, in discourse, strictly close. I am forced to call the men who serve
me either by the names of their offices or their country; for
names are very hard for me to remember. I can tell indeed
that there are three syllables, that it has a harsh sound, and
that it begins or ends with such a letter; but that’s all; and
if I should live long, I do not doubt but I should forget my
own name, as some others have done. Messala Corvinus
was two years without any trace of memory, which is also
said of Georgius Trapezuntius. For my own interest, I often
meditate what a kind of life theirs was, and if, without this
faculty, I should have enough left to support me with any
manner of ease; and prying narrowly into it, I fear that this
privation, if absolute, destroys all the other functions of the
soul:
“Plenus rimarum sum, hac atque iliac perfluo.”224
It has befallen me more than once to forget the watchword I had three hours before given or received, and to
forget where I had hidden my purse; whatever Cicero is
pleased to say, I help myself to lose what I have a particular care to lock safe up:
“Memoria certe non modo Philosophiam sed
omnis vitae usum, omnesque artes, una maxime
continet.”225
224 “I’m full of chinks, and leak out every way.”
–Ter., Eunuchus,
ii. 2, 23.
225 “It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy, but all
the arts and all that appertain to the use of life.” –Cicero, Acad., ii. 7.
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Memory is the receptacle and case of science: and
therefore mine being so treacherous, if I know little, I cannot much complain. I know, in general, the names of the
arts, and of what they treat, but nothing more. I turn over
books; I do not study them. What I retain I no longer recognise as another’s; ‘tis only what my judgment has made its
advantage of, the discourses and imaginations in which it
has been instructed: the author, place, words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget; and I am so excellent at
forgetting, that I no less forget my own writings and compositions than the rest. I am very often quoted to myself, and
am not aware of it. Whoever should inquire of me where
I had the verses and examples, that I have here huddled
together, would puzzle me to tell him, and yet I have not
borrowed them but from famous and known authors, not
contenting myself that they were rich, if I, moreover, had
them not from rich and honourable hands, where there is
a concurrence of authority with reason. It is no great wonder if my book run the same fortune that other books do, if
my memory lose what I have written as well as what I have
read, and what I give, as well as what I receive.
Besides the defect of memory, I have others which very
much contribute to my ignorance; I have a slow and heavy
wit, the least cloud stops its progress, so that, for example, I never propose to it any never so easy a riddle that
it could find out; there is not the least idle subtlety that will
not gravel me; in games, where wit is required, as chess,
draughts, and the like, I understand no more than the common movements. I have a slow and perplexed apprehension, but what it once apprehends, it apprehends well, for
the time it retains it. My sight is perfect, entire, and discovers at a very great distance, but is soon weary and heavy
at work, which occasions that I cannot read long, but am
forced to have one to read to me. The younger Pliny can
inform such as have not experimented it themselves, how
important an impediment this is to those who devote themselves to this employment.
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There is no so wretched and coarse a soul, wherein
some particular faculty is not seen to shine; no soul so
buried in sloth and ignorance, but it will sally at one end
or another; and how it comes to pass that a man blind and
asleep to everything else, shall be found sprightly, clear, and
excellent in some one particular effect, we are to inquire of
our masters: but the beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things; if not instructed, at
least capable of being so; which I say to accuse my own;
for whether it be through infirmity or negligence (and to
neglect that which lies at our feet, which we have in our
hands, and what nearest concerns the use of life, is far from
my doctrine) there is not a soul in the world so awkward as
mine, and so ignorant of many common things, and such as
a man cannot without shame fail to know. I must give some
examples.
I was born and bred up in the country, and amongst
husbandmen; I have had business and husbandry in my
own hands ever since my predecessors, who were lords of
the estate I now enjoy, left me to succeed them; and yet I
can neither cast accounts, nor reckon my counters: most
of our current money I do not know, nor the difference betwixt one grain and another, either growing or in the barn,
if it be not too apparent, and scarcely can distinguish between the cabbage and lettuce in my garden. I do not so
much as understand the names of the chief instruments of
husbandry, nor the most ordinary elements of agriculture,
which the very children know: much less the mechanic arts,
traffic, merchandise, the variety and nature of fruits, wines,
and viands, nor how to make a hawk fly, nor to physic a
horse or a dog. And, since I must publish my whole shame,
‘tis not above a month ago, that I was trapped in my ignorance of the use of leaven to make bread, or to what end
it was to keep wine in the vat. They conjectured of old at
Athens, an aptitude for the mathematics in him they saw
ingeniously bavin up a burthen of brushwood. In earnest,
they would draw a quite contrary conclusion from me, for
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give me the whole provision and necessaries of a kitchen,
I should starve. By these features of my confession men
may imagine others to my prejudice: but whatever I deliver
myself to be, provided it be such as I really am, I have my
end; neither will I make any excuse for committing to paper such mean and frivolous things as these: the meanness
of the subject compells me to it. They may, if they please,
accuse my project, but not my progress: so it is, that without anybody’s needing to tell me, I sufficiently see of how
little weight and value all this is, and the folly of my design:
‘tis enough that my judgment does not contradict itself, of
which these are the essays.
“Nasutus sis usque licet, sis denique nasus,
Quantum noluerit ferre rogatus Atlas;
Et possis ipsum to deridere Latinum,
Non potes in nugas dicere plura mess,
Ipse ego quam dixi: quid dentem dente juvabit
Rodere? carne opus est, si satur esse velis.
Ne perdas operam; qui se mirantur, in illos
Virus habe; nos haec novimus esse nihil.”226
I am not obliged not to utter absurdities, provided I am not
deceived in them and know them to be such: and to trip
knowingly, is so ordinary with me, that I seldom do it otherwise, and rarely trip by chance. ‘Tis no great matter to
add ridiculous actions to the temerity of my humour, since
I cannot ordinarily help supplying it with those that are vicious.
I was present one day at Barleduc, when King Francis
II., for a memorial of Rene, king of Sicily, was presented
226 “Let your nose be as keen as it will, be all nose, and even a nose
so great that Atlas will refuse to bear it: if asked, Could you even excel
Latinus in scoffing; against my trifles you could say no more than I
myself have said: then to what end contend tooth against tooth? You
must have flesh, if you want to be full; lose not your labour then; cast
your venom upon those that admire themselves; I know already that
these things are worthless.”–Mart., xiii. 2.
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with a portrait he had drawn of himself: why is it not in like
manner lawful for every one to draw himself with a pen, as
he did with a crayon? I will not, therefore, omit this blemish
though very unfit to be published, which is irresolution; a
very great effect and very incommodious in the negotiations
of the affairs of the world; in doubtful enterprises, I know
not which to choose:
“Ne si, ne no, nel cor mi suona intero.”227
I can maintain an opinion, but I cannot choose one. By
reason that in human things, to what sect soever we incline,
many appearances present themselves that confirm us in
it; and the philosopher Chrysippus said, that he would of
Zeno and Cleanthes, his masters, learn their doctrines only;
for, as to proofs and reasons, he should find enough of his
own. Which way soever I turn, I still furnish myself with
causes, and likelihood enough to fix me there; which makes
me detain doubt and the liberty of choosing, till occasion
presses; and then, to confess the truth, I, for the most part,
throw the feather into the wind, as the saying is, and commit myself to the mercy of fortune; a very light inclination
and circumstance carries me along with it.
“Dum in dubio est animus, paulo momento huc
atque
Illuc impellitur.”228
The uncertainty of my judgment is so equally balanced in
most occurrences, that I could willingly refer it to be decided by the chance of a die: and I observe, with great consideration of our human infirmity, the examples that the divine history itself has left us of this custom of referring to
fortune and chance the determination of election in doubtful things:
227 “My
heart does not tell me either yes or no.”–Petrarch.
in a short time it is impelled this way
and that.” –Terence, Andr., i. 6, 32.
228 “While the mind is in doubt,
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“Sors cecidit super Matthiam.”229
Human reason is a two-edged and dangerous sword:
observe in the hands of Socrates, her most intimate and familiar friend, how many several points it has. I am thus
good for nothing but to follow and suffer myself to be easily
carried away with the crowd; I have not confidence enough
in my own strength to take upon me to command and lead;
I am very glad to find the way beaten before me by others.
If I must run the hazard of an uncertain choice, I am rather
willing to have it under such a one as is more confident in
his opinions than I am in mine, whose ground and foundation I find to be very slippery and unsure.
Yet I do not easily change, by reason that I discern the
same weakness in contrary opinions:
“Ipsa consuetudo assentiendi periculosa esse
videtur, et lubrica;”230
especially in political affairs, there is a large field open for
changes and contestation:
“Justa pari premitur veluti cum pondere libra,
Prona, nec hac plus pane sedet, nec surgit ab
illa.”231
Machiavelli’s writings, for example, were solid enough for
the subject, yet were they easy enough to be controverted;
and they who have done so, have left as great a facility of
controverting theirs; there was never wanting in that kind
of argument replies and replies upon replies, and as infinite
a contexture of debates as our wrangling lawyers have extended in favour of long suits:
229 “The
lot fell upon Matthew.” –Acts i. 26.
very custom of assenting seems to be dangerous and
slippery.” –Cicero, Acad., ii. 21.
231 “As a just balance, pressed with equal weight, neither dips nor
rises on either side.” –Tibullus, iv. 41.
230 “The
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“Caedimur et totidem plagis consumimus
hostem;”232
the reasons have little other foundation than experience,
and the variety of human events presenting us with infinite
examples of all sorts of forms. An understanding person
of our times says: That whoever would, in contradiction
to our almanacs, write cold where they say hot, and wet
where they say dry, and always put the contrary to what
they foretell; if he were to lay a wager, he would not care
which side he took, excepting where no uncertainty could
fall out, as to promise excessive heats at Christmas, or extremity of cold at Midsummer. I have the same opinion of
these political controversies; be on which side you will, you
have as fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you
do not proceed so far as to shock principles that are broad
and manifest. And yet, in my conceit, in public affairs, there
is no government so ill, provided it be ancient and has been
constant, that is not better than change and alteration.
Our manners are infinitely corrupt, and wonderfully
incline to the worse; of our laws and customs there are
many that are barbarous and monstrous nevertheless, by
reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the danger of
stirring things, if I could put something under to stop the
wheel, and keep it where it is, I would do it with all my
heart:
“Numquam adeo foedis, adeoque pudendis
Utimur exemplis, ut non pejora supersint.”233
The worst thing I find in our state is instability, and that our
laws, no more than our clothes, cannot settle in any certain
232 “We are slain, and with as many blows kill the enemy” (or),
“It is a fight wherein we exhaust each other by mutual wounds.”
–
Horace, Epist., ii. 2, 97.
233 “The examples we use are not so shameful and foul but that
worse remain behind.” –Juvenal, viii. 183.
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form. It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it: it is very easy to
beget in a people a contempt of ancient observances; never
any man undertook it but he did it; but to establish a better
regimen in the stead of that which a man has overthrown,
many who have attempted it have foundered. I very little consult my prudence in my conduct; I am willing to let
it be guided by the public rule. Happy the people who do
what they are commanded, better than they who command,
without tormenting themselves as to the causes; who suffer themselves gently to roll after the celestial revolution!
Obedience is never pure nor calm in him who reasons and
disputes.
In fine, to return to myself: the only thing by which
I something esteem myself, is that wherein never any man
thought himself to be defective; my recommendation is vulgar, common, and popular; for who ever thought he wanted
sense? It would be a proposition that would imply a contradiction in itself; ‘tis a disease that never is where it is
discerned; ‘tis tenacious and strong, but what the first ray
of the patient’s sight nevertheless pierces through and disperses, as the beams of the sun do thick and obscure mists;
to accuse one’s self would be to excuse in this case, and to
condemn, to absolve. There never was porter or the silliest
girl, that did not think they had sense enough to do their
business. We easily enough confess in others an advantage
of courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty, but an
advantage in judgment we yield to none; and the reasons
that proceed simply from the natural conclusions of others,
we think, if we had but turned our thoughts that way, we
should ourselves have found out as well as they. Knowledge, style, and such parts as we see in others’ works, we
are soon aware of, if they excel our own: but for the simple
products of the understanding, every one thinks he could
have found out the like in himself, and is hardly sensible
of the weight and difficulty, if not (and then with much
ado) in an extreme and incomparable distance. And who417
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ever should be able clearly to discern the height of another’s
judgment, would be also able to raise his own to the same
pitch. So that it is a sort of exercise, from which a man is
to expect very little praise; a kind of composition of small
repute. And, besides, for whom do you write? The learned,
to whom the authority appertains of judging books, know
no other value but that of learning, and allow of no other
proceeding of wit but that of erudition and art: if you have
mistaken one of the Scipios for another, what is all the rest
you have to say worth? Whoever is ignorant of Aristotle,
according to their rule, is in some sort ignorant of himself;
vulgar souls cannot discern the grace and force of a lofty
and delicate style. Now these two sorts of men take up the
world. The third sort into whose hands you fall, of souls
that are regular and strong of themselves, is so rare, that it
justly has neither name nor place amongst us; and ‘tis so
much time lost to aspire unto it, or to endeavour to please
it.
‘Tis commonly said that the justest portion Nature has
given us of her favours is that of sense; for there is no one
who is not contented with his share: is it not reason? whoever should see beyond that, would see beyond his sight. I
think my opinions are good and sound, but who does not
think the same of his own? One of the best proofs I have that
mine are so is the small esteem I have of myself; for had they
not been very well assured, they would easily have suffered
themselves to have been deceived by the peculiar affection
I have to myself, as one that places it almost wholly in myself, and do not let much run out. All that others distribute
amongst an infinite number of friends and acquaintance, to
their glory and grandeur, I dedicate to the repose of my own
mind and to myself; that which escapes thence is not properly by my direction:
“Mihi nempe valere et vivere doctus.”234
234 “To
live and to do well for myself.”
418
–Lucretius, v. 959.
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Now I find my opinions very bold and constant in condemning my own imperfection. And, to say the truth, ‘tis
a subject upon which I exercise my judgment as much as
upon any other. The world looks always opposite; I turn my
sight inwards, and there fix and employ it. I have no other
business but myself, I am eternally meditating upon myself, considering and tasting myself. Other men’s thoughts
are ever wandering abroad, if they will but see it; they are
still going forward:
“Nemo in sese tentat descendere;”235
for my part, I circulate in myself. This capacity of trying the
truth, whatever it be, in myself, and this free humour of not
over easily subjecting my belief, I owe principally to myself; for the strongest and most general imaginations I have
are those that, as a man may say, were born with me; they
are natural and entirely my own. I produced them crude
and simple, with a strong and bold production, but a little
troubled and imperfect; I have since established and fortified them with the authority of others and the sound examples of the ancients, whom I have found of the same judgment: they have given me faster hold, and a more manifest fruition and possession of that I had before embraced.
The reputation that every one pretends to of vivacity and
promptness of wit, I seek in regularity; the glory they pretend to from a striking and signal action, or some particular
excellence, I claim from order, correspondence, and tranquillity of opinions and manners:
“Omnino si quidquam est decorum, nihil est
profecto magis, quam aequabilitas universae vitae, tum singularum actionum, quam conservare non possis, si, aliorum naturam imitans,
omittas tuam.”236
235 “No
236 “If
one thinks of descending into himself.” –Persius, iv. 23.
anything be entirely decorous, nothing certainly can be more
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Here, then, you see to what degree I find myself guilty
of this first part, that I said was the vice of presumption.
As to the second, which consists in not having a sufficient
esteem for others, I know not whether or no I can so well
excuse myself; but whatever comes on’t I am resolved to
speak the truth. And whether, peradventure, it be that the
continual frequentation I have had with the humours of the
ancients, and the idea of those great souls of past ages, put
me out of taste both with others and myself, or that, in truth,
the age we live in produces but very indifferent things, yet
so it is that I see nothing worthy of any great admiration.
Neither, indeed, have I so great an intimacy with many men
as is requisite to make a right judgment of them; and those
with whom my condition makes me the most frequent, are,
for the most part, men who have little care of the culture of
the soul, but that look upon honour as the sum of all blessings, and valour as the height of all perfection.
What I see that is fine in others I very readily commend
and esteem: nay, I often say more in their commendation
than I think they really deserve, and give myself so far leave
to lie, for I cannot invent a false subject: my testimony is
never wanting to my friends in what I conceive deserves
praise, and where a foot is due I am willing to give them a
foot and a half; but to attribute to them qualities that they
have not, I cannot do it, nor openly defend their imperfections. Nay, I frankly give my very enemies their due testimony of honour; my affection alters, my judgment does
not, and I never confound my animosity with other circumstances that are foreign to it; and I am so jealous of the liberty of my judgment that I can very hardly part with it for
any passion whatever. I do myself a greater injury in lying
than I do him of whom I tell a lie. This commendable and
generous custom is observed of the Persian nation, that they
spoke of their mortal enemies and with whom they were at
so than an equability alike in the whole life and in every particular
action; which thou canst not possibly observe if, imitating other men’s
natures, thou layest aside thy own.” –Cicero, De Of., i. 31.
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deadly war, as honourably and justly as their virtues deserved.
I know men enough that have several fine parts; one
wit, another courage, another address, another conscience,
another language: one science, another, another; but a generally great man, and who has all these brave parts together,
or any one of them to such a degree of excellence that we
should admire him or compare him with those we honour of times past, my fortune never brought me acquainted
with; and the greatest I ever knew, I mean for the natural parts of the soul, was Etienne De la Boetie; his was a
full soul indeed, and that had every way a beautiful aspect:
a soul of the old stamp, and that had produced great effects had his fortune been so pleased, having added much
to those great natural parts by learning and study.
But how it comes to pass I know not, and yet it is certainly so, there is as much vanity and weakness of judgment in those who profess the greatest abilities, who take
upon them learned callings and bookish employments as in
any other sort of men whatever; either because more is required and expected from them, and that common defects
are excusable in them, or because the opinion they have of
their own learning makes them more bold to expose and lay
themselves too open, by which they lose and betray themselves. As an artificer more manifests his want of skill in
a rich matter he has in hand, if he disgrace the work by ill
handling and contrary to the rules required, than in a matter
of less value; and men are more displeased at a disproportion in a statue of gold than in one of plaster; so do these
when they advance things that in themselves and in their
place would be good; for they make use of them without
discretion, honouring their memories at the expense of their
understandings, and making themselves ridiculous by honouring Cicero, Galen, Ulpian, and St. Jerome alike.
I willingly fall again into the discourse of the vanity of
our education, the end of which is not to render us good
and wise, but learned, and she has obtained it. She has
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not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and prudence,
but she has imprinted in us their derivation and etymology; we know how to decline Virtue, if we know not how
to love it; if we do not know what prudence is really and
in effect, and by experience, we have it however by jargon
and heart: we are not content to know the extraction, kindred, and alliances of our neighbours; we desire, moreover,
to have them our friends and to establish a correspondence
and intelligence with them; but this education of ours has
taught us definitions, divisions, and partitions of virtue, as
so many surnames and branches of a genealogy, without
any further care of establishing any familiarity or intimacy
betwixt her and us. It has culled out for our initiatory instruction not such books as contain the soundest and truest
opinions, but those that speak the best Greek and Latin, and
by their fine words has instilled into our fancy the vainest
humours of antiquity.
A good education alters the judgment and manners;
as it happened to Polemon, a lewd and debauched young
Greek, who going by chance to hear one of Xenocrates’ lectures, did not only observe the eloquence and learning of
the reader, and not only brought away, the knowledge of
some fine matter, but a more manifest and more solid profit,
which was the sudden change and reformation of his former life. Whoever found such an effect of our discipline?
“Faciasne, quod olim
Mutatus Polemon? ponas insignia morbi
Fasciolas, cubital, focalia; potus ut ille
Dicitur ex collo furtim carpsisse coronas,
Postquam est impransi correptus voce magistri?”237
237 “Will you do what reformed Polemon did of old? will you lay
aside the joys of your disease, your garters, capuchin, muffler, as he
in
his cups is said to have secretly torn off his garlands from his
neck when he heard what that temperate teacher said?” –Horace,
Sat., ii. 3, 253
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That seems to me to be the least contemptible condition of
men, which by its plainness and simplicity is seated in the
lowest degree, and invites us to a more regular course. I
find the rude manners and language of country people commonly better suited to the rule and prescription of true philosophy, than those of our philosophers themselves:
“Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus
est, sapit.”238
The most remarkable men, as I have judged by outward appearance (for to judge of them according to my own
method, I must penetrate a great deal deeper), for soldiers
and military conduct, were the Duc de Guise, who died at
Orleans, and the late Marshal Strozzi; and for men of great
ability and no common virtue, Olivier and De l’Hospital,
Chancellors of France. Poetry, too, in my opinion, has flourished in this age of ours; we have abundance of very good
artificers in the trade: D’Aurat, Beza, Buchanan, L’Hospital,
Montdore, Turnebus; as to the French poets, I believe they
raised their art to the highest pitch to which it can ever arrive; and in those parts of it wherein Ronsard and Du Bellay excel, I find them little inferior to the ancient perfection. Adrian Turnebus knew more, and what he did know,
better than any man of his time, or long before him. The
lives of the last Duke of Alva, and of our Constable de
Montmorency, were both of them great and noble, and that
had many rare resemblances of fortune; but the beauty and
glory of the death of the last, in the sight of Paris and of
his king, in their service, against his nearest relations, at the
head of an army through his conduct victorious, and by a
sudden stroke, in so extreme old age, merits methinks to be
recorded amongst the most remarkable events of our times.
As also the constant goodness, sweetness of manners, and
conscientious facility of Monsieur de la Noue, in so great an
238 “The vulgar are so much the wiser, because they only know what
is needful for them to know.” –Lactantms, Instit. Div., iii. 5.
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injustice of armed parties (the true school of treason, inhumanity, and robbery), wherein he always kept up the reputation of a great and experienced captain.
I have taken a delight to publish in several places the
hopes I have of Marie de Gournay le Jars,239
my adopted daughter; and certainly beloved by me
more than paternally, and enveloped in my retirement and
solitude as one of the best parts of my own being: I have
no longer regard to anything in this world but her. And
if a man may presage from her youth, her soul will one
day be capable of very great things; and amongst others,
of the perfection of that sacred friendship, to which we
do not read that any of her sex could ever yet arrive; the
sincerity and solidity of her manners are already sufficient
for it, and her affection towards me more than superabundant, and such, in short, as that there is nothing more to
be wished, if not that the apprehension she has of my end,
being now five-and-fifty years old, might not so much afflict her. The judgment she made of my first Essays, being
a woman, so young, and in this age, and alone in her own
country; and the famous vehemence wherewith she loved
me, and desired my acquaintance solely from the esteem
she had thence of me, before she ever saw my face, is an
incident very worthy of consideration.
Other virtues have had little or no credit in this age; but
valour is become popular by our civil wars; and in this, we
have souls brave even to perfection, and in so great number
that the choice is impossible to make.
This is all of extraordinary and uncommon grandeur
that has hitherto arrived at my knowledge.
239 She was adopted by him in 1588.
See Leon Feugere’s
Mademoiselle
de Gournay: ‘Etude sur sa Vie et ses Ouvrages’.
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OF GIVING THE LIE
, but some one will say to me, this design of makW
ing a man’s self the subject of his writing, were indeed excusable in rare and famous men, who by their repELL
utation had given others a curiosity to be fully informed of
them. It is most true, I confess and know very well, that
a mechanic will scarce lift his eyes from his work to look
at an ordinary man, whereas a man will forsake his business and his shop to stare at an eminent person when he
comes into a town. It misbecomes any other to give his own
character, but him who has qualities worthy of imitation,
and whose life and opinions may serve for example: Caesar and Xenophon had a just and solid foundation whereon
to found their narrations, the greatness of their own performances; and were to be wished that we had the journals
of Alexander the Great, the commentaries that Augustus,
Cato, Sylla, Brutus, and others left of their actions; of such
persons men love and contemplate the very statues even in
copper and marble. This remonstrance is very true; but it
very little concerns me:
“Non recito cuiquam, nisi amicis, idque coactus;
Non ubivis, coramve quibuslibet, in medio qui
Scripta foro recitant, sunt multi, quique lavantes.”240
I do not here form a statue to erect in the great square of a
city, in a church, or any public place:
“Non equidem hoc studeo, bullatis ut mihi
nugis,
240 “I repeat my poems only to my friends, and when bound to
do so; not before every one and everywhere; there are plenty of
reciters
in the open market-place and at the baths.” –Horace,
sat. i. 4, 73.
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Pagina turgescat...
Secreti loquimur:”241
‘tis for some corner of a library, or to entertain a neighbour,
a kinsman, a friend, who has a mind to renew his acquaintance and familiarity with me in this image of myself. Others have been encouraged to speak of themselves, because
they found the subject worthy and rich; I, on the contrary,
am the bolder, by reason the subject is so poor and sterile
that I cannot be suspected of ostentation. I judge freely of
the actions of others; I give little of my own to judge of,
because they are nothing: I do not find so much good in
myself, that I cannot tell it without blushing.
What contentment would it not be to me to hear any
one thus relate to me the manners, faces, countenances, the
ordinary words and fortunes of my ancestors? how attentively should I listen to it! In earnest, it would be evil nature
to despise so much as the pictures of our friends and predecessors, the fashion of their clothes and arms. I preserve
their writing, seal, and a particular sword they wore, and
have not thrown the long staves my father used to carry in
his hand, out of my closet.
“Paterna vestis, et annulus, tanto charior es posteris, quanto erga parentes major affectus.”242
If my posterity, nevertheless, shall be of another mind,
I shall be avenged on them; for they cannot care less for me
than I shall then do for them. All the traffic that I have in
this with the public is, that I borrow their utensils of writing,
which are more easy and most at hand; and in recompense
241 “I study not to make my pages swell with empty trifles; you and
I are talking in private.” –Persius, Sat., v. 19.
242 “A father’s garment and ring is by so much dearer to his posterity, as there is the greater affection towards parents.” –St. Aug., De
Civat. Dei, i. 13.
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shall, peradventure, keep a pound of butter in the market
from melting in the sun:243
“Ne toga cordyllis, ne penula desit olivis;
Et laxas scombris saepe dabo tunicas;”244
And though nobody should read me, have I wasted time
in entertaining myself so many idle hours in so pleasing
and useful thoughts? In moulding this figure upon myself,
I have been so often constrained to temper and compose
myself in a right posture, that the copy is truly taken, and
has in some sort formed itself; painting myself for others, I
represent myself in a better colouring than my own natural
complexion. I have no more made my book than my book
has made me: ‘tis a book consubstantial with the author, of
a peculiar design, a parcel of my life, and whose business is
not designed for others, as that of all other books is. In giving myself so continual and so exact an account of myself,
have I lost my time? For they who sometimes cursorily survey themselves only, do not so strictly examine themselves,
nor penetrate so deep, as he who makes it his business, his
study, and his employment, who intends a lasting record,
with all his fidelity, and with all his force: The most delicious pleasures digested within, avoid leaving any trace
of themselves, and avoid the sight not only of the people,
but of any other person. How often has this work diverted
me from troublesome thoughts? and all that are frivolous
should be reputed so. Nature has presented us with a large
faculty of entertaining ourselves alone; and often calls us to
it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but
chiefly and mostly to ourselves. That I may habituate my
fancy even to meditate in some method and to some end,
and to keep it from losing itself and roving at random, ‘tis
243 Montaigne semi-seriously speculates on the possibility of his MS.
being used to wrap up butter.
244 “Let not wrappers be wanting to tunny-fish, nor olives; and I shall
supply loose coverings to mackerel.” –Martial, xiii. I, I.
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but to give to body and to record all the little thoughts that
present themselves to it. I give ear to my whimsies, because
I am to record them. It often falls out, that being displeased
at some action that civility and reason will not permit me
openly to reprove, I here disgorge myself, not without design of public instruction: and also these poetical lashes,
“Zon zur l’oeil, ion sur le groin,
Zon zur le dos du Sagoin,”245
imprint themselves better upon paper than upon the flesh.
What if I listen to books a little more attentively than ordinary, since I watch if I can purloin anything that may adorn
or support my own? I have not at all studied to make a
book; but I have in some sort studied because I had made it;
if it be studying to scratch and pinch now one author, and
then another, either by the head or foot, not with any design
to form opinions from them, but to assist, second, and fortify those I already have embraced. But whom shall we believe in the report he makes of himself in so corrupt an age?
considering there are so few, if, any at all, whom we can believe when speaking of others, where there is less interest to
lie. The first thing done in the corruption of manners is banishing truth; for, as Pindar says, to be true is the beginning
of a great virtue, and the first article that Plato requires in
the governor of his Republic. The truth of these days is not
that which really is, but what every man persuades another
man to believe; as we generally give the name of money not
only to pieces of the dust alloy, but even to the false also, if
they will pass. Our nation has long been reproached with
this vice; for Salvianus of Marseilles, who lived in the time
of the Emperor Valentinian, says that lying and forswearing
themselves is with the French not a vice, but a way of speaking. He who would enhance this testimony, might say that
it is now a virtue in them; men form and fashion themselves
245 “A slap on his eye, a slap on his snout, a slap on Sagoin’s
back.” –Marot. Fripelippes, Valet de Marot a Sagoin.
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to it as to an exercise of honour; for dissimulation is one of
the most notable qualities of this age.
I have often considered whence this custom that we so
religiously observe should spring, of being more highly offended with the reproach of a vice so familiar to us than
with any other, and that it should be the highest insult that
can in words be done us to reproach us with a lie. Upon
examination, I find that it is natural most to defend the defects with which we are most tainted. It seems as if by resenting and being moved at the accusation, we in some sort
acquit ourselves of the fault; though we have it in effect,
we condemn it in outward appearance. May it not also be
that this reproach seems to imply cowardice and feebleness
of heart? of which can there be a more manifest sign than
to eat a man’s own words–nay, to lie against a man’s own
knowledge? Lying is a base vice; a vice that one of the ancients portrays in the most odious colours when he says,
“that it is to manifest a contempt of God, and withal a fear
of men.” It is not possible more fully to represent the horror,
baseness, and irregularity of it; for what can a man imagine
more hateful and contemptible than to be a coward towards
men, and valiant against his Maker? Our intelligence being by no other way communicable to one another but by a
particular word, he who falsifies that betrays public society.
‘Tis the only way by which we communicate our thoughts
and wills; ‘tis the interpreter of the soul, and if it deceive
us, we no longer know nor have further tie upon one another; if that deceive us, it breaks all our correspondence,
and dissolves all the ties of government. Certain nations of
the newly discovered Indies (I need not give them names,
seeing they are no more; for, by wonderful and unheardof
example, the desolation of that conquest has extended to
the utter abolition of names and the ancient knowledge of
places) offered to their gods human blood, but only such as
was drawn from the tongue and ears, to expiate for the sin
of lying, as well heard as pronounced. That good fellow of
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Greece246 said that children are amused with toys and men
with words.
As to our diverse usages of giving the lie, and the laws
of honour in that case, and the alteration they have received,
I defer saying what I know of them to another time, and
shall learn, if I can, in the meanwhile, at what time the custom took beginning of so exactly weighing and measuring
words, and of making our honour interested in them; for it
is easy to judge that it was not anciently amongst the Romans and Greeks. And it has often seemed to me strange
to see them rail at and give one another the lie without
any quarrel. Their laws of duty steered some other course
than ours. Caesar is sometimes called thief, and sometimes
drunkard, to his teeth. We see the liberty of invective they
practised upon one another, I mean the greatest chiefs of
war of both nations, where words are only revenged with
words, and do not proceed any farther.
246 Plutarch,
Life of Lysander, c. 4.
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OF LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE
‘TIS USUAL TO see good intentions, if carried on without
moderation, push men on to very vicious effects. In this dispute which has at this time engaged France in a civil war,
the better and the soundest cause no doubt is that which
maintains the ancient religion and government of the kingdom. Nevertheless, amongst the good men of that party (for
I do not speak of those who only make a pretence of it, either
to execute their own particular revenges or to gratify their
avarice, or to conciliate the favour of princes, but of those
who engage in the quarrel out of true zeal to religion and a
holy desire to maintain the peace and government of their
country), of these, I say, we see many whom passion transports beyond the bounds of reason, and sometimes inspires
with counsels that are unjust and violent, and, moreover,
rash.
It is certain that in those first times, when our religion
began to gain authority with the laws, zeal armed many
against all sorts of pagan books, by which the learned suffered an exceeding great loss, a disorder that I conceive to
have done more prejudice to letters than all the flames of
the barbarians. Of this Cornelius Tacitus is a very good testimony; for though the Emperor Tacitus, his kinsman, had, by
express order, furnished all the libraries in the world with
it, nevertheless one entire copy could not escape the curious
examination of those who desired to abolish it for only five
or six idle clauses that were contrary to our belief.
They had also the trick easily to lend undue praises to
all the emperors who made for us, and universally to condemn all the actions of those who were adversaries, as is evidently manifest in the Emperor Julian, surnamed the Apostate,247 who was, in truth, a very great and rare man, a man
247 The character of the Emperor Julian was censured, when Montaigne was at Rome in 1581, by the Master of the Sacred Palace, who,
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in whose soul philosophy was imprinted in the best characters, by which he professed to govern all his actions; and, in
truth, there is no sort of virtue of which he has not left behind him very notable examples: in chastity (of which the
whole of his life gave manifest proof) we read the same of
him that was said of Alexander and Scipio, that being in
the flower of his age, for he was slain by the Parthians at
one-and-thirty, of a great many very beautiful captives, he
would not so much as look upon one. As to his justice, he
took himself the pains to hear the parties, and although he
would out of curiosity inquire what religion they were of,
nevertheless, the antipathy he had to ours never gave any
counterpoise to the balance. He made himself several good
laws, and repealed a great part of the subsidies and taxes
levied by his predecessors.
We have two good historians who were eyewitnesses
of his actions: one of whom, Marcellinus, in several places
of his history sharply reproves an edict of his whereby he
interdicted all Christian rhetoricians and grammarians to
keep school or to teach, and says he could wish that act of
his had been buried in silence: it is probable that had he
done any more severe thing against us, he, so affectionate
as he was to our party, would not have passed it over in silence. He was indeed sharp against us, but yet no cruel enemy; for our own people tell this story of him, that one day,
walking about the city of Chalcedon, Maris, bishop of the
place; was so bold as to tell him that he was impious, and
an enemy to Christ, at which, they say, he was no further
moved than to reply, “Go, poor wretch, and lament the loss
of thy eyes,” to which the bishop replied again, “I thank Jesus Christ for taking away my sight, that I may not see thy
impudent visage,” affecting in that, they say, a philosophical patience. But this action of his bears no comparison
however, as Montaigne tells us in his journal (ii. 35), referred it to his
conscience to alter what he should think in bad taste. This
Montaigne did not do, and this chapter supplied Voltaire with the greater
part of the praises he bestowed upon the Emperor. –Leclerc.
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to the cruelty that he is said to have exercised against us.
“He was,” says Eutropius, my other witness, “an enemy to
Christianity, but without putting his hand to blood.” And,
to return to his justice, there is nothing in that whereof he
can be accused, the severity excepted he practised in the
beginning of his reign against those who had followed the
party of Constantius, his predecessor. As to his sobriety, he
lived always a soldier-like life; and observed a diet and routine, like one that prepared and inured himself to the austerities of war. His vigilance was such, that he divided the
night into three or four parts, of which the least was dedicated to sleep; the rest was spent either in visiting the state
of his army and guards in person, or in study; for amongst
other rare qualities, he was very excellent in all sorts of
learning. ‘Tis said of Alexander the Great, that being in bed,
for fear lest sleep should divert him from his thoughts and
studies, he had always a basin set by his bedside, and held
one of his hands out with a ball of copper in it, to the end,
that, beginning to fall asleep, and his fingers leaving their
hold, the ball by falling into the basin, might awake him.
But the other had his soul so bent upon what he had a mind
to do, and so little disturbed with fumes by reason of his
singular abstinence, that he had no need of any such invention. As to his military experience, he was excellent in all
the qualities of a great captain, as it was likely he should,
being almost all his life in a continual exercise of war, and
most of that time with us in France, against the Germans
and Franks: we hardly read of any man who ever saw more
dangers, or who made more frequent proofs of his personal
valour.
His death has something in it parallel with that of
Epaminondas, for he was wounded with an arrow, and
tried to pull it out, and had done so, but that, being edged,
it cut and disabled his hand. He incessantly called out that
they should carry him again into the heat of the battle, to
encourage his soldiers, who very bravely disputed the fight
without him, till night parted the armies. He stood obliged
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to his philosophy for the singular contempt he had for his
life and all human things. He had a firm belief of the immortality of souls.
In matter of religion he was wrong throughout, and
was surnamed the Apostate for having relinquished ours:
nevertheless, the opinion seems to me more probable, that
he had never thoroughly embraced it, but had dissembled
out of obedience to the laws, till he came to the empire. He
was in his own so superstitious, that he was laughed at for
it by those of his own time, of the same opinion, who jeeringly said, that had he got the victory over the Parthians,
he had destroyed the breed of oxen in the world to supply
his sacrifices. He was, moreover, besotted with the art of
divination, and gave authority to all sorts of predictions.
He said, amongst other things at his death, that he was
obliged to the gods, and thanked them, in that they would
not cut him off by surprise, having long before advertised
him of the place and hour of his death, nor by a mean and
unmanly death, more becoming lazy and delicate people;
nor by a death that was languishing, long, and painful; and
that they had thought him worthy to die after that noble
manner, in the progress of his victories, in the flower of his
glory. He had a vision like that of Marcus Brutus, that first
threatened him in Gaul, and afterward appeared to him in
Persia just before his death. These words that some make
him say when he felt himself wounded: “Thou hast overcome, Nazarene”; or as others, “Content thyself, Nazarene”;
would hardly have been omitted, had they been believed,
by my witnesses, who, being present in the army, have set
down to the least motions and words of his end; no more
than certain other miracles that are reported about it.
And to return to my subject, he long nourished, says
Marcellinus, paganism in his heart; but all his army being
Christians, he durst not own it. But in the end, seeing himself strong enough to dare to discover himself, he caused
the temples of the gods to be thrown open, and did his
uttermost to set on foot and to encourage idolatry. Which
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the better to effect, having at Constantinople found the people disunited, and also the prelates of the church divided
amongst themselves, having convened them all before him,
he earnestly admonished them to calm those civil dissensions, and that every one might freely, and without fear,
follow his own religion. Which he the more sedulously solicited, in hope that this licence would augment the schisms
and factions of their division, and hinder the people from
reuniting, and consequently fortifying themselves against
him by their unanimous intelligence and concord; having
experienced by the cruelty of some Christians, that there is
no beast in the world so much to be feared by man as man;
these are very nearly his words.
Wherein this is very worthy of consideration, that the
Emperor Julian made use of the same receipt of liberty of
conscience to inflame the civil dissensions that our kings do
to extinguish them. So that a man may say on one side, that
to give the people the reins to entertain every man his own
opinion, is to scatter and sow division, and, as it were, to
lend a hand to augment it, there being no legal impediment
or restraint to stop or hinder their career; but, on the other
side, a man may also say, that to give the people the reins to
entertain every man his own opinion, is to mollify and appease them by facility and toleration, and to dull the point
which is whetted and made sharper by singularity, novelty,
and difficulty: and I think it is better for the honour of the
devotion of our kings, that not having been able to do what
they would, they have made a show of being willing to do
what they could.
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CHAPTER XX
THAT WE TASTE NOTHING PURE
The feebleness of our condition is such that things cannot, in their natural simplicity and purity, fall into our use;
the elements that we enjoy are changed, and so ‘tis with
metals; and gold must be debased with some other matter
to fit it for our service. Neither has virtue, so simple as that
which Aristo, Pyrrho, and also the Stoics, made the end of
life; nor the Cyrenaic and Aristippic pleasure, been without
mixture useful to it. Of the pleasure and goods that we enjoy, there is not one exempt from some mixture of ill and
inconvenience:
“Medio de fonte leporum,
Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis fioribus angat.”248
Our extremest pleasure has some sort of groaning and complaining in it; would you not say that it is dying of pain?
Nay, when we frame the image of it in its full excellence, we
stuff it with sickly and painful epithets and qualities, languor, softness, feebleness, faintness, ‘morbidezza’: a great
testimony of their consanguinity and consubstantiality. The
most profound joy has more of severity than gaiety, in it.
The highest and fullest contentment offers more of the grave
than of the merry:
‘Ipsa felicitas, se nisi temperat, premit.”249
Pleasure chews and grinds us; according to the old
Greek verse, which says that the gods sell us all the goods
they give us; that is to say, that they give us nothing pure
248 “From the very fountain of our pleasure, something rises that is
bitter, which even in flowers destroys.” –Lucretius, iv. 1130.
249 “Even felicity, unless it moderate itself, oppresses?”
–Seneca,
Ep. 74.
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and perfect, and that we do not purchase but at the price of
some evil.
Labour and pleasure, very unlike in nature, associate, nevertheless, by I know not what natural conjunction. Socrates says, that some god tried to mix in one mass
and to confound pain and pleasure, but not being able to
do it; he bethought him at least to couple them by the
tail. Metrodorus said, that in sorrow there is some mixture
of pleasure. I know not whether or no he intended anything else by that saying; but for my part, I am of opinion
that there is design, consent, and complacency in giving a
man’s self up to melancholy. I say, that besides ambition,
which may also have a stroke in the business, there is some
shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy. Are there not
some constitutions that feed upon it?
“Est quaedam flere voluptas;”250
and one Attalus in Seneca says, that the memory of our lost
friends is as grateful to us, as bitterness in wine, when too
old, is to the palate:
“Minister vetuli, puer, Falerni
Inger’ mi calices amariores”251
and as apples that have a sweet tartness.
Nature discovers this confusion to us; painters hold
that the same motions and grimaces of the face that serve
for weeping; serve for laughter too; and indeed, before the
one or the other be finished, do but observe the painter’s
manner of handling, and you will be in doubt to which of
the two the design tends; and the extreme of laughter does
at last bring tears:
250 “‘Tis
a certain kind of pleasure to weep.”
–Ovid, Trist., iv.
3,
27.
251 “Boy, when you pour out old Falernian wine, the bitterest put into
my bowl.” –Catullus, xxvii. I.
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“Nullum sine auctoramento malum est.”252
When I imagine man abounding with all the conveniences that are to be desired (let us put the case that all
his members were always seized with a pleasure like that of
generation, in its most excessive height) I feel him melting
under the weight of his delight, and see him utterly unable
to support so pure, so continual, and so universal a pleasure. Indeed, he is running away whilst he is there, and
naturally makes haste to escape, as from a place where he
cannot stand firm, and where he is afraid of sinking.
When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that
the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice; and I am
afraid that Plato, in his purest virtue (I, who am as sincere
and loyal a lover of virtue of that stamp as any other whatever), if he had listened and laid his ear close to himself and
he did so no doubt–would have heard some jarring note of
human mixture, but faint and only perceptible to himself.
Man is wholly and throughout but patch and motley. Even
the laws of justice themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice; insomuch that Plato says, they undertake
to cut off the hydra’s head, who pretend to clear the law of
all inconveniences:
“Omne magnum exemplum habet aliquid ex
iniquo, quod contra singulos utilitate publics
rependitur,”253
says Tacitus.
It is likewise true, that for the use of life and the service of public commerce, there may be some excesses in the
purity and perspicacity of our minds; that penetrating light
has in it too much of subtlety and curiosity: we must a little stupefy and blunt them to render them more obedient to
252 “No
evil is without its compensation.” –Seneca, Ep., 69.
great example has in it some mixture of injustice, which
recompenses the wrong done to particular men by the public utility.”
-Annals, xiv. 44.
253 “Every
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example and practice, and a little veil and obscure them, the
better to proportion them to this dark and earthly life. And
therefore common and less speculative souls are found to
be more proper for and more successful in the management
of affairs, and the elevated and exquisite opinions of philosophy unfit for business. This sharp vivacity of soul, and
the supple and restless volubility attending it, disturb our
negotiations. We are to manage human enterprises more
superficially and roughly, and leave a great part to fortune;
it is not necessary to examine affairs with so much subtlety
and so deep: a man loses himself in the consideration of
many contrary lustres, and so many various forms:
“Volutantibus res inter se pugnantes, obtorpuerunt... animi.”254
‘Tis what the ancients say of Simonides, that by reason
his imagination suggested to him, upon the question King
Hiero had put to him255 (to answer which he had had many
days for thought), several sharp and subtle considerations,
whilst he doubted which was the most likely, he totally despaired of the truth.
He who dives into and in his inquisition comprehends
all circumstances and consequences, hinders his election:
a little engine well handled is sufficient for executions,
whether of less or greater weight. The best managers are
those who can worst give account how they are so; while
the greatest talkers, for the most part, do nothing to purpose; I know one of this sort of men, and a most excellent
discourser upon all sorts of good husbandry, who has miserably let a hundred thousand livres yearly revenue slip
through his hands; I know another who talks, who better
advises than any man of his counsel, and there is not in the
world a fairer show of soul and understanding than he has;
254 “Whilst they considered of things so indifferent in themselves,
they were astonished, and knew not what to do.” –Livy, xxxii. 20.
255 What God was.–Cicero, De Nat.
Deor., i. 22.
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nevertheless, when he comes to the test, his servants find
him quite another thing; not to make any mention of his
misfortunes.
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AGAINST IDLENESS
Emperor Vespasian, being sick of the disease whereof
T
he died, did not for all that neglect to inquire after the
state of the empire, and even in bed continually despatched
HE
very many affairs of great consequence; for which, being reproved by his physician, as a thing prejudicial to his health,
“An emperor,” said he, “must die standing.” A fine saying, in my opinion, and worthy a great prince. The Emperor Adrian since made use of the same words, and kings
should be often put in mind of them, to make them know
that the great office conferred upon them of the command
of so many men, is not an employment of ease; and that
there is nothing can so justly disgust a subject, and make
him unwilling to expose himself to labour and danger for
the service of his prince, than to see him, in the meantime,
devoted to his ease and frivolous amusement, and to be solicitous of his preservation who so much neglects that of his
people.
Whoever will take upon him to maintain that ‘tis better
for a prince to carry on his wars by others, than in his own
person, fortune will furnish him with examples enough of
those whose lieutenants have brought great enterprises to
a happy issue, and of those also whose presence has done
more hurt than good: but no virtuous and valiant prince
can with patience endure so dishonourable councils. Under
colour of saving his head, like the statue of a saint, for the
happiness of his kingdom, they degrade him from and declare him incapable of his office, which is military throughout: I know one256 who had much rather be beaten, than to
sleep whilst another fights for him; and who never without
jealousy heard of any brave thing done even by his own officers in his absence. And Soliman I. said, with very good
reason, in my opinion, that victories obtained without the
256 Probably
Henry IV.
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master were never complete. Much more would he have
said that that master ought to blush for shame, to pretend to
any share in the honour, having contributed nothing to the
work, but his voice and thought; nor even so much as these,
considering that in such work as that, the direction and
command that deserve honour are only such as are given
upon the spot, and in the heat of the business. No pilot
performs his office by standing still. The princes of the Ottoman family, the chiefest in the world in military fortune,
have warmly embraced this opinion, and Bajazet II., with
his son, who swerved from it, spending their time in science
and other retired employments, gave great blows to their
empire; and Amurath III., now reigning, following their example, begins to find the same. Was it not Edward III., King
of England, who said this of our Charles V.: “There never
was king who so seldom put on his armour, and yet never
king who gave me so much to do.” He had reason to think it
strange, as an effect of chance more than of reason. And let
those seek out some other to join with them than me, who
will reckon the Kings of Castile and Portugal amongst the
warlike and magnanimous conquerors, because at the distance of twelve hundred leagues from their lazy abode, by
the conduct of their captains, they made themselves masters
of both Indies; of which it has to be known if they would
have had even the courage to go and in person enjoy them.
The Emperor Julian said yet further, that a philosopher
and a brave man ought not so much as to breathe; that is to
say, not to allow any more to bodily necessities than what
we cannot refuse; keeping the soul and body still intent and
busy about honourable, great, and virtuous things. He was
ashamed if any one in public saw him spit, or sweat (which
is said by some, also, of the Lacedaemonian young men,
and which Xenophon says of the Persian), forasmuch as
he conceived that exercise, continual labour, and sobriety,
ought to have dried up all those superfluities. What Seneca
says will not be unfit for this place; which is, that the ancient
Romans kept their youth always standing, and taught them
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nothing that they were to learn sitting.
‘Tis a generous desire to wish to die usefully and like a
man, but the effect lies not so much in our resolution as in
our good fortune; a thousand have proposed to themselves
in battle, either to overcome or to die, who have failed both
in the one and the other, wounds and imprisonment crossing their design and compelling them to live against their
will. There are diseases that overthrow even our desires,
and our knowledge. Fortune ought not to second the vanity of the Roman legions, who bound themselves by oath,
either to overcome or die:
“Victor, Marce Fabi, revertar ex acie: si fallo,
Jovem patrem,
Gradivumque Martem aliosque iratos invoco
deos.”257
The Portuguese say that in a certain place of their conquest
of the Indies, they met with soldiers who had condemned
themselves, with horrible execrations, to enter into no other
composition but either to cause themselves to be slain, or to
remain victorious; and had their heads and beards shaved
in token of this vow. ‘Tis to much purpose for us to hazard ourselves and to be obstinate: it seems as if blows
avoided those who present themselves too briskly to them,
and do not willingly fall upon those who too willingly seek
them, and so defeat them of their design. Such there have
been, who, after having tried all ways, not having been
able with all their endeavour to obtain the favour of dying
by the hand of the enemy, have been constrained, to make
good their resolution of bringing home the honour of victory or of losing their lives, to kill themselves even in the
heat of battle. Of which there are other examples, but this
is one: Philistus, general of the naval army of Dionysius
257 “I will return, Marcus Fabius, a conqueror, from the fight: and
if I fail, I invoke Father Jove, Mars Gradivus, and the other angry
gods.” –Livy, ii. 45.
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the younger against the Syracusans, presented them battle
which was sharply disputed, their forces being equal: in this
engagement, he had the better at the first, through his own
valour: but the Syracusans drawing about his gally to environ him, after having done great things in his own person
to disengage himself and hoping for no relief, with his own
hand he took away the life he had so liberally, and in vain,
exposed to the enemy.
Mule Moloch, king of Fez, who lately won against Sebastian, king of Portugal, the battle so famous for the death
of three kings, and for the transmission of that great kingdom to the crown of Castile, was extremely sick when the
Portuguese entered in an hostile manner into his dominions; and from that day forward grew worse and worse,
still drawing nearer to and foreseeing his end; yet never did
man better employ his own sufficiency more vigorously and
bravely than he did upon this occasion. He found himself
too weak to undergo the pomp and ceremony of entering.
into his camp, which after their manner is very magnificent,
and therefore resigned that honour to his brother; but this
was all of the office of a general that he resigned; all the rest
of greatest utility and necessity he most, exactly and gloriously performed in his own person; his body lying upon a
couch, but his judgment and courage upright and firm to
his last gasp, and in some sort beyond it. He might have
wasted his enemy, indiscreetly advanced into his dominions, without striking a blow; and it was a very unhappy
occurrence, that for want of a little life or somebody to substitute in the conduct of this war and the affairs of a troubled
state, he was compelled to seek a doubtful and bloody victory, having another by a better and surer way already in
his hands. Notwithstanding, he wonderfully managed the
continuance of his sickness in consuming the enemy, and
in drawing them far from the assistance of the navy and the
ports they had on the coast of Africa, even till the last day of
his life, which he designedly reserved for this great battle.
He arranged his battalions in a circular form, environing the
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Portuguese army on every side, which round circle coming
to close in and to draw up close together, not only hindered
them in the conflict (which was very sharp through the valour of the young invading king), considering that they had
every way to present a front, but prevented their flight after
the defeat, so that finding all passages possessed and shut
up by the enemy, they were constrained to close up together
again:
“Coacerventurque non solum caede, sed etiam
fuga,”258
and there they were slain in heaps upon one another, leaving to the conqueror a very bloody and entire victory. Dying, he caused himself to be carried and hurried from place
to place where most need was, and passing along the files,
encouraged the captains and soldiers one after another; but
a corner of his main battalions being broken, he was not to
be held from mounting on horseback with his sword in his
hand; he did his utmost to break from those about him, and
to rush into the thickest of the battle, they all the while withholding him, some by the bridle, some by his robe, and others by his stirrups. This last effort totally overwhelmed the
little life he had left; they again laid him upon his bed; but
coming to himself, and starting as it were out of his swoon,
all other faculties failing, to give his people notice that they
were to conceal his death the most necessary command he
had then to give, that his soldiers might not be discouraged
(with the news) he expired with his finger upon his mouth,
the ordinary sign of keeping silence. Who ever lived so long
and so far into death? whoever died so erect, or more like a
man?
The most extreme degree of courageously treating
death, and the most natural, is to look upon it not only without astonishment but without care, continuing the wonted
course of life even into it, as Cato did, who entertained himself in study, and went to sleep, having a violent and bloody
258 “Piled
up not only in slaughter but in flight.”
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death in his heart, and the weapon in his hand with which
he was resolved to despatch himself.
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CHAPTER XXII
OF POSTING
have been none of the least able in this exercise, which
II give
is proper for men of my pitch, well-knit and short; but
it over; it shakes us too much to continue it long. I
was at this moment reading, that King Cyrus, the better to
have news brought him from all parts of the empire, which
was of a vast extent, caused it to be tried how far a horse
could go in a day without baiting, and at that distance appointed men, whose business it was to have horses always
in readiness, to mount those who were despatched to him;
and some say, that this swift way of posting is equal to that
of the flight of cranes.
Caesar says, that Lucius Vibullius Rufus, being in great
haste to carry intelligence to Pompey, rode night and day,
still taking fresh horses for the greater diligence and speed;
and he himself, as Suetonius reports, travelled a hundred
miles a day in a hired coach; but he was a furious courier,
for where the rivers stopped his way he passed them by
swimming, without turning out of his way to look for either bridge or ford. Tiberius Nero, going to see his brother
Drusus, who was sick in Germany, travelled two hundred
miles in four-and-twenty hours, having three coaches. In
the war of the Romans against King Antiochus, T. Sempronius Gracchus, says Livy:
“Per dispositos equos prope incredibili celeritate
ab Amphissa tertio die Pellam pervenit.”259
And it appears that they were established posts, and
not horses purposely laid in upon this occasion.
Cecina’s invention to send back news to his family was
much more quick, for he took swallows along with him
259 “By pre-arranged relays of horses, he, with an almost incredible
speed, rode in three days from Amphissa to Pella.” –Livy, xxxvii. 7.
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from home, and turned them out towards their nests when
he would send back any news; setting a mark of some
colour upon them to signify his meaning, according to what
he and his people had before agreed upon.
At the theatre at Rome masters of families carried pigeons in their bosoms to which they tied letters when they
had a mind to send any orders to their people at home; and
the pigeons were trained up to bring back an answer. D.
Brutus made use of the same device when besieged in Modena, and others elsewhere have done the same.
In Peru they rode post upon men, who took them upon
their shoulders in a certain kind of litters made for that purpose, and ran with such agility that, in their full speed, the
first couriers transferred their load to the second without
making any stop.
I understand that the Wallachians, the grand Signior’s
couriers, perform wonderful journeys, by reason they have
liberty to dismount the first person they meet upon the
road, giving him their own tired horses; and that to preserve themselves from being weary, they gird themselves
straight about the middle with a broad girdle; but I could
never find any benefit from this.
448
CHAPTER XXIII
OF ILL MEANS EMPLOYED TO A GOOD END
is wonderful relation and correspondence in this
T
universal government of the works of nature, which
very well makes it appear that it is neither accidental nor
HERE
carried on by divers masters. The diseases and conditions
of our bodies are, in like manner, manifest in states and governments; kingdoms and republics are founded, flourish,
and decay with age as we do. We are subject to a repletion
of humours, useless and dangerous: whether of those that
are good (for even those the physicians are afraid of; and
seeing we have nothing in us that is stable, they say that a
too brisk and vigorous perfection of health must be abated
by art, lest our nature, unable to rest in any certain condition, and not having whither to rise to mend itself, make too
sudden and too disorderly a retreat; and therefore prescribe
wrestlers to purge and bleed, to qualify that superabundant
health), or else a repletion of evil humours, which is the ordinary cause of sickness. States are very often sick of the like
repletion, and various sorts of purgations have commonly
been applied. Some times a great multitude of families are
turned out to clear the country, who seek out new abodes
elsewhere and encroach upon others. After this manner our
ancient Franks came from the remotest part of Germany to
seize upon Gaul, and to drive thence the first inhabitants;
so was that infinite deluge of men made up who came into
Italy under the conduct of Brennus and others; so the Goths
and Vandals, and also the people who now possess Greece,
left their native country to go settle elsewhere, where they
might have more room; and there are scarce two or three little corners in the world that have not felt the effect of such
removals. The Romans by this means erected their colonies;
for, perceiving their city to grow immeasurably populous,
they eased it of the most unnecessary people, and sent them
to inhabit and cultivate the lands conquered by them; sometimes also they purposely maintained wars with some of
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their enemies, not only to keep their own men in action, for
fear lest idleness, the mother of corruption, should bring
upon them some worse inconvenience:
“Et patimur longae pacis mala; saevior armis
Luxuria incumbit.”260
but also to serve for a blood-letting to their Republic, and a
little to evaporate the too vehement heat of their youth, to
prune and clear the branches from the stock too luxuriant in
wood; and to this end it was that they maintained so long a
war with Carthage.
In the treaty of Bretigny, Edward III., king of England,
would not, in the general peace he then made with our king,
comprehend the controversy about the Duchy of Brittany,
that he might have a place wherein to discharge himself
of his soldiers, and that the vast number of English he had
brought over to serve him in his expedition here might not
return back into England. And this also was one reason why
our King Philip consented to send his son John upon a foreign expedition, that he might take along with him a great
number of hot young men who were then in his pay.
There–are many in our times who talk at this rate, wishing that this hot emotion that is now amongst us might discharge itself in some neighbouring war, for fear lest all the
peccant humours that now reign in this politic body of ours
may diffuse themselves farther, keep the fever still in the
height, and at last cause our total ruin; and, in truth, a foreign is much more supportable than a civil war, but I do not
believe that God will favour so unjust a design as to offend
and quarrel with others for our own advantage:
“Nil mihi tam valde placeat, Rhamnusia virgo,
Quod temere invitis suscipiatur heris.”261
260 “And we suffer the ills of a long peace; luxury is more pernicious
than war.” –Juvenal, vi. 291.
261 “Rhamnusian virgin, let nothing ever so greatly please me which
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And yet the weakness of our condition often pushes us
upon the necessity of making use of ill means to a good end.
Lycurgus, the most perfect legislator that ever was, virtuous
and invented this very unjust practice of making the helots,
who were their slaves, drunk by force, to the end that the
Spartans, seeing them so lost and buried in wine, might abhor the excess of this vice. And yet those were still more
to blame who of old gave leave that criminals, to what sort
of death soever condemned, should be cut up alive by the
physicians, that they might make a true discovery of our inward parts, and build their art upon greater certainty; for, if
we must run into excesses, it is more excusable to do it for
the health of the soul than that of the body; as the Romans
trained up the people to valour and the contempt of dangers and death by those furious spectacles of gladiators and
fencers, who, having to fight it out to the last, cut, mangled,
and killed one another in their presence:
“Quid vesani aliud sibi vult ars impia ludi,
Quid mortes juvenum, quid sanguine pasta
voluptas?”262
and this custom continued till the Emperor Theodosius’
time:
“Arripe dilatam tua, dux, in tempora famam,
Quodque patris superest, successor laudis habeto
Nullus in urbe cadat, cujus sit poena voluptas...
Jam solis contenta feris, infamis arena
Nulla cruentatis homicidia ludat in armis.”263
is taken without justice from the unwilling owners” –Catullus, lxviii.
77.
262 “What other end does the impious art of the gladiators propose
to itself, what the slaughter of young men, what pleasure fed with
blood.” –Prudentius, Contra Symmachum, ii. 643.
263 “Prince, take the honours delayed for thy reign, and be successor
to thy fathers; henceforth let none at Rome be slain for sport. Let
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It was, in truth, a wonderful example, and of great advantage for the training up the people, to see every day before
their eyes a hundred; two hundred, nay, a thousand couples
of men armed against one another, cut one another to pieces
with so great a constancy of courage, that they were never
heard to utter so much as one syllable of weakness or commiseration; never seen to turn their backs, nor so much as
to make one cowardly step to evade a blow, but rather exposed their necks to the adversary’s sword and presented
themselves to receive the stroke; and many of them, when
wounded to death, have sent to ask the spectators if they
were satisfied with their behaviour, before they lay down
to die upon the place. It was not enough for them to fight
and to die bravely, but cheerfully too; insomuch that they
were hissed and cursed if they made any hesitation about
receiving their death. The very girls themselves set them
on:
“Consurgit ad ictus,
Et, quoties victor ferrum jugulo inserit, illa
Delicias ait esse suas, pectusque jacentis
Virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi.”264
The first Romans only condemned criminals to this example: but they afterwards employed innocent slaves in the
work, and even freemen too, who sold themselves to this
purpose, nay, moreover, senators and knights of Rome, and
also women:
“Nunc caput in mortem vendunt, et funus
arena,
beasts’ blood stain the infamous arena, and no more homicides be
there acted.’ –Prudentius, Contra Symmachum, ii. 643.
264 “The modest virgin is so delighted with the sport, that she applauds the blow, and when the victor bathes his sword in his fellow’s
throat, she says it is her pleasure, and with turned thumb orders him
to rip up the bosom of the prostrate victim.” –Prudentius, Contra
Symmachum, ii. 617.
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Atque hostem sibi quisque parat, cum bella quiescunt.”265
“Hos inter fremitus novosque lusus...
Stat sexus rudis insciusque ferri,
Et pugnas capit improbus viriles;”266
which I should think strange and incredible, if we were
not accustomed every day to see in our own wars many
thousands of men of other nations, for money to stake their
blood and their lives in quarrels wherein they have no manner of concern.
265 “They sell themselves to death and the circus, and, since the wars
are ceased, each for himself a foe prepares.” –Manilius, Astron., iv.
225.
266 “Amidst these tumults and new sports, the tender sex, unskilled
in arms, immodestly engaged in manly fights.” –Statius, Sylv., i. 6,
51.
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CHAPTER XXIV
OF THE ROMAN GRANDEUR
will only say a word or two of this infinite argument,
Igreatness
to show the simplicity of those who compare the pitiful
of these times with that of Rome. In the seventh
book of Cicero’s Familiar Epistles (and let the grammarians
put out that surname of familiar if they please, for in truth
it is not very suitable; and they who, instead of familiar,
have substituted “ad Familiares,” may gather something to
justify them for so doing out of what Suetonius says in the
Life of Caesar, that there was a volume of letters of his “ad
Familiares ”) there is one directed to Caesar, then in Gaul,
wherein Cicero repeats these words, which were in the end
of another letter that Caesar had written to him: “As to what
concerns Marcus Furius, whom you have recommended to
me, I will make him king of Gaul, and if you would have me
advance any other friend of yours send him to me.” It was
no new thing for a simple citizen of Rome, as Caesar then
was, to dispose of kingdoms, for he took away that of King
Deiotarus from him to give it to a gentleman of the city of
Pergamus, called Mithridates; and they who wrote his Life
record several cities sold by him; and Suetonius says, that
he had once from King Ptolemy three millions and six hundred thousand crowns, which was very like selling him his
own kingdom:
“Tot Galatae, tot Pontus, tot Lydia, nummis.”267
Marcus Antonius said, that the greatness of the people of Rome was not so much seen in what they took, as
in what they gave; and, indeed, some ages before Antonius, they had dethroned one amongst the rest with so wonderful authority, that in all the Roman history I have not
267 “So much for Galatia, so much for Pontus,
Lydia.”–Claudius in Eutrop., i. 203.
454
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observed anything that more denotes the height of their
power. Antiochus possessed all Egypt, and was, moreover, ready to conquer Cyprus and other appendages of
that empire: when being upon the progress of his victories, C. Popilius came to him from the Senate, and at their
first meeting refused to take him by the hand, till he had
first read his letters, which after the king had read, and
told him he would consider of them, Popilius made a circle about him with his cane, saying:–“Return me an answer,
that I may carry it back to the Senate, before thou stirrest
out of this circle.” Antiochus, astonished at the roughness
of so positive a command, after a little pause, replied, “I will
obey the Senate’s command.” Then Popilius saluted him as
friend of the Roman people. To have renounced claim to
so great a monarchy, and a course of such successful fortune, from the effects of three lines in writing! Truly he had
reason, as he afterwards did, to send the Senate word by
his ambassadors, that he had received their order with the
same respect as if it had come from the immortal gods.
All the kingdoms that Augustus gained by the right of
war, he either restored to those who had lost them or presented them to strangers. And Tacitus, in reference to this,
speaking of Cogidunus, king of England, gives us, by a marvellous touch, an instance of that infinite power: the Romans, says he, were from all antiquity accustomed to leave
the kings they had subdued in possession of their kingdoms
under their authority.
“Ut haberent instruments servitutis et reges.”268
‘Tis probable that Solyman, whom we have seen make
a gift of Hungary and other principalities, had therein more
respect to this consideration than to that he was wont to
allege, viz., that he was glutted and overcharged with so
many monarchies and so much dominion, as his own valour and that of his ancestors had acquired.
268 “That
they might have even kings to be their slaves.”
13.
455
–Livy, xlv.
CHAPTER XXV
NOT TO COUNTERFEIT BEING SICK
is an epigram in Martial, and one of the very good
T
ones–for he has of all sorts–where he pleasantly tells
the story of Caelius, who, to avoid making his court to some
HERE
great men of Rome, to wait their rising, and to attend them
abroad, pretended to have the gout; and the better to colour
this anointed his legs, and had them lapped up in a great
many swathings, and perfectly counterfeited both the gesture and countenance of a gouty person; till in the end, Fortune did him the kindness to make him one indeed:
“Quantum curs potest et ars doloris
Desiit fingere Caelius podagram.”269
I think I have read somewhere in Appian a story like this,
of one who to escape the proscriptions of the triumvirs of
Rome, and the better to be concealed from the discovery of
those who pursued him, having hidden himself in a disguise, would yet add this invention, to counterfeit having
but one eye; but when he came to have a little more liberty,
and went to take off the plaster he had a great while worn
over his eye, he found he had totally lost the sight of it indeed, and that it was absolutely gone. ‘Tis possible that the
action of sight was dulled from having been so long without exercise, and that the optic power was wholly retired
into the other eye: for we evidently perceive that the eye we
keep shut sends some part of its virtue to its fellow, so that it
will swell and grow bigger; and so inaction, with the heat of
ligatures and, plasters, might very well have brought some
gouty humour upon the counterfeiter in Martial.
Reading in Froissart the vow of a troop of young English gentlemen, to keep their left eyes bound up till they
269 “How great is the power of counterfeiting pain: Caelius has
ceased to feign the gout; he has got it.” –Martial, Ep., vii. 39, 8.
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had arrived in France and performed some notable exploit
upon us, I have often been tickled with this thought, that
it might have befallen them as it did those others, and they
might have returned with but an eye a-piece to their mistresses, for whose sakes they had made this ridiculous vow.
Mothers have reason to rebuke their children when
they counterfeit having but one eye, squinting, lameness,
or any other personal defect; for, besides that their bodies
being then so tender, may be subject to take an ill bent, fortune, I know not how, sometimes seems to delight in taking
us at our word; and I have heard several examples related
of people who have become really sick, by only feigning to
be so. I have always used, whether on horseback or on foot,
to carry a stick in my hand, and even to affect doing it with
an elegant air; many have threatened that this fancy would
one day be turned into necessity: if so, I should be the first
of my family to have the gout.
But let us a little lengthen this chapter, and add another anecdote concerning blindness. Pliny reports of one
who, dreaming he was blind, found himself so indeed in the
morning without any preceding infirmity in his eyes. The
force of imagination might assist in this case, as I have said
elsewhere, and Pliny seems to be of the same opinion; but it
is more likely that the motions which the body felt within,
of which physicians, if they please, may find out the cause,
taking away his sight, were the occasion of his dream.
Let us add another story, not very improper for this
subject, which Seneca relates in one of his epistles: “You
know,” says he, writing to Lucilius, “that Harpaste, my
wife’s fool, is thrown upon me as an hereditary charge, for I
have naturally an aversion to those monsters; and if I have
a mind to laugh at a fool, I need not seek him far; I can
laugh at myself. This fool has suddenly lost her sight: I tell
you a strange, but a very true thing she is not sensible that
she is blind, but eternally importunes her keeper to take her
abroad, because she says the house is dark. That what we
laugh at in her, I pray you to believe, happens to every one
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of us: no one knows himself to be avaricious or grasping;
and, again, the blind call for a guide, while we stray of our
own accord. I am not ambitious, we say; but a man cannot
live otherwise at Rome; I am not wasteful, but the city requires a great outlay; ‘tis not my fault if I am choleric–if I
have not yet established any certain course of life: ‘tis the
fault of youth. Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves;
‘tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and the mere fact that
we do not perceive ourselves to be sick, renders us more
hard to be cured. If we do not betimes begin to see to ourselves, when shall we have provided for so many wounds
and evils wherewith we abound? And yet we have a most
sweet and charming medicine in philosophy; for of all the
rest we are sensible of no pleasure till after the cure: this
pleases and heals at once.” This is what Seneca says, that
has carried me from my subject, but there is advantage in
the change.
458
CHAPTER XXVI
OF THUMBS
reports, that amongst certain barbarian kings
T
their manner was, when they would make a firm obligation, to join their right hands close to one another, and
ACITUS
intertwist their thumbs; and when, by force of straining the
blood, it appeared in the ends, they lightly pricked them
with some sharp instrument, and mutually sucked them.
Physicians say that the thumbs are the master fingers
of the hand, and that their Latin etymology is derived from
“pollere.” The Greeks called them ‘Avtixeip’, as who should
say, another hand. And it seems that the Latins also sometimes take it in this sense for the whole hand:
“Sed nec vocibus excitata blandis,
Molli pollici nec rogata, surgit.”270
It was at Rome a signification of favour to depress and turn
in the thumbs:
“Fautor utroque
ludum:”271
tuum
laudabit
pollice
and of disfavour to elevate and thrust them outward:
“Converso pollice vulgi,
Quemlibet occidunt populariter.”272
The Romans exempted from war all such as were maimed
in the thumbs, as having no more sufficient strength to hold
270 “Neither to be excited by soft words or by the thumb.”
–Mart.,
xii. 98, 8.
271 “Thy patron will applaud thy sport with both thumbs” –Horace.
272 “The populace, with inverted thumbs, kill all that come before
them.” –Juvenal, iii. 36
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their weapons. Augustus confiscated the estate of a Roman knight who had maliciously cut off the thumbs of two
young children he had, to excuse them from going into the
armies; and, before him, the Senate, in the time of the Italic
war, had condemned Caius Vatienus to perpetual imprisonment, and confiscated all his goods, for having purposely
cut off the thumb of his left hand, to exempt himself from
that expedition. Some one, I have forgotten who, having
won a naval battle, cut off the thumbs of all his vanquished
enemies, to render them incapable of fighting and of handling the oar. The Athenians also caused the thumbs of the
AEginatans to be cut off, to deprive them of the superiority
in the art of navigation.
In Lacedaemon, pedagogues chastised their scholars
by biting their thumbs.
460
CHAPTER XXVII
COWARDICE THE MOTHER OF CRUELTY
often heard it said that cowardice is the mother of
Iandhave
cruelty; and I have found by experience that malicious
inhuman animosity and fierceness are usually accompanied with feminine weakness. I have seen the most cruel
people, and upon frivolous occasions, apt to cry. Alexander,
the tyrant of Pheres, durst not be a spectator of tragedies in
the theatre, for fear lest his citizens should see him weep
at the misfortunes of Hecuba and Andromache, who himself without pity caused so many people every day to be
murdered. Is it not meanness of spirit that renders them so
pliable to all extremities? Valour, whose effect is only to be
exercised against resistance–
“Nec nisi bellantis gaudet cervice juvenci”273
stops when it sees the enemy at its mercy; but pusillanimity, to say that it was also in the game, not having dared to
meddle in the first act of danger, takes as its part the second, of blood and massacre. The murders in victories are
commonly performed by the rascality and hangers-on of an
army, and that which causes so many unheard of cruelties
in domestic wars is, that this canaille makes war in imbruing itself up to the elbows in blood, and ripping up a body
that lies prostrate at its feet, having no sense of any other
valour:
“Et lupus, et turpes instant morientibus ursi,
Et quaecunque minor nobilitate fera est:”274
273 “Nor delights in killing a bull unless he resists.”
–Claudius, Ep.
ad Hadrianum, v. 39.
274 “Wolves and the filthy bears, and all the baser beasts, fall upon
the dying.” –Ovid, Trist., iii. 5, 35.
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like cowardly dogs, that in the house worry and tear the
skins of wild beasts, they durst not come near in the field.
What is it in these times of ours that makes our quarrels
mortal; and that, whereas our fathers had some degrees of
revenge, we now begin with the last in ours, and at the first
meeting nothing is to be said but, kill? What is this but cowardice?
Every one is sensible that there is more bravery and
disdain in subduing an enemy, than in cutting, his throat;
and in making him yield, than in putting him to the sword:
besides that the appetite of revenge is better satisfied and
pleased because its only aim is to make itself felt: And this is
the reason why we do not fall upon a beast or a stone when
they hurt us, because they are not capable of being sensible
of our revenge; and to kill a man is to save him from the
injury and offence we intend him. And as Bias cried out
to a wicked fellow, “I know that sooner or later thou wilt
have thy reward, but I am afraid I shall not see it”;275 and
pitied the Orchomenians that the penitence of Lyciscus for
the treason committed against them, came at a season when
there was no one remaining alive of those who had been interested in the offence, and whom the pleasure of this penitence should affect: so revenge is to be pitied, when the
person on whom it is executed is deprived of means of suffering under it: for as the avenger will look on to enjoy the
pleasure of his revenge, so the person on whom he takes
revenge should be a spectator too, to be afflicted and to
repent. “He will repent it,” we say, and because we have
given him a pistol-shot through the head, do we imagine
he will repent? On the contrary, if we but observe, we shall
find, that he makes mouths at us in falling, and is so far from
penitency, that he does not so much as repine at us; and we
do him the kindest office of life, which is to make him die
insensibly, and soon: we are afterwards to hide ourselves,
and to shift and fly from the officers of justice, who pursue
us, whilst he is at rest. Killing is good to frustrate an of275 Plutarch,
on the Delay in Divine Justice, c. 2.
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fence to come, not to revenge one that is already past; and
more an act of fear than of bravery; of precaution than of
courage; of defence than of enterprise. It is manifest that by
it we lose both the true end of revenge and the care of our
reputation; we are afraid, if he lives he will do us another
injury as great as the first; ‘tis not out of animosity to him,
but care of thyself, that thou gettest rid of him.
In the kingdom of Narsingah this expedient would be
useless to us, where not only soldiers, but tradesmen also,
end their differences by the sword. The king never denies
the field to any who wish to fight; and when they are persons of quality; he looks on, rewarding the victor with a
chain of gold,–for which any one who pleases may fight
with him again, so that, by having come off from one combat, he has engaged himself in many.
If we thought by virtue to be always masters of our enemies, and to triumph over them at pleasure, we should be
sorry they should escape from us as they do, by dying: but
we have a mind to conquer, more with safety than honour,
and, in our quarrel, more pursue the end than the glory.
Asnius Pollio, who, as being a worthy man, was the
less to be excused, committed a like, error, when, having
written a libel against Plancus, he forbore to publish it till
he was dead; which is to bite one’s thumb at a blind man, to
rail at one who is deaf, to wound a man who has no feeling,
rather than to run the hazard of his resentment. And it was
also said of him that it was only for hobgoblins to wrestle
with the dead.
He who stays to see the author die, whose writings he
intends to question, what does he say but that he is weak in
his aggressiveness? It was told to Aristotle that some one
had spoken ill of him: “Let him do more,” said he; “let him
whip me too, provided I am not there.”
Our fathers contented themselves with revenging an
insult with the lie, the lie with a box of the ear, and so
forward; they were valiant enough not to fear their adversaries, living and provoked we tremble for fear so soon as
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we see them on foot. And that this is so, does not our noble
practice of these days, equally to prosecute to death both
him that has offended us and him we have offended, make
it out? ‘Tis also a kind of cowardice that has introduced the
custom of having seconds, thirds, and fourths in our duels;
they were formerly duels; they are now skirmishes, rencontres, and battles. Solitude was, doubtless, terrible to those
who were the first inventors of this practice:
“Quum in se cuique minimum fiduciae esset,”
for naturally any company whatever is consolatory in danger. Third persons were formerly called in to prevent disorder and foul play only, and to be witness of the fortune of
the combat; but now they have brought it to this pass that
the witnesses themselves engage; whoever is invited cannot
handsomely stand by as an idle spectator, for fear of being
suspected either of want of affection or of courage. Besides
the injustice and unworthiness of such an action, of engaging other strength and valour in the protection of your honour than your own, I conceive it a disadvantage to a brave
man, and who wholly relies upon himself, to shuffle his fortune with that of a second; every one runs hazard enough
himself without hazarding for another, and has enough to
do to assure himself in his own valour for the defence of his
life, without intrusting a thing so dear in a third man’s hand.
For, if it be not expressly agreed upon before to the contrary, ‘tis a combined party of all four, and if your second be
killed, you have two to deal withal, with good reason; and
to say that it is foul play, it is so indeed, as it is, well armed,
to attack a man who has but the hilt of a broken sword in
his hand, or, clear and untouched, a man who is desperately wounded: but if these be advantages you have got by
fighting, you may make use of them without reproach. The
disparity and inequality are only weighed and considered
from the condition of the combatants when they began; as
to the rest, you must take your chance: and though you had,
alone, three enemies upon you at once, your two companions being killed, you have no more wrong done you, than
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I should do in a battle, by running a man through whom
I should see engaged with one of our own men, with the
like advantage. The nature of society will have it so that
where there is troop against troop, as where our Duke of Orleans challenged Henry, king of England, a hundred against
a hundred; three hundred against as many, as the Argians
against the Lacedaemonians; three to three, as the Horatii
against the Curiatii, the multitude on either side is considered but as one single man: the hazard, wherever there is
company, being confused and mixed.
I have a domestic interest in this discourse; for my
brother, the Sieur de Mattecoulom, was at Rome asked by
a gentleman with whom he had no great acquaintance, and
who was a defendant challenged by another, to be his second; in this duel he found himself matched with a gentleman much better known to him. (I would fain have an
explanation of these rules of honour, which so often shock
and confound those of reason.) After having despatched
his man, seeing the two principals still on foot and sound,
he ran in to disengage his friend. What could he do less?
should he have stood still, and if chance would have ordered it so, have seen him he was come thither to defend
killed before his face? what he had hitherto done helped
not the business; the quarrel was yet undecided. The courtesy that you can, and certainly ought to shew to your enemy, when you have reduced him to an ill condition and
have a great advantage over him, I do not see how you can
do it, where the interest of another is concerned, where you
are only called in as an assistant, and the quarrel is none of
yours: he could neither be just nor courteous, at the hazard
of him he was there to serve. And he was therefore enlarged
from the prisons of Italy at the speedy and solemn request
of our king. Indiscreet nation! we are not content to make
our vices and follies known to the world by report only, but
we must go into foreign countries, there to show them what
fools we are. Put three Frenchmen into the deserts of Libya,
they will not live a month together without fighting; so that
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you would say this peregrination were a thing purposely
designed to give foreigners the pleasure of our tragedies,
and, for the most part, to such as rejoice and laugh at our
miseries. We go into Italy to learn to fence, and exercise the
art at the expense of our lives before we have learned it; and
yet, by the rule of discipline, we should put the theory before the practice. We discover ourselves to be but learners:
“Primitae juvenum miserae, bellique futuri
Dura rudimenta.”276
I know that fencing is an art very useful to its end (in a
duel betwixt two princes, cousin-germans, in Spain, the
elder, says Livy, by his skill and dexterity in arms, easily
overcoming the greater and more awkward strength of the
younger), and of which the knowledge, as I experimentally
know, has inspired some with courage above their natural
measure; but this is not properly valour, because it supports
itself upon address, and is founded upon something besides itself. The honour of combat consists in the jealousy
of courage, and not of skill; and therefore I have known
a friend of mine, famed as a great master in this exercise,
in his quarrels make choice of such arms as might deprive
him of this advantage and that wholly depended upon fortune and assurance, that they might not attribute his victory
rather to his skill in fencing than his valour. When I was
young, gentlemen avoided the reputation of good fencers
as injurious to them, and learned to fence with all imaginable privacy as a trade of subtlety, derogating from true and
natural valour:
“Non schivar non parar, non ritirarsi
Voglion costor, ne qui destrezza ha parte;
Non danno i colpi or finti, or pieni, or scarsi!
Toglie l’ira a il furor l’uso de l’arte.
276 “Wretched the elementary trials of youth, and hard the rudiments
of approaching war.” –Virgil, AEneid, xi. 156.
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Odi le spade orribilmente utarsi
A mezzo il ferro; il pie d’orma non parte,
Sempre a il pie fermo, a la man sempre in moto;
Ne scende taglio in van, ne punta a voto.”277
Butts, tilting, and barriers, the feint of warlike fights, were
the exercises of our forefathers: this other exercise is so
much the less noble, as it only respects a private end; that
teaches us to destroy one another against law and justice,
and that every way always produces very ill effects. It is
much more worthy and more becoming to exercise ourselves in things that strengthen than that weaken our government and that tend to the public safety and common
glory. The consul, Publius Rutilius, was the first who taught
the soldiers to handle their arms with skill, and joined art
with valour, not for the rise of private quarrel, but for war
and the quarrels of the people of Rome; a popular and civil
defence. And besides the example of Caesar, who commanded his men to shoot chiefly at the face of Pompey’s
soldiers in the battle of Pharsalia, a thousand other commanders have also bethought them to invent new forms of
weapons and new ways of striking and defending, according as occasion should require.
But as Philopoemen condemned wrestling, wherein he
excelled, because the preparatives that were therein employed were differing from those that appertain to military discipline, to which alone he conceived men of honour
ought wholly to apply themselves; so it seems to me that
this address to which we form our limbs, those writhings
277 “They neither shrank, nor vantage sought of ground,
They travers’d not, nor skipt from part to part,
heir blows were neither false, nor feigned found:
In fight, their rage would let them use no art.
Their swords together clash with dreadful sound,
Their feet stand fast, and neither stir nor start,
They move their hands, steadfast their feet remain.
Nor blow nor foin they strook, or thrust in vain.”
–Tasso, Gierus. Lib., c. 12, st. 55, Fairfax’s translation.
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and motions young men are taught in this new school,
are not only of no use, but rather contrary and hurtful to
the practice of fight in battle; and also our people commonly make use of particular weapons, and peculiarly designed for duel; and I have seen, when it has been disapproved, that a gentleman challenged to fight with rapier
and poignard appeared in the array of a man-at-arms, and
that another should take his cloak instead of his poignard.
It is worthy of consideration that Laches in Plato, speaking of learning to fence after our manner, says that he never
knew any great soldier come out of that school, especially
the masters of it: and, indeed, as to them, our experience
tells as much. As to the rest, we may at least conclude that
they are qualities of no relation or correspondence; and in
the education of the children of his government, Plato interdicts the art of boxing, introduced by Amycus and Epeius,
and that of wrestling, by Antaeus and Cercyo, because they
have another end than to render youth fit for the service of
war and contribute nothing to it. But I see that I have somewhat strayed from my theme.
The Emperor Mauricius, being advertised by dreams
and several prognostics, that one Phocas, an obscure soldier,
should kill him, questioned his son-in-law, Philip, who this
Phocas was, and what were his nature, qualities, and manners; and so soon as Philip, amongst other things, had told
him that he was cowardly and timorous, the emperor immediately concluded then that he was a murderer and cruel.
What is it that makes tyrants so sanguinary? ‘Tis only the
solicitude for their own safety, and that their faint hearts can
furnish them with no other means of securing themselves
than in exterminating those who may hurt them, even so
much as women, for fear of a scratch:
“Cuncta ferit, dum cuncta timer.”278
The first cruelties are exercised for themselves thence
springs the fear of a just revenge, which afterwards pro278 “He
strikes at all who fears all.”
468
–Claudius, in Eutrop., i. 182.
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duces a series of new cruelties, to obliterate one another.
Philip, king of Macedon, who had so much to do with the
people of Rome, agitated with the horror of so many murders committed by his order, and doubting of being able to
keep himself secure from so many families, at divers times
mortally injured and offended by him, resolved to seize all
the children of those he had caused to be slain, to despatch
them daily one after another, and so to establish his own
repose.
Fine matter is never impertinent, however placed; and
therefore I, who more consider the weight and utility of
what I deliver than its order and connection, need not fear
in this place to bring in an excellent story, though it be a
little by-the-by; for when they are rich in their own native
beauty, and are able to justify themselves, the least end of a
hair will serve to draw them into my discourse.
Amongst others condemned by Philip, had been one
Herodicus, prince of Thessaly; he had, moreover, after him
caused his two sons-in-law to be put to death, each leaving a son very young behind him. Theoxena and Archo
were their two widows. Theoxena, though highly courted
to it, could not be persuaded to marry again: Archo married Poris, the greatest man among the AEnians, and by
him had a great many children, whom she, dying, left at
a very tender age. Theoxena, moved with a maternal charity towards her nephews, that she might have them under
her own eyes and in her own protection, married Poris:
when presently comes a proclamation of the king’s edict.
This brave-spirited mother, suspecting the cruelty of Philip,
and afraid of the insolence of the soldiers towards these
charming and tender children was so bold as to declare hat
she would rather kill them with her own hands than deliver them. Poris, startled at this protestation, promised her
to steal them away, and to transport them to Athens, and
there commit them to the custody of some faithful friends
of his. They took, therefore, the opportunity of an annual
feast which was celebrated at AEnia in honour of AEneas,
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and thither they went. Having appeared by day at the public ceremonies and banquet, they stole the night following
into a vessel laid ready for the purpose, to escape away
by sea. The wind proved contrary, and finding themselves
in the morning within sight of the land whence they had
launched overnight, and being pursued by the guards of the
port, Poris perceiving this, laboured all he could to make the
mariners do their utmost to escape from the pursuers. But
Theoxena, frantic with affection and revenge, in pursuance
of her former resolution, prepared both weapons and poison, and exposing them before them; “Go to, my children,”
said she, “death is now the only means of your defence and
liberty, and shall administer occasion to the gods to exercise their sacred justice: these sharp swords, and these full
cups, will open you the way into it; courage, fear nothing!
And thou, my son, who art the eldest, take this steel into thy
hand, that thou mayest the more bravely die.” The children
having on one side so powerful a counsellor, and the enemy
at their throats on the other, run all of them eagerly upon
what was next to hand; and, half dead, were thrown into the
sea. Theoxena, proud of having so gloriously provided for
the safety of her children, clasping her arms with great affection about her husband’s neck. “Let us, my friend,” said
she, “follow these boys, and enjoy the same sepulchre they
do”; and so, having embraced, they threw themselves headlong into the sea; so that the ship was carried–back without
the owners into the harbour.
Tyrants, at once both to kill and to make their anger
felt, have employed their capacity to invent the most lingering deaths. They will have their enemies despatched,
but not so fast that they may not have leisure to taste their
vengeance. And therein they are mightily perplexed; for if
the torments they inflict are violent, they are short; if long,
they are not then so painful as they desire; and thus plague
themselves in choice of the greatest cruelty. Of this we have
a thousand examples in antiquity, and I know not whether
we, unawares, do not retain some traces of this barbarity.
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All that exceeds a simple death appears to me absolute cruelty. Our justice cannot expect that he, whom the
fear of dying by being beheaded or hanged will not restrain,
should be any more awed by the imagination of a languishing fire, pincers, or the wheel. And I know not, in the meantime, whether we do not throw them into despair; for in
what condition can be the soul of a man, expecting fourand-twenty hours together to be broken upon a wheel, or after the old way, nailed to a cross? Josephus relates that in the
time of the war the Romans made in Judaea, happening to
pass by where they had three days before crucified certain
Jews, he amongst them knew three of his own friends, and
obtained the favour of having them taken down, of whom
two, he says, died; the third lived a great while after.
Chalcondylas, a writer of good credit, in the records he
has left behind him of things that happened in his time, and
near him, tells us, as of the most excessive torment, of that
the Emperor Mohammed very often practised, of cutting off
men in the middle by the diaphragm with one blow of a
scimitar, whence it followed that they died as it were two
deaths at once; and both the one part, says he, and the other,
were seen to stir and strive a great while after in very great
torment. I do not think there was any great suffering in this
motion the torments that are the most dreadful to look on
are not always the greatest to endure; and I find those that
other historians relate to have been practised by him upon
the Epirot lords, are more horrid and cruel, where they were
condemned to be flayed alive piecemeal, after so malicious
a manner that they continued fifteen days in that misery.
And these other two: Croesus, having caused a gentleman, the favourite of his brother Pantaleon, to be seized,
carried him into a fuller’s shop, where he caused him to be
scratched and carded with the cards and combs belonging
to that trade, till he died. George Sechel, chief commander
of the peasants of Poland, who committed so many mischiefs under the title of the Crusade, being defeated in battle
and taken bu the Vayvode of Transylvania, was three days
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bound naked upon the rack exposed to all sorts of torments
that any one could contrive against him: during which time
many other prisoners were kept fasting; in the end, he living
and looking on, they made his beloved brother Lucat, for
whom alone he entreated, taking on himself the blame of all
their evil actions drink his blood, and caused twenty of his
most favoured captains to feed upon him, tearing his flesh
in pieces with their teeth, and swallowing the morsels. The
remainder of his body and his bowels, so soon as he was
dead, were boiled, and others of his followers compelled to
eat them.
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CHAPTER XXVIII
ALL THINGS HAVE THEIR SEASON
as compare Cato the Censor with the younger Cato,
S
who killed himself, compare two beautiful natures,
much resembling one another. The first acquired his repUCH
utation several ways, and excels in military exploits and
the utility of his public employments; but the virtue of the
younger, besides that it were blasphemy to compare any to
it in vigour, was much more pure and unblemished. For
who could absolve that of the Censor from envy and ambition, having dared to attack the honour of Scipio, a man in
goodness and all other excellent qualities infinitely beyond
him or any other of his time?
That which they, report of him, amongst other things,
that in his extreme old age he put himself upon learning the
Greek tongue with so greedy an appetite, as if to quench
a long thirst, does not seem to me to make much for his
honour; it being properly what we call falling into second
childhood. All things have their seasons, even good ones,
and I may say my Paternoster out of time; as they accused
T. Quintus Flaminius, that being general of an army, he was
seen praying apart in the time of a battle that he won.
“Imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis.”279
Eudemonidas, seeing Xenocrates when very old, still
very intent upon his school lectures: “When will this man
be wise,” said he, “if he is yet learning?” And Philopaemen,
to those who extolled King Ptolemy for every day inuring
his person to the exercise of arms: “It is not,” said he, “commendable in a king of his age to exercise himself in these
things; he ought now really to employ them.” The young
are to make their preparations, the old to enjoy them, say
the sages: and the greatest vice they observe in us is that
279 “The
wise man limits even honest things.”–Juvenal, vi. 444
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our desires incessantly grow young again; we are always
re-beginning to live.
Our studies and desires should sometime be sensible of
age; yet we have one foot in the grave and still our appetites
and pursuits spring every day anew within us:
“Tu secanda marmora
Locas sub ipsum funus, et, sepulcri
Immemor, struis domos.”280
The longest of my designs is not of above a year’s extent;
I think of nothing now but ending; rid myself of all new
hopes and enterprises; take my last leave of every place I depart from, and every day dispossess myself of what I have.
“Olim jam nec perit quicquam mihi, nec acquiritur... plus superest viatici quam viae.”281
“Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum fortuna,
peregi.”282
“Diversos diversa juvant; non omnibus annis
Omnia conveniunt.”283
If we must study, let us study what is suitable to our present
condition, that we may answer as he did, who being asked
to what end he studied in his decrepit age, “that I may go
280 “You against the time of death have marble cut for use, and, forgetful of the tomb, build houses.” –Horace, Od., ii. 18, 17.
281 “Henceforward I will neither lose, nor expect to get: I have
morewherewith to defray my journey, than I have way to go.”
(Or): “Hitherto nothing of me has been lost or gained; more remains
to pay the way than there is way.” –Seneca, Ep., 77.
(The sense seems to be that so far he had met his expenses, but that
for the future he was likely to have more than he required.)
282 “I have lived and finished the career Fortune placed before
me.” –AEneid, iv. 653.
283 “Various things delight various men; all things are not for all
ages.” –Gall., Eleg., i. 104.
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out better,” said he, “and at greater ease.” Such a study
was that of the younger Cato, feeling his end approach, and
which he met with in Plato’s Discourse of the Eternity of the
Soul: not, as we are to believe, that he was not long before
furnished with all sorts of provision for such a departure;
for of assurance, an established will and instruction, he had
more than Plato had in all his writings; his knowledge and
courage were in this respect above philosophy; he applied
himself to this study, not for the service of his death; but, as
a man whose sleeps were never disturbed in the importance
of such a deliberation, he also, without choice or change,
continued his studies with the other accustomary actions
of his life. The night that he was denied the praetorship
he spent in play; that wherein he was to die he spent in
reading. The loss either of life or of office was all one to
him.
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OF VIRTUE
by experience, that there is a good deal to be said
Ilutefind
betwixt the flights and emotions of the soul or a resoand constant habit; and very well perceive that there is
nothing we may not do, nay, even to the surpassing the Divinity itself, says a certain person, forasmuch as it is more
to render a man’s self impassible by his own study and industry, than to be so by his natural condition; and even to
be able to conjoin to man’s imbecility and frailty a God-like
resolution and assurance; but it is by fits and starts; and in
the lives of those heroes of times past there are sometimes
miraculous impulses, and that seem infinitely to exceed our
natural force; but they are indeed only impulses: and ‘tis
hard to believe, that these so elevated qualities in a man
can so thoroughly tinct and imbue the soul that they should
become ordinary, and, as it were, natural in him. It accidentally happens even to us, who are but abortive births of
men, sometimes to launch our souls, when roused by the
discourses or examples of others, much beyond their ordinary stretch; but ‘tis a kind of passion which pushes and
agitates them, and in some sort ravishes them from themselves: but, this perturbation once overcome, we see that
they insensibly flag and slacken of themselves, if not to the
lowest degree, at least so as to be no more the same; insomuch as that upon every trivial occasion, the losing of a
bird, or the breaking, of a glass, we suffer ourselves to be
moved little less than one of the common people. I am of
opinion, that order, moderation, and constancy excepted,
all things are to be done by a man that is very imperfect
and defective in general. Therefore it is, say the Sages, that
to make a right judgment of a man, you are chiefly to pry
into his common actions, and surprise him in his everyday
habit.
Pyrrho, he who erected so pleasant a knowledge upon
ignorance, endeavoured, as all the rest who were really
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philosophers did, to make his life correspond with his doctrine. And because he maintained the imbecility of human
judgment to be so extreme as to be incapable of any choice
or inclination, and would have it perpetually wavering and
suspended, considering and receiving all things as indifferent, ‘tis said, that he always comforted himself after the
same manner and countenance: if he had begun a discourse,
he would always end what he had to say, though the person he was speaking to had gone away: if he walked, he
never stopped for any impediment that stood in his way,
being preserved from precipices, collision with carts, and
other like accidents, by the care of his friends: for, to fear or
to avoid anything, had been to shock his own propositions,
which deprived the senses themselves of all election and
certainty. Sometimes he suffered incision and cauteries with
so great constancy as never to be seen so much as to wince.
‘Tis something to bring the soul to these imaginations; ‘tis
more to join the effects, and yet not impossible; but to conjoin them with such perseverance and constancy as to make
them habitual, is certainly, in attempts so remote from the
common usage, almost incredible to be done. Therefore it
was, that being sometime taken in his house sharply scolding with his sister, and being reproached that he therein
transgressed his own rules of indifference: “What!” said
he, “must this bit of a woman also serve for a testimony
to my rules?” Another time, being seen to defend himself
against a dog: “It is,” said he, “very hard totally to put off
man; and we must endeavour and force ourselves to resist
and encounter things, first by effects, but at least by reason
and argument.”
About seven or eight years since, a husbandman yet
living, but two leagues from my house, having long been
tormented with his wife’s jealousy, coming one day home
from his work, and she welcoming him with her accustomed railing, entered into so great fury that with a sickle he
had yet in his hand, he totally cut off all those parts that she
was jealous of and threw them in her face. And, ‘tis said that
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a young gentleman of our nation, brisk and amorous, having by his perseverance at last mollified the heart of a fair
mistress, enraged, that upon the point of fruition he found
himself unable to perform, and that,
“Nec viriliter
Iners senile penis extulit caput.”284
as soon as ever he came home he deprived himself of the
rebellious member, and sent it to his mistress, a cruel and
bloody victim for the expiation of his offence. If this had
been done upon mature consideration, and upon the account of religion, as the priests of Cybele did, what should
we say of so high an action?
A few days since, at Bergerac, five leagues from my
house, up the river Dordogne, a woman having overnight
been beaten and abused by her husband, a choleric illconditioned fellow, resolved to escape from his ill-usage at
the price of her life; and going so soon as she was up the
next morning to visit her neighbours, as she was wont to
do, and having let some words fall in recommendation of
her affairs, she took a sister of hers by the hand, and led her
to the bridge; whither being come, and having taken leave
of her, in jest as it were, without any manner of alteration in
her countenance, she threw herself headlong from the top
into the river, and was there drowned. That which is the
most remarkable in this is, that this resolution was a whole
night forming in her head.
It is quite another thing with the Indian women for it
being the custom there for the men to have many wives, and
the best beloved of them to kill herself at her husband’s decease, every one of them makes it the business of her whole
life to obtain this privilege and gain this advantage over her
companions; and the good offices they do their husbands
284 (The 19th or 20th century translators leave this phrase
untranslated and with no explanation. D.W.) –Tibullus, Priap. Carm.,
84.
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aim at no other recompense but to be preferred in accompanying him in death:
“Ubi mortifero jacta est fax ultima lecto,
Uxorum fusis stat pia turba comis
Et certamen habent lethi, quae viva sequatur
Conjugium: pudor est non licuisse mori.
Ardent victrices, et flammae pectora praebent,
Imponuntque suis ora perusta viris.”285
A certain author of our times reports that he has seen in
those Oriental nations this custom in practice, that not only
the wives bury themselves with their husbands, but even
the slaves he has enjoyed also; which is done after this manner: The husband being dead, the widow may if she will
(but few will) demand two or three months’ respite wherein
to order her affairs. The day being come, she mounts on
horseback, dressed as fine as at her wedding, and with a
cheerful countenance says she is going to sleep with her
spouse, holding a looking-glass in her left hand and an arrow in the other. Being thus conducted in pomp, accompanied with her kindred and friends and a great concourse
of people in great joy, she is at last brought to the public
place appointed for such spectacles: this is a great space,
in the midst of which is a pit full of wood, and adjoining
to it a mount raised four or five steps, upon which she is
brought and served with a magnificent repast; which being done, she falls to dancing and singing, and gives order, when she thinks fit, to kindle the fire. This being done,
she descends, and taking the nearest of her husband’s relations by the hand, they walk to the river close by, where
she strips herself stark naked, and having distributed her
clothes and jewels to her friends, plunges herself into the
285 “For when they threw the torch on the funeral bed, the pious
wives with hair dishevelled, stand around striving, which, living, shall
accompany her spouse; and are ashamed that they may not die; they
who are preferred expose their breasts to the flame, and they lay their
scorched lips on those of their husbands.” –Propertius, iii. 13, 17.
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water, as if there to cleanse herself from her sins; coming
out thence, she wraps herself in a yellow linen of five-andtwenty ells long, and again giving her hand to this kinsman
of her husband’s, they return back to the mount, where she
makes a speech to the people, and recommends her children
to them, if she have any. Betwixt the pit and the mount
there is commonly a curtain drawn to screen the burning
furnace from their sight, which some of them, to manifest
the greater courage, forbid. Having ended what she has to
say, a woman presents her with a vessel of oil, wherewith
to anoint her head and her whole body, which when done
with she throws into the fire, and in an instant precipitates
herself after. Immediately, the people throw a good many
billets and logs upon her that she may not be long in dying,
and convert all their joy into sorrow and mourning. If they
are persons of meaner condition, the body of the defunct is
carried to the place of sepulture, and there placed sitting,
the widow kneeling before him, embracing the dead body;
and they continue in this posture whilst the people build a
wall about them, which so soon as it is raised to the height of
the woman’s shoulders, one of her relations comes behind
her, and taking hold of her head, twists her neck; so soon as
she is dead, the wall is presently raised up, and closed, and
there they remain entombed.
There was, in this same country, something like this in
their gymnosophists; for not by constraint of others nor by
the impetuosity of a sudden humour, but by the express
profession of their order, their custom was, as soon as they
arrived at a certain age, or that they saw themselves threatened by any disease, to cause a funeral pile to be erected for
them, and on the top a stately bed, where, after having joyfully feasted their friends and acquaintance, they laid them
down with so great resolution, that fire being applied to it,
they were never seen to stir either hand or foot; and after
this manner, one of them, Calanus by name; expired in the
presence of the whole army of Alexander the Great. And
he was neither reputed holy nor happy amongst them who
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did not thus destroy himself, dismissing his soul purged
and purified by the fire, after having consumed all that
was earthly and mortal. This constant premeditation of the
whole life is that which makes the wonder.
Amongst our other controversies, that of ‘Fatum’ has
also crept in; and to tie things to come, and even our own
wills, to a certain and inevitable necessity, we are yet upon
this argument of time past: “Since God foresees that all
things shall so fall out, as doubtless He does, it must then
necessarily follow, that they must so fall out”: to which our
masters reply: “that the seeing anything come to pass, as
we do, and as God Himself also does (for all things being present with him, He rather sees, than foresees), is not
to compel an event: that is, we see because things do fall
out, but things do not fall out because we see: events cause
knowledge, but knowledge does not cause events. That
which we see happen, does happen; but it might have happened otherwise: and God, in the catalogue of the causes
of events which He has in His prescience, has also those
which we call accidental and voluntary, depending upon
the liberty. He has given our free will, and knows that we
do amiss because we would do so.”
I have seen a great many commanders encourage their
soldiers with this fatal necessity; for if our time be limited
to a certain hour, neither the enemies’ shot nor our own
boldness, nor our flight and cowardice, can either shorten
or prolong our lives. This is easily said, but see who will
be so easily persuaded; and if it be so that a strong and
lively faith draws along with it actions of the same kind,
certainly this faith we so much brag of, is very light in this
age of ours, unless the contempt it has of works makes it
disdain their company. So it is, that to this very purpose the
Sire de Joinville, as credible a witness as any other whatever, tells us of the Bedouins, a nation amongst the Saracens, with whom the king St. Louis had to do in the Holy
Land, that they, in their religion, so firmly believed the number of every man’s days to be from all eternity prefixed and
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set down by an inevitable decree, that they went naked to
the wars, excepting a Turkish sword, and their bodies only
covered with a white linen cloth: and for the greatest curse
they could invent when they were angry, this was always
in their mouths: “Accursed be thou, as he that arms himself
for fear of death.” This is a testimony of faith very much
beyond ours. And of this sort is that also that two friars of
Florence gave in our fathers’ days. Being engaged in some
controversy of learning, they agreed to go both of them into
the fire in the sight of all the people, each for the verification of his argument, and all things were already prepared,
and the thing just upon the point of execution, when it was
interrupted by an unexpected accident.286
A young Turkish lord, having performed a notable exploit in his own person in the sight of both armies, that of
Amurath and that of Huniades, ready to join battle, being
asked by Amurath, what in such tender and inexperienced
years (for it was his first sally into arms) had inspired him
with so brave a courage, replied, that his chief tutor for valour was a hare. “For being,” said he, “one day a hunting,
I found a hare sitting, and though I had a brace of excellent greyhounds with me, yet methought it would be best
for sureness to make use of my bow; for she sat very fair. I
then fell to letting fly my arrows, and shot forty that I had
in my quiver, not only without hurting, but without starting her from her form. At last I slipped my dogs after her,
but to no more purpose than I had shot: by which I understood that she had been secured by her destiny; and, that
neither darts nor swords can wound without the permission of fate, which we can neither hasten nor defer.” This
story may serve, by the way, to let us see how flexible our
reason is to all sorts of images.
286 7th April 1498.
Savonarola issued the challenge. After many
delays from demands and counter-demands by each side as to the details of the fire, both parties found that they had important business
to transact in another county–both just barely escaped assassination at
the hands of the disappointed spectators. D.W.
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A person of great years, name, dignity, and learning
boasted to me that he had been induced to a certain very
important change in his faith by a strange and whimsical
incitation, and one otherwise so inadequate, that I thought
it much stronger, taken the contrary way: he called it a miracle, and so I look upon it, but in a different sense. The
Turkish historians say, that the persuasion those of their nation have imprinted in them of the fatal and unalterable prescription of their days, manifestly conduces to the giving
them great assurance in dangers. And I know a great prince
who makes very fortunate use of it, whether it be that he
really believes it, or that he makes it his excuse for so wonderfully hazarding himself: let us hope Fortune may not be
too soon weary of her favour to him.
There has not happened in our memory a more admirable effect of resolution than in those two who conspired
the death of the Prince of Orange.287
‘Tis marvellous how the second who executed it, could
ever be persuaded into an attempt, wherein his companion,
who had done his utmost, had had so ill success; and after
the same method, and with the same arms, to go attack a
lord, armed with so recent a late lesson of distrust, powerful
in followers and bodily strength, in his own hall, amidst his
guards, and in a city wholly at his devotion. Assuredly, he
employed a very resolute arm and a courage enflamed with
furious passion. A poignard is surer for striking home; but
by reason that more motion and force of hand is required
than with a pistol, the blow is more subject to be put by or
hindered. That this man did not run to a certain death, I
make no great doubt; for the hopes any one could flatter
him withal, could not find place in any sober understanding, and the conduct of his exploit sufficiently manifests that
he had no want of that, no more than of courage. The motives of so powerful a persuasion may be diverse, for our
287 The first of these was Jehan de Jaureguy, who wounded the Prince
18th March 1582; the second, by whom the Prince was killed 10th July
1584., was Balthazar Gerard.
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fancy does what it will, both with itself and us. The execution that was done near Orleans288 was nothing like this;
there was in this more of chance than vigour; the wound
was not mortal, if fortune had not made it so, and to attempt to shoot on horseback, and at a great distance, by one
whose body was in motion from the motion of his horse,
was the attempt of a man who had rather miss his blow
than fail of saving himself. This was apparent from what
followed; for he was so astonished and stupefied with the
thought of so high an execution, that he totally lost his judgment both to find his way to flight and to govern his tongue.
What needed he to have done more than to fly back to his
friends across the river? ‘Tis what I have done in less dangers, and that I think of very little hazard, how broad soever the river may be, provided your horse have easy going
in, and that you see on the other side easy landing according to the stream. The other,289 when they pronounced his
dreadful sentence, “I was prepared for this,” said he, “beforehand, and I will make you wonder at my patience.”
The Assassins, a nation bordering upon Phoenicia,290
are reputed amongst the Mohammedans a people of very
great devotion and purity of manners. They hold that the
nearest way to gain Paradise is to kill some one of a contrary religion; which is the reason they have often been
seen, being but one or two, and without armour, to attempt
against powerful enemies, at the price of a certain death
and without any consideration of their own danger. So was
our Raymond, Count of Tripoli, assassinated (which word
is derived from their name) in the heart of his city,291 during
our enterprises of the Holy War: and likewise Conrad, Mar288 The
murder of the Duke of Guise by Poltrot.
Gerard.
290 Or in Egypt, Syria, and Persia.
Derivation of ‘assassin’ is from
Hassan-ben-Saba, one of their early leaders, and they had an existence
for some centuries. They are classed among the secret societies of the
Middle Ages. D.W.
291 in 1151
289 Balthazar
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quis of Monteferrat, the murderers at their execution bearing themselves with great pride and glory that they had performed so brave an exploit.
485
CHAPTER XXX
OF A MONSTROUS CHILD
story shall go by itself; for I will leave it to physicians
T
to discourse of. Two days ago I saw a child that two
men and a nurse, who said they were the father, the uncle,
HIS
and the aunt of it, carried about to get money by showing
it, by reason it was so strange a creature. It was, as to all the
rest, of a common form, and could stand upon its feet; could
go and gabble much like other children of the same age; it
had never as yet taken any other nourishment but from the
nurse’s breasts, and what, in my presence, they tried to put
into the mouth of it, it only chewed a little and spat it out
again without swallowing; the cry of it seemed indeed a little odd and particular, and it was just fourteen months old.
Under the breast it was joined to another child, but without
a head, and which had the spine of the back without motion, the rest entire; for though it had one arm shorter than
the other, it had been broken by accident at their birth; they
were joined breast to breast, and as if a lesser child sought to
throw its arms about the neck of one something bigger. The
juncture and thickness of the place where they were conjoined was not above four fingers, or thereabouts, so that if
you thrust up the imperfect child you might see the navel
of the other below it, and the joining was betwixt the paps
and the navel. The navel of the imperfect child could not
be seen, but all the rest of the belly, so that all that was not
joined of the imperfect one, as arms, buttocks, thighs, and
legs, hung dangling upon the other, and might reach to the
mid-leg. The nurse, moreover, told us that it urined at both
bodies, and that the members of the other were nourished,
sensible, and in the same plight with that she gave suck to,
excepting that they were shorter and less. This double body
and several limbs relating to one head might be interpreted
a favourable prognostic to the king,292 of maintaining these
292 Henry
III.
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various parts of our state under the union of his laws; but
lest the event should prove otherwise, ‘tis better to let it
alone, for in things already past there needs no divination,
“Ut quum facts sunt, tum ad conjecturam aliqui
interpretatione revocentur;”293
as ‘tis said of Epimenides, that he always prophesied backward.
I have just seen a herdsman in Medoc, of about thirty
years of age, who has no sign of any genital parts; he has
three holes by which he incessantly voids his water; he is
bearded, has desire, and seeks contact with women.
Those that we call monsters are not so to God, who sees
in the immensity of His work the infinite forms that He has
comprehended therein; and it is to be believed that this figure which astonishes us has relation to some other figure
of the same kind unknown to man. From His all wisdom
nothing but good, common; and regular proceeds; but we
do not discern the disposition and relation:
“Quod crebro videt, non miratur, etiamsi, cur
fiat, nescit. Quod ante non vidit, id, si evenerit,
ostentum esse censet.”294
Whatever falls out contrary to custom we say is contrary to nature, but nothing, whatever it be, is contrary to
her. Let, therefore, this universal and natural reason expel
the error and astonishment that novelty brings along with
it.
293 “So as when they are come to pass, they may then by some interpretation be recalled to conjecture” –Cicero, De Divin., ii. 31.
294 “What he often sees he does not admire, though he be ignorant
how it comes to pass. When a thing happens he never saw before,
he thinks that it is a portent.” –Cicero, De Divin., ii. 22.
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OF ANGER
is admirable throughout, but especially where
P
he judges of human actions. What fine things does he
say in the comparison of Lycurgus and Numa upon the subLUTARCH
ject of our great folly in abandoning children to the care and
government of their fathers? The most of our civil governments, as Aristotle says, “leave, after the manner of the Cyclopes, to every one the ordering of their wives and children, according to their own foolish and indiscreet fancy;
and the Lacedaemonian and Cretan are almost the only governments that have committed the education of children to
the laws. Who does not see that in a state all depends upon
their nurture and bringing up? and yet they are left to the
mercy of parents, let them be as foolish and ill-conditioned
as they may, without any manner of discretion.”
Amongst other things, how often have I, as I have
passed along our streets, had a good mind to get up a
farce, to revenge the poor boys whom I have seen hided,
knocked down, and miserably beaten by some father or
mother, when in their fury and mad with rage? You shall
see them come out with fire and fury sparkling in their eyes:
“Rabie jecur incendente, feruntur,
Praecipites; ut saxa jugis abrupta, quibus mons
Subtrahitur, clivoque latus pendente recedit,”295
(and according to Hippocrates, the most dangerous maladies are they that disfigure the countenance), with a roaring and terrible voice, very often against those that are
but newly come from nurse, and there they are lamed and
spoiled with blows, whilst our justice takes no cognisance
295 “They are headlong borne with burning fury as great stones torn
from the mountains, by which the steep sides are left naked and
bare.” –Juvenal, Sat., vi. 647.
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of it, as if these maims and dislocations were not executed
upon members of our commonwealth:
“Gratum est, quod patria; civem populoque
dedisti,
Si facis, ut patrix sit idoneus, utilis agris,
Utilis et bellorum et pacis rebus agendis.”296
There is no passion that so much transports men from their
right judgment as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal
on the account of his own choler; why, then, should fathers
and pedagogues be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? ‘Tis then no longer correction,
but revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children;
and would we endure a physician who should be animated
against and enraged at his patient?
We ourselves, to do well, should never lay a hand upon
our servants whilst our anger lasts. When the pulse beats,
and we feel emotion in ourselves, let us defer the business;
things will indeed appear otherwise to us when we are calm
and cool. ‘Tis passion that then commands, ‘tis passion
that speaks, and not we. Faults seen through passion appear much greater to us than they really are, as bodies do
when seen through a mist. He who is hungry uses meat;
but he who will make use of chastisement should have neither hunger nor thirst to it. And, moreover, chastisements
that are inflicted with weight and discretion are much better received and with greater benefit by him who suffers;
otherwise, he will not think himself justly condemned by
a man transported with anger and fury, and will allege his
master’s excessive passion, his inflamed countenance, his
unwonted oaths, his emotion and precipitous rashness, for
his own justification:
296 “It is well when to thy country and the people thou hast given a
citizen, provided thou make fit for his country’s service; useful to till
the earth, useful in affairs of war and peace” –Juvenal, Sat., xiv. 70.
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“Ora tument ira, nigrescunt sanguine venae,
Lumina Gorgoneo saevius igne micant.”297
Suetonius reports that Caius Rabirius having been condemned by Caesar, the thing that most prevailed upon the
people (to whom he had appealed) to determine the cause
in his favour, was the animosity and vehemence that Caesar
had manifested in that sentence.
Saying is a different thing from doing; we are to consider the sermon apart and the preacher apart. These men
lent themselves to a pretty business who in our times have
attempted to shake the truth of our Church by the vices
of her ministers; she extracts her testimony elsewhere; ‘tis
a foolish way of arguing and that would throw all things
into confusion. A man whose morals are good may have
false opinions, and a wicked man may preach truth, even
though he believe it not himself. ‘Tis doubtless a fine harmony when doing and saying go together; and I will not
deny but that saying, when the actions follow, is not of
greater authority and efficacy, as Eudamidas said, hearing a
philosopher talk of military affairs: “These things are finely
said, but he who speaks them is not to be believed for his
ears have never been used to the sound of the trumpet.”
And Cleomenes, hearing an orator declaiming upon valour,
burst out into laughter, at which the other being angry; “I
should,” said he to him, “do the same if it were a swallow
that spoke of this subject; but if it were an eagle I should
willingly hear him.” I perceive, methinks, in the writings
of the ancients, that he who speaks what he thinks, strikes
much more home than he who only feigns. Hear Cicero
speak of the love of liberty: hear Brutus speak of it, the mere
written words of this man sound as if he would purchase it
at the price of his life. Let Cicero, the father of eloquence,
treat of the contempt of death; let Seneca do the same: the
first languishingly drawls it out so you perceive he would
297 “Their faces swell, their veins grow black with rage, and their
eyes sparkle with Gorgonian fire.” –Ovid, De Art. Amandi, iii. 503.
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make you resolve upon a thing on which he is not resolved
himself; he inspires you not with courage, for he himself has
none; the other animates and inflames you. I never read an
author, even of those who treat of virtue and of actions, that
I do not curiously inquire what kind of a man he was himself; for the Ephori at Sparta, seeing a dissolute fellow propose a wholesome advice to the people, commanded him
to hold his peace, and entreated a virtuous man to attribute
to himself the invention, and to propose it. Plutarch’s writings, if well understood, sufficiently bespeak their author,
and so that I think I know him even into his soul; and yet I
could wish that we had some fuller account of his life. And
I am thus far wandered from my subject, upon the account
of the obligation I have to Aulus Gellius, for having left us
in writing this story of his manners, that brings me back to
my subject of anger. A slave of his, a vicious, ill-conditioned
fellow, but who had the precepts of philosophy often ringing in his ears, having for some offence of his been stript by
Plutarch’s command, whilst he was being whipped, muttered at first, that it was without cause and that he had done
nothing to deserve it; but at last falling in good earnest to
exclaim against and rail at his master, he reproached him
that he was no philosopher, as he had boasted himself to be:
that he had often heard him say it was indecent to be angry,
nay, had written a book to that purpose; and that the causing him to be so cruelly beaten, in the height of his rage,
totally gave the lie to all his writings; to which Plutarch
calmly and coldly answered, “How, ruffian,” said he, “by
what dost thou judge that I am now angry? Does either my
face, my colour, or my voice give any manifestation of my
being moved? I do not think my eyes look fierce, that my
countenance appears troubled, or that my voice is dreadful:
am I red, do I foam, does any word escape my lips I ought
to repent? Do I start? Do I tremble with fury? For those, I
tell thee, are the true signs of anger.” And so, turning to the
fellow that was whipping him, “Ply on thy work,” said he,
“whilst this gentleman and I dispute.” This is his story.
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Archytas Tarentinus, returning from a war wherein he
had been captain-general, found all things in his house
in very great disorder, and his lands quite out of tillage,
through the ill husbandry of his receiver, and having caused
him to be called to him; “Go,” said he, “if I were not in anger
I would soundly drub your sides.” Plato likewise, being
highly offended with one of his slaves, gave Speusippus order to chastise him, excusing himself from doing it because
he was in anger. And Carillus, a Lacedaemonian, to a Helot,
who carried himself insolently towards him: “By the gods,”
said he, “if I was not angry, I would immediately cause thee
to be put to death.”
‘Tis a passion that is pleased with and flatters itself.
How often, being moved under a false cause, if the person
offending makes a good defence and presents us with a just
excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself? In
proof of which, I remember a marvellous example of antiquity.
Piso, otherwise a man of very eminent virtue, being
moved against a soldier of his, for that returning alone from
forage he could give him no account where he had left a
companion of his, took it for granted that he had killed him,
and presently condemned him to death. He was no sooner
mounted upon the gibbet, but, behold, his wandering companion arrives, at which all the army were exceedingly glad,
and after many embraces of the two comrades, the hangman carried both the one and the other into Piso’s presence,
all those present believing it would be a great pleasure even
to himself; but it proved quite contrary; for through shame
and spite, his fury, which was not yet cool, redoubled; and
by a subtlety which his passion suddenly suggested to him,
he made three criminals for having found one innocent, and
caused them all to be despatched: the first soldier, because
sentence had passed upon him; the second, who had lost his
way, because he was the cause of his companion’s death;
and the hangman, for not having obeyed the order which
had been given him. Such as have had to do with testy and
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obstinate women, may have experimented into what a rage
it puts them to oppose silence and coldness to their fury,
and that a man disdains to nourish their anger. The orator Celius was wonderfully choleric by nature; and to one
who supped in his company, a man of a gentle and sweet
conversation, and who, that he might not move him, approved and consented to all he said; he, impatient that his
ill-humour should thus spend itself without aliment: “For
the love of the gods deny me something,” said he, “that we
may be two.” Women, in like manner, are only angry that
others may be angry again, in imitation of the laws of love.
Phocion, to one who interrupted his speaking by injurious
and very opprobrious words, made no other return than silence, and to give him full liberty and leisure to vent his
spleen; which he having accordingly done, and the storm
blown over, without any mention of this disturbance, he
proceeded in his discourse where he had left off before. No
answer can nettle a man like such a contempt.
Of the most choleric man in France (anger is always an
imperfection, but more excusable in, a soldier, for in that
trade it cannot sometimes be avoided) I often say, that he is
the most patient man that I know, and the most discreet in
bridling his passions; which rise in him with so great violence and fury,
“Magno veluti cum flamma sonore
Virgea suggeritur costis undantis ahem,
Exsultantque aatu latices, furit intus aquae vis.
Fumidus atque alte spumis exuberat amnis,
Nec jam se capit unda; volat vapor ater ad
auras;”298
that he must of necessity cruelly constrain himself to mod298 “When with loud crackling noise, a fire of sticks is applied
to the boiling caldron’s side, by the heat in frisky bells the liquor
dances; within the water rages, and high the smoky fluid in foam
overflows. Nor can the wave now contain itself; the black steam flies
all abroad.” –AEneid, vii. 462.
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erate it. And for my part, I know no passion which I could
with so much violence to myself attempt to cover and conceal; I would not set wisdom at so high a price; and do not
so much consider what a man does, as how much it costs
him to do no worse.
Another boasted himself to me of the regularity and
gentleness of his manners, which are to truth very singular;
to whom I replied, that it was indeed something, especially
m persons of so eminent a quality as himself, upon whom
every one had their eyes, to present himself always welltempered to the world; but that the principal thing was to
make provision for within and for himself; and that it was
not in my opinion very well to order his business outwardly
well, and to grate himself within, which I was afraid he did,
in putting on and maintaining this mask and external appearance.
A man incorporates anger by concealing it, as Diogenes
told Demosthenes, who, for fear of being seen in a tavern,
withdrew himself the more retiredly into it: “The more you
retire backward, the farther you enter in.” I would rather
advise that a man should give his servant a box of the ear a
little unseasonably, than rack his fancy to present this grave
and composed countenance; and had rather discover my
passions than brood over them at my own expense; they
grow less inventing and manifesting themselves; and ‘tis
much better their point should wound others without, than
be turned towards ourselves within:
“Omnia vitia in aperto leviora sunt: et tunc
perniciosissima, quum simulata sanitate subsident.”299
I admonish all those who have authority to be angry in
my family, in the first place to manage their anger and not
299 “All vices are less dangerous when open to be seen, and then most
pernicious when they lurk under a dissembled good nature.” –Seneca,
Ep. 56
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to lavish it upon every occasion, for that both lessens the
value and hinders the effect: rash and incessant scolding
runs into custom, and renders itself despised; and what you
lay out upon a servant for a theft is not felt, because it is
the same he has seen you a hundred times employ against
him for having ill washed a glass, or set a stool out of place.
Secondly, that they be not angry to no purpose, but make
sure that their reprehension reach him with whom they are
offended; for, ordinarily, they rail and bawl before he comes
into their presence, and continue scolding an age after he is
gone:
“Et secum petulans amentia certat:”300
they attack his shadow, and drive the storm in a place where
no one is either chastised or concerned, but in the clamour
of their voice. I likewise in quarrels condemn those who
huff and vapour without an enemy: those rhodomontades
should be reserved to discharge upon the offending party:
“Mugitus veluti cum prima in praelia taurus
Terrificos ciet, atque irasci in cornua tentat,
Arboris obnixus trunco, ventospue lacessit
Ictibus, et sparsa ad pugnum proludit arena.”301
When I am angry, my anger is very sharp but withal very
short, and as private as I can; I lose myself indeed in
promptness and violence, but not in trouble; so that I throw
out all sorts of injurious words at random, and without
choice, and never consider pertinently to dart my language
where I think it will deepest wound, for I commonly make
use of no other weapon than my tongue.
300 “And petulant madness contends with itself.”
–Claudian in Eutrop., i. 237.
301 “As when a bull to usher in the fight, makes dreadful bellowings,
and whets his horns against the trunk of a tree; with blows he beats
the air, and rehearses the fight by scattering the sand.” –AEneid, xii.
103.
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My servants have a better bargain of me in great occasions than in little; the little ones surprise me; and the
misfortune is, that when you are once upon the precipice,
‘tis no matter who gave you the push, you always go to
the bottom; the fall urges, moves, and makes haste of itself.
In great occasions this satisfies me, that they are so just every one expects a reasonable indignation, and then I glorify
myself in deceiving their expectation; against these, I fortify
and prepare myself; they disturb my head, and threaten to
transport me very far, should I follow them. I can easily contain myself from entering into one of these passions, and am
strong enough, when I expect them, to repel their violence,
be the cause never so great; but if a passion once prepossess and seize me, it carries me away, be the cause never so
small. I bargain thus with those who may contend with me
when you see me moved first, let me alone, right or wrong;
I’ll do the same for you. The storm is only begot by a concurrence of angers, which easily spring from one another,
and are not born together. Let every one have his own way,
and we shall be always at peace. A profitable advice, but
hard to execute. Sometimes also it falls out that I put on a
seeming anger, for the better governing of my house, without any real emotion. As age renders my humours more
sharp, I study to oppose them, and will, if I can, order it so,
that for the future I may be so much the less peevish and
hard to please, as I have more excuse and inclination to be
so, although I have heretofore been reckoned amongst those
who have the greatest patience.
A word more to conclude this argument. Aristotle says,
that anger sometimes serves for arms to virtue and valour. That is probable; nevertheless, they who contradict him
pleasantly answer, that ‘tis a weapon of novel use, for we
move all other arms, this moves us; our hand guides it not,
‘tis it that guides our hand; it holds us, we hold not it.
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DEFENCE OF SENECA AND PLUTARCH
familiarity I have with these two authors, and the
T
assistance they have lent to my age and to my book,
wholly compiled of what I have borrowed from them,
HE
oblige me to stand up for their honour.
As to Seneca, amongst a million of little pamphlets that
those of the so-called reformed religion disperse abroad for
the defence of their cause (and which sometimes proceed
from so good a hand, that ‘tis pity his pen is not employed
in a better subject), I have formerly seen one, that to make
up the parallel he would fain find out betwixt the government of our late poor King Charles IX. and that of Nero,
compares the late Cardinal of Lorraine with Seneca; their
fortunes, in having both of them been the prime ministers
in the government of their princes, and in their manners,
conditions, and deportments to have been very near alike.
Wherein, in my opinion, he does the said cardinal a very
great honour; for though I am one of those who have a very
high esteem for his wit, eloquence, and zeal to religion and
the service of his king, and his good fortune to have lived in
an age wherein it was so novel, so rare, and also so necessary for the public good to have an ecclesiastical person of
such high birth and dignity, and so sufficient and capable of
his place; yet, to confess the truth, I do not think his capacity by many degrees near to the other, nor his virtue either
so clean, entire, or steady as that of Seneca.
Now the book whereof I speak, to bring about its design, gives a very injurious description of Seneca, having
borrowed its approaches from Dion the historian, whose
testimony I do not at all believe for besides that he is inconsistent, that after having called Seneca one while very wise,
and again a mortal enemy to Nero’s vices, makes him elsewhere avaricious, an usurer, ambitious, effeminate, voluptuous, and a false pretender to philosophy, his virtue appears so vivid and vigorous in his writings, and his vindi497
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cation is so clear from any of these imputations, as of his
riches and extraordinarily expensive way of living, that I
cannot believe any testimony to the contrary. And besides,
it is much more reasonable to believe the Roman historians
in such things than Greeks and foreigners. Now Tacitus and
the rest speak very honourably both of his life and death;
and represent him to us a very excellent and virtuous person in all things; and I will allege no other reproach against
Dion’s report but this, which I cannot avoid, namely, that he
has so weak a judgment in the Roman affairs, that he dares
to maintain Julius Caesar’s cause against Pompey302 , and
that of Antony against Cicero.
Let us now come to Plutarch: Jean Bodin is a good author of our times, and a writer of much greater judgment
than the rout of scribblers of his age, and who deserves to be
read and considered. I find him, though, a little bold in this
passage of his Method of history, where he accuses Plutarch
not only of ignorance (wherein I would have let him alone:
for that is beyond my criticism), but that he “often writes
things incredible, and absolutely fabulous ”: these are his
own words. If he had simply said, that he had delivered
things otherwise than they really are, it had been no great
reproach; for what we have not seen, we are forced to receive from other hands, and take upon trust, and I see that
he purposely sometimes variously relates the same story;
as the judgment of the three best captains that ever were,
given by Hannibal; ‘tis one way in the Life of Flammius,
and another in that of Pyrrhus. But to charge him with having taken incredible and impossible things for current pay,
is to accuse the most judicious author in the world of want
of judgment. And this is his example; “as,” says he, “when
he relates that a Lacedaemonian boy suffered his bowels to
be torn out by a fox-cub he had stolen, and kept it still concealed under his coat till he fell down dead, rather than he
would discover his theft.” I find, in the first place, this example ill chosen, forasmuch as it is very hard to limit the
302 And
so does this editor.
D.W.
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power of the faculties of–the soul, whereas we have better
authority to limit and know the force of the bodily limbs;
and therefore, if I had been he, I should rather have chosen
an example of this second sort; and there are some of these
less credible: and amongst others, that which he refates of
Pyrrhus, that “all wounded as he was, he struck one of his
enemies, who was armed from head to foot, so great a blow
with his sword, that he clave him down from his crown to
his seat, so that the body was divided into two parts.” In
this example I find no great miracle, nor do I admit the excuse with which he defends Plutarch, in having added these
words, “as ‘tis said,” to suspend our belief; for unless it be
in things received by authority, and the reverence to antiquity or religion, he would never have himself admitted, or
enjoined us to believe things incredible in themselves; and
that these words, “as ‘tis said,” are not put in this place to
that effect, is easy to be seen, because he elsewhere relates to
us, upon this subject, of the patience of the Lacedaemonian
children, examples happening in his time, more unlikely to
prevail upon our faith; as what Cicero has also testified before him, as having, as he says, been upon the spot: that
even to their times there were children found who, in the
trial of patience they were put to before the altar of Diana,
suffered themselves to be there whipped till the blood ran
down all over their bodies, not only without crying out, but
without so much as a groan, and some till they there voluntarily lost their lives: and that which Plutarch also, amongst
a hundred other witnesses, relates, that at a sacrifice, a burning coal having fallen into the sleeve of a Lacedaemonian
boy, as he was censing, he suffered his whole arm to be
burned, till the smell of the broiling flesh was perceived by
those present. There was nothing, according to their custom, wherein their reputation was more concerned, nor for
which they were to undergo more blame and disgrace, than
in being taken in theft. I am so fully satisfied of the greatness of those people, that this story does not only not appear
to me, as to Bodin, incredible; but I do not find it so much as
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rare and strange. The Spartan history is full of a thousand
more cruel and rare examples; and is; indeed, all miracle in
this respect.
Marcellinus, concerning theft, reports that in his time
there was no sort of torments which could compel the Egyptians, when taken in this act, though a people very much
addicted to it, so much as to tell their name.
A Spanish peasant, being put to the rack as to the accomplices of the murder of the Praetor Lucius Piso, cried
out in the height of the torment, “that his friends should not
leave him, but look on in all assurance, and that no pain had
the power to force from him one word of confession,” which
was all they could get the first day. The next day, as they
were leading him a second time to another trial, strongly
disengaging himself from the hands of his guards, he furiously ran his head against a wall, and beat out his brains.
Epicharis, having tired and glutted the cruelty of
Nero’s satellites, and undergone their fire, their beating,
their racks, a whole day together, without one syllable of
confession of her conspiracy; being the next day brought
again to the rack, with her limbs almost torn to pieces, conveyed the lace of her robe with a running noose over one of
the arms of her chair, and suddenly slipping her head into
it, with the weight of her own body hanged herself. Having
the courage to die in that manner, is it not to be presumed
that she purposely lent her life to the trial of her fortitude
the day before, to mock the tyrant, and encourage others to
the like attempt?
And whoever will inquire of our troopers the experiences they have had in our civil wars, will find effects of
patience and obstinate resolution in this miserable age of
ours, and amongst this rabble even more effeminate than
the Egyptians, worthy to be compared with those we have
just related of the Spartan virtue.
I know there have been simple peasants amongst us
who have endured the soles of their feet to be broiled upon
a gridiron, their finger-ends to be crushed with the cock of
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a pistol, and their bloody eyes squeezed out of their heads
by force of a cord twisted about their brows, before they
would so much as consent to a ransom. I have seen one left
stark naked for dead in a ditch, his neck black and swollen,
with a halter yet about it with which they had dragged him
all night at a horse’s tail, his body wounded in a hundred
places, with stabs of daggers that had been given him, not to
kill him, but to put him to pain and to affright him, who had
endured all this, and even to being speechless and insensible, resolved, as he himself told me, rather to die a thousand
deaths (as indeed, as to matter of suffering, he had borne
one) before he would promise anything; and yet he was one
of the richest husbandmen of all the country. How many
have been seen patiently to suffer themselves to be burnt
and roasted for opinions taken upon trust from others, and
by them not at all understood? I have known a hundred
and a hundred women (for Gascony has a certain prerogative for obstinacy) whom you might sooner have made eat
fire than forsake an opinion they had conceived in anger.
They are all the more exasperated by blows and constraint.
And he that made the story of the woman who, in defiance of all correction, threats, and bastinadoes, ceased not to
call her husband lousy knave, and who being plunged over
head and ears in water, yet lifted her hands above her head
and made a sign of cracking lice, feigned a tale of which, in
truth, we every day see a manifest image in the obstinacy of
women. And obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in
vigour and stability.
We are not to judge what is possible and what is not,
according to what is credible and incredible to our apprehension, as I have said elsewhere and it is a great fault, and
yet one that most men are guilty of, which, nevertheless,
I do not mention with any reflection upon Bodin, to make
a difficulty of believing that in another which they could
not or would not do themselves. Every one thinks that the
sovereign stamp of human nature is imprinted in him, and
that from it all others must take their rule; and that all pro501
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ceedings which are not like his are feigned and false. Is
anything of another’s actions or faculties proposed to him?
the first thing he calls to the consultation of his judgment
is his own example; and as matters go with him, so they
must of necessity do with all the world besides dangerous
and intolerable folly! For my part, I consider some men as
infinitely beyond me, especially amongst the ancients, and
yet, though I clearly discern my inability to come near them
by a thousand paces, I do not forbear to keep them in sight,
and to judge of what so elevates them, of which I perceive
some seeds in myself, as I also do of the extreme meanness
of some other minds, which I neither am astonished at nor
yet misbelieve. I very well perceive the turns those great
souls take to raise themselves to such a pitch, and admire
their grandeur; and those flights that I think the bravest I
could be glad to imitate; where, though I want wing, yet
my judgment readily goes along with them. The other example he introduces of “things incredible and wholly fabulous,” delivered by Plutarch, is, that “Agesilaus was fined
by the Ephori for having wholly engrossed the hearts and
affections of his citizens to himself alone.” And herein I do
not see what sign of falsity is to be found: clearly Plutarch
speaks of things that must needs be better known to him
than to us; and it was no new thing in Greece to see men
punished and exiled for this very thing, for being too acceptable to the people; witness the Ostracism and Petalism.303
There is yet in this place another accusation laid against
Plutarch which I cannot well digest, where Bodin says
that he has sincerely paralleled Romans with Romans, and
Greeks amongst themselves, but not Romans with Greeks;
witness, says he, Demosthenes and Cicero, Cato and Aristides, Sylla and Lysander, Marcellus and Pelopidas, Pompey and Agesilaus, holding that he has favoured the Greeks
in giving them so unequal companions. This is really to at303 Ostracism at Athens was banishment for ten years; petalism at
Syracuse was banishment for five years.
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tack what in Plutarch is most excellent and most to be commended; for in his parallels (which is the most admirable
part of all his works, and with which, in my opinion, he
is himself the most pleased) the fidelity and sincerity of his
judgments equal their depth and weight; he is a philosopher
who teaches us virtue. Let us see whether we cannot defend
him from this reproach of falsity and prevarication. All that
I can imagine could give occasion to this censure is the great
and shining lustre of the Roman names which we have in
our minds; it does not seem likely to us that Demosthenes
could rival the glory of a consul, proconsul, and proctor
of that great Republic; but if a man consider the truth of
the thing, and the men in themselves, which is Plutarch’s
chiefest aim, and will rather balance their manners, their
natures, and parts, than their fortunes, I think, contrary to
Bodin, that Cicero and the elder Cato come far short of the
men with whom they are compared. I should sooner, for
his purpose, have chosen the example of the younger Cato
compared with Phocion, for in this couple there would have
been a more likely disparity, to the Roman’s advantage. As
to Marcellus, Sylla, and Pompey, I very well discern that
their exploits of war are greater and more full of pomp
and glory than those of the Greeks, whom Plutarch compares with them; but the bravest and most virtuous actions
any more in war than elsewhere, are not always the most
renowned. I often see the names of captains obscured by
the splendour of other names of less desert; witness Labienus, Ventidius, Telesinus, and several others. And to take
it by that, were I to complain on the behalf of the Greeks,
could I not say, that Camillus was much less comparable
to Themistocles, the Gracchi to Agis and Cleomenes, and
Numa to Lycurgus? But ‘tis folly to judge, at one view,
of things that have so many aspects. When Plutarch compares them, he does not, for all that, make them equal; who
could more learnedly and sincerely have marked their distinctions? Does he parallel the victories, feats of arms, the
force of the armies conducted by Pompey, and his triumphs,
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with those of Agesilaus? “I do not believe,” says he, “that
Xenophon himself, if he were now living, though he were
allowed to write whatever pleased him to the advantage
of Agesilaus, would dare to bring them into comparison.”
Does he speak of paralleling Lysander to Sylla. “There is,”
says he, “no comparison, either in the number of victories or
in the hazard of battles, for Lysander only gained two naval
battles.” This is not to derogate from the Romans; for having only simply named them with the Greeks, he can have
done them no injury, what disparity soever there may be
betwixt them and Plutarch does not entirely oppose them
to one another; there is no preference in general; he only
compares the pieces and circumstances one after another,
and gives of every one a particular and separate judgment.
Wherefore, if any one could convict him of partiality, he
ought to pick out some one of those particular judgments,
or say, in general, that he was mistaken in comparing such
a Greek to such a Roman, when there were others more fit
and better resembling to parallel him to.
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THE STORY OF SPURINA
thinks she has not ill employed her talent
P
when she has given the sovereignty of the soul and the
authority of restraining our appetites to reason. Amongst
HILOSOPHY
which, they who judge that there is none more violent than
those which spring from love, have this opinion also, that
they seize both body and soul, and possess the whole man,
so that even health itself depends upon them, and medicine
is sometimes constrained to pimp for them; but one might,
on the contrary, also say, that the mixture of the body brings
an abatement and weakening; for such desires are subject to
satiety, and capable of material remedies.
Many, being determined to rid their soul from the continual alarms of this appetite, have made use of incision and
amputation of the rebelling members; others have subdued
their force and ardour by the frequent application of cold
things, as snow and vinegar. The sackcloths of our ancestors
were for this purpose, which is cloth woven of horse hair, of
which some of them made shirts, and others girdles, to torture and correct their reins. A prince, not long ago, told me
that in his youth upon a solemn festival in the court of King
Francis I., where everybody was finely dressed, he would
needs put on his father’s hair shirt, which was still kept in
the house; but how great soever his devotion was, he had
not patience to wear it till night, and was sick a long time
after; adding withal, that he did not think there could be
any youthful heat so fierce that the use of this recipe would
not mortify, and yet perhaps he never essayed the most violent; for experience shows us, that such emotions are often
seen under rude and slovenly clothes, and that a hair shirt
does not always render those chaste who wear it.
Xenocrates proceeded with greater rigour in this affair; for his disciples, to make trial of his continency, having slipt Lais, that beautiful and famous courtesan, into his
bed, quite naked, excepting the arms of her beauty and her
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wanton allurements, her philters, finding that, in despite of
his reason and philosophical rules, his unruly flesh began to
mutiny, he caused those members of his to be burned that
he found consenting to this rebellion. Whereas the passions
which wholly reside in the soul, as ambition, avarice, and
the rest, find the reason much more to do, because it cannot
there be helped but by its own means; neither are those appetites capable of satiety, but grow sharper and increase by
fruition.
The sole example of Julius Caesar may suffice to
demonstrate to us the disparity of these appetites; for never
was man more addicted to amorous delights than he: of
which one testimony is the peculiar care he had of his person, to such a degree, as to make use of the most lascivious
means to that end then in use, as to have all the hairs of
his body twitched off, and to wipe all over with perfumes
with the extremest nicety. And he was a beautiful person in
himself, of a fair complexion, tall, and sprightly, full faced,
with quick hazel eyes, if we may believe Suetonius; for the
statues of him that we see at Rome do not in all points answer this description. Besides his wives, whom he four
times changed, without reckoning the amours of his boyhood with Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, he had the maidenhead of the renowned Cleopatra, queen of Egypt; witness
the little Caesario whom he had by her. He also made love
to. Eunoe, queen of Mauritania, and at Rome, to Posthumia,
the wife of Servius Sulpitius; to Lollia, the wife of Gabinius
to Tertulla, the wife of Crassus, and even to Mutia, wife to
the great Pompey: which was the reason, the Roman historians say, that she was repudiated by her husband, which
Plutarch confesses to be more than he knew; and the Curios, both father and son, afterwards reproached Pompey,
when he married Caesar’s daughter, that he had made himself son-in-law to a man who had made him cuckold, and
one whom he himself was wont to call AEgisthus. Besides
all these, he entertained Servilia, Cato’s sister and mother to
Marcus Brutus, whence, every one believes, proceeded the
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great affection he had to Brutus, by reason that he was born
at a time when it was likely he might be his son. So that
I have reason, methinks, to take him for a man extremely
given to this debauch, and of very amorous constitution.
But the other passion of ambition, with which he was infinitely smitten, arising in him to contend with the former,
it was boon compelled to give way.
And here calling to mind Mohammed, who won Constantinople, and finally exterminated the Grecian name, I
do not know where these two were so evenly balanced;
equally an indefatigable lecher and soldier: but where they
both meet in his life and jostle one another, the quarrelling
passion always gets the better of the amorous one, and this
though it was out of its natural season never regained an
absolute sovereignty over the other till he had arrived at an
extreme old age and unable to undergo the fatigues of war.
What is related for a contrary example of Ladislaus,
king of Naples, is very remarkable; that being a great captain, valiant and ambitious, he proposed to himself for the
principal end of his ambition, the execution of his pleasure
and the enjoyment of some rare and excellent beauty. His
death sealed up all the rest: for having by a close and tedious siege reduced the city of Florence to so great distress
that the inhabitants were compelled to capitulate about surrender, he was content to let them alone, provided they
would deliver up to him a beautiful maid he had heard of
in their city; they were forced to yield to it, and by a private
injury to avert the public ruin. She was the daughter of a famous physician of his time, who, finding himself involved
in so foul a necessity, resolved upon a high attempt. As every one was lending a hand to trick up his daughter and
to adorn her with ornaments and jewels to render her more
agreeable to this new lover, he also gave her a handkerchief
most richly wrought, and of an exquisite perfume, an implement they never go without in those parts, which she
was to make use of at their first approaches. This handkerchief, poisoned with his greatest art, coming to be rubbed
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between the chafed flesh and open pores, both of the one
and the other, so suddenly infused the poison, that immediately converting their warm into a cold sweat they presently
died in one another’s arms.
But I return to Caesar. His pleasures never made him
steal one minute of an hour, nor go one step aside from occasions that might any way conduce to his advancement.
This passion was so sovereign in him over all the rest, and
with so absolute authority possessed his soul, that it guided
him at pleasure. In truth, this troubles me, when, as to everything else, I consider the greatness of this man, and the
wonderful parts wherewith he was endued; learned to that
degree in all sorts of knowledge that there is hardly any one
science of which he has not written; so great an orator that
many have preferred his eloquence to that of Cicero, and
he, I conceive, did not think himself inferior to him in that
particular, for his two anti-Catos were written to counterbalance the elocution that Cicero had expended in his Cato.
As to the rest, was ever soul so vigilant, so active, and so
patient of labour as his? and, doubtless, it was embellished
with many rare seeds of virtue, lively, natural, and not put
on; he was singularly sober; so far from being delicate in
his diet, that Oppius relates, how that having one day at table set before him medicated instead of common oil in some
sauce, he ate heartily of it, that he might not put his entertainer out of countenance. Another time he caused his baker
to be whipped for serving him with a finer than ordinary
sort of bread. Cato himself was wont to say of him, that he
was the first sober man who ever made it his business to
ruin his country. And as to the same Cato’s calling, him one
day drunkard, it fell out thus being both of them in the Senate, at a time when Catiline’s conspiracy was in question of
which was Caesar was suspected, one came and brought
him a letter sealed up. Cato believing that it was something the conspirators gave him notice of, required him to
deliver into his hand, which Caesar was constrained to do
to avoid further suspicion. It was by chance a love-letter
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that Servilia, Cato’s sister, had written to him, which Cato
having read, he threw it back to him saying, “There, drunkard.” This, I say, was rather a word of disdain and anger
than an express reproach of this vice, as we often rate those
who anger us with the first injurious words that come into
our mouths, though nothing due to those we are offended
at; to which may be added that the vice with which Cato
upbraided him is wonderfully near akin to that wherein he
had surprised Caesar; for Bacchus and Venus, according to
the proverb, very willingly agree; but to me Venus is much
more sprightly accompanied by sobriety. The examples of
his sweetness and clemency to those by whom he had been
offended are infinite; I mean, besides those he gave during
the time of the civil wars, which, as plainly enough appears
by his writings, he practised to cajole his enemies, and to
make them less afraid of his future dominion and victory.
But I must also say, that if these examples are not sufficient
proofs of his natural sweetness, they, at least, manifest a
marvellous confidence and grandeur of courage in this person. He has often been known to dismiss whole armies,
after having overcome them, to his enemies, without ransom, or deigning so much as to bind them by oath, if not
to favour him, at least no more to bear arms against him;
he has three or four times taken some of Pompey’s captains
prisoners, and as often set them at liberty. Pompey declared
all those to be enemies who did not follow him to the war;
he proclaimed all those to be his friends who sat still and
did not actually take arms against him. To such captains
of his as ran away from him to go over to the other side,
he sent, moreover, their arms, horses, and equipage: the
cities he had taken by force he left at full liberty to follow
which side they pleased, imposing no other garrison upon
them but the memory of his gentleness and clemency. He
gave strict and express charge, the day of his great battle of
Pharsalia, that, without the utmost necessity, no one should
lay a hand upon the citizens of Rome. These, in my opinion, were very hazardous proceedings, and ‘tis no wonder
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if those in our civil war, who, like him, fight against the ancient estate of their country, do not follow his example; they
are extraordinary means, and that only appertain to Caesar’s fortune, and to his admirable foresight in the conduct
of affairs. When I consider the incomparable grandeur of
his soul, I excuse victory that it could not disengage itself
from him, even in so unjust and so wicked a cause.
To return to his clemency: we have many striking examples in the time of his government, when, all things being reduced to his power, he had no more written against
him which he had as sharply answered: yet he did not
soon after forbear to use his interest to make him consul.
Caius Calvus, who had composed several injurious epigrams against him, having employed many of his friends to
mediate a reconciliation with him, Caesar voluntarily persuaded himself to write first to him. And our good Catullus, who had so rudely ruffled him under the name of
Mamurra, coming to offer his excuses to him, he made the
same day sit at his table. Having intelligence of some who
spoke ill of him, he did no more, but only by a public oration declare that he had notice of it. He still less feared his
enemies than he hated them; some conspiracies and cabals
that were made against his life being discovered to him, he
satisfied himself in publishing by proclamation that they
were known to him, without further prosecuting the conspirators.
As to the respect he had for his friends: Caius Oppius,
being with him upon a journey, and finding himself ill, he
left him the only lodging he had for himself, and lay all
night upon a hard ground in the open air. As to what concerns his justice, he put a beloved servant of his to death
for lying with a noble Roman’s wife, though there was no
complaint made. Never had man more moderation in his
victory, nor more resolution in his adverse fortune.
But all these good inclinations were stifled and spoiled
by his furious ambition, by which he suffered himself to
be so transported and misled that one may easily maintain
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that this passion was the rudder of all his actions; of a liberal man, it made him a public thief to supply this bounty
and profusion, and made him utter this vile and unjust
saying, “That if the most wicked and profligate persons in
the world had been faithful in serving him towards his advancement, he would cherish and prefer them to the utmost
of his power, as much as the best of men.” It intoxicated him
with so excessive a vanity, as to dare to boast in the presence
of his fellow-citizens, that he had made the great commonwealth of Rome a name without form and without body;
and to say that his answers for the future should stand for
laws; and also to receive the body of the Senate coming to
him, sitting; to suffer himself to be adored, and to have divine honours paid to him in his own presence. To conclude,
this sole vice, in my opinion, spoiled in him the most rich
and beautiful nature that ever was, and has rendered his
name abominable to all good men, in that he would erect
his glory upon the ruins of his country and the subversion
of the greatest and most flourishing republic the world shall
ever see.
There might, on the contrary, many examples be produced of great men whom pleasures have made to neglect
the conduct of their affairs, as Mark Antony and others; but
where love and ambition should be in equal balance, and
come to jostle with equal forces, I make no doubt but the
last would win the prize.
To return to my subject: ‘tis much to bridle our appetites by the argument of reason, or, by violence, to contain
our members within their duty; but to lash ourselves for our
neighbour’s interest, and not only to divest ourselves of the
charming passion that tickles us, of the pleasure we feel in
being agreeable to others, and courted and beloved of every one, but also to conceive a hatred against the graces that
produce that effect, and to condemn our beauty because it
inflames others; of this, I confess, I have met with few examples. But this is one. Spurina, a young man of Tuscany:
“Qualis gemma micat, fulvum quae dividit au511
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rum,
Aut collo decus, aut cupiti: vel quale per artem
Inclusum buxo aut Oricia terebintho
Lucet ebur,”304
being endowed with a singular beauty, and so excessive,
that the chastest eyes could not chastely behold its rays; not
contenting himself with leaving so much flame and fever as
he everywhere kindled without relief, entered into a furious
spite against himself and those great endowments nature
had so liberally conferred upon him, as if a man were responsible to himself for the faults of others, and purposely
slashed and disfigured, with many wounds and scars, the
perfect symmetry and proportion that nature had so curiously imprinted in his face. To give my free opinion, I more
admire than honour such actions: such excesses are enemies
to my rules. The design was conscientious and good, but
certainly a little defective in prudence. What if his deformity served afterwards to make others guilty of the sin of
hatred or contempt; or of envy at the glory of so rare a recommendation; or of calumny, interpreting this humour a
mad ambition! Is there any form from which vice cannot,
if it will, extract occasion to exercise itself, one way or another? It had been more just, and also more noble, to have
made of these gifts of God a subject of exemplary regularity
and virtue.
They who retire themselves from the common offices,
from that infinite number of troublesome rules that fetter a
man of exact honesty in civil life, are in my opinion very
discreet, what peculiar sharpness of constraint soever they
impose upon themselves in so doing. ‘Tis in some sort a
kind of dying to avoid the pain of living well. They may
have another reward; but the reward of difficulty I fancy
they can never have; nor, in uneasiness, that there can be
304 “As a gem shines enchased in yellow gold, or an ornament on the
neck or head, or as ivory has lustre, set by art in boxwood or Orician
ebony.” –AEneid, x. 134.
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anything more or better done than the keeping oneself upright amid the waves of the world, truly and exactly performing all parts of our duty. ‘Tis, peradventure, more easy
to keep clear of the sex than to maintain one’s self aright in
all points in the society of a wife; and a man may with less
trouble adapt himself to entire abstinence than to the due
dispensation of abundance. Use, carried on according to
reason, has in it more of difficulty than abstinence; moderation is a virtue that gives more work than suffering; the well
living of Scipio has a thousand fashions, that of Diogenes
but one; this as much excels the ordinary lives in innocence
as the most accomplished excel them in utility and force.
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OBSERVATION ON THE MEANS TO CARRY ON A WAR
ACCORDING TO JULIUS CAESAR
‘Tis related of many great leaders that they have had
certain books in particular esteem, as Alexander the Great,
Homer; Scipio Africanus, Xenophon; Marcus Brutus, Polybius; Charles V., Philip’de Comines; and ‘tis said that, in our
times, Machiavelli is elsewhere still in repute; but the late
Marshal Strozzi, who had taken Caesar for his man, doubtless made the best choice, seeing that it indeed ought to be
the breviary of every soldier, as being the true and sovereign
pattern of the military art. And, moreover, God knows with
that grace and beauty he has embellished that rich matter,
with so pure, delicate, and perfect expression, that, in my
opinion, there are no writings in the world comparable to
his, as to that business.
I will set down some rare and particular passages of his
wars that remain in my memory.
His army, being in some consternation upon the rumour that was spread of the great forces that king Juba was
leading against him, instead of abating the apprehension
which his soldiers had conceived at the news and of lessening to them the forces of the enemy, having called them
all together to encourage and reassure them, he took a quite
contrary way to what we are used to do, for he told them
that they need no more trouble themselves with inquiring
after the enemy’s forces, for that he was certainly informed
thereof, and then told them of a number much surpassing
both the truth and the report that was current in his army;
following the advice of Cyrus in Xenophon, forasmuch as
the deception is not of so great importance to find an enemy weaker than we expected, than to find him really very
strong, after having been made to believe that he was weak.
It was always his use to accustom his soldiers simply to
obey, without taking upon them to control, or so much as to
speak of their captain’s designs, which he never communi514
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cated to them but upon the point of execution; and he took
a delight, if they discovered anything of what he intended,
immediately to change his orders to deceive them; and to
that purpose, would often, when he had assigned his quarters in a place, pass forward and lengthen his day’s march,
especially if it was foul and rainy weather.
The Swiss, in the beginning of his wars in Gaul, having
sent to him to demand a free passage over the Roman territories, though resolved to hinder them by force, he nevertheless spoke kindly to the messengers, and took some
respite to return an answer, to make use of that time for the
calling his army together. These silly people did not know
how good a husband he was of his time: for he often repeats
that it is the best part of a captain to know how to make use
of occasions, and his diligence in his exploits is, in truth,
unheard of and incredible.
If he was not very conscientious in taking advantage of
an enemy under colour of a treaty of agreement, he was as
little so in this, that he required no other virtue in a soldier
but valour only, and seldom punished any other faults but
mutiny and disobedience. He would often after his victories turn them loose to all sorts of licence, dispensing them
for some time from the rules of military discipline, saying
withal that he had soldiers so well trained up that, powdered and perfumed, they would run furiously to the fight.
In truth, he loved to have them richly armed, and made
them wear engraved, gilded, and damasked armour, to the
end that the care of saving it might engage them to a more
obstinate defence. Speaking to them, he called them by the
name of fellow-soldiers, which we yet use; which his successor, Augustus, reformed, supposing he had only done
it upon necessity, and to cajole those who merely followed
him as volunteers:
“Rheni mihi Caesar in undis
Dux erat; hic socius; facinus quos inquinat, ae515
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quat:”305
but that this carriage was too mean and low for the dignity of an emperor and general of an army, and therefore
brought up the custom of calling them soldiers only.
With this courtesy Caesar mixed great severity to keep
them in awe; the ninth legion having mutinied near Placentia, he ignominiously cashiered them, though Pompey was
then yet on foot, and received them not again to grace till after many supplications; he quieted them more by authority
and boldness than by gentle ways.
In that place where he speaks of his, passage over the
Rhine to Germany, he says that, thinking it unworthy of the
honour of the Roman people to waft over his army in vessels, he built a bridge that they might pass over dry-foot.
There it was that he built that wonderful bridge of which
he gives so particular a description; for he nowhere so willingly dwells upon his actions as in representing to us the
subtlety of his inventions in such kind of handiwork.
I have also observed this, that he set a great value upon
his exhortations to the soldiers before the fight; for where
he would show that he was either surprised or reduced to
a necessity of fighting, he always brings in this, that he had
not so much as leisure to harangue his army. Before that
great battle with those of Tournay, “Caesar,” says he, “having given order for everything else, presently ran where
fortune carried him to encourage his people, and meeting
with the tenth legion, had no more time to say anything
to them but this, that they should remember their wonted
valour; not to be astonished, but bravely sustain the enemy’s encounter; and seeing the enemy had already approached within a dart’s cast, he gave the signal for battle;
and going suddenly thence elsewhere, to encourage others,
he found that they were already engaged.” Here is what
305 “In the waters of the Rhine Caesar was my general; here at Rome
he is my fellow. Crime levels those whom it polluted.” –Lucan, v.
289.
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he tells us in that place. His tongue, indeed, did him notable service upon several occasions, and his military eloquence was, in his own time, so highly reputed, that many
of his army wrote down his harangues as he spoke them, by
which means there were volumes of them collected that existed a long time after him. He had so particular a grace in
speaking, that his intimates, and Augustus amongst others,
hearing those orations read, could distinguish even to the
phrases and words that were not his.
The first time that he went out of Rome with any public command, he arrived in eight days at the river Rhone,
having with him in his coach a secretary or two before
him who were continually writing, and him who carried
his sword behind him. And certainly, though a man did
nothing but go on, he could hardly attain that promptitude
with which, having been everywhere victorious in Gaul, he
left it, and, following Pompey to Brundusium, in eighteen
days’ time he subdued all Italy; returned from Brundusium
to Rome; from Rome went into the very heart of Spain,
where he surmounted extreme difficulties in the war against
Afranius and Petreius, and in the long siege of Marseilles;
thence he returned into Macedonia, beat the Roman army at
Pharsalia, passed thence in pursuit of Pompey into Egypt,
which he also subdued; from Egypt he went into Syria and
the territories of Pontus, where he fought Pharnaces; thence
into Africa, where he defeated Scipio and Juba; again returned through Italy, where he defeated Pompey’s sons:
“Ocyor et coeli fiammis, et tigride foeta.”306
“Ac veluti montis saxum de, vertice praeceps
Cum ruit avulsum vento, seu turbidus imber
Proluit, aut annis solvit sublapsa vetustas,
Fertur in abruptum magno mons improbus actu,
Exultatque solo, silvas, armenta, virosque,
306 “Swifter
than lightning, or the cub-bearing tigress.”
405
517
–Lucan, v.
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Involvens secum.”307
Speaking of the siege of Avaricum, he says, that it, was his
custom to be night and day with the pioneers.308 In all enterprises of consequence he always reconnoitred in person,
and never brought his army into quarters till he had first
viewed the place, and, if we may believe Suetonius, when
he resolved to pass over into England, he was the first man
that sounded the passage.
He was wont to say that he more valued a victory obtained
by counsel than by force, and in the war against Petreius
and Afranius, fortune presenting him with an occasion of
manifest advantage, he declined it, saying, that he hoped,
with a little more time, but less hazard, to overthrow his enemies. He there also played a notable part in commanding
his whole army to pass the river by swimming, without any
manner of necessity:
“Rapuitque ruens in praelia miles,
Quod fugiens timuisset, iter; mox uda receptis
Membra fovent armis, gelidosque a gurgite, cursu Restituunt artus.”309
I find him a little more temperate and considerate in
his enterprises than Alexander, for this man seems to seek
and run headlong upon dangers like an impetuous torrent
which attacks and rushes against everything it meets, without choice or discretion;
“Sic tauriformis volvitur Aufidus;
Qui regna Dauni perfluit Appuli,
307 “And as a stone torn from the mountain’s top by the wind or rain
torrents, or loosened by age, falls massive with mighty force, bounds
here and there, in its course sweeps from the earth with it woods,
herds, and men.” –AEneid, xii. 684.
308 Engineers.
D.W.
309 “The soldier rushing through a way to fight which he would have
been afraid to have taken in flight: then with their armour they cover
wet limbs, and by running restore warmth to their numbed joints.” –
Lucan, iv. 151.
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Dum saevit, horrendamque cultis
Diluviem meditatur agris;”310
and, indeed, he was a general in the flower and first heat of
his youth, whereas Caesar took up the trade at a ripe and
well advanced age; to which may be added that Alexander was of a more sanguine, hot, and choleric constitution,
which he also inflamed with wine, from which Caesar was
very abstinent.
But where necessary occasion required, never did any
man venture his person more than he: so much so, that for
my part, methinks I read in many of his exploits a determinate resolution to throw himself away to avoid the shame of
being overcome. In his great battle with those of Tournay,
he charged up to the head of the enemies without his shield,
just as he was seeing the van of his own army beginning
to give ground’; which also several other times befell him.
Hearing that his people were besieged, he passed through
the enemy’s army in disguise to go and encourage them
with his presence. Having crossed over to Dyrrachium
with very slender forces, and seeing the remainder of his
army which he had left to Antony’s conduct slow in following him, he undertook alone to repass the sea in a very
great storms and privately stole away to fetch the rest of his
forces, the ports on the other side being seized by Pompey,
and the whole sea being in his possession. And as to what
he performed by force of hand, there are many exploits that
in hazard exceed all the rules of war; for with how small
means did he undertake to subdue the kingdom of Egypt,
and afterwards to attack the forces of Scipio and Juba, ten
times greater than his own? These people had, I know not
what, more than human confidence in their fortune; and he
was wont to say that men must embark, and not deliberate,
upon high enterprises. After the battle of Pharsalia, when
310 “So
the
the
the biforked Aufidus, which flows through the realm of
Apulian Daunus, when raging, threatens a fearful deluge to
tilled ground.” –Horat., Od., iv. 14, 25.
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he had sent his army away before him into Asia, and was
passing in one single vessel the strait of the Hellespont, he
met Lucius Cassius at sea with ten tall men-of-war, when he
had the courage not only to stay his coming, but to sail up
to him and summon him to yield, which he did.
Having undertaken that furious siege of Alexia, where
there were fourscore thousand men in garrison, all Gaul being in arms to raise the siege and having set an army on foot
of a hundred and nine thousand horse, and of two hundred
and forty thousand foot, what a boldness and vehement
confidence was it in him that he would not give over his
attempt, but resolved upon two so great difficulties–which
nevertheless he overcame; and, after having won that great
battle against those without, soon reduced those within to
his mercy. The same happened to Lucullus at the siege
of Tigranocerta against King Tigranes, but the condition of
the enemy was not the same, considering the effeminacy of
those with whom Lucullus had to deal. I will here set down
two rare and extraordinary events concerning this siege of
Alexia; one, that the Gauls having drawn their powers together to encounter Caesar, after they had made a general
muster of all their forces, resolved in their council of war to
dismiss a good part of this great multitude, that they might
not fall into confusion. This example of fearing to be too
many is new; but, to take it right, it stands to reason that
the body of an army should be of a moderate greatness, and
regulated to certain bounds, both out of respect to the difficulty of providing for them, and the difficulty of governing and keeping them in order. At least it is very easy to
make it appear by example that armies monstrous in number have seldom done anything to purpose. According to
the saying of Cyrus in Xenophon, “‘Tis not the number of
men, but the number of good men, that gives the advantage”: the remainder serving rather to trouble than assist.
And Bajazet principally grounded his resolution of giving
Tamerlane battle, contrary to the opinion of all his captains,
upon this, that his enemies numberless number of men gave
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him assured hopes of confusion. Scanderbeg, a very good
and expert judge in such matters, was wont to say that ten
or twelve thousand reliable fighting men were sufficient to
a good leader to secure his regulation in all sorts of military
occasions. The other thing I will here record, which seems
to be contrary both to the custom and rules of war, is, that
Vercingetorix, who was made general of all the parts of the
revolted Gaul, should go shut up himself in Alexia: for he
who has the command of a whole country ought never to
shut himself up but in case of such last extremity that the
only place he has left is in concern, and that the only hope he
has left is in the defence of that city; otherwise he ought to
keep himself always at liberty, that he may have the means
to provide, in general, for all parts of his government.
To return to Caesar. He grew, in time, more slow and
more considerate, as his friend Oppius witnesses: conceiving that he ought not lightly to hazard the glory of so many
victories, which one blow of fortune might deprive him of.
‘Tis what the Italians say, when they would reproach the
rashness and foolhardiness of young people, calling them
Bisognosi d’onore, “necessitous of honour,” and that being
in so great a want and dearth of reputation, they have reason to seek it at what price soever, which they ought not
to do who have acquired enough already. There may reasonably be some moderation, some satiety, in this thirst and
appetite of glory, as well as in other things: and there are
enough people who practise it.
He was far remote from the religious scruples of the
ancient Romans, who would never prevail in their wars but
by dint of pure and simple valour; and yet he was more
conscientious than we should be in these days, and did
not approve all sorts of means to obtain a victory. In the
war against Ariovistus, whilst he was parleying with him,
there happened some commotion between the horsemen,
which was occasioned by the fault of Ariovistus’ light horse,
wherein, though Caesar saw he had a very great advantage
of the enemy, he would make no use on’t, lest he should
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have been reproached with a treacherous proceeding.
He was always wont to wear rich garments, and of a
shining colour in battle, that he might be the more remarkable and better observed.
He always carried a stricter and tighter hand over his
soldiers when near an enemy. When the ancient Greeks
would accuse any one of extreme insufficiency, they would
say, in common proverb, that he could neither read nor
swim; he was of the same opinion, that swimming was of
great use in war, and himself found it so; for when he had
to use diligence, he commonly swam over the rivers in his
way; for he loved to march on foot, as also did Alexander
the Great. Being in Egypt forced, to save himself, to go into
a little boat, and so many people leaping in with him that it
was in danger of sinking, he chose rather to commit himself
to the sea, and swam to his fleet, which lay two hundred
paces off, holding in his left hand his tablets, and drawing
his coatarmour in his teeth, that it might not fall into the enemy’s hand, and at this time he was of a pretty advanced
age.
Never had any general so much credit with his soldiers:
in the beginning of the civil wars, his centurions offered him
to find every one a man-at-arms at his own charge, and the
foot soldiers to serve him at their own expense; those who
were most at their ease, moreover, undertaking to defray
the more necessitous. The late Admiral Chastillon311
showed us the like example in our civil wars; for the
French of his army provided money out of their own purses
to pay the foreigners that were with him. There are but
rarely found examples of so ardent and so ready an affection amongst the soldiers of elder times, who kept themselves strictly to their rules of war: passion has a more absolute command over us than reason; and yet it happened
in the war against Hannibal, that by the example of the people of Rome in the city, the soldiers and captains refused
311 Gaspard
Bartholomew
de
Coligny,
assassinated
massacre, 24th August 1572.
522
in
the
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their pay in the army, and in Marcellus’ camp those were
branded with the name of Mercenaries who would receive
any. Having got the worst of it near Dyrrachium, his soldiers came and offered themselves to be chastised and punished, so that there was more need to comfort than reprove
them. One single cohort of his withstood four of Pompey’s legions above four hours together, till they were almost all killed with arrows, so that there were a hundred
and thirty thousand shafts found in the trenches. A soldier
called Scaeva, who commanded at one of the avenues, invincibly maintained his ground, having lost an eye, with
one shoulder and one thigh shot through, and his shield hit
in two hundred and thirty places. It happened that many
of his soldiers being taken prisoners, rather chose to die
than promise to join the contrary side. Granius Petronius
was taken by Scipio in Africa: Scipio having put the rest to
death, sent him word that he gave him his life, for he was
a man of quality and quaestor, to whom Petronius sent answer back, that Caesar’s soldiers were wont to give others
their life, and not to receive it; and immediately with his
own hand killed himself.
Of their fidelity there are infinite examples amongst
them, that which was done by those who were besieged
in Salona, a city that stood for Caesar against Pompey, is
not, for the rarity of an accident that there happened, to
be forgotten. Marcus Octavius kept them close besieged;
they within being reduced to the extremest necessity of all
things, so that to supply the want of men, most of them
being either slain or wounded, they had manumitted all
their slaves, and had been constrained to cut off all the
women’s hair to make ropes for their war engines, besides
a wonderful dearth of victuals, and yet continuing resolute
never to yield. After having drawn the siege to a great
length, by which Octavius was grown more negligent and
less attentive to his enterprise, they made choice of one day
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siegers with such fury, that having routed the first, second,
and third body, and afterwards the fourth, and the rest, and
beaten them all out of their trenches, they pursued them
even to their ships, and Octavius himself was fain to fly
to Dyrrachium, where Pompey lay. I do not at present remember that I have met with any other example where the
besieged ever gave the besieger a total defeat and won the
field, nor that a sortie ever achieved the result of a pure and
entire victory.
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OF THREE GOOD WOMEN
“Jactantius moerent, quae minus dolent.”312
whimpering is offensive to the living and vain to
T
the dead. We should willingly give them leave to laugh
after we are dead, provided they will smile upon us whilst
HEIR
we are alive. Is it not enough to make a man revive in pure
spite, that she, who spat in my face whilst I was in being,
shall come to kiss my feet when I am no more? If there
be any honour in lamenting a husband, it only appertains
to those who smiled upon them whilst they had them; let
those who wept during their lives laugh at their deaths, as
well outwardly as within. Therefore, never regard those
blubbered eyes and that pitiful voice; consider her deportment, her complexion, the plumpness of her cheeks under
all those formal veils; ‘tis there she talks plain French. There
are few who do not mend upon’t, and health is a quality
that cannot lie. That starched and ceremonious countenance
looks not so much back as forward, and is rather intended
to get a new husband than to lament the old. When I was
a boy, a very beautiful and virtuous lady, who is yet living,
the widow of a prince, wore somewhat more ornament in
her dress than our laws of widowhood allow, and being reproached with it, she made answer that it was because she
was resolved to have no more love affairs, and would never
marry again.
I have here, not at all dissenting from our customs,
made choice of three women, who have also expressed
the utmost of their goodness and affection about their husbands’ deaths; yet are they examples of another kind than
are now m use, and so austere that they will hardly be
drawn into imitation.
312 “They make the most ado who are least concerned.” (Or:) “They
mourn the more ostentatiously, the less they grieve.” –Tacitus, Annal., ii. 77, writing of Germanicus.
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The younger Pliny’ had near a house of his in Italy a
neighbour who was exceedingly tormented with certain ulcers in his private parts. His wife seeing him so long to languish, entreated that he would give her leave to see and at
leisure to consider of the condition of his disease, and that
she would freely tell him what she thought. This permission being obtained, and she having curiously examined the
business, found it impossible he could ever be cured, and
that all he had to hope for or expect was a great while to
linger out a painful and miserable life, and therefore, as the
most sure and sovereign remedy, resolutely advised him to
kill himself. But finding him a little tender and backward
in so rude an attempt: “Do not think, my friend,” said she,
“that the torments I see thee endure are not as sensible to
me as to thyself, and that to deliver myself from them, I will
not myself make use of the same remedy I have prescribed
to thee. I will accompany thee in the cure as I have done
in the disease; fear nothing, but believe that we shall have
pleasure in this passage that is to free us from so many miseries, and we will go happily together.” Which having said,
and roused up her husband’s courage, she resolved that
they should throw themselves headlong into the sea out of a
window that overlooked it, and that she might maintain to
the last the loyal and vehement affection wherewith she had
embraced him during his life, she would also have him die
in her arms; but lest they should fail, and should quit their
hold in the fall through fear, she tied herself fast to him by
the waist, and so gave up her own life to procure her husband’s repose. This was a woman of mean condition; and,
amongst that class of people, ‘tis no very new thing to see
some examples of rare virtue:
“Extrema per illos
Justitia excedens terris vestigia fecit.”313
The other two were noble and rich, where examples of
313 “Justice, when she left the earth, took her last steps among
them.” –Virgil, Georg., ii. 473.
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virtue are rarely lodged.
Arria, the wife of Caecina Paetus, a consular person,
was the mother of another Arria, the wife of Thrasea Paetus, he whose virtue was so renowned in the time of Nero,
and by this son-in-law, the grandmother of Fannia: for the
resemblance of the names of these men and women, and
their fortunes, have led to several mistakes. This first Arria, her husband Caecina Paetus, having been taken prisoner by some of the Emperor Claudius’ people, after Scribonianus’ defeat, whose party he had embraced in the war,
begged of those who were to carry him prisoner to Rome,
that they would take her into their ship, where she would
be of much less charge and trouble to them than a great
many persons they must otherwise have to attend her husband, and that she alone would undertake to serve him in
his chamber, his kitchen, and all other offices. They refused,
whereupon she put herself into a fisher-boat she hired on
the spot, and in that manner followed him from Sclavonia.
When she had come to Rome, Junia, the widow of Scribonianus, having one day, from the resemblance of their fortune, accosted her in the Emperor’s presence; she rudely repulsed her with these words, “I,” said she, “speak to thee, or
give ear to any thing thou sayest! to thee in whose lap Scribonianus was slain, and thou art yet alive!” These words,
with several other signs, gave her friends to understand that
she would undoubtedly despatch herself, impatient of supporting her husband’s misfortune. And Thrasea, her sonin-law, beseeching her not to throw away herself, and saying to her, “What! if I should run the same fortune that
Caecina has done, would you that your daughter, my wife,
should do the same?”–“Would I?” replied she, “yes, yes, I
would: if she had lived as long, and in as good understanding with thee as I have done, with my husband.” These
answers made them more careful of her, and to have a more
watchful eye to her proceedings. One day, having said to
those who looked to her: “Tis to much purpose that you
take all this pains to prevent me; you may indeed make
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me die an ill death, but to keep me from dying is not in
your power”; she in a sudden phrenzy started from a chair
whereon she sat, and with all her force dashed her head
against the wall, by which blow being laid flat in a swoon,
and very much wounded, after they had again with great
ado brought her to herself: “I told you,” said she, “that
if you refused me some easy way of dying, I should find
out another, how painful soever.” The conclusion of so admirable a virtue was this: her husband Paetus, not having
resolution enough of his own to despatch himself, as he was
by the emperor’s cruelty enjoined, one day, amongst others,
after having first employed all the reasons and exhortations
which she thought most prevalent to persuade him to it, she
snatched the poignard he wore from his side, and holding
it ready in her hand, for the conclusion of her admonitions;
“Do thus, Paetus,” said she, and in the same instant giving
herself a mortal stab in the breast, and then drawing it out
of the wound, presented it to him, ending her life with this
noble, generous, and immortal saying, “Paete, non dolet”–
having time to pronounce no more but those three never-tobe-forgotten words: “Paetus, it is not painful.”
“Casta suo gladium cum traderet Arria Paeto,
Quern de visceribus traxerat ipsa suis
Si qua fides, vulnus quod feci non dolet, inquit,
Sed quod to facies, id mihi, Paete, dolet.”314
The action was much more noble in itself, and of a braver
sense than the poet expressed it: for she was so far from being deterred by the thought of her husband’s wound and
death and her own, that she had been their promotress
and adviser: but having performed this high and courageous enterprise for her husband’s only convenience, she
had even in the last gasp of her life no other concern but for
314 “When the chaste Arria gave to Poetus the reeking sword she
had drawn from her breast, ‘If you believe me,’ she said, ‘Paetus,
the wound I have made hurts not, but ‘tis that which thou wilt make
that hurts me.”’ –Martial, i. 14.
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him, and of dispossessing him of the fear of dying with her.
Paetus presently struck himself to the heart with the same
weapon, ashamed, I suppose, to have stood in need of so
dear and precious an example.
Pompeia Paulina, a young and very noble Roman lady,
had married Seneca in his extreme old age. Nero, his fine
pupil, sent his guards to him to denounce the sentence of
death, which was performed after this manner: When the
Roman emperors of those times had condemned any man
of quality, they sent to him by their officers to choose what
death he would, and to execute it within such or such a time,
which was limited, according to the degree of their indignation, to a shorter or a longer respite, that they might therein
have better leisure to dispose their affairs, and sometimes
depriving them of the means of doing it by the shortness of
the time; and if the condemned seemed unwilling to submit to the order, they had people ready at hand to execute
it either by cutting the veins of the arms and legs, or by
compelling them by force to swallow a draught of poison.
But persons of honour would not abide this necessity, but
made use of their own physicians and surgeons for this purpose. Seneca, with a calm and steady countenance, heard
their charge, and presently called for paper to write his will,
which being by the captain refused, he turned himself towards his friends, saying to them, “Since I cannot leave you
any other acknowledgment of the obligation I have to you, I
leave you at least the best thing I have, namely, the image of
my life and manners, which I entreat you to keep in memory
of me, that by so doing you may acquire the glory of sincere
and real friends.” And there withal, one while appeasing
the sorrow he saw in them with gentle words, and presently
raising his voice to reprove them: “What,” said he, “are
become of all our brave philosophical precepts? What are
become of all the provisions we have so many years laid
up against the accidents of fortune? Is Nero’s cruelty unknown to us? What could we expect from him who had
murdered his mother and his brother, but that he should put
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his tutor to death who had brought him up?” After having
spoken these words in general, he turned himself towards
his wife, and embracing her fast in his arms, as, her heart
and strength failing her, she was ready to sink down with
grief, he begged of her, for his sake, to bear this accident
with a little more patience, telling her, that now the hour
was come wherein he was to show, not by argument and
discourse, but effect, the fruit he had acquired by his studies, and that he really embraced his death, not only without
grief, but moreover with joy. “Wherefore, my dearest,” said
he, “do not dishonour it with thy tears, that it may not seem
as if thou lovest thyself more than my reputation. Moderate thy grief, and comfort thyself in the knowledge thou
hast had of me and my actions, leading the remainder of thy
life in the same virtuous manner thou hast hitherto done.”
To which Paulina, having a little recovered her spirits, and
warmed the magnanimity of her courage with a most generous affection, replied,–“No, Seneca,” said she, “I am not a
woman to suffer you to go alone in such a necessity: I will
not have you think that the virtuous examples of your life
have not taught me how to die; and when can I ever better or more fittingly do it, or more to my own desire, than
with you? and therefore assure yourself I will go along with
you.” Then Seneca, taking this noble and generous resolution of his wife m good part, and also willing to free himself from the fear of leaving her exposed to the cruelty of
his enemies after his death: “I have, Paulina,” said he, “instructed thee in what would serve thee happily to live; but
thou more covetest, I see, the honour of dying: in truth, I
will not grudge it thee; the constancy and resolution in our
common end are the same, but the beauty and glory of thy
part are much greater.” Which being said, the surgeons, at
the same time, opened the veins of both their arms, but as
those of Seneca were more shrunk up, as well with age as
abstinence, made his blood flow too slowly, he moreover
commanded them to open the veins of his thighs; and lest
the torments he endured might pierce his wife’s heart, and
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also to free himself from the affliction of seeing her in so sad
a condition, after having taken a very affectionate leave of
her, he entreated she would suffer them to carry her into
her chamber, which they accordingly did. But all these incisions being not yet enough to make him die, he commanded
Statius Anneus, his physician, to give him a draught of poison, which had not much better effect; for by reason of the
weakness and coldness of his limbs, it could not arrive at
his heart. Wherefore they were forced to superadd a very
hot bath, and then, feeling his end approach, whilst he had
breath he continued excellent discourses upon the subject of
his present condition, which the secretaries wrote down so
long as they could hear his voice, and his last words were
long after in high honour and esteem amongst men, and
it is a great loss to us that they have not come down to our
times. Then, feeling the last pangs of death, with the bloody
water of the bath he bathed his head, saying: “This water I
dedicate to Jupiter the deliverer.” Nero, being presently informed of all this, fearing lest the death of Paulina, who was
one of the best-born ladies of Rome, and against whom he
had no particular unkindness, should turn to his reproach,
sent orders in all haste to bind up her wounds, which her attendants did without her knowledge, she being already half
dead, and without all manner of sense. Thus, though she
lived contrary to her own design, it was very honourably,
and befitting her own virtue, her pale complexion ever after manifesting how much life had run from her veins.
These are my three very true stories, which I find as entertaining and as tragic as any of those we make out of our
own heads wherewith to amuse the common people; and
I wonder that they who are addicted to such relations, do
not rather cull out ten thousand very fine stories, which are
to be found in books, that would save them the trouble of
invention, and be more useful and diverting; and he who
would make a whole and connected body of them would
need to add nothing of his own, but the connection only,
as it were the solder of another metal; and might by this
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means embody a great many true events of all sorts, disposing and diversifying them according as the beauty of
the work should require, after the same manner, almost, as
Ovid has made up his Metamorphoses of the infinite number of various fables.
In the last couple, this is, moreover, worthy of consideration, that Paulina voluntarily offered to lose her life for
the love of her husband, and that her husband had formerly
also forborne to die for the love of her. We may think there
is no just counterpoise in this exchange; but, according to
his stoical humour, I fancy he thought he had done as much
for her, in prolonging his life upon her account, as if he had
died for her. In one of his letters to Lucilius, after he has
given him to understand that, being seized with an ague
in Rome, he presently took coach to go to a house he had
in the country, contrary to his wife’s opinion, who would
have him stay, and that he had told her that the ague he was
seized with was not a fever of the body but of the place, it
follows thus: “She let me go,” says he, “giving me a strict
charge of my health. Now I, who know that her life is involved in mine, begin to make much of myself, that I may
preserve her. And I lose the privilege my age has given me,
of being more constant and resolute in many things, when
I call to mind that in this old fellow there is a young girl
who is interested in his health. And since I cannot persuade
her to love me more courageously, she makes me more solicitously love myself: for we must allow something to honest affections, and, sometimes, though occasions importune
us to the contrary, we must call back life, even though it
be with torment: we must hold the soul fast in our teeth,
since the rule of living, amongst good men, is not so long as
they please, but as long as they ought. He that loves not his
wife nor his friend so well as to prolong his life for them,
but will obstinately die, is too delicate and too effeminate:
the soul must impose this upon itself, when the utility of
our friends so requires; we must sometimes lend ourselves
to our friends, and when we would die for ourselves must
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break that resolution for them. ‘Tis a testimony of grandeur
of courage to return to life for the consideration of another,
as many excellent persons have done: and ‘tis a mark of singular good nature to preserve old age (of which the greatest
convenience is the indifference as to its duration, and a more
stout and disdainful use of life), when a man perceives that
this office is pleasing, agreeable, and useful to some person
by whom he is very much beloved. And a man reaps by
it a very pleasing reward; for what can be more delightful
than to be so dear to his wife, as upon her account he shall
become dearer to himself? Thus has my Paulina loaded me
not only with her fears, but my own; it has not been sufficient to consider how resolutely I could die, but I have also
considered how irresolutely she would bear my death. I am
enforced to live, and sometimes to live in magnanimity.”
These are his own words, as excellent as they everywhere
are.
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OF THE MOST EXCELLENT MEN
I should be asked my choice among all the men who
Imethinks
have come to my knowledge, I should make answer, that
I find three more excellent than all the rest.
F
One of them Homer: not that Aristotle and Varro, for
example, were not, peradventure, as learned as he; nor that
possibly Virgil was not equal to him in his own art, which I
leave to be determined by such as know them both. I who,
for my part, understand but one of them, can only say this,
according to my poor talent, that I do not believe the Muses
themselves could ever go beyond the Roman:
“Tale facit carmen docta testudine, quale
Cynthius impositis temperat articulis:”315
and yet in this judgment we are not to forget that it is chiefly
from Homer that Virgil derives his excellence, that he is
guide and teacher; and that one touch of the Iliad has supplied him with body and matter out of which to compose
his great and divine AEneid. I do not reckon upon that, but
mix several other circumstances that render to me this poet
admirable, even as it were above human condition. And, in
truth, I often wonder that he who has produced, and, by his
authority, given reputation in the world to so many deities,
was not deified himself. Being blind and poor, living before
the sciences were reduced into rule and certain observation,
he was so well acquainted with them, that all those who
have since taken upon them to establish governments, to
carry on wars, and to write either of religion or philosophy,
of what sect soever, or of the arts, have made use of him as
of a most perfect instructor in the knowledge of all things,
and of his books as of a treasury of all sorts of learning:
315 “He plays on his learned lute a verse such as Cynthian Apollo
modulates with his imposed fingers.” –Propertius, ii. 34, 79.
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“Qui, quid sit pulcrum, quid turpe, quid utile,
quid non,
Planius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore
dicit:”316
and as this other says,
“A quo, ceu fonte perenni,
Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis”317
and the other,
“Adde Heliconiadum comites, quorum unus
Homerus
Sceptra potitus;”318
and the other:
“Cujusque ex ore profusos
Omnis posteritas latices in carmina duxit,
Amnemque in tenues ausa est deducere rivos.
Unius foecunda bonis.”319
‘Tis contrary to the order of nature that he has made the
most excellent production that can possibly be; for the ordinary birth of things is imperfect; they thrive and gather
strength by growing, whereas he rendered the infancy of
316 “Who tells us what is good, what evil, what useful, what not,
more clearly and better than Chrysippus and Crantor?” –Horace,
Ep., i. 2, 3.
317 “From which, as from a perennial spring, the lips of the poets are
moistened by Pierian waters.” –Ovid, Amoy., iii. 9, 25.
318 “Add the companions of the Muses, whose sceptre Homer has
solely obtained.” –Lucretius, iii. 1050.
319 “From whose mouth all posterity has drawn out copious streams
of
verse, and has made bold to turn the mighty river into its little
rivulets, fertile in the property of one man.” –Manilius, Astyon., ii.
8.
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poesy and several other sciences mature, perfect, and accomplished at first. And for this reason he may be called the
first and the last of the poets, according to the fine testimony
antiquity has left us of him, “that as there was none before
him whom he could imitate, so there has been none since
that could imitate him.” His words, according to Aristotle,
are the only words that have motion and action, the only
substantial words. Alexander the Great, having found a rich
cabinet amongst Darius’ spoils, gave order it should be reserved for him to keep his Homer in, saying: that he was
the best and most faithful counsellor he had in his military
affairs. For the same reason it was that Cleomenes, the son
of Anaxandridas, said that he was the poet of the Lacedaemonians, for that he was an excellent master for the discipline of war. This singular and particular commendation is
also left of him in the judgment of Plutarch, that he is the
only author in the world that never glutted nor disgusted
his readers, presenting himself always another thing, and
always flourishing in some new grace. That wanton Alcibiades, having asked one, who pretended to learning, for a
book of Homer, gave him a box of the ear because he had
none, which he thought as scandalous as we should if we
found one of our priests without a Breviary. Xenophanes
complained one day to Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, that
he was so poor he had not wherewithal to maintain two
servants. “What!” replied he, “Homer, who was much
poorer than thou art, keeps above ten thousand, though he
is dead.” What did Panaetius leave unsaid when he called
Plato the Homer of the philosophers? Besides what glory
can be compared to his? Nothing is so frequent in men’s
mouths as his name and works, nothing so known and received as Troy, Helen, and the war about her, when perhaps
there was never any such thing. Our children are still called
by names that he invented above three thousand years ago;
who does not know Hector and Achilles? Not only some
particular families, but most nations also seek their origin
in his inventions. Mohammed, the second of that name,
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emperor of the Turks, writing to our Pope Pius II., “I am astonished,” says he, “that the Italians should appear against
me, considering that we have our common descent from the
Trojans, and that it concerns me as well as it does them to
revenge the blood of Hector upon the Greeks, whom they
countenance against me.” Is it not a noble farce wherein
kings, republics, and emperors have so many ages played
their parts, and to which the vast universe serves for a theatre? Seven Grecian cities contended for his birth, so much
honour even his obscurity helped him to!
“Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios,
Argos, Athenm.”
The other is Alexander the Great. For whoever will
consider the age at which he began his enterprises, the small
means by which he effected so glorious a design, the authority he obtained in such mere youth with the greatest and
most experienced captains of the world, by whom he was
followed, the extraordinary favour wherewith fortune embraced and favoured so many hazardous, not to say rash,
exploits,
“Impellens quicquid sibi summa petenti
Obstaret, gaudensque viam fecisse ruins;”320
that greatness, to have at the age of three-and-thirty years,
passed victorious through the whole habitable earth, and
in half a life to have attained to the utmost of what human
nature can do; so that you cannot imagine its just duration
and the continuation of his increase in valour and fortune,
up to a due maturity of age, but that you must withal imagine something more than man: to have made so many royal
branches to spring from his soldiers, leaving the world, at
his death, divided amongst four successors, simple captains
320 “Bearing down all who sought to withstand him, and pleased to
force his way by ruin.” –Lucan, i. 149.
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of his army, whose posterity so long continued and maintained that vast possession; so many excellent virtues as he
was master of, justice, temperance, liberality, truth in his
word, love towards his own people, and humanity towards
those he overcame; for his manners, in general, seem in
truth incapable of any manner of reproach, although some
particular and extraordinary actions of his may fall under
censure. But it is impossible to carry on such great things
as he did within the strict rules of justice; such as he are
to be judged in gross by the main end of their actions. The
ruin of Thebes and Persepolis, the murder of Menander and
of Ephistion’s physician, the massacre of so many Persian
prisoners at one time, of a troop of Indian soldiers not without prejudice to his word, and of the Cossians, so much as
to the very children, are indeed sallies that are not well to
be excused. For, as to Clytus, the fault was more than redeemed; and that very action, as much as any other whatever, manifests the goodness of his nature, a nature most
excellently formed to goodness; and it was ingeniously said
of him, that he had his virtues from Nature, his vices from
Fortune. As to his being a little given to bragging, a little too impatient of hearing himself ill-spoken of, and as to
those mangers, arms, and bits he caused to be strewed in the
Indies, all those little vanities, methinks, may very well be
allowed to his youth, and the prodigious prosperity of his
fortune. And who will consider withal his so many military
virtues, his diligence, foresight, patience, discipline, subtlety, magnanimity, resolution, and good fortune, wherein
(though we had not had the authority of Hannibal to assure
us) he was the first of men, the admirable beauty and symmetry of his person, even to a miracle, his majestic port and
awful mien, in a face so young, ruddy, and radiant:
“Qualis, ubi Oceani perfusus Lucifer unda,
Quem Venus ante alios astrorum diligit ignes,
Extulit os sacrum coelo, tenebrasque re538
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solvit;”321
the excellence of his knowledge and capacity; the duration
and grandeur of his glory, pure, clean, without spot or envy,
and that long after his death it was a religious belief that his
very medals brought good fortune to all who carried them
about them; and that more kings and princes have written
his actions than other historians have written the actions of
any other king or prince whatever; and that to this very day
the Mohammedans, who despise all other histories, admit
of and honour his alone, by a special privilege: whoever,
I say, will seriously consider these particulars, will confess
that, all these things put together, I had reason to prefer him
before Caesar himself, who alone could make me doubtful
in my choice: and it cannot be denied that there was more
of his own in his exploits, and more of fortune in those of
Alexander. They were in many things equal, and peradventure Caesar had some greater qualities they were two fires,
or two torrents, overrunning the world by several ways;
“Ac velut immissi diversis partibus ignes
Arentem in silvam, et virgulta sonantia lauro
Aut ubi decursu rapido de montibus altis
Dant sonitum spumosi amnes, et in aequora currunt,
Quisque suum populatus iter:”322
but though Caesar’s ambition had been more moderate, it
would still be so unhappy, having the ruin of his country
and universal mischief to the world for its abominable object, that, all things raked together and put into the balance,
I must needs incline to Alexander’s side.
321 “As when, bathed in the waves of Ocean, Lucifer, whom Venus
loves beyond the other stars, has displayed his sacred countenance to
the
heaven, and disperses the darkness” –AEneid, iii. 589.
322 “And as fires applied in several parts to a dry wood and crackling
shrubs of laurel, or as with impetuous fall from the steep mountains,
foaming torrents pour down to the ocean, each clearing a destructive
course.” –AEneid, xii. 521.
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The third and in my opinion the most excellent, is
Epaminondas. Of glory he has not near so much as the
other two (which, for that matter, is but a part of the substance of the thing): of valour and resolution, not of that
sort which is pushed on by ambition, but of that which wisdom and reason can plant in a regular soul, he had all that
could be imagined. Of this virtue of his, he has, in my idea,
given as ample proof as Alexander himself or Caesar: for
although his warlike exploits were neither so frequent nor
so full, they were yet, if duly considered in all their circumstances, as important, as bravely fought, and carried with
them as manifest testimony of valour and military conduct,
as those of any whatever. The Greeks have done him the
honour, without contradiction, to pronounce him the greatest man of their nation; and to be the first of Greece, is easily to be the first of the world. As to his knowledge, we
have this ancient judgment of him, “That never any man
knew so much, and spake so little as he”;323 for he was of
the Pythagorean sect; but when he did speak, never any
man spake better; an excellent orator, and of powerful persuasion. But as to his manners and conscience, he infinitely
surpassed all men who ever undertook the management of
affairs; for in this one thing, which ought chiefly to be considered, which alone truly denotes us for what we are, and
which alone I make counterbalance all the rest put together,
he comes not short of any philosopher whatever, not even of
Socrates himself. Innocence, in this man, is a quality peculiar, sovereign, constant, uniform, incorruptible, compared
with which, it appears in Alexander subject to something
else subaltern, uncertain, variable, effeminate, and fortuitous.
Antiquity has judged that in thoroughly sifting all the
other great captains, there is found in every one some peculiar quality that illustrates his name: in this man only there
is a full and equal virtue throughout, that leaves nothing to
be wished for in him, whether in private or public employ323 Plutarch,
On the Demon of Socrates, c. 23.
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ment, whether in peace or war; whether to live gloriously
and grandly, and to die: I do not know any form or fortune
of man that I so much honour and love.
‘Tis true that I look upon his obstinate poverty, as it
is set out by his best friends, as a little too scrupulous and
nice; and this is the only feature, though high in itself and
well worthy of admiration, that I find so rugged as not to
desire to imitate, to the degree it was in him.
Scipio AEmilianus alone, could one attribute to him as
brave and magnificent an end, and as profound and universal a knowledge, might be put into the other scale of the
balance. Oh, what an injury has time done me to deprive
me of the sight of two of the most noble lives which, by the
common consent of all the world, one of the greatest of the
Greeks, and the other of the Romans, were in all Plutarch.
What a matter! what a workman!
For a man that was no saint, but, as we say, a gentleman, of civilian and ordinary manners, and of a moderate
ambition, the richest life that I know, and full of the richest
and most to be desired parts, all things considered, is, in my
opinion, that of Alcibiades.
But as to what concerns Epaminondas, I will here, for
the example of an excessive goodness, add some of his opinions: he declared, that the greatest satisfaction he ever had
in his whole life, was the contentment he gave his father
and mother by his victory at Leuctra; wherein his deference is great, preferring their pleasure before his own, so
dust and so full of so glorious an action. He did not think
it lawful, even to restore the liberty of his country, to kill
a man without knowing a cause: which made him so cold
in the enterprise of his companion Pelopidas for the relief
of Thebes. He was also of opinion that men in battle ought
to avoid the encounter of a friend who was on the contrary
side, and to spare him. And his humanity, even towards
his enemies themselves, having rendered him suspected to
the Boeotians, for that, after he had miraculously forced the
Lacedaemonians to open to him the pass which they had
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undertaken to defend at the entrance into the Morea, near
Corinth, he contented himself with having charged through
them, without pursuing them to the utmost, he had his commission of general taken from him, very honourably upon
such an account, and for the shame it was to them upon
necessity afterwards to restore him to his command, and
so to manifest how much upon him depended their safety
and honour; victory like a shadow attending him wherever
he went; and indeed the prosperity of his country, as being
from him derived, died with him.
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OF THE RESEMBLANCE OF CHILDREN TO THEIR
FATHERS
faggoting up of so many divers pieces is so done that
T
I never set pen to paper but when I have too much idle
time, and never anywhere but at home; so that it is compiled
HIS
after divers interruptions and intervals, occasions keeping
me sometimes many months elsewhere. As to the rest, I
never correct my first by any second conceptions; I, peradventure, may alter a word or so, but ‘tis only to vary the
phrase, and not to destroy my former meaning. I have a
mind to represent the progress of my humours, and that
every one may see each piece as it came from the forge. I
could wish I had begun sooner, and had taken more notice
of the course of my mutations. A servant of mine whom I
employed to transcribe for me, thought he had got a prize
by stealing several pieces from me, wherewith he was best
pleased; but it is my comfort that he will be no greater a
gainer than I shall be a loser by the theft. I am grown older
by seven or eight years since I began; nor has it been without same new acquisition: I have, in that time, by the liberality of years, been acquainted with the stone: their commerce and long converse do not well pass away without
some such inconvenience. I could have been glad that of
other infirmities age has to present long-lived men withal, it
had chosen some one that would have been more welcome
to me, for it could not possibly have laid upon me a disease
for which, even from my infancy, I have had so great a horror; and it is, in truth, of all the accidents of old age, that of
which I have ever been most afraid. I have often thought
with myself that I went on too far, and that in so long a voyage I should at last run myself into some disadvantage; I
perceived, and have often enough declared, that it was time
to depart, and that life should be cut off in the sound and
living part, according to the surgeon’s rule in amputations;
and that nature made him pay very strict usury who did
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not in due time pay the principal. And yet I was so far from
being ready, that in the eighteen months’ time or thereabout
that I have been in this uneasy condition, I have so inured
myself to it as to be content to live on in it; and have found
wherein to comfort myself, and to hope: so much are men
enslaved to their miserable being, that there is no condition
so wretched they will not accept, provided they may live!
Hear Maecenas:
“Debilem facito manu,
Debilem pede, coxa,
Lubricos quate dentes;
Vita dum superest, bene est.”324
And Tamerlane, with a foolish humanity, palliated the fantastic cruelty he exercised upon lepers, when he put all he
could hear of to death, to deliver them, as he pretended,
from the painful life they lived. For there was not one of
them who would not rather have been thrice a leper than
be not. And Antisthenes the Stoic, being very sick, and crying out, “Who will deliver me from these evils?” Diogenes,
who had come to visit him, “This,” said he, presenting him a
knife, “soon enough, if thou wilt.”–“I do not mean from my
life,” he replied, “but from my sufferings.” The sufferings
that only attack the mind, I am not so sensible of as most
other men; and this partly out of judgment, for the world
looks upon several things as dreadful or to be avoided at
the expense of life, that are almost indifferent to me: partly,
through a dull and insensible complexion I have in accidents which do not point-blank hit me; and that insensibility I look upon as one of the best parts of my natural condition; but essential and corporeal pains I am very sensible
of. And yet, having long since foreseen them, though with
a sight weak and delicate and softened with the long and
happy health and quiet that God has been pleased to give
324 “Cripple my hand, foot, hip; shake out my loose teeth: while
there’s life, ‘tis well.” –Apud Seneca, Ep., 101.
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me the greatest part of my time, I had in my imagination
fancied them so insupportable, that, in truth, I was more
afraid than I have since found I had cause: by which I am
still more fortified in this belief, that most of the faculties of
the soul, as we employ them, more trouble the repose of life
than they are any way useful to it.
I am in conflict with the worst, the most sudden, the
most painful, the most mortal, and the most irremediable
of all diseases; I have already had the trial of five or six
very long and very painful fits; and yet I either flatter myself, or there is even in this state what is very well to be
endured by a man who has his soul free from the fear of
death, and of the menaces, conclusions, and consequences
which physic is ever thundering in our ears; but the effect
even of pain itself is not so sharp and intolerable as to put a
man of understanding into rage and despair. I have at least
this advantage by my stone, that what I could not hitherto
prevail upon myself to resolve upon, as to reconciling and
acquainting myself with death, it will perfect; for the more
it presses upon and importunes me, I shall be so much the
less afraid to die. I had already gone so far as only to love
life for life’s sake, but my pain will dissolve this intelligence;
and God grant that in the end, should the sharpness of it be
once greater than I shall be able to bear, it does not throw
me into the other no less vicious extreme to desire and wish
to die!
“Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes:”325
they are two passions to be feared; but the one has its remedy much nearer at hand than the other.
As to the rest, I have always found the precept that
so rigorously enjoins a resolute countenance and disdainful
and indifferent comportment in the toleration of infirmities
to be ceremonial. Why should philosophy, which only has
325 “Neither to wish, nor fear to die.”
(Or:)
“Thou
shouldest neither fear nor desire the last day.” –Martial, x. 7.
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respect to life and effects, trouble itself about these external
appearances? Let us leave that care to actors and masters
of rhetoric, who set so great a value upon our gestures. Let
her allow this vocal frailty to disease, if it be neither cordial
nor stomachic, and permit the ordinary ways of expressing
grief by sighs, sobs, palpitations, and turning pale, that nature has put out of our power; provided the courage be undaunted, and the tones not expressive of despair, let her be
satisfied. What matter the wringing of our hands, if we do
not wring our thoughts? She forms us for ourselves, not for
others; to be, not to seem; let her be satisfied with governing our understanding, which she has taken upon her the
care of instructing; that, in the fury of the colic, she maintain the soul in a condition to know itself, and to follow
its accustomed way, contending with, and enduring, not
meanly truckling under pain; moved and heated, not subdued and conquered, in the contention; capable of discourse
and other things, to a certain degree. In such extreme accidents, ‘tis cruelty to require so exact a composedness. ‘Tis
no great matter that we make a wry face, if the mind plays
its part well: if the body find itself relieved by complaining
let it complain: if agitation ease it, let it tumble and toss at
pleasure; if it seem to find the disease evaporate (as some
physicians hold that it helps women in delivery) in making
loud outcries, or if this do but divert its torments, let it roar
as it will. Let us not command this voice to sally, but stop
it not. Epicurus, not only forgives his sage for crying out in
torments, but advises him to it:
“Pugiles etiam, quum feriunt, in jactandis
caestibus ingemiscunt, quia profundenda voce
omne corpus intenditur, venitque plaga vehementior.”326
We have enough to do to deal with the disease, without
326 “Boxers also, when they strike, groan in the act, because with the
strength of voice the whole body is carried, and the blow comes with
the greater vehemence.” –Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 23.
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troubling ourselves with these superfluous rules.
Which I say in excuse of those whom we ordinarily see
impatient in the assaults of this malady; for as to what concerns myself, I have passed it over hitherto with a little better countenance, and contented myself with groaning without roaring out; not, nevertheless, that I put any great constraint upon myself to maintain this exterior decorum, for I
make little account of such an advantage: I allow herein as
much as the pain requires; but either my pains are not so excessive, or I have more than ordinary patience. I complain,
I confess, and am a little impatient in a very sharp fit, but I
do not arrive to such a degree of despair as he who with:
“Ejulatu, questu, gemitu, fremitibus
Resonando, multum flebiles voces refert:”327
I try myself in the depth of my suffering, and have always
found that I was in a capacity to speak, think, and give a rational answer as well as at any other time, but not so firmly,
being troubled and interrupted by the pain. When I am
looked upon by my visitors to be in the greatest torment,
and that they therefore forbear to trouble me, I often essay
my own strength, and myself set some discourse on foot,
the most remote I can contrive from my present condition. I
can do anything upon a sudden endeavour, but it must not
continue long. Oh, what pity ‘tis I have not the faculty of
that dreamer in Cicero, who dreaming he was lying with a
wench, found he had discharged his stone in the sheets. My
pains strangely deaden my appetite that way. In the intervals from this excessive torment, when my ureters