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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 18
+by Michel de Montaigne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 18
+
+Author: Michel de Montaigne
+
+Release Date: September 17, 2006 [EBook #3598]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE, VOLUME 18 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
+
+Translated by Charles Cotton
+
+Edited by William Carew Hazilitt
+
+1877
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOLUME 18.
+
+X.        Of Managing the Will.
+XI.       Of Cripples.
+XII.      Of Physiognomy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OF MANAGING THE WILL
+
+Few things, in comparison of what commonly affect other men, move, or, to
+say better, possess me: for 'tis but reason they should concern a man,
+provided they do not possess him.  I am very solicitous, both by study
+and argument, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in me
+naturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I espouse and
+am very much moved with very few things.  I have a clear sight enough,
+but I fix it upon very few objects; I have a sense delicate and tender
+enough; but an apprehension and application hard and negligent.  I am
+very unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself
+wholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb
+and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into
+it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over
+which fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I
+so much value, 'tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to
+covet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable.  A man ought
+to moderate himself betwixt the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure:
+and Plato sets down a middle path of life betwixt the two.  But against
+such affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere,
+against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power.  'Tis my
+opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself
+to himself.  Were my will easy to lend itself out and to be swayed, I
+should not stick there; I am too tender both by nature and use:
+
+            "Fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus."
+
+          ["Avoiding affairs and born to secure ease."
+          --Ovid, De Trist., iii. 2, 9.]
+
+Hot and obstinate disputes, wherein my adversary would at last have the
+better, the issue that would render my heat and obstinacy disgraceful
+would peradventure vex me to the last degree.  Should I set myself to it
+at the rate that others do, my soul would never have the force to bear
+the emotion and alarms of those who grasp at so much; it would
+immediately be disordered by this inward agitation.  If, sometimes, I
+have been put upon the management of other men's affairs, I have promised
+to take them in hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them upon
+me, not to incorporate them; to take pains, yes: to be impassioned about
+it, by no means; I have a care of them, but I will not sit upon them.
+I have enough to do to order and govern the domestic throng of those that
+I have in my own veins and bowels, without introducing a crowd of other
+men's affairs; and am sufficiently concerned about my own proper and
+natural business, without meddling with the concerns of others.  Such as
+know how much they owe to themselves, and how many offices they are bound
+to of their own, find that nature has cut them out work enough of their
+own to keep them from being idle.  "Thou hast business enough at home:
+look to that."
+
+Men let themselves out to hire; their faculties are not for themselves,
+but for those to whom they have enslaved themselves; 'tis their tenants
+occupy them, not themselves.  This common humour pleases not me.  We must
+be thrifty of the liberty of our souls, and never let it out but upon
+just occasions, which are very few, if we judge aright.  Do but observe
+such as have accustomed themselves to be at every one's call: they do it
+indifferently upon all, as well little as great, occasions; in that which
+nothing concerns them; as much as in what imports them most.  They thrust
+themselves in indifferently wherever there is work to do and obligation,
+and are without life when not in tumultuous bustle:
+
+                    "In negotiis sunt, negotii cause,"
+
+     ["They are in business for business' sake."--Seneca, Ep., 22.]
+
+It is not so much that they will go, as it is that they cannot stand
+still: like a rolling stone that cannot stop till it can go no further.
+Occupation, with a certain sort of men, is a mark of understanding and
+dignity: their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being
+rocked in a cradle; they may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their
+friends, as they are troublesome to themselves.  No one distributes his
+money to others, but every one distributes his time and his life: there
+is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of these two things, of which
+to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful.  I am of a quite
+contrary humour; I look to myself, and commonly covet with no great
+ardour what I do desire, and desire little; and I employ and busy myself
+at the same rate, rarely and temperately.  Whatever they take in hand,
+they do it with their utmost will and vehemence.  There are so many
+dangerous steps, that, for the more safety, we must a little lightly and
+superficially glide over the world, and not rush through it.  Pleasure
+itself is painful in profundity:
+
+                              "Incedis per ignes,
+                    Suppositos cineri doloso."
+
+          ["You tread on fire, hidden under deceitful ashes."
+          --Horace, Od., ii. i, 7.]
+
+The Parliament of Bordeaux chose me mayor of their city at a time when I
+was at a distance from France,--[At Bagno Della Villa, near Lucca,
+September 1581]--and still more remote from any such thought.
+I entreated to be excused, but I was told by my friends that I had
+committed an error in so doing, and the greater because the king had,
+moreover, interposed his command in that affair.  'Tis an office that
+ought to be looked upon so much more honourable, as it has no other
+salary nor advantage than the bare honour of its execution.  It continues
+two years, but may be extended by a second election, which very rarely
+happens; it was to me, and had never been so but twice before: some years
+ago to Monsieur de Lansac, and lately to Monsieur de Biron, Marshal of
+France, in whose place I succeeded; and, I left mine to Monsieur de
+Matignon, Marshal of France also: proud of so noble a fraternity--
+
+               "Uterque bonus pacis bellique minister."
+
+          ["Either one a good minister in peace and war."
+          --AEneid, xi. 658.]
+
+Fortune would have a hand in my promotion, by this particular
+circumstance which she put in of her own, not altogether vain; for
+Alexander disdained the ambassadors of Corinth, who came to offer him a
+burgess-ship of their city; but when they proceeded to lay before him
+that Bacchus and Hercules were also in the register, he graciously
+thanked them.
+
+At my arrival, I faithfully and conscientiously represented myself to
+them for such as I find myself to be--a man without memory, without
+vigilance, without experience, and without vigour; but withal, without
+hatred, without ambition, without avarice, and without violence; that
+they might be informed of my qualities, and know what they were to expect
+from my service.  And whereas the knowledge they had had of my late
+father, and the honour they had for his memory, had alone incited them to
+confer this favour upon me, I plainly told them that I should be very
+sorry anything should make so great an impression upon me as their
+affairs and the concerns of their city had made upon him, whilst he held
+the government to which they had preferred me.  I remembered, when a boy,
+to have seen him in his old age cruelly tormented with these public
+affairs, neglecting the soft repose of his own house, to which the
+declension of his age had reduced him for several years before, the
+management of his own affairs, and his health; and certainly despising
+his own life, which was in great danger of being lost, by being engaged
+in long and painful journeys on their behalf.  Such was he; and this
+humour of his proceeded from a marvellous good nature; never was there a
+more charitable and popular soul.  Yet this proceeding which I commend in
+others, I do not love to follow myself, and am not without excuse.
+
+He had learned that a man must forget himself for his neighbour, and that
+the particular was of no manner of consideration in comparison with the
+general.  Most of the rules and precepts of the world run this way; to
+drive us out of ourselves into the street for the benefit of public
+society; they thought to do a great feat to divert and remove us from
+ourselves, assuming we were but too much fixed there, and by a too
+natural inclination; and have said all they could to that purpose: for
+'tis no new thing for the sages to preach things as they serve, not as
+they are.  Truth has its obstructions, inconveniences, and
+incompatibilities with us; we must often deceive that we may not deceive
+ourselves; and shut our eyes and our understandings to redress and amend
+them:
+
+          "Imperiti enim judicant, et qui frequenter
+          in hoc ipsum fallendi sunt, ne errent."
+
+     ["For the ignorant judge, and therefore are oft to be deceived,
+     less they should err."--Quintil., Inst. Orat., xi. 17.]
+
+When they order us to love three, four, or fifty degrees of things above
+ourselves,  they do like archers, who, to hit the white, take their aim a
+great deal higher than the butt; to make a crooked stick straight, we
+bend it the contrary way.
+
+I believe that in the Temple of Pallas, as we see in all other religions,
+there were apparent mysteries to be exposed to the people; and others,
+more secret and high, that were only to be shown to such as were
+professed; 'tis likely that in these the true point of friendship that
+every one owes to himself is to be found; not a false friendship, that
+makes us embrace glory, knowledge, riches, and the like, with a principal
+and immoderate affection, as members of our being; nor an indiscreet and
+effeminate friendship, wherein it happens, as with ivy, that it decays
+and ruins the walls it embraces; but a sound and regular friendship,
+equally useful and pleasant.  He who knows the duties of this friendship
+and practises them is truly of the cabinet of the Muses, and has attained
+to the height of human wisdom and of our happiness, such an one, exactly
+knowing what he owes to himself, will on his part find that he ought to
+apply to himself the use of the world and of other men; and to do this,
+to contribute to public society the duties and offices appertaining to
+him.  He who does not in some sort live for others, does not live much
+for himself:
+
+     "Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse."
+
+     ["He who is his own friend, is a friend to everybody else."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 6.]
+
+The principal charge we have is, to every one his own conduct; and 'tis
+for this only that we here are.  As he who should forget to live a
+virtuous and holy life, and should think he acquitted himself of his duty
+in instructing and training others up to it, would be a fool; even so he
+who abandons his own particular healthful and pleasant living to serve
+others therewith, takes, in my opinion, a wrong and unnatural course.
+
+I would not that men should refuse, in the employments they take upon
+them, their attention, pains, eloquence, sweat, and blood if need be:
+
+                         "Non ipse pro caris amicis
+                    Aut patria, timidus perire:"
+
+     ["Himself not afraid to die for beloved friends, or for his
+     country."--Horace, Od., iv. 9, 51.]
+
+but 'tis only borrowed, and accidentally; his mind being always in repose
+and in health; not without action, but without vexation, without passion.
+To be simply acting costs him so little, that he acts even sleeping;
+but it must be set on going with discretion; for the body receives the
+offices imposed upon it just according to what they are; the mind often
+extends and makes them heavier at its own expense, giving them what
+measure it pleases.  Men perform like things with several sorts of
+endeavour, and different contention of will; the one does well enough
+without the other; for how many people hazard themselves every day in war
+without any concern which way it goes; and thrust themselves into the
+dangers of battles, the loss of which will not break their next night's
+sleep? and such a man may be at home, out of the danger which he durst
+not have looked upon, who is more passionately concerned for the issue of
+this war, and whose soul is more anxious about events than the soldier
+who therein stakes his blood and his life.  I could have engaged myself
+in public employments without quitting my own matters a nail's breadth,
+and have given myself to others without abandoning myself.  This
+sharpness and violence of desires more hinder than they advance the
+execution of what we undertake; fill us with impatience against slow or
+contrary events, and with heat and suspicion against those with whom we
+have to do.  We never carry on that thing well by which we are
+prepossessed and led:
+
+                         "Male cuncta ministrat
+                         Impetus."
+
+     ["Impulse manages all things ill."--Statius, Thebaid, x. 704.]
+
+He who therein employs only his judgment and address proceeds more
+cheerfully: he counterfeits, he gives way, he defers quite at his ease,
+according to the necessities of occasions; he fails in his attempt
+without trouble and affliction, ready and entire for a new enterprise;
+he always marches with the bridle in his hand.  In him who is intoxicated
+with this violent and tyrannical intention, we discover, of necessity,
+much imprudence and injustice; the impetuosity of his desire carries him
+away; these are rash motions, and, if fortune do not very much assist,
+of very little fruit.  Philosophy directs that, in the revenge of
+injuries received, we should strip ourselves of choler; not that the
+chastisement should be less, but, on the contrary, that the revenge may
+be the better and more heavily laid on, which, it conceives, will be by
+this impetuosity hindered.  For anger not only disturbs, but, of itself,
+also wearies the arms of those who chastise; this fire benumbs and wastes
+their force; as in precipitation, "festinatio tarda est,"--haste trips
+up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself:
+
+               "Ipsa se velocitas implicat."--Seneca, Ep. 44
+
+For example, according to what I commonly see, avarice has no greater
+impediment than itself; the more bent and vigorous it is, the less it
+rakes together, and commonly sooner grows rich when disguised in a visor
+of liberality.
+
+A very excellent gentleman, and a friend of mine, ran a risk of impairing
+his faculties by a too passionate attention and affection to the affairs
+of a certain prince his master;--[Probably the King of Navarre, afterward
+Henry IV.]--which master has thus portrayed himself to me; "that he
+foresees the weight of accidents as well as another, but that in those
+for which there is no remedy, he presently resolves upon suffering; in
+others, having taken all the necessary precautions which by the vivacity
+of his understanding he can presently do, he quietly awaits what may
+follow."  And, in truth, I have accordingly seen him maintain a great
+indifferency and liberty of actions and serenity of countenance in very
+great and difficult affairs: I find him much greater, and of greater
+capacity in adverse than in prosperous fortune; his defeats are to him
+more glorious than his victories, and his mourning than his triumph.
+
+Consider, that even in vain and frivolous actions, as at chess, tennis,
+and the like, this eager and ardent engaging with an impetuous desire,
+immediately throws the mind and members into indiscretion and disorder: a
+man astounds and hinders himself; he who carries himself more moderately,
+both towards gain and loss, has always his wits about him; the less
+peevish and passionate he is at play, he plays much more advantageously
+and surely.
+
+As to the rest, we hinder the mind's grasp and hold, in giving it so many
+things to seize upon; some things we should only offer to it; tie it to
+others, and with others incorporate it.  It can feel and discern all
+things, but ought to feed upon nothing but itself; and should be
+instructed in what properly concerns itself, and that is properly of its
+own having and substance.  The laws of nature teach us what justly we
+need.  After the sages have told us that no one is indigent according to
+nature, and that every one is so according to opinion, they very subtly
+distinguish betwixt the desires that proceed from her, and those that
+proceed from the disorder of our own fancy: those of which we can see the
+end are hers; those that fly before us, and of which we can see no end,
+are our own: the poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the
+soul is irreparable:
+
+         "Nam si, quod satis est homini, id satis esse potesset
+          Hoc sat erat: nunc, quum hoc non est, qui credimus porro
+          Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse?"
+
+     ["For if what is for man enough, could be enough, it were enough;
+     but since it is not so, how can I believe that any wealth can give
+     my mind content."--Lucilius aped Nonium Marcellinum, V. sec. 98.]
+
+Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniture
+carried in pomp through his city:  "How many things," said he, "I do not
+desire!"--[Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., V. 32.]--Metrodorus lived on twelve
+ounces a day, Epicurus upon less; Metrocles slept in winter abroad
+amongst sheep, in summer in the cloisters of churches:
+
+               "Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit."
+
+          ["Nature suffices for what he requires."--Seneca, Ep., 90.]
+
+Cleanthes lived by the labour of his own hands, and boasted that
+Cleanthes, if he would, could yet maintain another Cleanthes.
+
+If that which nature exactly and originally requires of us for the
+conservation of our being be too little (as in truth what it is, and how
+good cheap life may be maintained, cannot be better expressed than by
+this consideration, that it is so little that by its littleness it
+escapes the gripe and shock of fortune), let us allow ourselves a little
+more; let us call every one of our habits and conditions nature; let us
+rate and treat ourselves by this measure; let us stretch our
+appurtenances and accounts so far; for so far, I fancy, we have some
+excuse.  Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful.  What is
+wanting to my custom, I reckon is wanting to me; and I should be almost
+as well content that they took away my life as cut me short in the way
+wherein I have so long lived.  I am no longer in condition for any great
+change, nor to put myself into a new and unwonted course, not even to
+augmentation.  'Tis past the time for me to become other than what I am;
+and as I should complain of any great good hap that should now befall me,
+that it came not in time to be enjoyed:
+
+               "Quo mihi fortunas, si non conceditur uti?"
+
+     ["What is the good fortune to me, if it is not granted to me
+     to use it."--Horace, Ep., i. 5, 12.]
+
+so should I complain of any inward acquisition.  It were almost better
+never, than so late, to become an honest man, and well fit to live, when
+one has no longer to live.  I, who am about to make my exit out of the
+world, would easily resign to any newcomer, who should desire it, all the
+prudence I am now acquiring in the world's commerce; after meat, mustard.
+I have no need of goods of which I can make no use; of what use is
+knowledge to him who has lost his head?  'Tis an injury and unkindness in
+fortune to tender us presents that will only inspire us with a just
+despite that we had them not in their due season.  Guide me no more; I
+can no longer go.  Of so many parts as make up a sufficiency, patience is
+the most sufficient.  Give the capacity of an excellent treble to the
+chorister who has rotten lungs, and eloquence to a hermit exiled into the
+deserts of Arabia.  There needs no art to help a fall; the end finds
+itself of itself at the conclusion of every affair.  My world is at an
+end, my form expired; I am totally of the past, and am bound to authorise
+it, and to conform my outgoing to it.  I will here declare, by way of
+example, that the Pope's late ten days' diminution
+
+     [Gregory XIII., in 1582, reformed the Calendar, and, in consequence,
+     in France they all at once passed from the 9th to the 20th
+     December.]
+
+has taken me so aback that I cannot well reconcile myself to it; I belong
+to the years wherein we kept another kind of account.  So ancient and so
+long a custom challenges my adherence to it, so that I am constrained to
+be somewhat heretical on that point incapable of any, though corrective,
+innovation.  My imagination, in spite of my teeth, always pushes me ten
+days forward or backward, and is ever murmuring in my ears: "This rule
+concerns those who are to begin to be."  If health itself, sweet as it
+is, returns to me by fits, 'tis rather to give me cause of regret than
+possession of it; I have no place left to keep it in.  Time leaves me;
+without which nothing can be possessed.  Oh, what little account should I
+make of those great elective dignities that I see in such esteem in the
+world, that are never conferred but upon men who are taking leave of it;
+wherein they do not so much regard how well the man will discharge his
+trust, as how short his administration will be: from the very entry they
+look at the exit.  In short, I am about finishing this man, and not
+rebuilding another.  By long use, this form is in me turned into
+substance, and fortune into nature.
+
+I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is excusable in
+thinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; but
+withal, beyond these limits, 'tis nothing but confusion; 'tis the largest
+extent we can grant to our own claims.  The more we amplify our need and
+our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows of
+Fortune and adversities.  The career of our desires ought to be
+circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and most
+contiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be performed
+not in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of which the
+two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves.  Actions
+that are carried on without this reflection--a near and essential
+reflection, I mean--such as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and so
+many more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries them
+before themselves, such actions, I say; are erroneous and sickly.
+
+Most of our business is farce:
+
+               "Mundus universus exercet histrioniam."
+               --[Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8.]
+
+We must play our part properly, but withal as a part of a borrowed
+personage; we must not make real essence of a mask and outward
+appearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we cannot distinguish the
+skin from the shirt: 'tis enough to meal the face, without mealing the
+breast.  I see some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into as
+many new shapes and new beings as they undertake new employments; and who
+strut and fume even to the heart and liver, and carry their state along
+with them even to the close-stool: I cannot make them distinguish the
+salutations made to themselves from those made to their commission, their
+train, or their mule:
+
+     "Tantum se fortunx permittunt, etiam ut naturam dediscant."
+
+     ["They so much give themselves up to fortune, as even to unlearn
+     nature."--Quintus Curtius, iii. 2.]
+
+They swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking,
+according to the height of their magisterial place.  The Mayor of
+Bordeaux and Montaigne have ever been two by very manifest separation.
+Because one is an advocate or a financier, he must not ignore the knavery
+there is in such callings; an honest man is not accountable for the vice
+or absurdity of his employment, and ought not on that account refuse to
+take the calling upon him: 'tis the usage of his country, and there is
+money to be got by it; a man must live by the world; and make his best of
+it, such as it is.  But the judgment of an emperor ought to be above his
+empire, and see and consider it as a foreign accident; and he ought to
+know how to enjoy himself apart from it, and to communicate himself as
+James and Peter, to himself, at all events.
+
+I cannot engage myself so deep and so entire; when my will gives me to
+anything, 'tis not with so violent an obligation that my judgment is
+infected with it.  In the present broils of this kingdom, my own interest
+has not made me blind to the laudable qualities of our adversaries, nor
+to those that are reproachable in those men of our party.  Others adore
+all of their own side; for my part, I do not so much as excuse most
+things in those of mine: a good work has never the worst grace with me
+for being made against me.  The knot of the controversy excepted, I have
+always kept myself in equanimity and pure indifference:
+
+     "Neque extra necessitates belli praecipuum odium gero;"
+
+     ["Nor bear particular hatred beyond the necessities of war."]
+
+for which I am pleased with myself; and the more because I see others
+commonly fail in the contrary direction.  Such as extend their anger and
+hatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that they
+spring from some other occasion and private cause; like one who, being
+cured of an ulcer, has yet a fever remaining, by which it appears that
+the ulcer had another more concealed beginning.  The reason is that they
+are not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to the
+state and general interest; but are only nettled by reason of their
+particular concern.  This is why they are so especially animated, and to
+a degree so far beyond justice and public reason:
+
+          "Non tam omnia universi, quam ea, quae ad quemque pertinent,
+          singuli carpebant."
+
+     ["Every one was not so much angry against things in general, as
+     against those that particularly concern himself."
+     --Livy, xxxiv. 36.]
+
+I would have the advantage on our side; but if it be not, I shall not run
+mad.  I am heartily for the right party; but I do not want to be taken
+notice of as an especial enemy to others, and beyond the general quarrel.
+I marvellously challenge this vicious form of opinion: "He is of the
+League because he admires the graciousness of Monsieur de Guise; he is
+astonished at the King of Navarre's energy, therefore he is a Huguenot;
+he finds this to say of the manners of the king, he is therefore
+seditious in his heart."  And I did not grant to the magistrate himself
+that he did well in condemning a book because it had placed a heretic
+--[Theodore de Beza.]--amongst the best poets of the time.  Shall we not
+dare to say of a thief that he has a handsome leg?  If a woman be a
+strumpet, must it needs follow that she has a foul smell?  Did they in
+the wisest ages revoke the proud title of Capitolinus they had before
+conferred on Marcus Manlius as conservator of religion and the public
+liberty, and stifle the memory of his liberality, his feats of arms, and
+military recompenses granted to his valour, because he, afterwards
+aspired to the sovereignty, to the prejudice of the laws of his country?
+If we take a hatred against an advocate, he will not be allowed the next
+day to be eloquent.  I have elsewhere spoken of the zeal that pushed on
+worthy men to the like faults.  For my part, I can say, "Such an one does
+this thing ill, and another thing virtuously and well."  So in the
+prognostication or sinister events of affairs they would have every one
+in his party blind or a blockhead, and that our persuasion and judgment
+should subserve not truth, but to the project of our desires.  I should
+rather incline towards the other extreme; so much I fear being suborned
+by my desire; to which may be added that I am a little tenderly
+distrustful of things that I wish.
+
+I have in my time seen wonders in the indiscreet and prodigious facility
+of people in suffering their hopes and belief to be led and governed,
+which way best pleased and served their leaders, despite a hundred
+mistakes one upon another, despite mere dreams and phantasms.  I no more
+wonder at those who have been blinded and seduced by the fooleries of
+Apollonius and Mahomet.  Their sense and understanding are absolutely
+taken away by their passion; their discretion has no more any other
+choice than that which smiles upon them and encourages their cause.
+I had principally observed this in the beginning of our intestine
+distempers; that other, which has sprung up since, in imitating, has
+surpassed it; by which I am satisfied that it is a quality inseparable
+from popular errors; after the first, that rolls, opinions drive on one
+another like waves with the wind: a man is not a member of the body, if
+it be in his power to forsake it, and if he do not roll the common way.
+But, doubtless, they wrong the just side when they go about to assist it
+with fraud; I have ever been against that practice: 'tis only fit to work
+upon weak heads; for the sound, there are surer and more honest ways to
+keep up their courage and to excuse adverse accidents.
+
+Heaven never saw a greater animosity than that betwixt Caesar and Pompey,
+nor ever shall; and yet I observe, methinks, in those brave souls,
+a great moderation towards one another: it was a jealousy of honour and
+command, which did not transport them to a furious and indiscreet hatred,
+and was without malignity and detraction: in their hottest exploits upon
+one another, I discover some remains of respect and good-will: and am
+therefore of opinion that, had, it been possible, each of them would
+rather have done his business without the ruin of the other than with it.
+Take notice how much otherwise matters went with Marius and Sylla.
+
+We must not precipitate ourselves so headlong after our affections and
+interests.  As, when I was young, I opposed myself to the progress of
+love which I perceived to advance too fast upon me, and had a care lest
+it should at last become so pleasing as to force, captivate, and wholly
+reduce me to its mercy: so I do the same upon all other occasions where
+my will is running on with too warm an appetite.  I lean opposite to the
+side it inclines to; as I find it going to plunge and make itself drunk
+with its own wine; I evade nourishing its pleasure so far, that I cannot
+recover it without infinite loss.  Souls that, through their own
+stupidity, only discern things by halves, have this happiness, that they
+smart less with hurtful things: 'tis a spiritual leprosy that has some
+show of health, and such a health as philosophy does not altogether
+contemn; but yet we have no reason to call it wisdom, as we often do.
+And after this manner some one anciently mocked Diogeries, who, in the
+depth of winter and quite naked, went embracing an image of snow for a
+trial of his endurance: the other seeing him in this position, "Art thou
+now very cold?"  said he.  "Not at all," replied Diogenes.  "Why, then,"
+pursued the other, "what difficult and exemplary thing dost thou think
+thou doest in embracing that snow?"  To take a true measure of constancy,
+one must necessarily know what the suffering is.
+
+But souls that are to meet with adverse events and the injuries of
+fortune, in their depth and sharpness, that are to weigh and taste them
+according to their natural weight and bitterness, let such show their
+skill in avoiding the causes and diverting the blow.  What did King Cotys
+do?  He paid liberally for the rich and beautiful vessel that had been
+presented to him, but, seeing it was exceedingly brittle, he immediately
+broke it betimes, to prevent so easy a matter of displeasure against his
+servants. In like manner, I have willingly avoided all confusion in my
+affairs, and never coveted to have my estate contiguous to those of my
+relations, and such with whom I coveted a strict friendship; for thence
+matter of unkindness and falling out often proceeds.  I formerly loved
+hazardous games of cards and dice; but have long since left them off,
+only for this reason that, with whatever good air I carried my losses,
+I could not help feeling vexed within.  A man of honour, who ought to be
+touchily sensible of the lie or of an insult, and who is not to take a
+scurvy excuse for satisfaction, should avoid occasions of dispute.
+I shun melancholy, crabbed men, as I would the plague; and in matters I
+cannot talk of without emotion and concern I never meddle, if not
+compelled by my duty:
+
+               "Melius non incipient, quam desinent."
+
+     ["They had better never to begin than to have to desist."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 72.]
+
+The surest way, therefore, is to prepare one's self beforehand for
+occasions.
+
+I know very well that some wise men have taken another way, and have not
+feared to grapple and engage to the utmost upon several subjects these
+are confident of their own strength, under which they protect themselves
+in all ill successes, making their patience wrestle and contend with
+disaster:
+
+               "Velut rupes, vastum quae prodit in aequor,
+               Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto,
+               Vim cunctam atque minas perfert coelique marisque;
+               Ipsa immota manens."
+
+     ["As a rock, which projects into the vast ocean, exposed to the
+     furious winds and the raging sea, defies the force and menaces of
+     sky and sea, itself unshaken."--Virgil, AEneid, x. 693.]
+
+Let us not attempt these examples; we shall never come up to them.  They
+set themselves resolutely, and without agitation, to behold the ruin of
+their country, which possessed and commanded all their will: this is too
+much, and too hard a task for our commoner souls.  Cato gave up the
+noblest life that ever was upon this account; we meaner spirits must fly
+from the storm as far as we can; we must provide for sentiment, and not
+for patience, and evade the blows we cannot meet.  Zeno, seeing
+Chremonides, a young man whom he loved, draw near to sit down by him,
+suddenly started up; and Cleanthes demanding of him the reason why he did
+so, "I hear," said he, "that physicians especially order repose, and
+forbid emotion in all tumours."  Socrates does not say: "Do not surrender
+to the charms of beauty; stand your ground, and do your utmost to oppose
+it."  "Fly it," says he; "shun the fight and encounter of it, as of a
+powerful poison that darts and wounds at a distance."  And his good
+disciple, feigning or reciting, but, in my opinion, rather reciting than
+feigning, the rare perfections of the great Cyrus, makes him distrustful
+of his own strength to resist the charms of the divine beauty of that
+illustrous Panthea, his captive, and committing the visiting and keeping
+her to another, who could not have so much liberty as himself.  And the
+Holy Ghost in like manner:
+
+                    "Ne nos inducas in tentationem."
+
+          ["Lead us not into temptation."--St. Matthew, vi. 13.]
+
+We do not pray that our reason may not be combated and overcome by
+concupiscence, but that it should not be so much as tried by it; that we
+should not be brought into a state wherein we are so much as to suffer
+the approaches, solicitations, and temptations of sin: and we beg of
+Almighty God to keep our consciences quiet, fully and perfectly delivered
+from all commerce of evil.
+
+Such as say that they have reason for their revenging passion, or any
+other sort of troublesome agitation of mind, often say true, as things
+now are, but not as they were: they speak to us when the causes of their
+error are by themselves nourished and advanced; but look backward--recall
+these causes to their beginning--and there you will put them to a
+nonplus.  Will they have their faults less, for being of longer
+continuance; and that of an unjust beginning, the sequel can be just?
+Whoever shall desire the good of his country, as I do, without fretting
+or pining himself, will be troubled, but will not swoon to see it
+threatening either its own ruin, or a no less ruinous continuance; poor
+vessel, that the waves, the winds, and the pilot toss and steer to so
+contrary designs!
+
+                        "In tam diversa magister
+                         Ventus et unda trahunt."
+
+He who does not gape after the favour of princes, as after a thing he
+cannot live without, does not much concern himself at the coldness of
+their reception and countenance, nor at the inconstancy of their wills.
+He who does not brood over his children or his honours with a slavish
+propension, ceases not to live commodiously enough after their loss.  He
+who does good principally for his own satisfaction will not be much
+troubled to see men judge of his actions contrary to his merit.  A
+quarter of an ounce of patience will provide sufficiently against such
+inconveniences.  I find ease in this receipt, redeeming myself in the
+beginning as good cheap as I can; and find that by this means I have
+escaped much trouble and many difficulties.  With very little ado I stop
+the first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to be
+troublesome before it transports me.  He who stops not the start will
+never be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never,
+get them out when they are once got in; and he who cannot arrive at the
+beginning will never arrive at the end of all.  Nor will he bear the fall
+who cannot sustain the shock:
+
+     "Etenim ipsae se impellunt, ubi semel a ratione discessum est;
+     ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur
+     imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi."
+
+     ["For they throw themselves headlong when once they lose their
+     reason; and infirmity so far indulges itself, and from want of
+     prudence is carried out into deep water, nor finds a place to
+     shelter it."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 18.]
+
+I am betimes sensible of the little breezes that begin to sing and
+whistle within, forerunners of the storm:
+
+                              "Ceu flamina prima
+               Cum deprensa fremunt sylvis et caeca volutant
+               Murmura, venturos nautis prodentia ventos."
+
+     ["As the breezes, pent in the woods, first send out dull murmurs,
+     announcing the approach of winds to mariners."--AEneid, x. 97.]
+
+How often have I done myself a manifest injustice to avoid the hazard of
+having yet a worse done me by the judges, after an age of vexations,
+dirty and vile practices, more enemies to my nature than fire or the
+rack?
+
+     "Convenit a litibus, quantum licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam
+     quam licet, abhorrentem esse: est enim non modo liberale, paululum
+     nonnunquam de suo jure decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum."
+
+     ["A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may, and I know not
+     whether not something more; for 'tis not only liberal, but sometimes
+     also advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right.
+     --"Cicero, De Offic., ii. 18.]
+
+Were we wise, we ought to rejoice and boast, as I one day heard a young
+gentleman of a good family very innocently do, that his mother had lost
+her cause, as if it had been a cough, a fever, or something very
+troublesome to keep.  Even the favours that fortune might have given me
+through relationship or acquaintance with those who have sovereign
+authority in those affairs, I have very conscientiously and very
+carefully avoided employing them to the prejudice of others, and of
+advancing my pretensions above their true right.  In fine, I have so much
+prevailed by my endeavours (and happily I may say it) that I am to this
+day a virgin from all suits in law; though I have had very fair offers
+made me, and with very just title, would I have hearkened to them, and a
+virgin from quarrels too.  I have almost passed over a long life without
+any offence of moment, either active or passive, or without ever hearing
+a worse word than my own name: a rare favour of Heaven.
+
+Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes: what ruin did
+our last Duke of Burgundy run into about a cartload of sheepskins!
+And was not the graving of a seal the first and principal cause of the
+greatest commotion that this machine of the world ever underwent?
+--[The civil war between Marius and Sylla; see Plutarch's Life of Marius,
+c. 3.]--for Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of
+the two others: and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in this
+kingdom assembled with great ceremony, and at the public expense, about
+treaties and agreements, of which the true decision, in the meantime,
+absolutely depended upon the ladies' cabinet council, and the inclination
+of some bit of a woman.
+
+The poets very well understood this when they put all Greece and Asia to
+fire and sword about an apple.  Look why that man hazards his life and
+honour upon the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him acquaint you
+with the occasion of the quarrel; he cannot do it without blushing: the
+occasion is so idle and frivolous.
+
+A little thing will engage you in it; but being once embarked, all the
+cords draw; great provisions are then required, more hard and more
+important.  How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out?
+Now we should proceed contrary to the reed, which, at its first
+springing, produces a long and straight shoot, but afterwards, as if
+tired and out of breath, it runs into thick and frequent joints and
+knots, as so many pauses which demonstrate that it has no more its first
+vigour and firmness; 'twere better to begin gently and coldly, and to
+keep one's breath and vigorous efforts for the height and stress of the
+business.  We guide affairs in their beginnings, and have them in our own
+power; but afterwards, when they are once at work, 'tis they that guide
+and govern us, and we are to follow them.
+
+Yet do I not mean to say that this counsel has discharged me of all
+difficulty, and that I have not often had enough to do to curb and
+restrain my passions; they are not always to be governed according to the
+measure of occasions, and often have their entries very sharp and
+violent.  But still good fruit and profit may thence be reaped; except
+for those who in well-doing are not satisfied with any benefit, if
+reputation be wanting; for, in truth, such an effect is not valued but by
+every one to himself; you are better contented, but not more esteemed,
+seeing you reformed yourself before you got into the whirl of the dance,
+or that the provocative matter was in sight.  Yet not in this only, but
+in all other duties of life also, the way of those who aim at honour is
+very different from that they proceed by, who propose to themselves order
+and reason.  I find some who rashly and furiously rush into the lists and
+cool in the course.  As Plutarch says, that those who, through false
+shame, are soft and facile to grant whatever is desired of them, are
+afterwards as facile to break their word and to recant; so he who enters
+lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it.  The same
+difficulty that keeps me from entering into it, would, when once hot and
+engaged in quarrel, incite me to maintain it with great obstinacy and
+resolution.  'Tis the tyranny of custom; when a man is once engaged; he
+must go through with it, or die.  "Undertake coolly," said Bias,
+"but pursue with ardour."  For want of prudence, men fall into want of
+courage, which is still more intolerable.
+
+Most accommodations of the quarrels of these days of ours are shameful
+and false; we only seek to save appearances, and in the meantime betray
+and disavow our true intentions; we salve over the fact.  We know very
+well how we said the thing, and in what sense we spoke it, and the
+company know it, and our friends whom we have wished to make sensible of
+our advantage, understand it well enough too: 'tis at the expense of our
+frankness and of the honour of our courage, that we disown our thoughts,
+and seek refuge in falsities, to make matters up.  We give ourselves the
+lie, to excuse the lie we have given to another.  You are not to consider
+if your word or action may admit of another interpretation; 'tis your own
+true and sincere interpretation, your real meaning in what you said or
+did, that you are thenceforward to maintain, whatever it cost you.  Men
+speak to your virtue and conscience, which are not things to be put under
+a mask; let us leave these pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of
+the law.  The excuses and reparations that I see every day made and given
+to repair indiscretion, seem to me more scandalous than the indiscretion
+itself.  It were better to affront your adversary a second time than to
+offend yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction.  You have braved
+him in your heat and anger, and you would flatter and appease him in your
+cooler and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at his
+feet, whom before you pretended to overtop.  I do not find anything a
+gentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is
+infamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him;
+forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour than
+pusillanimity.  Passions are as easy for me to evade, as they are hard
+for me to moderate:
+
+          "Exscinduntur facilius ammo, quam temperantur."
+
+     ["They are more easily to be eradicated than governed."]
+
+He who cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him secure
+himself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what they
+performed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament.  The middle
+region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers
+and peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness:
+
+               "Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
+               Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
+               Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!
+               Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
+               Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!"
+
+     ["Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place
+     under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of
+     rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan,
+     and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs."--Virgil, Georg., ii. 490.]
+
+The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we should
+have our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, the
+danger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as little
+to be found.  I had every day encountered a million of crosses, harder to
+digest in the progress of ambition, than it has been hard for me to curb
+the natural propension that inclined me to it:
+
+                    "Jure perhorrui
+                    Lath conspicuum tollere verticem."
+
+          ["I ever justly feared to raise my head too high."
+          --Horace, Od.,iii. 16, 18.]
+
+All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations;
+for too many heads judge of them.  Some say of this civic employment of
+mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is
+worth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that
+I have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid
+temperament; and they have some colour for what they say.  I endeavoured
+to keep my mind and my thoughts in repose;
+
+          "Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus;"
+
+          ["As being always quiet by nature, so also now by age."
+          --Cicero, De Petit. Consul., c. 2.]
+
+and if they sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression,
+'tis in truth without my advice.  Yet from this natural heaviness of
+mine, men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for want of care
+and want of sense are two very different things), and much less any
+unkindness or ingratitude towards that corporation who employed the
+utmost means they had in their power to oblige me, both before they knew
+me and after; and they did much more for me in choosing me anew than in
+conferring that honour upon me at first.  I wish them all imaginable
+good; and assuredly had occasion been, there is nothing I would have
+spared for their service; I did for them as I would have done for myself.
+'Tis a good, warlike, and generous people, but capable of obedience and
+discipline, and of whom the best use may be made, if well guided.  They
+say also that my administration passed over without leaving any mark or
+trace.  Good!  They moreover accuse my cessation in a time when everybody
+almost was convicted of doing too much.  I am impatient to be doing where
+my will spurs me on; but this itself is an enemy to perseverance.  Let
+him who will make use of me according to my own way, employ me in affairs
+where vigour and liberty are required, where a direct, short, and,
+moreover, a hazardous conduct are necessary; I may do something; but if
+it must be long, subtle, laborious, artificial and intricate, he had
+better call in somebody else.  All important offices are not necessarily
+difficult: I came prepared to do somewhat rougher work, had there been
+great occasion; for it is in my power to do something more than I do, or
+than I love to do.  I did not, to my knowledge, omit anything that my
+duty really required.  I easily forgot those offices that ambition mixes
+with duty and palliates with its title; these are they that, for the most
+part, fill the eyes and ears, and give men the most satisfaction; not the
+thing but the appearance contents them; if they hear no noise, they think
+men sleep.  My humour is no friend to tumult; I could appease a commotion
+without commotion, and chastise a disorder without being myself
+disorderly; if I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it,
+and put it on.  My manners are languid, rather faint than sharp.  I do
+not condemn a magistrate who sleeps, provided the people under his charge
+sleep as well as he: the laws in that case sleep too.  For my part, I
+commend a gliding, staid, and silent life:
+
+          "Neque submissam et abjectam, neque se efferentem;"
+
+          ["Neither subject and abject, nor obtrusive."
+          --Cicero, De Offic., i. 34]
+
+my fortune will have it so.  I am descended from a family that has lived
+without lustre or tumult, and, time out of mind, particularly ambitious
+of a character for probity.
+
+Our people nowadays are so bred up to bustle and ostentation, that good
+nature, moderation, equability, constancy, and such like quiet and
+obscure qualities, are no more thought on or regarded.  Rough bodies make
+themselves felt; the smooth are imperceptibly handled: sickness is felt,
+health little or not at all; no more than the oils that foment us, in
+comparison of the pains for which we are fomented.  'Tis acting for one's
+particular reputation and profit, not for the public good, to refer that
+to be done in the public squares which one may do in the council chamber;
+and to noon day what might have been done the night before; and to be
+jealous to do that himself which his colleague can do as well as he; so
+were some surgeons of Greece wont to perform their operations upon
+scaffolds in the sight of the people, to draw more practice and profit.
+They think that good rules cannot be understood but by the sound of
+trumpet.  Ambition is not a vice of little people, nor of such modest
+means as ours.  One said to Alexander: "Your father will leave you a
+great dominion, easy and pacific"; this youth was emulous of his father's
+victories and of the justice of his government; he would not have enjoyed
+the empire of the world in ease and peace.  Alcibiades, in Plato, had
+rather die young, beautiful, rich, noble, and learned, and all this in
+full excellence, than to stop short of such condition; this disease is,
+peradventure, excusable in so strong and so full a soul.  When wretched
+and dwarfish little souls cajole and deceive themselves, and think to
+spread their fame for having given right judgment in an affair, or
+maintained the discipline of the guard of a gate of their city, the more
+they think to exalt their heads the more they show their tails.  This
+little well-doing has neither body nor life; it vanishes in the first
+mouth, and goes no further than from one street to another.  Talk of it
+by all means to your son or your servant, like that old fellow who,
+having no other auditor of his praises nor approver of his valour,
+boasted to his chambermaid, crying, "O Perrete, what a brave, clever man
+hast thou for thy master!"  At the worst, talk of it to yourself, like a
+councillor of my acquaintance, who, having disgorged a whole cartful of
+law jargon with great heat and as great folly, coming out of the council
+chamber to make water, was heard very complacently to mutter betwixt his
+teeth:
+
+          "Non nobis, domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam."
+
+     ["Not unto us, O Lord, not to us: but unto Thy name be the glory."
+     --Psalm cxiii. I.]
+
+He who gets it of nobody else, let him pay himself out of his own purse.
+
+Fame is not prostituted at so cheap a rate: rare and exemplary actions,
+to which it is due, would not endure the company of this prodigious crowd
+of petty daily performances.  Marble may exalt your titles, as much as
+you please, for having repaired a rod of wall or cleansed a public sewer;
+but not men of sense.  Renown does not follow all good deeds, if novelty
+and difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, according
+to the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; nor
+will they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, abstains from an
+old blear-eyed crone.  Those who have known the admirable qualities of
+Scipio Africanus, deny him the glory that Panaetius attributes to him, of
+being abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of his
+age.  We have pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of
+grandeur: our own are more natural, and by so much more solid and sure,
+as they are lower.  If not for that of conscience, yet at least for
+ambition's sake, let us reject ambition; let us disdain that thirst of
+honour and renown, so low and mendicant, that it makes us beg it of all
+sorts of people:
+
+          "Quae est ista laus quae: possit e macello peti?"
+
+     ["What praise is that which is to be got in the market-place (meat
+     market)?"  Cicero, De Fin., ii. 15.]
+
+by abject means, and at what cheap rate soever: 'tis dishonour to be so
+honoured.  Let us learn to be no more greedy, than we are capable, of
+glory.  To be puffed up with every action that is innocent or of use, is
+only for those with whom such things are extraordinary and rare: they
+will value it as it costs them.  The more a good effect makes a noise,
+the more do I abate of its goodness as I suspect that it was more
+performed for the noise, than upon account of the goodness: exposed upon
+the stall, 'tis half sold.  Those actions have much more grace and
+lustre, that slip from the hand of him that does them, negligently and
+without noise, and that some honest man thereafter finds out and raises
+from the shade, to produce it to the light upon its own account,
+
+          "Mihi quidem laudabiliora videntur omnia, quae sine
+          venditatione, et sine populo teste fiunt,"
+
+     ["All things truly seem more laudable to me that are performed
+     without ostentation, and without the testimony of the people."
+     --Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., ii. 26.]
+
+says the most ostentatious man that ever lived.
+
+I had but to conserve and to continue, which are silent and insensible
+effects: innovation is of great lustre; but 'tis interdicted in this age,
+when we are pressed upon and have nothing to defend ourselves from but
+novelties.  To forbear doing is often as generous as to do; but 'tis less
+in the light, and the little good I have in me is of this kind.  In fine,
+occasions in this employment of mine have been confederate with my
+humour, and I heartily thank them for it.  Is there any who desires to be
+sick, that he may see his physician at work? and would not the physician
+deserve to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst us, that he
+might put his art in practice?  I have never been of that wicked humour,
+and common enough, to desire that troubles and disorders in this city
+should elevate and honour my government; I have ever heartily contributed
+all I could to their tranquillity and ease.
+
+He who will not thank me for the order, the sweet and silent calm that
+has accompanied my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of the
+share that belongs to me by title of my good fortune.  And I am of such a
+composition, that I would as willingly be lucky as wise, and had rather
+owe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God, than to any
+operation of my own.  I had sufficiently published to the world my
+unfitness for such public offices; but I have something in me yet worse
+than incapacity itself; which is, that I am not much displeased at it,
+and that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of
+life that I have proposed to myself.
+
+Neither have I satisfied myself in this employment; but I have very near
+arrived at what I expected from my own performance, and have much
+surpassed what I promised them with whom I had to do: for I am apt to
+promise something less than what I am able to do, and than what I hope to
+make good.  I assure myself that I have left no offence or hatred behind
+me; to leave regret or desire for me amongst them, I at least know very
+well that I never much aimed at it:
+
+              "Mene huic confidere monstro!
+               Mene salis placidi vultum, fluctusque quietos
+               Ignorare?"
+
+     ["Should I place confidence in this monster?  Should I be ignorant
+     of the dangers of that seeming placid sea, those now quiet waves?"
+     --Virgil, Aeneid, V. 849.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+OF CRIPPLES
+
+'Tis now two or three years ago that they made the year ten days shorter
+in France.--[By the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.]--How many
+changes may we expect should follow this reformation! it was really
+moving heaven and earth at once.  Yet nothing for all that stirs from its
+place my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, the
+opportunities of doing their business, the hurtful and propitious days,
+dust at the same time where they had, time out of mind, assigned them;
+there was no more error perceived in our old use, than there is amendment
+found in the alteration; so great an uncertainty there is throughout; so
+gross, obscure, and obtuse is our perception.  'Tis said that this
+regulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, by
+subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the
+Bissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, till
+we had exactly satisfied this debt, the which itself is not done by this
+correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear: and yet, by this
+means, such order might be taken for the future, arranging that after the
+revolution of such or such a number of years, the supernumerary day might
+be always thrown out, so that we could not, henceforward, err above
+four-and-twenty hours in our computation.  We have no other account of
+time but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only; and
+yet it is a measure that to this day we are not agreed upon, and one that
+we still doubt what form other nations have variously given to it, and
+what was the true use of it.  What does this saying of some mean, that
+the heavens in growing old bow themselves down nearer towards us, and put
+us into an uncertainty even of hours and days? and that which Plutarch
+says of the months, that astrology had not in his time determined as to
+the motion of the moon; what a fine condition are we in to keep records
+of things past.
+
+I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a free and roving thing
+human reason is.  I ordinarily see that men, in things propounded to
+them, more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth:
+they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of
+consequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes.  Pleasant
+talkers!  The knowledge of causes only concerns him who has the conduct
+of things; not us, who are merely to undergo them, and who have perfectly
+full and accomplished use of them, according to our need, without
+penetrating into the original and essence; wine is none the more pleasant
+to him who knows its first faculties.  On the contrary, both the body and
+the soul interrupt and weaken the right they have of the use of the world
+and of themselves, by mixing with it the opinion of learning; effects
+concern us, but the means not at all.  To determine and to distribute
+appertain to superiority and command; as it does to subjection to accept.
+Let me reprehend our custom.  They commonly begin thus: "How is such a
+thing done?"  Whereas they should say, "Is such a thing done?"  Our
+reason is able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out the
+beginnings and contexture; it needs neither matter nor foundation: let it
+but run on, it builds as well in the air as on the earth, and with
+inanity as well as with matter:
+
+                    "Dare pondus idonea fumo."
+
+          ["Able to give weight to smoke."--Persius, v. 20.]
+
+I find that almost throughout we should say, "there is no such thing,"
+and should myself often make use of this answer, but I dare not: for they
+cry that it is an evasion produced from ignorance and weakness of
+understanding; and I am fain, for the most part, to juggle for company,
+and prate of frivolous subjects and tales that I believe not a word of;
+besides that, in truth, 'tis a little rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny
+a stated fact; and few people but will affirm, especially in things hard
+to be believed, that they have seen them, or at least will name witnesses
+whose authority will stop our mouths from contradiction.  In this way, we
+know the foundations and means of things that never were; and the world
+scuffles about a thousand questions, of which both the Pro and the Con
+are false.
+
+          "Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in praecipitem
+          locum non debeat se sapiens committere."
+
+     ["False things are so near the true, that a wise man should not
+     trust himself in a precipitous place"--Cicero, Acad., ii.  21.]
+
+Truth and lies are faced alike; their port, taste, and proceedings are
+the same, and we look upon them with the same eye.  I find that we are
+not only remiss in defending ourselves from deceit, but that we seek and
+offer ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, as
+a thing conformable to our being.
+
+I have seen the birth of many miracles in my time; which, although they
+were abortive, yet have we not failed to foresee what they would have
+come to, had they lived their full age.  'Tis but finding the end of the
+clew, and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greater
+distance betwixt nothing and the least thing in the world than there is
+betwixt this and the greatest.  Now the first that are imbued with this
+beginning of novelty, when they set out with their tale, find, by the
+oppositions they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, and
+so caulk up that place with some false piece;
+
+     [Voltaire says of this passage, "He who would learn to doubt should
+     read this whole chapter of Montaigne, the least methodical of all
+     philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable."
+     --Melanges Historiques, xvii.  694, ed. of Lefevre.]
+
+besides that:
+
+     "Insita hominibus libido alendi de industria rumores,"
+
+          ["Men having a natural desire to nourish reports."
+          --Livy, xxviii. 24.]
+
+we naturally make a conscience of restoring what has been lent us,
+without some usury and accession of our own.  The particular error first
+makes the public error, and afterwards, in turn, the public error makes
+the particular one; and thus all this vast fabric goes forming and piling
+itself up from hand to hand, so that the remotest witness knows more
+about it than those who were nearest, and the last informed is better
+persuaded than the first.
+
+'Tis a natural progress; for whoever believes anything, thinks it a work
+of charity to persuade another into the same opinion; which the better to
+do, he will make no difficulty of adding as much of his own invention as
+he conceives necessary to his tale to encounter the resistance or want of
+conception he meets with in others.  I myself, who make a great
+conscience of lying, and am not very solicitous of giving credit and
+authority to what I say, yet find that in the arguments I have in hand,
+being heated with the opposition of another, or by the proper warmth of
+my own narration, I swell and puff up my subject by voice, motion,
+vigour, and force of words, and moreover, by extension and amplification,
+not without some prejudice to the naked truth; but I do it conditionally
+withal, that to the first who brings me to myself, and who asks me the
+plain and bare truth, I presently surrender my passion, and deliver the
+matter to him without exaggeration, without emphasis, or any painting of
+my own.  A quick and earnest way of speaking, as mine is, is apt to run
+into hyperbole.  There is nothing to which men commonly are more inclined
+than to make way for their own opinions; where the ordinary means fail
+us, we add command, force, fire, and sword.  'Tis a misfortune to be at
+such a pass, that the best test of truth is the multitude of believers in
+a crowd, where the number of fools so much exceeds the wise:
+
+     "Quasi vero quidquam sit tam valde, quam nil sapere, vulgare."
+
+          ["As if anything were so common as ignorance."
+          --Cicero, De Divin., ii.]
+
+          "Sanitatis patrocinium est, insanientium turba."
+
+     ["The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise."
+     --St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, vi. 10.]
+
+'Tis hard to resolve a man's judgment against the common opinions: the
+first persuasion, taken from the very subject itself, possesses the
+simple, and from them diffuses itself to the wise, under the authority of
+the number and antiquity of the witnesses.  For my part, what I should
+not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred and one: and I
+do not judge opinions by years.
+
+'Tis not long since one of our princes, in whom the gout had spoiled an
+excellent nature and sprightly disposition, suffered himself to be so far
+persuaded with the report made to him of the marvellous operations of a
+certain priest who by words and gestures cured all sorts of diseases,
+as to go a long journey to seek him out, and by the force of his mere
+imagination, for some hours so persuaded and laid his legs asleep, as to
+obtain that service from them they had long time forgotten.  Had fortune
+heaped up five or six such-like incidents, it had been enough to have
+brought this miracle into nature.  There was afterwards discovered so
+much simplicity and so little art in the author of these performances,
+that he was thought too contemptible to be punished, as would be thought
+of most such things, were they well examined:
+
+               "Miramur ex intervallo fallentia."
+
+     ["We admire after an interval (or at a distance) things that
+     deceive."--Seneca, Ep., 118, 2.]
+
+So does our sight often represent to us strange images at a distance that
+vanish on approaching near:
+
+               "Nunquam ad liquidum fama perducitur."
+
+               ["Report is never fully substantiated."
+               --Quintus Curtius, ix. 2.]
+
+'Tis wonderful from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes such
+famous impressions commonly, proceed.  This it is that obstructs
+information; for whilst we seek out causes and solid and weighty ends,
+worthy of so great a name, we lose the true ones; they escape our sight
+by their littleness.  And, in truth, a very prudent, diligent, and subtle
+inquisition is required in such searches, indifferent, and not
+prepossessed.  To this very hour, all these miracles and strange events
+have concealed themselves from me: I have never seen greater monster or
+miracle in the world than myself: one grows familiar with all strange
+things by time and custom, but the more I frequent and the better I know
+myself, the more does my own deformity astonish me, the less I understand
+myself.
+
+The principal right of advancing and producing such accidents is reserved
+to fortune.  Passing the day before yesterday through a village two
+leagues from my house, I found the place yet warm with a miracle that had
+lately failed of success there, where with first the neighbourhood had
+been several months amused; then the neighbouring provinces began to take
+it up, and to run thither in great companies of all sorts of people.
+A young fellow of the place had one night in sport counterfeited the
+voice of a spirit in his own house, without any other design at present,
+but only for sport; but this having succeeded with him better than he
+expected, to extend his farce with more actors he associated with him a
+stupid silly country girl, and at last there were three of them of the
+same age and understanding, who from domestic, proceeded to public,
+preachings, hiding themselves under the altar of the church, never
+speaking but by night, and forbidding any light to be brought.  From
+words which tended to the conversion of the world, and threats of the day
+of judgment (for these are subjects under the authority and reverence of
+which imposture most securely lurks), they proceeded to visions and
+gesticulations so simple and ridiculous that--nothing could hardly be so
+gross in the sports of little children.  Yet had fortune never so little
+favoured the design, who knows to what height this juggling might have at
+last arrived?  These poor devils are at present in prison, and are like
+shortly to pay for the common folly; and I know not whether some judge
+will not also make them smart for his.  We see clearly into this, which
+is discovered; but in many things of the like nature that exceed our
+knowledge, I am of opinion that we ought to suspend our judgment, whether
+as to rejection or as to reception.
+
+Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the
+abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of
+professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we
+are not able to refute: we speak of all things by precepts and decisions.
+The style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to having
+seen with his own eyes, and what a judge determined with his most certain
+knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking: "it seems to me."  They
+make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me
+as infallible.  I love these words which mollify and moderate the
+temerity of our propositions: "peradventure; in some sort; some; 'tis
+said, I think," and the like: and had I been set to train up children I
+had put this way of answering into their mouths, inquiring and not
+resolving: "What does this mean?  I understand it not; it may be: is it
+true?" so that they should rather have retained the form of pupils at
+threescore years old than to go out doctors, as they do, at ten.  Whoever
+will be cured of ignorance must confess it.
+
+Iris is the daughter of Thaumas;
+
+     ["That is, of Admiration.  She (Iris, the rainbow) is beautiful, and
+     for that reason, because she has a face to be admired, she is said
+     to have been the daughter of Thamus."
+     --Cicero, De Nat. Deor., iii. 20.]
+
+admiration is the foundation of all philosophy, inquisition the progress,
+ignorance the end.  But there is a sort of ignorance, strong and
+generous, that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; an
+ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive
+knowledge itself.  I read in my younger years a trial that Corras,
+
+     [A celebrated Calvinist lawyer, born at Toulouse; 1513, and
+     assassinated there, 4th October 1572.]
+
+a councillor of Toulouse, printed, of a strange incident, of two men who
+presented themselves the one for the other.  I remember (and I hardly
+remember anything else) that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of
+him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful and so far exceeding both
+our knowledge and his own, who was the judge, that I thought it a very
+bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged.  Let us have some form of
+decree that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter" more
+freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who, finding themselves
+perplexed with a cause they could not unravel, ordered the parties to
+appear again after a hundred years.
+
+The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon the
+report of every new author who seeks to give body to their dreams.  To
+accommodate the examples that Holy Writ gives us of such things, most
+certain and irrefragable examples, and to tie them to our modern events,
+seeing that we neither see the causes nor the means, will require another
+sort-of wit than ours.  It, peradventure, only appertains to that sole
+all-potent testimony to tell us.  "This is, and that is, and not that
+other."  God ought to be believed; and certainly with very good reason;
+but not one amongst us for all that who is astonished at his own
+narration (and he must of necessity be astonished if he be not out of his
+wits), whether he employ it about other men's affairs or against himself.
+
+I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable, avoiding
+those ancient reproaches:
+
+          "Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis, quae non intelligunt;
+          --Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur."
+
+     ["Men are most apt to believe what they least understand: and from
+     the acquisitiveness of the human intellect, obscure things are more
+     easily credited." The second sentence is from Tacitus, Hist. 1. 22.]
+
+I see very well that men get angry, and that I am forbidden to doubt upon
+pain of execrable injuries; a new way of persuading!  Thank God, I am not
+to be cuffed into belief.  Let them be angry with those who accuse their
+opinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness, and
+condemn the opposite affirmation equally, if not so imperiously, with
+them.  He who will establish this proposition by authority and huffing
+discovers his reason to be very weak.  For a verbal and scholastic
+altercation let them have as much appearance as their contradictors;
+
+               "Videantur sane, non affirmentur modo;"
+
+     ["They may indeed appear to be; let them not be affirmed (Let them
+     state the probabilities, but not affirm.)"
+     --Cicero, Acad., n. 27.]
+
+but in the real consequence they draw from it these have much the
+advantage.  To kill men, a clear and strong light is required, and our
+life is too real and essential to warrant these supernatural and
+fantastic accidents.
+
+As to drugs and poisons, I throw them out of my count, as being the worst
+sort of homicides: yet even in this, 'tis said, that men are not always
+to rely upon the personal confessions of these people; for they have
+sometimes been known to accuse themselves of the murder of persons who
+have afterwards been found living and well.  In these other extravagant
+accusations, I should be apt to say, that it is sufficient a man, what
+recommendation soever he may have, be believed as to human things; but of
+what is beyond his conception, and of supernatural effect, he ought then
+only to be believed when authorised by a supernatural approbation.  The
+privilege it has pleased Almighty God to give to some of our witnesses,
+ought not to be lightly communicated and made cheap.  I have my ears
+battered with a thousand such tales as these: "Three persons saw him such
+a day in the east three, the next day in the west: at such an hour, in
+such a place, and in such habit"; assuredly I should not believe it
+myself.  How much more natural and likely do I find it that two men
+should lie than that one man in twelve hours' time should fly with the
+wind from east to west?  How much more natural that our understanding
+should be carried from its place by the volubility of our disordered
+minds, than that one of us should be carried by a strange spirit upon a
+broomstaff, flesh and bones as we are, up the shaft of a chimney?  Let
+not us seek illusions from without and unknown, we who are perpetually
+agitated with illusions domestic and our own.  Methinks one is pardonable
+in disbelieving a miracle, at least, at all events where one can elude
+its verification as such, by means not miraculous; and I am of St.
+Augustine's opinion, that, "'tis better to lean towards doubt than
+assurance, in things hard to prove and dangerous to believe."
+
+'Tis now some years ago that I travelled through the territories of a
+sovereign prince, who, in my favour, and to abate my incredulity, did me
+the honour to let me see, in his own presence, and in a private place,
+ten or twelve prisoners of this kind, and amongst others, an old woman,
+a real witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in that
+profession.  I saw both proofs and free confessions, and I know not what
+insensible mark upon the miserable creature: I examined and talked with
+her and the rest as much and as long as I would, and gave the best and
+soundest attention I could, and I am not a man to suffer my judgment to
+be made captive by prepossession.  In the end, and in all conscience, I
+should rather have prescribed them hellebore than hemlock;
+
+     "Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis similis visa;"
+
+     ["The thing was rather to be attributed to madness, than malice."
+     ("The thing seemed to resemble minds possessed rather than guilty.")
+     --Livy, viii, 18.]
+
+justice has its corrections proper for such maladies.  As to the
+oppositions and arguments that worthy men have made to me, both there,
+and often in other places, I have met with none that have convinced me,
+and that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions.
+It is true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon
+experience and fact, I do not go about to untie, neither have they any
+end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot.  After all,
+'tis setting a man's conjectures at a very high price upon them to cause
+a man to be roasted alive.
+
+We are told by several examples, as Praestantius of his father, that
+being more profoundly, asleep than men usually are, he fancied himself
+to be a mare, and that he served the soldiers for a sumpter; and what
+he fancied himself to be, he really proved.  If sorcerers dream so
+materially; if dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with
+effects, still I cannot believe that therefore our will should be
+accountable to justice; which I say as one who am neither judge nor privy
+councillor, and who think myself by many degrees unworthy so to be, but a
+man of the common sort, born and avowed to the obedience of the public
+reason, both in its words and acts.  He who should record my idle talk as
+being to the prejudice of the pettiest law, opinion, or custom of his
+parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more; for, in
+what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but that 'tis what I had then
+in my thought, a tumultuous and wavering thought.  All I say is by way of
+discourse, and nothing by way of advice:
+
+          "Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam;"
+
+     ["Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what
+     I do not know."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]
+
+I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed; and so I
+told a great man, who complained of the tartness and contentiousness of
+my exhortations.  Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, I
+propose to you the other, with all the diligence and care I can, to clear
+your judgment, not to compel it.  God has your hearts in His hands, and
+will furnish you with the means of choice.  I am not so presumptuous even
+as to desire that my opinions should bias you--in a thing of so great
+importance: my fortune has not trained them up to so potent and elevated
+conclusions.  Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also a
+great many opinions, that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I
+had one.  What, if the truest are not always the most commodious to man,
+being of so wild a composition?
+
+Whether it be to the purpose or not, tis no great matter: 'tis a common
+proverb in Italy, that he knows not Venus in her perfect sweetness who
+has never lain with a lame mistress.  Fortune, or some particular
+incident, long ago put this saying into the mouths of the people; and the
+same is said of men as well as of women; for the queen of the Amazons
+answered the Scythian who courted her to love, "Lame men perform best."
+In this feminine republic, to evade the dominion of the males, they
+lamed them in their infancy--arms, legs, and other members that gave them
+advantage over them, and only made use of them in that wherein we, in
+these parts of the world, make use of them.  I should have been apt to
+think; that the shuffling pace of the lame mistress added some new
+pleasure to the work, and some extraordinary titillation to those who
+were at the sport; but I have lately learnt that ancient philosophy has
+itself determined it, which says that the legs and thighs of lame women,
+not receiving, by reason of their imperfection, their due aliment, it
+falls out that the genital parts above are fuller and better supplied and
+much more vigorous; or else that this defect, hindering exercise, they
+who are troubled with it less dissipate their strength, and come more
+entire to the sports of Venus; which also is the reason why the Greeks
+decried the women-weavers as being more hot than other women by reason of
+their sedentary trade, which they carry on without any great exercise of
+the body.  What is it we may not reason of at this rate?  I might also
+say of these, that the jaggling about whilst so sitting at work, rouses
+and provokes their desire, as the swinging and jolting of coaches does
+that of our ladies.
+
+Do not these examples serve to make good what I said at first: that our
+reasons often anticipate the effect, and have so infinite an extent of
+jurisdiction that they judge and exercise themselves even on inanity
+itself and non-existency?  Besides the flexibility of our invention to
+forge reasons of all sorts of dreams, our imagination is equally facile
+to receive impressions of falsity by very frivolous appearances; for, by
+the sole authority of the ancient and common use of this proverb, I have
+formerly made myself believe that I have had more pleasure in a woman by
+reason she was not straight, and accordingly reckoned that deformity
+amongst her graces.
+
+Torquato Tasso, in the comparison he makes betwixt France and Italy,
+says that he has observed that our legs are generally smaller than those
+of the Italian gentlemen, and attributes the cause of it to our being
+continually on horseback; which is the very same cause from which
+Suetonius draws a quite opposite conclusion; for he says, on the
+contrary, that Germanicus had made his legs bigger by the continuation of
+the same exercise.
+
+Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding; it is the shoe of
+Theramenes, fit for all feet.  It is double and diverse, and the matters
+are double and diverse too.  "Give me a drachm of silver," said a Cynic
+philosopher to Antigonus.  "That is not a present befitting a king,"
+replied he.  "Give me then a talent," said the other.  "That is not a
+present befitting a Cynic."
+
+              "Seu plures calor ille vias et caeca relaxat
+               Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in herbas
+               Seu durat magis, et venas astringit hiantes;
+               Ne tenues pluviae, rapidive potentia colic
+               Acrior, aut Boreae penetrabile frigus adurat."
+
+     ["Whether the heat opens more passages and secret pores through
+     which the sap may be derived into the new-born herbs; or whether it
+     rather hardens and binds the gaping veins that the small showers and
+     keen influence of the violent sun or penetrating cold of Boreas may
+     not hurt them."--Virg., Georg., i. 89.]
+
+                    "Ogni medaglia ha il suo rovescio."
+
+          ["Every medal has its reverse."--Italian Proverb.]
+
+This is the reason why Clitomachus said of old that Carneades had outdone
+the labours of Hercules, in having eradicated consent from men, that is
+to say, opinion and the courage of judging.  This so vigorous fancy of
+Carneades sprang, in my opinion, anciently from the impudence of those
+who made profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit.
+AEsop was set to sale with two other slaves; the buyer asked the first of
+these what he could do; he, to enhance his own value, promised mountains
+and marvels, saying he could do this and that, and I know not what; the
+second said as much of himself or more: when it came to AEsop's turn, and
+that he was also asked what he could do; "Nothing," said he, "for these
+two have taken up all before me; they know everything."  So has it
+happened in the school of philosophy: the pride of those who attributed
+the capacity of all things to the human mind created in others, out of
+despite and emulation, this opinion, that it is capable of nothing: the
+one maintain the same extreme in ignorance that the others do in
+knowledge; to make it undeniably manifest that man is immoderate
+throughout, and can never stop but of necessity and the want of ability
+to proceed further.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+OF PHYSIOGNOMY
+
+Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and trust; and
+'tis not amiss; we could not choose worse than by ourselves in so weak an
+age.  That image of Socrates' discourses, which his friends have
+transmitted to us, we approve upon no other account than a reverence to
+public sanction: 'tis not according to our own knowledge; they are not
+after our way; if anything of the kind should spring up now, few men
+would value them.  We discern no graces that are not pointed and puffed
+out and inflated by art; such as glide on in their own purity and
+simplicity easily escape so gross a sight as ours; they have a delicate
+and concealed beauty, such as requires a clear and purified sight to
+discover its secret light.  Is not simplicity, as we take it,
+cousin-german to folly and a quality of reproach?  Socrates makes his
+soul move a natural and common motion: a peasant said this; a woman said
+that; he has never anybody in his mouth but carters, joiners, cobblers,
+and masons; his are inductions and similitudes drawn from the most common
+and known actions of men; every one understands him.  We should never
+have recognised the nobility and splendour of his admirable conceptions
+under so mean a form; we, who think all things low and flat that are not
+elevated, by learned doctrine, and who discern no riches but in pomp and
+show.  This world of ours is only formed for ostentation: men are only
+puffed up with wind, and are bandied to and fro like tennis-balls.  He
+proposed to himself no vain and idle fancies; his design was to furnish
+us with precepts and things that more really and fitly serve to the use
+of life;
+
+                       "Servare modum, finemque tenere,
+                    Naturamque sequi."
+
+               ["To keep a just mean, to observe a just limit,
+               and to follow Nature."--Lucan, ii. 381.]
+
+He was also always one and the same, and raised himself, not by starts
+but by complexion, to the highest pitch of vigour; or, to say better,
+mounted not at all, but rather brought down, reduced, and subjected all
+asperities and difficulties to his original and natural condition; for in
+Cato 'tis most manifest that 'tis a procedure extended far beyond the
+common ways of men: in the brave exploits of his life, and in his death,
+we find him always mounted upon the great horse; whereas the other ever
+creeps upon the ground, and with a gentle and ordinary pace, treats of
+the most useful matters, and bears himself, both at his death and in the
+rudest difficulties that could present themselves, in the ordinary way of
+human life.
+
+It has fallen out well that the man most worthy to be known and to be
+presented to the world for example should be he of whom we have the most
+certain knowledge; he has been pried into by the most clear-sighted men
+that ever were; the testimonies we have of him are admirable both in
+fidelity and fulness.  'Tis a great thing that he was able so to order
+the pure imaginations of a child, that, without altering or wresting
+them, he thereby produced the most beautiful effects of our soul: he
+presents it neither elevated nor rich; he only represents it sound, but
+assuredly with a brisk and full health.  By these common and natural
+springs, by these ordinary and popular fancies, without being moved or
+put out, he set up not only the most regular, but the most high and
+vigorous beliefs, actions, and manners that ever were.  'Tis he who
+brought again from heaven, where she lost her time, human wisdom, to
+restore her to man with whom her most just and greatest business lies.
+See him plead before his judges; observe by what reasons he rouses his
+courage to the hazards of war; with what arguments he fortifies his
+patience against calumny, tyranny, death, and the perverseness of his
+wife: you will find nothing in all this borrowed from arts and sciences:
+the simplest may there discover their own means and strength; 'tis not
+possible more to retire or to creep more low.  He has done human nature a
+great kindness in showing it how much it can do of itself.
+
+We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow
+and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of
+our own.  Man can in nothing fix himself to his actual necessity: of
+pleasure, wealth, and power, he grasps at more than he can hold; his
+greediness is incapable of moderation.  And I find that in curiosity of
+knowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, and
+more than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge to the full
+of its matter:
+
+     "Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus."
+
+     ["We carry intemperance into the study of literature, as well as
+     into everything else."--Seneca, Ep., 106.]
+
+And Tacitus had reason to commend the mother of Agricola for having
+restrained her son in his too violent appetite for learning.
+
+Tis a good, if duly considered, which has in it, as the other goods of
+men have, a great deal of vanity and weakness, proper and natural to
+itself, and that costs very dear.  Its acquisition is far more hazardous
+than that of all other meat or drink; for, as to other things, what we
+have bought we carry home in some vessel, and there have full leisure to
+examine our purchase, how much we shall eat or drink of it, and when: but
+sciences we can, at the very first, stow into no other vessel than the
+soul; we swallow them in buying, and return from the market, either
+already infected or amended: there are some that only burden and
+overcharge the stomach, instead of nourishing; and, moreover, some that,
+under colour of curing, poison us.  I have been pleased, in places where
+I have been, to see men in devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity,
+poverty, and penitence: 'tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites, to
+blunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and to
+deprive the soul of this voluptuous complacency that tickles us with the
+opinion of knowledge: and 'tis plenarily to accomplish the vow of
+poverty, to add unto it that of the mind.  We need little doctrine to
+live at our ease; and Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the way
+how to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency which
+exceeds the natural is well-nigh superfluous and vain: 'tis much if it
+does not rather burden and cumber us than do us good:
+
+               "Paucis opus est literis ad mentem bonam:"
+
+          ["Little learning is needed to form a sound mind."
+          --Seneca, Ep., 106.]
+
+'tis a feverish excess of the mind; a tempestuous and unquiet instrument.
+Do but recollect yourself, and you will find in yourself natural
+arguments against death, true, and the fittest to serve you in time of
+necessity: 'tis they that make a peasant, and whole nations, die with as
+much firmness as a philosopher.  Should I have died less cheerfully
+before I had read Cicero's Tusculan Quastiones?  I believe not; and when
+I find myself at the best, I perceive that my tongue is enriched indeed,
+but my courage little or nothing elevated by them; that is just as nature
+framed it at first, and defends itself against the conflict only after a
+natural and ordinary way.  Books have not so much served me for
+instruction as exercise.  What if knowledge, trying to arm us with new
+defences against natural inconveniences, has more imprinted in our
+fancies their weight and greatness, than her reasons and subtleties to
+secure us from them?  They are subtleties, indeed, with which she often
+alarms us to little purpose.  Do but observe how many slight and
+frivolous, and, if nearly examined, incorporeal arguments, the closest
+and wisest authors scatter about one good one: they are but verbal quirks
+and fallacies to amuse and gull us: but forasmuch as it may be with some
+profit, I will sift them no further; many of that sort are here and there
+dispersed up and down this book, either borrowed or by imitation.
+Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which is
+only a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, or
+that good which is only fine:
+
+               "Quae magis gustata quam potata, delectant,"
+
+          ["Which more delight in the tasting than in being drunk."
+          --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 5.]
+
+everything that pleases does not nourish:
+
+               "Ubi non ingenii, sed animi negotium agitur."
+
+     ["Where the question is not about the wit, but about the soul."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 75.]
+
+To see the trouble that Seneca gives himself to fortify himself against
+death; to see him so sweat and pant to harden and encourage himself, and
+bustle so long upon this perch, would have lessened his reputation with
+me, had he not very bravely held himself at the last.  His so ardent and
+frequent agitations discover that he was in himself impetuous and
+passionate,
+
+          "Magnus animus remissius loquitur, et securius .  .  .
+          non est alius ingenio, alius ammo color;"
+
+     ["A great courage speaks more calmly and more securely.  There is
+     not one complexion for the wit and another for the mind."
+     --Seneca, Ep. 114, 115]
+
+he must be convinced at his own expense; and he in some sort discovers
+that he was hard pressed by his enemy.  Plutarch's way, by how much it is
+more disdainful and farther stretched, is, in my opinion, so much more
+manly and persuasive: and I am apt to believe that his soul had more
+assured and more regular motions.  The one more sharp, pricks and makes
+us start, and more touches the soul; the other more constantly solid,
+forms, establishes, and supports us, and more touches the understanding.
+That ravishes the judgment, this wins it.  I have likewise seen other
+writings, yet more reverenced than these, that in the representation of
+the conflict they maintain against the temptations of the flesh, paint
+them, so sharp, so powerful and invincible, that we ourselves, who are of
+the common herd, are as much to wonder at the strangeness and unknown
+force of their temptation, as at the resisting it.
+
+To what end do we so arm ourselves with this harness of science?  Let us
+look down upon the poor people that we see scattered upon the face of the
+earth, prone and intent upon their business, that neither know Aristotle
+nor Cato, example nor precept; from these nature every day extracts
+effects of constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so
+inquisitively study in the schools: how many do I ordinarily see who
+slight poverty?  how many who desire to die, or who die without alarm or
+regret?  He who is now digging in my garden, has this morning buried his
+father or his son.  The very names by which they call diseases sweeten
+and mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more than
+a cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as
+they gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great
+and grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never
+keep their beds but to die:
+
+          "Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscuram et solertem
+          scientiam versa est."
+
+     ["That overt and simple virtue is converted into an obscure and
+     subtle science."--Seneca, Ep., 95.]
+
+I was writing this about the time when a great load of our intestine
+troubles for several months lay with all its weight upon me; I had the
+enemy at my door on one side, and the freebooters, worse enemies, on the
+other,
+
+               "Non armis, sed vitiis, certatur;"
+
+     ["The fight is not with arms, but with vices."--Seneca, Ep. 95.]
+
+and underwent all sorts of military injuries at once:
+
+         "Hostis adest dextra laevaque a parte timendus.
+          Vicinoque malo terret utrumque latus."
+
+     ["Right and left a formidable enemy is to be feared, and threatens
+     me on both sides with impending danger."--Ovid, De Ponto, i. 3, 57.]
+
+A monstrous war!  Other wars are bent against strangers, this against
+itself, destroying itself with its own poison.  It is of so malignant and
+ruinous a nature, that it ruins itself with the rest; and with its own
+rage mangles and tears itself to pieces.  We more often see it dissolve
+of itself than through scarcity of any necessary thing or by force of the
+enemy.  All discipline evades it; it comes to compose sedition, and is
+itself full of it; would chastise disobedience, and itself is the
+example; and, employed for the defence of the laws, rebels against its
+own.  What a condition are we in!  Our physic makes us sick!
+
+                    "Nostre mal s'empoisonne
+                    Du secours qu'on luy donne."
+
+               "Exuperat magis, aegrescitque medendo."
+
+     ["Our disease is poisoned with its very remedies"--AEnead, xii. 46.]
+
+               "Omnia fanda, nefanda, malo permista furore,
+               Justificam nobis mentem avertere deorum."
+
+     ["Right and wrong, all shuffled together in this wicked fury, have
+     deprived us of the gods' protection."
+     --Catullus, De Nuptiis Pelei et Thetidos, V. 405.]
+
+In the beginning of these popular maladies, one may distinguish the sound
+from the sick; but when they come to continue, as ours have done, the
+whole body is then infected from head to foot; no part is free from
+corruption, for there is no air that men so greedily draw in that
+diffuses itself so soon and that penetrates so deep as that of licence.
+Our armies only subsist and are kept together by the cement of
+foreigners; for of Frenchmen there is now no constant and regular army to
+be made.  What a shame it is! there is no longer any discipline but what
+we see in the mercenary soldiers.  As to ourselves, our conduct is at
+discretion, and that not of the chief, but every one at his own.  The
+general has a harder game to play within than he has without; he it is
+who has to follow, to court the soldiers, to give way to them; he alone
+has to obey: all the rest if disolution and free licence.  It pleases me
+to observe how much pusillanimity and cowardice there is in ambition; by
+how abject and servile ways it must arrive at its end; but it displeases
+me to see good and generous natures, and that are capable of justice,
+every day corrupted in the management and command of this confusion.
+Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation.  We had
+ill-formed souls enough, without spoiling those that were generous and
+good; so that, if we hold on, there will scarcely remain any with whom to
+intrust the health of this State of ours, in case fortune chance to
+restore it:
+
+              "Hunc saltem everso juvenem succurrere seclo,
+               Ne prohibete."
+
+     ["Forbid not, at least, that this young man repair this ruined age."
+     --Virgil, Georg., i.  500.  Montaigne probably refers to Henry, king
+     of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV.]
+
+What has become of the old precept, "That soldiers ought more to fear
+their chief than the enemy"?--[Valerius Maximus, Ext. 2.]--and of that
+wonderful example, that an orchard being enclosed within the precincts of
+a camp of the Roman army, was seen at their dislodgment the next day in
+the same condition, not an apple, though ripe and delicious, being pulled
+off, but all left to the possessor?  I could wish that our youth, instead
+of the time they spend in less fruitful travels and less honourable
+employments, would bestow one half of that time in being an eye-witness
+of naval exploits, under some good captain of Rhodes, and the other half
+in observing the discipline of the Turkish armies; for they have many
+differences and advantages over ours; one of these is, that our soldiers
+become more licentious in expeditions, theirs more temperate and
+circumspect; for the thefts and insolencies committed upon the common
+people, which are only punished with a cudgel in peace, are capital in
+war; for an egg taken by a Turkish soldier without paying for it, fifty
+blows with a stick is the fixed rate; for anything else, of what sort or
+how trivial soever, not necessary to nourishment, they are presently
+impaled or beheaded without mercy.  I am astonished, in the history of
+Selim, the most cruel conqueror that ever was, to see that when he
+subdued Egypt, the beautiful gardens about Damascus being all open, and
+in a conquered land, and his army encamped upon the very place, should be
+left untouched by the hands of the soldiers, by reason they had not
+received the signal of pillage.
+
+But is there any disease in a government that it is worth while to physic
+with such a mortal drug?--[i.e.  as civil war.]--No, said Favonius, not
+even the tyrannical usurpation of a Commonwealth.  Plato, likewise, will
+not consent that a man should violate the peace of his country in order
+to cure it, and by no means approves of a reformation that disturbs and
+hazards all, and that is to be purchased at the price of the citizens'
+blood and ruin; determining it to be the duty of a good patriot in such a
+case to let it alone, and only to pray to God for his extraordinary
+assistance: and he seems to be angry with his great friend Dion, for
+having proceeded somewhat after another manner.  I was a Platonist in
+this point before I knew there had ever been such a man as Plato in the
+world.  And if this person ought absolutely to be rejected from our
+society (he who by the sincerity of his conscience merited from the
+divine favour to penetrate so far into the Christian light, through the
+universal darkness wherein the world was involved in his time), I do not
+think it becomes us to suffer ourselves to be instructed by a heathen,
+how great an impiety it is not to expect from God any relief simply his
+own and without our co-operation.  I often doubt, whether amongst so many
+men as meddle in such affairs, there is not to be found some one of so
+weak understanding as to have been really persuaded that he went towards
+reformation by the worst of deformations; and advanced towards salvation
+by the most express causes that we have of most assured damnation; that
+by overthrowing government, the magistracy, and the laws, in whose
+protection God has placed him, by dismembering his good mother, and
+giving her limbs to be mangled by her old enemies, filling fraternal
+hearts with parricidal hatreds, calling devils and furies to his aid, he
+can assist the most holy sweetness and justice of the divine law.
+Ambition, avarice, cruelty, and revenge have not sufficient natural
+impetuosity of their own; let us bait them with the glorious titles of
+justice and devotion.  There cannot a worse state of things be imagined
+than where wickedness comes to be legitimate, and assumes, with the
+magistrates' permission, the cloak of virtue:
+
+          "Nihil in speciem fallacius, quam prava religio,
+          ubi deorum numen prxtenditur sceleribus."
+
+     ["Nothing has a more deceiving face than false religion, where the
+     divinity of the gods is obscured by crimes."--Livy, xxxix. 16.]
+
+The extremest sort of injustice, according to Plato,  is where that which
+is unjust should be reputed for just.
+
+The common people then suffered very much, and not present damage only:
+
+                              "Undique totis
+                    Usque adeo turbatur agris,"
+
+          ["Such great disorders overtake our fields on every side."
+          --Virgil, Eclog., i. II.]
+
+but future too; the living were to suffer, and so were they who were yet
+unborn; they stript them, and consequently myself, even of hope, taking
+from them all they had laid up in store to live on for many years:
+
+         "Quae nequeunt secum ferre aut abducere, perdunt;
+          Et cremat insontes turba scelesta casas .  .  .
+          Muris nulla fides, squalent populatibus agri."
+
+     ["What they cannot bear away, they spoil; and the wicked mob burn
+     harmless houses; walls cannot secure their masters, and the fields
+     are squalid with devastation."
+     --Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 35; Claudianus, In Eutyop., i. 244.]
+
+Besides this shock, I suffered others: I underwent the inconveniences
+that moderation brings along with it in such a disease: I was robbed on
+all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, and to the Guelph a
+Ghibelline; one of my poets expresses this very well, but I know not
+where it is.
+
+     ["So Tories called me Whig, and Whigs a Tory."--Pope, after Horace.]
+
+The situation of my house, and my friendliness with my neighbours,
+presented me with one face; my life and my actions with another.  They
+did not lay formal accusations to my charge, for they had no foundation
+for so doing; I never hide my head from the laws, and whoever would have
+questioned me, would have done himself a greater prejudice than me; they
+were only mute suspicions that were whispered about, which never want
+appearance in so confused a mixture, no more than envious or idle heads.
+I commonly myself lend a hand to injurious presumptions that fortune
+scatters abroad against me, by a way I have ever had of evading to
+justify, excuse, or explain myself; conceiving that it were to compromise
+my conscience to plead in its behalf:
+
+               "Perspicuitas enim argumentatione elevatur;"
+
+     ["For perspicuity is lessened by argument."
+     ("The clearness of a cause is clouded by argumentation.")
+     --Cicero, De Nat.  Deor., iii.  4.]
+
+and, as if every one saw as clearly into me as I do myself, instead of
+retiring from an accusation, I step up to meet it, and rather give it
+some kind of colour by an ironical and scoffing confession, if I do not
+sit totally mute, as of a thing not worth my answer.  But such as look
+upon this kind of behaviour of mine as too haughty a confidence, have as
+little kindness for me as they who interpret the weakness of an
+indefensible cause; namely, the great folks, towards whom want of
+submission is the great fault, harsh towards all justice that knows and
+feels itself, and is not submissive humble, and suppliant; I have often
+knocked my head against this pillar.  So it is that at what then befell
+me, an ambitious man would have hanged himself, and a covetous man would
+have done the same.  I have no manner of care of getting;
+
+         "Si mihi, quod nunc est, etiam minus; et mihi vivam
+          Quod superest aevi, si quid superesse volent dii:"
+
+     ["If I may have what I now own, or even less, and may live for
+     myself what of life remains, if the gods grant me remaining years."
+     --Horace, Ep., i. 18, 107.]
+
+but the losses that befall me by the injury of others, whether by theft
+or violence, go almost as near my heart as they would to that of the most
+avaricious man.  The offence troubles me, without comparison, more than
+the loss.  A thousand several sorts of mischiefs fell upon me in the neck
+of one another; I could more cheerfully have borne them all at once.
+
+I was already considering to whom, amongst my friends, I might commit a
+necessitous and discredited old age; and having turned my eyes quite
+round, I found myself bare.  To let one's self fall plump down, and from
+so great a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and
+fortunate friendship: these are very rare, if there be any.  At last, I
+saw that it was safest for me to trust to myself in my necessity; and if
+it should so fall out, that I should be but upon cold terms in Fortune's
+favour, I should so much the more pressingly recommend me to my own, and
+attach myself and look to myself all the more closely.  Men on all
+occasions throw themselves upon foreign assistance to spare their own,
+which is alone certain and sufficient to him who knows how therewith to
+arm himself.  Every one runs elsewhere, and to the future, forasmuch as
+no one is arrived at himself.  And I was satisfied that they were
+profitable inconveniences; forasmuch as, first, ill scholars are to be
+admonished with the rod, when reason will not do, as a crooked piece of
+wood is by fire and straining reduced to straightness.  I have a great
+while preached to myself to stick close to my own concerns, and separate
+myself from the affairs of others; yet I am still turning my eyes aside.
+A bow, a favourable word, a kind look from a great person tempts me; of
+which God knows if there is scarcity in these days, and what they
+signify.  I, moreover, without wrinkling my forehead, hearken to the
+persuasions offered me, to draw me into the marketplace, and so gently
+refuse, as if I were half willing to be overcome.  Now for so indocile a
+spirit blows are required; this vessel which thus chops and cleaves, and
+is ready to fall one piece from another, must have the hoops forced down
+with good sound strokes of a mallet.  Secondly, that this accident served
+me for exercise to prepare me for worse, if I, who both by the benefit of
+fortune, and by the condition of my manners, hoped to be among the last,
+should happen to be one of the first assailed by this storm; instructing
+myself betimes to constrain my life, and fit it for a new state.  The
+true liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself:
+
+          "Potentissimus est, qui se habet in potestate."
+
+     ["He is most potent who is master of himself."--Seneca, Ep., 94.]
+
+In an ordinary and quiet time, a man prepares himself for moderate and
+common accidents; but in the confusion wherein we have been for these
+thirty years, every Frenchman, whether personal or in general, sees
+himself every hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his
+fortune: by so much the more ought he to have his courage supplied with
+the strongest and most vigorous provisions.  Let us thank fortune, that
+has not made us live in an effeminate, idle, and languishing age; some
+who could never have been so by other means will be made famous by their
+misfortunes.  As I seldom read in histories the confusions of other
+states without regret that I was not present, the better to consider
+them, so does my curiosity make me in some sort please myself in seeing
+with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its form and
+symptoms; and since I cannot hinder it, I am content to have been
+destined to be present therein, and thereby to instruct myself.  So do
+we eagerly covet to see, though but in shadow and the fables of theatres,
+the pomp of tragic representations of human fortune; 'tis not without
+compassion at what we hear, but we please ourselves in rousing our
+displeasure, by the rarity of these pitiable events.  Nothing tickles
+that does not pinch.  And good historians skip over, as stagnant water
+and dead sea, calm narrations, to return to seditions, to wars, to which
+they know that we invite them.
+
+I question whether I can decently confess with how small a sacrifice of
+its repose and tranquillity I have passed over above the one half of my
+life amid the ruin of my country.  I lend myself my patience somewhat too
+cheap, in accidents that do not privately assail me; and do not so much
+regard what they take from me, as what remains safe, both within and
+without.  There is comfort in evading, one while this, another while
+that, of the evils that are levelled at ourselves too, at last, but at
+present hurt others only about us; as also, that in matters of public
+interest, the more universally my affection is dispersed, the weaker it
+is: to which may be added, that it is half true:
+
+               "Tantum ex publicis malis sentimus,
+               quantum ad privatas res pertinet;"
+
+     ["We are only so far sensible of public evils as they respect our
+     private affairs."--Livy, xxx. 44.]
+
+and that the health from which we fell was so ill, that itself relieves
+the regret we should have for it.  It was health, but only in comparison
+with the sickness that has succeeded it: we are not fallen from any great
+height; the corruption and brigandage which are in dignity and office
+seem to me the least supportable: we are less injuriously rifled in a
+wood than in a place of security.  It was an universal juncture of
+particular members, each corrupted by emulation of the others, and most
+of them with old ulcers, that neither received nor required any cure.
+This convulsion, therefore, really more animated than pressed me, by the
+assistance of my conscience, which was not only at peace within itself,
+but elevated, and I did not find any reason to complain of myself.  Also,
+as God never sends evils, any more than goods, absolutely pure to men,
+my health continued at that time more than usually good; and, as I can
+do nothing without it, there are few things that I cannot do with it.
+It afforded me means to rouse up all my faculties, and to lay my hand
+before the wound that would else, peradventure, have gone farther; and I
+experienced, in my patience, that I had some stand against fortune, and
+that it must be a great shock could throw me out of the saddle.  I do not
+say this to provoke her to give me a more vigorous charge: I am her
+humble servant, and submit to her pleasure: let her be content, in God's
+name.  Am I sensible of her assaults?  Yes, I am. But, as those who are
+possessed and oppressed with sorrow sometimes suffer themselves,
+nevertheless, by intervals to taste a little pleasure, and are sometimes
+surprised with a smile, so have I so much power over myself, as to make
+my ordinary condition quiet and free from disturbing thoughts; yet I
+suffer myself, withal, by fits to be surprised with the stings of those
+unpleasing imaginations that assault me, whilst I am arming myself to
+drive them away, or at least to wrestle with them.
+
+But behold another aggravation of the evil which befell me in the tail of
+the rest: both without doors and within I was assailed with a most
+violent plague, violent in comparison of all others; for as sound bodies
+are subject to more grievous maladies, forasmuch as they, are not to be
+forced but by such, so my very healthful air, where no contagion, however
+near, in the memory of man, ever took footing, coming to be corrupted,
+produced strange effects:
+
+         "Mista senum et juvenum densentur funera; nullum
+          Saeva caput Proserpina fugit;"
+
+     ["Old and young die in mixed heaps.  Cruel Proserpine forbears
+     none."--Horace, Od., i. 28, 19.]
+
+I had to suffer this pleasant condition, that the sight of my house, was
+frightful to me; whatever I had there was without guard, and left to the
+mercy of any one who wished to take it.  I myself, who am so hospitable,
+was in very great distress for a retreat for my family; a distracted
+family, frightful both to its friends and itself, and filling every place
+with horror where it attempted to settle, having to shift its abode so
+soon as any one's finger began but to ache; all diseases are then
+concluded to be the plague, and people do not stay to examine whether
+they are so or no.  And the mischief on't is that, according to the rules
+of art, in every danger that a man comes near, he must undergo a
+quarantine in fear of the evil, your imagination all the while tormenting
+you at pleasure, and turning even your health itself into a fever.  Yet
+all this would have much less affected me had I not withal been compelled
+to be sensible of the sufferings of others, and miserably to serve six
+months together for a guide to this caravan; for I carry my own antidotes
+within myself, which are resolution and patience.  Apprehension, which is
+particularly feared in this disease, does not much trouble me; and, if
+being alone, I should have been taken, it had been a less cheerless and
+more remote departure; 'tis a kind of death that I do not think of the
+worst sort; 'tis commonly short, stupid, without pain, and consoled by
+the public condition; without ceremony, without mourning, without a
+crowd.  But as to the people about us, the hundredth part of them could
+not be saved:
+
+              "Videas desertaque regna
+               Pastorum, et longe saltus lateque vacantes."
+
+     ["You would see shepherds' haunts deserted, and far and wide empty
+     pastures."--Virgil, Georg., iii. 476.]
+
+In this place my largest revenue is manual: what an hundred men ploughed
+for me, lay a long time fallow.
+
+But then, what example of resolution did we not see in the simplicity of
+all this people?  Generally, every one renounced all care of life; the
+grapes, the principal wealth of the country, remained untouched upon the
+vines; every man indifferently prepared for and expected death, either
+to-night or to-morrow, with a countenance and voice so far from fear,
+as if they had come to terms with this necessity, and that it was an
+universal and inevitable sentence.  'Tis always such; but how slender
+hold has the resolution of dying?  The distance and difference of a few
+hours, the sole consideration of company, renders its apprehension
+various to us.  Observe these people; by reason that they die in the same
+month, children, young people, and old, they are no longer astonished at
+it; they no longer lament.  I saw some who were afraid of staying behind,
+as in a dreadful solitude; and I did not commonly observe any other
+solicitude amongst them than that of sepulture; they were troubled to see
+the dead bodies scattered about the fields, at the mercy of the wild
+beasts that presently flocked thither.  How differing are the fancies of
+men; the Neorites, a nation subjected by Alexander, threw the bodies of
+their dead into the deepest and less frequented part of their woods, on
+purpose to have them there eaten; the only sepulture reputed happy
+amongst them.  Some, who were yet in health, dug their own graves; others
+laid themselves down in them whilst alive; and a labourer of mine, in
+dying, with his hands and feet pulled the earth upon him.  Was not this
+to nestle and settle himself to sleep at greater ease?  A bravery in some
+sort like that of the Roman soldiers who, after the battle of Cannae,
+were found with their heads thrust into holes in the earth, which they
+had made, and in suffocating themselves, with their own hands pulled the
+earth about their ears.  In short, a whole province was, by the common
+usage, at once brought to a course nothing inferior in undauntedness to
+the most studied and premeditated resolution.
+
+Most of the instructions of science to encourage us herein have in them
+more of show than of force, and more of ornament than of effect.  We have
+abandoned Nature, and will teach her what to do; teach her who so happily
+and so securely conducted us; and in the meantime, from the footsteps of
+her instruction, and that little which, by the benefit of ignorance,
+remains of her image imprinted in the life of this rustic rout of
+unpolished men, science is constrained every day to borrow patterns for
+her disciples of constancy, tranquillity, and innocence.  It is pretty to
+see that these persons, full of so much fine knowledge, have to imitate
+this foolish simplicity, and this in the primary actions of virtue; and
+that our wisdom must learn even from beasts the most profitable
+instructions in the greatest and most necessary concerns of our life;
+as, how we are to live and die, manage our property, love and bring up
+our children, maintain justice: a singular testimony of human infirmity;
+and that this reason we so handle at our pleasure, finding evermore some
+diversity and novelty, leaves in us no apparent trace of nature.  Men
+have done with nature as perfumers with oils; they have sophisticated her
+with so many argumentations and far-fetched discourses, that she is
+become variable and particular to each, and has lost her proper,
+constant, and universal face; so that we must seek testimony from beasts,
+not subject to favour, corruption, or diversity of opinions.  It is,
+indeed, true that even these themselves do not always go exactly in the
+path of nature, but wherein they swerve, it is so little that you may
+always see the track; as horses that are led make many bounds and
+curvets, but 'tis always at the length of the halter, and still follow
+him that leads them; and as a young hawk takes its flight, but still
+under the restraint of its tether:
+
+          "Exsilia, torments, bells, morbos, naufragia meditare .  .  .
+          ut nullo sis malo tiro."
+
+     ["To meditate upon banishments, tortures, wars, diseases, and
+     shipwrecks, that thou mayest not be a novice in any disaster."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 91, 107.]
+
+What good will this curiosity do us, to anticipate all the inconveniences
+of human nature, and to prepare ourselves with so much trouble against
+things which, peradventure, will never befall us?
+
+          "Parem passis tristitiam facit, pati posse;"
+
+          ["It troubles men as much that they may possibly suffer,
+          as if they really did suffer."--Idem, ibid., 74.]
+
+not only the blow, but the wind of the blow strikes us: or, like
+phrenetic people--for certainly it is a phrensy--to go immediately and
+whip yourself, because it may so fall out that Fortune may one day make
+you undergo it; and to put on your furred gown at Midsummer, because you
+will stand in need of it at Christmas!  Throw yourselves, say they, into
+the experience of all the evils, the most extreme evils that can possibly
+befall you, and so be assured of them.  On the contrary, the most easy
+and most natural way would be to banish even the thoughts of them; they
+will not come soon enough; their true being will not continue with us
+long enough; our mind must lengthen and extend them; we must incorporate
+them in us beforehand, and there entertain them, as if they would not
+otherwise sufficiently press upon our senses.  "We shall find them heavy
+enough when they come," says one of our masters, of none of the tender
+sects, but of the most severe; "in the meantime, favour thyself; believe
+what pleases thee best; what good will it do thee to anticipate thy ill
+fortune, to lose the present for fear of the future: and to make thyself
+miserable now, because thou art to be so in time?"  These are his words.
+Science, indeed, does us one good office in instructing us exactly as to
+the dimensions of evils,
+
+                    "Curis acuens mortalia corda!"
+
+     ["Probing mortal hearts with cares."--Virgil, Georg., i. 23.]
+
+'Twere pity that any part of their greatness should escape our sense and
+knowledge.
+
+'Tis certain that for the most part the preparation for death has
+administered more torment than the thing itself.  It was of old truly
+said, and by a very judicious author:
+
+          "Minus afficit sensus fatigatio, quam cogitatio."
+
+     ["Suffering itself less afflicts the senses than the apprehension
+     of suffering."--Quintilian, Inst. Orat., i. 12.]
+
+The sentiment of present death sometimes, of itself, animates us with a
+prompt resolution not to avoid a thing that is utterly inevitable: many
+gladiators have been seen in the olden time, who, after having fought
+timorously and ill, have courageously entertained death, offering their
+throats to the enemies' sword and bidding them despatch.  The sight of
+future death requires a courage that is slow, and consequently hard to be
+got.  If you know not how to die, never trouble yourself; nature will, at
+the time, fully and sufficiently instruct you: she will exactly do that
+business for you; take you no care--
+
+              "Incertam frustra, mortales, funeris horam,
+               Quaeritis et qua sit mors aditura via....
+               Poena minor certam subito perferre ruinam;
+               Quod timeas, gravius sustinuisse diu."
+
+     ["Mortals, in vain you seek to know the uncertain hour of death,
+     and by what channel it will come upon you."--Propertius, ii. 27, 1.
+     "'Tis less painful to undergo sudden destruction; 'tis hard to bear
+     that which you long fear."--Incert. Auct.]
+
+We trouble life by the care of death, and death by the care of life: the
+one torments, the other frights us.  It is not against death that we
+prepare, that is too momentary a thing; a quarter of an hour's suffering,
+without consequence and without damage, does not deserve especial
+precepts: to say the truth, we prepare ourselves against the preparations
+of death.  Philosophy ordains that we should always have death before our
+eyes, to see and consider it before the time, and then gives us rules and
+precautions to provide that this foresight and thought do us no harm;
+just so do physicians, who throw us into diseases, to the end they may
+have whereon to employ their drugs and their art.  If we have not known
+how to live, 'tis injustice to teach us how to die, and make the end
+difform from all the rest; if we have known how to live firmly and
+quietly, we shall know how to die so too.  They may boast as much as they
+please:
+
+          "Tota philosophorum vita commentatio mortis est;"
+
+     ["The whole life of philosophers is the meditation of death."
+     --Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., ii. 30.]
+
+but I fancy that, though it be the end, it is not the aim of life; 'tis
+its end, its extremity, but not, nevertheless, its object; it ought
+itself to be its own aim and design; its true study is to order, govern,
+and suffer itself.  In the number of several other offices, that the
+general and principal chapter of Knowing how to live comprehends, is this
+article of Knowing how to die; and, did not our fears give it weight,
+one of the lightest too.
+
+To judge of them by utility and by the naked truth, the lessons of
+simplicity are not much inferior to those which learning teaches us: nay,
+quite the contrary.  Men differ in sentiment and force; we must lead them
+to their own good according to their capacities and by various ways:
+
+          "Quo me comque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes."
+
+     ["Wherever the season takes me,(where the tempest drives me)
+     there I am carried as a guest."--Horace, Ep., i. i, 15.]
+
+I never saw any peasant among my neighbours cogitate with what
+countenance and assurance he should pass over his last hour; nature
+teaches him not to think of death till he is dying; and then he does it
+with a better grace than Aristotle, upon whom death presses with a double
+weight, both of itself and from so long a premeditation; and, therefore,
+it was the opinion of Caesar, that the least premeditated death was the
+easiest and the most happy:
+
+     "Plus dolet quam necesse est, qui ante dolet, quam necesse est."
+
+     ["He grieves more than is necessary, who grieves before it is
+     necessary."--Seneca, Ep., 98.]
+
+The sharpness of this imagination springs from our curiosity: 'tis thus
+we ever impede ourselves, desiring to anticipate and regulate natural
+prescripts.  It is only for the doctors to dine worse for it, when in the
+best health, and to frown at the image of death; the common sort stand in
+need of no remedy or consolation, but just in the shock, and when the
+blow comes; and consider on't no more than just what they endure.  Is it
+not then, as we say, that the stolidity and want of apprehension in the
+vulgar give them that patience m present evils, and that profound
+carelessness of future sinister accidents?  That their souls, in being
+more gross and dull, are less penetrable and not so easily moved?  If it
+be so, let us henceforth, in God's name, teach nothing but ignorance;
+'tis the utmost fruit the sciences promise us, to which this stolidity so
+gently leads its disciples.
+
+We have no want of good masters, interpreters of natural simplicity.
+Socrates shall be one; for, as I remember, he speaks something to this
+purpose to the judges who sat upon his life and death.
+
+     [That which follows is taken from the Apology of Socrates in Plato,
+     chap.  17, &c.]
+
+"I am afraid, my masters, that if I entreat you not to put me to death, I
+shall confirm the charge of my accusers, which is, that I pretend to be
+wiser than others, as having some more secret knowledge of things that
+are above and below us.  I have neither frequented nor known death, nor
+have ever seen any person that has tried its qualities, from whom to
+inform myself.  Such as fear it, presuppose they know it; as for my part,
+I neither know what it is, nor what they do in the other world.  Death
+is, peradventure, an indifferent thing; peradventure, a thing to be
+desired.  'Tis nevertheless to be believed, if it be a transmigration
+from one place to another, that it is a bettering of one's condition to
+go and live with so many great persons deceased, and to be exempt from
+having any more to do with unjust and corrupt judges; if it be an
+annihilation of our being, 'tis yet a bettering of one's condition to
+enter into a long and peaceable night; we find nothing more sweet in life
+than quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams.  The things that
+I know to be evil, as to injure one's neighbour and to disobey one's
+superior, whether it be God or man, I carefully avoid; such as I do not
+know whether they be good or evil, I cannot fear them.  If I am to die
+and leave you alive, the gods alone only know whether it will go better
+with you or with me.  Wherefore, as to what concerns me, you may do as
+you shall think fit.  But according to my method of advising just and
+profitable things, I say that you will do your consciences more right to
+set me at liberty, unless you see further into my cause than I do; and,
+judging according to my past actions, both public and private, according
+to my intentions, and according to the profit that so many of our
+citizens, both young and old, daily extract from my conversation, and the
+fruit that you all reap from me, you cannot more duly acquit yourselves
+towards my merit than in ordering that, my poverty considered, I should
+be maintained at the Prytanaeum, at the public expense, a thing that I
+have often known you, with less reason, grant to others.  Do not impute
+it to obstinacy or disdain that I do not, according to the custom,
+supplicate and go about to move you to commiseration.  I have both
+friends and kindred, not being, as Homer says, begotten of wood or of
+stone, no more than others, who might well present themselves before you
+with tears and mourning, and I have three desolate children with whom to
+move you to compassion; but I should do a shame to our city at the age I
+am, and in the reputation of wisdom which is now charged against me, to
+appear in such an abject form.  What would men say of the other
+Athenians?  I have always admonished those who have frequented my
+lectures, not to redeem their lives by an unbecoming action; and in the
+wars of my country, at Amphipolis, Potidea, Delia, and other expeditions
+where I have been, I have effectually manifested how far I was from
+securing my safety by my shame.  I should, moreover, compromise your
+duty, and should invite you to unbecoming things; for 'tis not for my
+prayers to persuade you, but for the pure and solid reasons of justice.
+You have sworn to the gods to keep yourselves upright; and it would seem
+as if I suspected you, or would recriminate upon you that I do not
+believe that you are so; and I should testify against myself, not to
+believe them as I ought, mistrusting their conduct, and not purely
+committing my affair into their hands.  I wholly rely upon them; and hold
+myself assured they will do in this what shall be most fit both for you
+and for me: good men, whether living or dead, have no reason to fear the
+gods."
+
+Is not this an innocent child's pleading of an unimaginable loftiness,
+true, frank, and just, unexampled?--and in what a necessity employed!
+Truly, he had very good reason to prefer it before that which the great
+orator Lysias had penned for him: admirably couched, indeed, in the
+judiciary style, but unworthy of so noble a criminal.  Had a suppliant
+voice been heard out of the mouth of Socrates, that lofty virtue had
+struck sail in the height of its glory; and ought his rich and powerful
+nature to have committed her defence to art, and, in her highest proof,
+have renounced truth and simplicity, the ornaments of his speaking, to
+adorn and deck herself with the embellishments of figures and the
+flourishes of a premeditated speech?  He did very wisely, and like
+himself, not to corrupt the tenor of an incorrupt life, and so sacred an
+image of the human form, to spin out his decrepitude another year, and to
+betray the immortal memory of that glorious end.  He owed his life not to
+himself, but to the example of the world; had it not been a public
+damage, that he should have concluded it after a lazy and obscure manner?
+Assuredly, that careless and indifferent consideration of his death
+deserved that posterity should consider it so much the more, as indeed
+they did; and there is nothing so just in justice than that which fortune
+ordained for his recommendation; for the Athenians abominated all those
+who had been causers of his death to such a degree, that they avoided
+them as excommunicated persons, and looked upon everything as polluted
+that had been touched by them; no one would wash with them in the public
+baths, none would salute or own acquaintance with them: so that, at last,
+unable longer to support this public hatred, they hanged themselves.
+
+If any one shall think that, amongst so many other examples that I had to
+choose out of in the sayings of Socrates for my present purpose, I have
+made an ill choice of this, and shall judge this discourse of his
+elevated above common conceptions, I must tell them that I have properly
+selected it; for I am of another opinion, and hold it to be a discourse,
+in rank and simplicity, much below and behind common conceptions.  He
+represents, in an inartificial boldness and infantine security, the pure
+and first impression and ignorance of nature; for it is to be believed
+that we have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death, by reason of
+itself; 'tis a part of our being, and no less essential than living.
+
+To what end should nature have begotten in us a hatred to it and a horror
+of it, considering that it is of so great utility to her in maintaining
+the succession and vicissitude of her works? and that in this universal
+republic, it conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss or
+ruin?
+
+                  "Sic rerum summa novatur."
+
+               "Mille animas una necata dedit."
+
+"The failing of one life is the passage to a thousand other lives."
+
+Nature has imprinted in beasts the care of themselves and of their
+conservation; they proceed so far as hitting or hurting to be timorous of
+being worse, of themselves, of our haltering and beating them, accidents
+subject to their sense and experience; but that we should kill them, they
+cannot fear, nor have they the faculty to imagine and conclude such a
+thing as death; it is said, indeed, that we see them not only cheerfully
+undergo it, horses for the most part neighing and swans singing when they
+die, but, moreover, seek it at need, of which elephants have given many
+examples.
+
+Besides, the method of arguing, of which Socrates here makes use, is it
+not equally admirable both in simplicity and vehemence?  Truly it is much
+more easy to speak like Aristotle and to live like Caesar than to speak
+and live as Socrates did; there lies the extreme degree of perfection and
+difficulty; art cannot reach it.  Now, our faculties are not so trained
+up; we do not try, we do not know them; we invest ourselves with those of
+others, and let our own lie idle; as some one may say of me, that I have
+here only made a nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing of
+my own but the thread to tie them.
+
+Certainly I have so far yielded to public opinion, that those borrowed
+ornaments accompany me; but I do not mean that they shall cover me and
+hide me; that is quite contrary to my design, who desire to make a show
+of nothing but what is my own, and what is my own by nature; and had I
+taken my own advice, I had at all hazards spoken purely alone, I more and
+more load myself every day,
+
+     [In fact, the first edition of the Essays (Bordeaux, 1580) has very
+     few quotations.  These became more numerous in the edition of 1588;
+     but the multitude of classical texts which at times encumber
+     Montaigne's text, only dates from the posthumous edition of 1595, he
+     had made these collections in the four last years of his life, as an
+     amusement of his "idleness."--Le Clerc.  They grow, however, more
+     sparing in the Third Book.]
+
+beyond my purpose and first method, upon the account of idleness and the
+humour of the age.  If it misbecome me, as I believe it does, 'tis no
+matter; it may be of use to some others.  Such there are who quote Plato
+and Homer, who never saw either of them; and I also have taken things out
+of places far enough distant from their source.  Without pains and
+without learning, having a thousand volumes about me in the place where I
+write, I can presently borrow, if I please, from a dozen such
+scrap-gatherers, people about whom I do not much trouble myself, wherewith
+to trick up this treatise of Physiognomy; there needs no more but a
+preliminary epistle of a German to stuff me with quotations.  And so it
+is we go in quest of a tickling story to cheat the foolish world.  These
+lumber pies of commonplaces, wherewith so many furnish their studies, are
+of little use but to common subjects, and serve but to show us, and not
+to direct us: a ridiculous fruit of learning, that Socrates so pleasantly
+discusses against Euthydemus.  I have seen books made of things that were
+never either studied or understood; the author committing to several of
+his learned friends the examination of this and t'other matter to compile
+it, contenting himself, for his share, with having projected the design,
+and by his industry to have tied together this faggot of unknown
+provisions; the ink and paper, at least, are his.  This is to buy or
+borrow a book, and not to make one; 'tis to show men not that he can make
+a book, but that, whereof they may be in doubt, he cannot make one.
+A president, where I was, boasted that he had amassed together two
+hundred and odd commonplaces in one of his judgments; in telling which,
+he deprived himself of the glory he had got by it: in my opinion, a
+pusillanimous and absurd vanity for such a subject and such a person.
+I do the contrary; and amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can
+steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service; at the hazard
+of having it said that 'tis for want of understanding its natural use;
+I give it some particular touch of my own hand, to the end it may not be
+so absolutely foreign.  These set their thefts in show and value
+themselves upon them, and so have more credit with the laws than I have:
+we naturalists I think that there is a great and incomparable preference
+in the honour of invention over that of allegation.
+
+If I would have spoken by learning, I had spoken sooner; I had written of
+the time nearer to my studies, when I had more wit and better memory, and
+should sooner have trusted to the vigour of that age than of this, would
+I have made a business of writing.  And what if this gracious favour
+--[His acquaintance with Mademoiselle de Gournay.]--which Fortune has
+lately offered me upon the account of this work, had befallen me in that
+time of my life, instead of this, wherein 'tis equally desirable to
+possess, soon to be lost!  Two of my acquaintance, great men in this
+faculty, have, in my opinion, lost half, in refusing to publish at forty
+years old, that they might stay till threescore.  Maturity has its
+defects as well as green years, and worse; and old age is as unfit for
+this kind of business as any other.  He who commits his decrepitude to
+the press plays the fool if he think to squeeze anything out thence that
+does not relish of dreaming, dotage, and drivelling; the mind grows
+costive and thick in growing old.  I deliver my ignorance in pomp and
+state, and my learning meagrely and poorly; this accidentally and
+accessorily, that principally and expressly; and write specifically of
+nothing but nothing, nor of any science but of that inscience.  I have
+chosen a time when my life, which I am to give an account of, lies wholly
+before me; what remains has more to do with death; and of my death
+itself, should I find it a prating death, as others do, I would willingly
+give an account at my departure.
+
+Socrates was a perfect exemplar in all great qualities, and I am vexed
+that he had so deformed a face and body as is said, and so unsuitable to
+the beauty of his soul, himself being so amorous and such an admirer of
+beauty: Nature did him wrong.  There is nothing more probable than the
+conformity and relation of the body to the soul:
+
+     "Ipsi animi magni refert, quali in corpore locati sint: multo enim a
+     corpore existunt, qux acuant mentem: multa qua obtundant;"
+
+     ["It is of great consequence in what bodies minds are placed, for
+     many things spring from the body that may sharpen the mind, and many
+     that may blunt it."--Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., i. 33.]
+
+this refers to an unnatural ugliness and deformity of limbs; but we call
+ugliness also an unseemliness at first sight, which is principally lodged
+in the face, and disgusts us on very slight grounds: by the complexion, a
+spot, a rugged countenance, for some reasons often wholly inexplicable,
+in members nevertheless of good symmetry and perfect.  The deformity,
+that clothed a very beautiful soul in La Boetie, was of this predicament:
+that superficial ugliness, which nevertheless is always the most
+imperious, is of least prejudice to the state of the mind, and of little
+certainty in the opinion of men.  The other, which is never properly
+called deformity, being more substantial, strikes deeper in.  Not every
+shoe of smooth shining leather, but every shoe well-made, shews the shape
+of the foot within.  As Socrates said of his, it betrayed equal ugliness
+in his soul, had he not corrected it by education; but in saying so, I
+hold he was in jest, as his custom was; never so excellent a soul formed
+itself.
+
+I cannot often enough repeat how great an esteem I have for beauty, that
+potent and advantageous quality; he (La Boetie) called it "a short
+tyranny," and Plato, "the privilege of nature."  We have nothing that
+excels it in reputation; it has the first place in the commerce of men;
+it presents itself in the front; seduces and prepossesses our judgments
+with great authority and wonderful impression.  Phryne had lost her cause
+in the hands of an excellent advocate, if, opening her robe, she had not
+corrupted her judges by the lustre of her beauty.  And I find that Cyrus,
+Alexander, and Caesar, the three masters of the world, never neglected
+beauty in their greatest affairs; no more did the first Scipio.  The same
+word in Greek signifies both fair and good; and the Holy Word often says
+good when it means fair: I should willingly maintain the priority in good
+things, according to the song that Plato calls an idle thing, taken out
+of some ancient poet: "health, beauty, riches."  Aristotle says that the
+right of command appertains to the beautiful; and that, when there is a
+person whose beauty comes near the images of the gods, veneration is
+equally due to him.  To him who asked why people oftener and longer
+frequent the company of handsome persons: "That question," said he, "is
+only to be asked by the blind."  Most of the philosophers, and the
+greatest, paid for their schooling, and acquired wisdom by the favour and
+mediation of their beauty.  Not only in the men that serve me, but also
+in the beasts, I consider it within two fingers' breadth of goodness.
+
+And yet I fancy that those features and moulds of face, and those
+lineaments, by which men guess at our internal complexions and our
+fortunes to come, is a thing that does not very directly and simply lie
+under the chapter of beauty and deformity, no more than every good odour
+and serenity of air promises health, nor all fog and stink infection in a
+time of pestilence.  Such as accuse ladies of contradicting their beauty
+by their manners, do not always hit right; for, in a face which is none
+of the best, there may dwell some air of probity and trust; as, on the
+contrary, I have read, betwixt two beautiful eyes, menaces of a dangerous
+and malignant nature.  There are favourable physiognomies, so that in a
+crowd of victorious enemies, you shall presently choose, amongst men you
+never saw before, one rather than another to whom to surrender, and with
+whom to intrust your life; and yet not properly upon the consideration of
+beauty.
+
+A person's look is but a feeble warranty; and yet it is something
+considerable too; and if I had to lash them, I would most severely
+scourge the wicked ones who belie and betray the promises that nature has
+planted in their foreheads; I should with greater severity punish malice
+under a mild and gentle aspect.  It seems as if there were some lucky and
+some unlucky faces; and I believe there is some art in distinguishing
+affable from merely simple faces, severe from rugged, malicious from
+pensive, scornful from melancholic, and such other bordering qualities.
+There are beauties which are not only haughty, but sour, and others that
+are not only gentle, but more than that, insipid; to prognosticate from
+them future events is a matter that I shall leave undecided.
+
+I have, as I have said elsewhere as to my own concern, simply and
+implicitly embraced this ancient rule, "That we cannot fail in following
+Nature," and that the sovereign precept is to conform ourselves to her.
+I have not, as Socrates did, corrected my natural composition by the
+force of reason, and have not in the least disturbed my inclination by
+art; I have let myself go as I came: I contend not; my two principal
+parts live, of their own accord, in peace and good intelligence, but my
+nurse's milk, thank God, was tolerably wholesome and good.  Shall I say
+this by the way, that I see in greater esteem than 'tis worth, and in use
+solely among ourselves, a certain image of scholastic probity, a slave to
+precepts, and fettered with hope and fear?  I would have it such as that
+laws and religions should not make, but perfect and authorise it; that
+finds it has wherewithal to support itself without help, born and rooted
+in us from the seed of universal reason, imprinted in every man by
+nature.  That reason which strengthens Socrates from his vicious bend
+renders him obedient to the gods and men of authority in his city:
+courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal, but because he is
+mortal.  'Tis a doctrine ruinous to all government, and much more hurtful
+than ingenious and subtle, which persuades the people that a religious
+belief is alone sufficient, and without conduct, to satisfy the divine
+justice.  Use demonstrates to us a vast distinction betwixt devotion and
+conscience.
+
+I have a favourable aspect, both in form and in interpretation:
+
+               "Quid dixi, habere me? imo habui, Chreme."
+
+          ["What did I say?  that I have?  no, Chremes, I had."
+          --Terence, Heaut., act i., sec. 2, v. 42.]
+
+               "Heu!  tantum attriti corporis ossa vides;"
+
+          ["Alas! of a worn body thou seest only the bones"]
+
+and that makes a quite contrary show to that of Socrates.  It has often
+befallen me, that upon the mere credit of my presence and air, persons
+who had no manner of knowledge of me have put a very great confidence in
+me, whether in their own affairs or mine; and I have in foreign parts
+thence obtained singular and rare favours.  But the two following
+examples are, peradventure, worth particular relation.  A certain person
+planned to surprise my house and me in it; his scheme was to come to my
+gates alone, and to be importunate to be let in.  I knew him by name,
+and had fair reason to repose confidence in him, as being my neighbour
+and something related to me.  I caused the gates to be opened to him,
+as I do to every one.  There I found him, with every appearance of alarm,
+his horse panting and very tired.  He entertained me with this story:
+"That, about half a league off, he had met with a certain enemy of his,
+whom I also knew, and had heard of their quarrel; that his enemy had
+given him a very brisk chase, and that having been surprised in disorder,
+and his party being too weak, he had fled to my gates for refuge;
+and that he was in great trouble for his followers, whom (he said) he
+concluded to be all either dead or taken."  I innocently did my best to
+comfort, assure, and refresh him.  Shortly after came four or five of his
+soldiers, who presented themselves in the same countenance and affright,
+to get in too; and after them more, and still more, very well mounted and
+armed, to the number of five-and-twenty or thirty, pretending that they
+had the enemy at their heels.  This mystery began a little to awaken my
+suspicion; I was not ignorant what an age I lived in, how much my house
+might be envied, and I had several examples of others of my acquaintance
+to whom a mishap of this sort had happened.  But thinking there was
+nothing to be got by having begun to do a courtesy, unless I went through
+with it, and that I could not disengage myself from them without spoiling
+all, I let myself go the most natural and simple way, as I always do, and
+invited them all to come in. And in truth I am naturally very little
+inclined to suspicion and distrust; I willingly incline towards excuse
+and the gentlest interpretation; I take men according to the common
+order, and do not more believe in those perverse and unnatural
+inclinations, unless convinced by manifest evidence, than I do in
+monsters and miracles; and I am, moreover, a man who willingly commit
+myself to Fortune, and throw myself headlong into her arms; and I have
+hitherto found more reason to applaud than to blame myself for so doing,
+having ever found her more discreet about, and a greater friend to, my
+affairs than I am myself.  There are some actions in my life whereof the
+conduct may justly be called difficult, or, if you please, prudent; of
+these, supposing the third part to have been my own, doubtless the other
+two-thirds were absolutely hers.  We make, methinks, a mistake in that we
+do not enough trust Heaven with our affairs, and pretend to more from our
+own conduct than appertains to us; and therefore it is that our designs
+so often miscarry. Heaven is jealous of the extent that we attribute to
+the right of human prudence above its own, and cuts it all the shorter by
+how much the more we amplify it.  The last comers remained on horseback
+in my courtyard, whilst their leader, who was with me in the parlour,
+would not have his horse put up in the stable, saying he should
+immediately retire, so soon as he had news of his men.  He saw himself
+master of his enterprise, and nothing now remained but its execution.
+He has since several times said (for he was not ashamed to tell the story
+himself) that my countenance and frankness had snatched the treachery out
+of his hands.  He again mounted his horse; his followers, who had their
+eyes intent upon him, to see when he would give the signal, being very
+much astonished to find him come away and leave his prey behind him.
+
+Another time, relying upon some truce just published in the army, I took
+a journey through a very ticklish country.  I had not ridden far, but I
+was discovered, and two or three parties of horse, from various places,
+were sent out to seize me; one of them overtook me on the third day, and
+I was attacked by fifteen or twenty gentlemen in vizors, followed at a
+distance by a band of foot-soldiers.  I was taken, withdrawn into the
+thick of a neighbouring forest, dismounted, robbed, my trunks rifled, my
+money-box taken, and my horses and equipage divided amongst new masters.
+We had, in this copse, a very long contest about my ransom, which they
+set so high, that it was manifest that I was not known to them.  They
+were, moreover, in a very great debate about my life; and, in truth,
+there were various circumstances that clearly showed the danger I was in:
+
+          "Tunc animis opus, AEnea, tunc pectore firmo."
+
+     ["Then, AEneas, there is need of courage, of a firm heart."
+     --AEneid, vi. 261.]
+
+I still insisted upon the truce, too willing they should have the gain of
+what they had already taken from me, which was not to be despised,
+without promise of any other ransom.  After two or three hours that we
+had been in this place, and that they had mounted me upon a horse that
+was not likely to run from them, and committed me to the guard of fifteen
+or twenty harquebusiers, and dispersed my servants to others, having
+given order that they should carry us away prisoners several ways, and I
+being already got some two or three musket-shots from the place,
+
+          "Jam prece Pollucis, jam Castoris, implorata,"
+
+          ["By a prayer addressed now to Pollux, now to Castor."
+          --Catullus, lxvi. 65.]
+
+behold a sudden and unexpected alteration; I saw the chief return to me
+with gentler language, making search amongst the troopers for my
+scattered property, and causing as much as could be recovered to be
+restored to me, even to my money-box; but the best present they made was
+my liberty, for the rest did not much concern me at that time.  The true
+cause of so sudden a change, and of this reconsideration, without any
+apparent impulse, and of so miraculous a repentance, in such a time, in a
+planned and deliberate enterprise, and become just by usage (for, at the
+first dash, I plainly confessed to them of what party I was, and whither
+I was going), truly, I do not yet rightly understand.  The most prominent
+amongst them, who pulled off his vizor and told me his name, repeatedly
+told me at the time, over and over again, that I owed my deliverance to
+my countenance, and the liberty and boldness of my speech, that rendered
+me unworthy of such a misadventure, and should secure me from its
+repetition.  'Tis possible that the Divine goodness willed to make use of
+this vain instrument for my preservation; and it, moreover, defended me
+the next day from other and worse ambushes, of which these my assailants
+had given me warning.  The last of these two gentlemen is yet living
+himself to tell the story; the first was killed not long ago.
+
+If my face did not answer for me, if men did not read in my eyes and in
+my voice the innocence of intention, I had not lived so long without
+quarrels and without giving offence, seeing the indiscreet whatever comes
+into my head, and to judge so rashly of things.  This way may, with
+reason, appear uncivil, and ill adapted to our way of conversation; but
+I have never met with any who judged it outrageous or malicious, or that
+took offence at my liberty, if he had it from my own mouth; words
+repeated have another kind of sound and sense.  Nor do I hate any person;
+and I am so slow to offend, that I cannot do it, even upon the account of
+reason itself; and when occasion has required me to sentence criminals,
+I have rather chosen to fail in point of justice than to do it:
+
+               "Ut magis peccari nolim, quam satis animi
+               ad vindicanda peccata habeam."
+
+     ["So that I had rather men should not commit faults than that I
+     should have sufficient courage to condemn them."---Livy, xxxix. 21.]
+
+Aristotle, 'tis said, was reproached for having been too merciful to a
+wicked man: "I was indeed," said he, "merciful to the man, but not to his
+wickedness."  Ordinary judgments exasperate themselves to punishment by
+the horror of the fact: but it cools mine; the horror of the first murder
+makes me fear a second; and the deformity of the first cruelty makes me
+abhor all imitation of it.' That may be applied to me, who am but a
+Squire of Clubs, which was said of Charillus, king of Sparta: "He cannot
+be good, seeing he is not evil even to the wicked."  Or thus--for
+Plutarch delivers it both these ways, as he does a thousand other things,
+variously and contradictorily--"He must needs be good, because he is so
+even to the wicked."  Even as in lawful actions I dislike to employ
+myself when for such as are displeased at it; so, to say the truth, in
+unlawful things I do not make conscience enough of employing myself when
+it is for such as are willing.
+
+
+
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may
+     A person's look is but a feeble warranty
+     Accept all things we are not able to refute
+     Admiration is the foundation of all philosophy
+     Advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right
+     All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice
+     Apt to promise something less than what I am able to do
+     As if anything were so common as ignorance
+     Authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses
+     Best test of truth is the multitude of believers in a crowd
+     Books have not so much served me for instruction as exercise
+     Books of things that were never either studied or understood
+     Condemn the opposite affirmation equally
+     Courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal--Socrates
+     Death conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss
+     Decree that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter"
+     Deformity of the first cruelty makes me abhor all imitation
+     Enters lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it
+     Establish this proposition by authority and huffing
+     Extend their anger and hatred beyond the dispute in question
+     Fabric goes forming and piling itself up from hand to hand
+     Fortune heaped up five or six such-like incidents
+     Hard to resolve a man's judgment against the common opinions
+     Haste trips up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself
+     He cannot be good, seeing he is not evil even to the wicked
+     He who stops not the start will never be able to stop the course
+     "How many things," said he, "I do not desire!"
+     How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out
+     I am a little tenderly distrustful of things that I wish
+     I am no longer in condition for any great change
+     I am not to be cuffed into belief
+     I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable
+     I do not judge opinions by years
+     I ever justly feared to raise my head too high
+     I would as willingly be lucky as wise
+     If I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it
+     If they hear no noise, they think men sleep
+     Impose them upon me as infallible
+     Inconveniences that moderation brings (in civil war)
+     Lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself
+     Let not us seek illusions from without and unknown
+     "Little learning is needed to form a sound mind."--Seneca
+     Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation
+     Men are not always to rely upon the personal confessions
+     Merciful to the man, but not to his wickedness--Aristotle
+     Miracles and strange events have concealed themselves from me
+     My humour is no friend to tumult
+     Nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing of my own
+     Not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred
+     Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding
+     Number of fools so much exceeds the wise
+     Opinions we have are taken on authority and trust
+     Others adore all of their own side
+     Pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of the law
+     Prepare ourselves against the preparations of death
+     Profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit
+     Quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams
+     Reasons often anticipate the effect
+     Refusin  to justify, excuse, or explain myself
+     Remotest witness knows more about it than those who were nearest
+     Restoring what has been lent us, wit  usury and accession
+     Richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow
+     Right of command appertains to the beautiful-Aristotle
+     Rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny a stated fact
+     Suffer my judgment to be made captive by prepossession
+     Swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking
+     Taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance
+     The last informed is better persuaded than the first
+     The mind grows costive and thick in growing old
+     The particular error first makes the public error
+     Their souls seek repose in agitation
+     They gently name them, so they patiently endure them (diseases)
+     Those oppressed with sorrow sometimes surprised by a smile
+     Threats of the day of judgment
+     Tis better to lean towards doubt than assurance--Augustine
+     Tis no matter; it may be of use to some others
+     To forbear doing is often as generous as to do
+     To kill men, a clear and strong light is required
+     Too contemptible to be punished
+     True liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself
+     Vast distinction betwixt devotion and conscience
+     We have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death
+     What did I say?  that I have?  no, Chremes, I had
+     Who discern no riches but in pomp and show
+     Whoever will be cured of ignorance must confess it
+     Would have every one in his party blind or a blockhead
+     Wrong the just side when they go about to assist it with fraud
+     Yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 18
+by Michel de Montaigne
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Essays of Montaigne, V18
+#18 in our series by Michel de Montaigne
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+Title: The Essays of Montaigne, V18
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+Author: Michel de Montaigne
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+Editor: William Carew Hazlitt, 1877
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+Translator: Charles Cotton
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+Official Release Date: December, 2002 [Etext #3598]
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+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
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+ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
+
+Translated by Charles Cotton
+
+Edited by William Carew Hazilitt
+
+1877
+
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOLUME 18.
+
+X.        Of Managing the Will.
+XI.       Of Cripples.
+XII.      Of Physiognomy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OF MANAGING THE WILL
+
+Few things, in comparison of what commonly affect other men, move, or, to
+say better, possess me: for 'tis but reason they ,should concern a man,
+provided they do not possess him.  I am very solicitous, both by study
+and argument, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in me
+naturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I espouse and
+am very much moved with very few things.  I have a clear sight enough,
+but I fix it upon very few objects; I have a sense delicate and tender
+enough; but an apprehension and application hard and negligent.  I am
+very unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself
+wholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb
+and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into
+it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over
+which fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I
+so much value, 'tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to
+covet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable.  A man ought
+to moderate himself betwixt the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure:
+and Plato sets down a middle path of life betwixt the two.  But against
+such affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere,
+against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power.  'Tis my
+opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself
+to himself.  Were my will easy to lend itself out and to be swayed, I
+should not stick there; I am too tender both by nature and use:
+
+            "Fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus."
+
+          ["Avoiding affairs and born to secure ease."
+          --Ovid, De Trist., iii. 2, 9.]
+
+Hot and obstinate disputes, wherein my adversary would at last have the
+better, the issue that would render my heat and obstinacy disgraceful
+would peradventure vex me to the last degree.  Should I set myself to it
+at the rate that others do, my soul would never have the force to bear
+the emotion and alarms of those who grasp at so much; it would
+immediately be disordered by this inward agitation.  If, sometimes, I
+have been put upon the management of other men's affairs, I have promised
+to take them in hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them upon
+me, not to incorporate them; to take pains, yes: to be impassioned about
+it, by no means; I have a care of them, but I will not sit upon them.
+I have enough to do to order and govern the domestic throng of those that
+I have in my own veins and bowels, without introducing a crowd of other
+men's affairs; and am sufficiently concerned about my own proper and
+natural business, without meddling with the concerns of others.  Such as
+know how much they owe to themselves, and how many offices they are bound
+to of their own,, find that nature has cut them out work enough of their
+own to keep them from being idle.  "Thou hast business enough at home:
+look to that."
+
+Men let themselves out to hire; their faculties are not for themselves,
+but for those to whom they have enslaved themselves; 'tis their tenants
+occupy them, not themselves.  This common humour pleases not me.  We must
+be thrifty of the liberty of our souls, and never let it out but upon
+just occasions, which are very few, if we judge aright.  Do but observe
+such as have accustomed themselves to be at every one's call: they do it
+indifferently upon all, as well little as great, occasions; in that which
+nothing concerns them; as much as in what imports them most.  They thrust
+themselves in indifferently wherever there is work to do and obligation,
+and are without life when not in tumultuous bustle:
+
+                    "In negotiis sunt, negotii cause,"
+
+     ["They are in business for business' sake."--Seneca, Ep., 22.]
+
+It is not so much that they will go, as it is that they cannot stand
+still: like a rolling stone that cannot stop till it can go no further.
+Occupation, with a certain sort of men, is a mark of understanding and
+dignity: their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being
+rocked in a cradle; they may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their
+friends, as they are troublesome to themselves.  No one distributes his
+money to others, but every one distributes his time and his life: there
+is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of these two things, of which
+to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful.  I am of a quite
+contrary humour; I look to myself, and commonly covet with no great
+ardour what I do desire, and desire little; and I employ and busy myself
+at the same rate, rarely and temperately.  Whatever they take in hand,
+they do it with their utmost will and vehemence.  There are so many
+dangerous steps, that, for the more safety, we must a little lightly and
+superficially glide over the world, and not rush through it.  Pleasure
+itself is painful in profundity:
+
+                              "Incedis per ignes,
+                    Suppositos cineri doloso."
+
+          ["You tread on fire, hidden under deceitful ashes."
+          --Horace, Od., ii. i, 7.]
+
+The Parliament of Bordeaux chose me mayor of their city at a time when I
+was at a distance from France, --[At Bagno Della Villa, near Lucca,
+September 1581]--and still more remote from any such thought.
+I entreated to be excused, but I was told by my friends that I had
+committed an error in so doing, and the greater because the king had,
+moreover, interposed his command in that affair.  'Tis an office that
+ought to be looked upon so much more honourable, as it has no other
+salary nor advantage than the bare honour of its execution.  It continues
+two years, but may be extended by a second election, which very rarely
+happens; it was to me, and had never been so but twice before: some years
+ago to Monsieur de Lansac, and lately to Monsieur de Biron, Marshal of
+France, in whose place I succeeded; and, I left mine to Monsieur de
+Matignon, Marshal of France also: proud of so noble a fraternity--
+
+               "Uterque bonus pacis bellique minister."
+
+          ["Either one a good minister in peace and war."
+          --AEneid, xi. 658.]
+
+Fortune would have a hand in my promotion, by this particular
+circumstance which she put in of her own, not altogether vain; for
+Alexander disdained the ambassadors of Corinth, who came to offer him a
+burgess-ship of their city; but when they proceeded to lay before him
+that Bacchus and Hercules were also in the register, he graciously
+thanked them.
+
+At my arrival, I faithfully and conscientiously represented myself to
+them for such as I find myself to be--a man without memory, without
+vigilance, without experience, and without vigour; but withal, without
+hatred, without ambition, without avarice, and without violence; that
+they might be informed of my qualities, and know what they were to expect
+from my service.  And whereas the knowledge they had had of my late
+father, and the honour they had for his memory, had alone incited them to
+confer this favour upon me, I plainly told them that I should be very
+sorry anything should make so great an impression upon me as their
+affairs and the concerns of their city had made upon him, whilst he held
+the government to which they had preferred me.  I remembered, when a boy,
+to have seen him in his old age cruelly tormented with these public
+affairs, neglecting the soft repose of his own house, to which the
+declension of his age had reduced him for several years before, the
+management of his own affairs, and his health; and certainly despising
+his own life, which was in great danger of being lost, by being engaged
+in long and painful journeys on their behalf.  Such was he; and this
+humour of his proceeded from a marvellous good nature; never was there a
+more charitable and popular soul.  Yet this proceeding which I commend in
+others, I do not love to follow myself, and am not without excuse.
+
+He had learned that a man must forget himself for his neighbour, and that
+the particular was of no manner of consideration in comparison with the
+general.  Most of the rules and precepts of the world run this way; to
+drive us out of ourselves into the street for the benefit of public
+society; they thought to do a great feat to divert and remove us from
+ourselves, assuming we were but too much fixed there, and by a too
+natural inclination; and have said all they could to that purpose: for
+'tis no new thing for the sages to preach things as they serve, not as
+they are.  Truth has its obstructions, inconveniences, and
+incompatibilities with us; we must often deceive that we may not deceive
+ourselves; and shut our eyes and our understandings to redress and amend
+them:
+
+          "Imperiti enim judicant, et qui frequenter
+          in hoc ipsum fallendi sunt, ne errent."
+
+     ["For the ignorant judge, and therefore are oft to be deceived,
+     less they should err."--Quintil., Inst. Orat., xi. 17.]
+
+When they order us to love three, four, or fifty degrees of things above
+ourselves,  they do like archers, who, to hit the white, take their aim a
+great deal higher than the butt; to make a crooked stick straight, we
+bend it the contrary way.
+
+I believe that in the Temple of Pallas, as we see in all other religions,
+there were apparent mysteries to be exposed to the people; and others,
+more secret and high, that were only to be shown to such as were
+professed; 'tis likely that in these the true point of friendship that
+every one owes to himself is to be found; not a false friendship, that
+makes us embrace glory, knowledge, riches, and the like, with a principal
+and immoderate affection, as members of our being; nor an indiscreet and
+effeminate friendship, wherein it happens, as with ivy, that it decays
+and ruins the walls it embraces; but a sound and regular friendship,
+equally useful and pleasant.  He who knows the duties of this friendship
+and practises them is truly of the cabinet of the Muses, and has attained
+to the height of human wisdom and of our happiness, such an one, exactly
+knowing what he owes to himself, will on his part find that he ought to
+apply to himself the use of the world and of other men; and to do this,
+to contribute to public society the duties and offices appertaining to
+him.  He who does not in some sort live for others, does not live much
+for himself:
+
+     "Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse."
+
+     ["He who is his own friend, is a friend to everybody else."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 6.]
+
+The principal charge we have is, to every one his own conduct; and 'tis
+for this only that we here are.  As he who should forget to live a
+virtuous and holy life, and should think he acquitted himself of his duty
+in instructing and training others up to it, would be a fool; even so he
+who abandons his own particular healthful and pleasant living to serve
+others therewith, takes, in my opinion, a wrong and unnatural course.
+
+I would not that men should refuse, in the employments they take upon
+them, their attention, pains, eloquence, sweat, and blood if need be:
+
+                         "Non ipse pro caris amicis
+                    Aut patria, timidus perire:"
+
+     ["Himself not afraid to die for beloved friends, or for his
+     country."--Horace, Od., iv. 9, 51.]
+
+but 'tis only borrowed, and accidentally; his mind being always in repose
+and in health; not without action, but without vexation, without passion.
+To be simply acting costs him so little, that he acts even sleeping;
+but it must be set on going with discretion; for the body receives the
+offices imposed upon it just according to what they are; the mind often
+extends and makes them heavier at its own expense, giving them what
+measure it pleases.  Men perform like things with several sorts of
+endeavour, and different contention of will; the one does well enough
+without the other; for how many people hazard themselves every day in war
+without any concern which way it goes; and thrust themselves into the
+dangers of battles, the loss of which will not break their next night's
+sleep? and such a man may be at home, out of the danger which he durst
+not have looked upon, who is more passionately concerned for the issue of
+this war, and whose soul is more anxious about events than the soldier
+who therein stakes his blood and his life.  I could have engaged myself
+in public employments without quitting my own matters a nail's breadth,
+and have given myself to others without abandoning myself.  This
+sharpness and violence of desires more hinder than they advance the
+execution of what we undertake; fill us with impatience against slow or
+contrary events, and with heat and suspicion against those with whom we
+have to do.  We never carry on that thing well by which we are
+prepossessed and led:
+
+                         "Male cuncta ministrat
+                         Impetus."
+
+     ["Impulse manages all things ill."--Statius, Thebaid, x. 704.]
+
+He who therein employs only his judgment and address proceeds more
+cheerfully: he counterfeits, he gives way, he defers quite at his ease,
+according to the necessities of occasions; he fails in his attempt
+without trouble and affliction, ready and entire for a new enterprise;
+he always marches with the bridle in his hand.  In him who is intoxicated
+with this violent and tyrannical intention, we discover, of necessity,
+much imprudence and injustice; the impetuosity of his desire carries him
+away; these are rash motions, and, if fortune do not very much assist,
+of very little fruit.  Philosophy directs that, in the revenge of
+injuries received, we should strip ourselves of choler; not that the
+chastisement should be less, but, on the contrary, that the revenge may
+be the better and more heavily laid on, which, it conceives, will be by
+this impetuosity hindered.  For anger not only disturbs, but, of itself,
+also wearies the arms of those who chastise; this fire benumbs and wastes
+their force; as in precipitation, "festinatio tarda est,"-- haste trips
+up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself:
+
+               "Ipsa se velocitas implicat."--Seneca, Ep. 44
+
+For example, according to what I commonly see, avarice has no greater
+impediment than itself; the more bent and vigorous it is, the less it
+rakes together, and commonly sooner grows rich when disguised in a visor
+of liberality.
+
+A very excellent gentleman, and a friend of mine, ran a risk of impairing
+his faculties by a too passionate attention and affection to the affairs
+of a certain prince his master;--[Probably the King of Navarre, afterward
+Henry IV.]-- which master has thus portrayed himself to me; "that he
+foresees the weight of accidents as well as another, but that in those
+for which there is no remedy, he presently resolves upon suffering; in
+others, having taken all the necessary precautions which by the vivacity
+of his understanding he can presently do, he quietly awaits what may
+follow."  And, in truth, I have accordingly seen him maintain a great
+indifferency and liberty of actions and serenity of countenance in very
+great and difficult affairs: I find him much greater, and of greater
+capacity in adverse than in prosperous fortune; his defeats are to him
+more glorious than his victories, and his mourning than his triumph.
+
+Consider, that even in vain and frivolous actions, as at chess, tennis,
+and the like, this eager and ardent engaging with an impetuous desire,
+immediately throws the mind and members into indiscretion and disorder: a
+man astounds and hinders himself; he who carries himself more moderately,
+both towards gain and loss, has always his wits about him; the less
+peevish and passionate he is at play, he plays much more advantageously
+and surely.
+
+As to the rest, we hinder the mind's grasp and hold, in giving it so many
+things to seize upon; some things we should only offer to it; tie it to
+others, and with others incorporate it.  It can feel and discern all
+things, but ought to feed upon nothing but itself; and should be
+instructed in what properly concerns itself, and that is properly of its
+own having and substance.  The laws of nature teach us what justly we
+need.  After the sages have told us that no one is indigent according to
+nature, and that every one is so according to opinion, they very subtly
+distinguish betwixt the desires that proceed from her, and those that
+proceed from the disorder of our own fancy: those of which we can see the
+end are hers; those that fly before us, and of which we can see no end,
+are our own: the poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the
+soul is irreparable:
+
+         "Nam si, quod satis est homini, id satis esse potesset
+          Hoc sat erat: nunc, quum hoc non est, qui credimus porro
+          Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse?"
+
+     ["For if what is for man enough, could be enough, it were enough;
+     but since it is not so, how can I believe that any wealth can give
+     my mind content."--Lucilius aped Nonium Marcellinum, V. sec. 98.]
+
+Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniture
+carried in pomp through his city:  "How many things," said he, "I do not
+desire!"--[Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., V. 32.]-- Metrodorus lived on twelve
+ounces a day, Epicurus upon less; Metrocles slept in winter abroad
+amongst sheep, in summer in the cloisters of churches:
+
+               "Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit."
+
+          ["Nature suffices for what he requires."--Seneca, Ep., 90.]
+
+Cleanthes lived by the labour of his own hands, and boasted that
+Cleanthes, if he would, could yet maintain another Cleanthes.
+
+If that which nature exactly and originally requires of us for the
+conservation of our being be too little (as in truth what it is, and how
+good cheap life may be maintained, cannot be better expressed than by
+this consideration, that it is so little that by its littleness it
+escapes the gripe and shock of fortune), let us allow ourselves a little
+more; let us call every one of our habits and conditions nature; let us
+rate and treat ourselves by this measure; let us stretch our
+appurtenances and accounts so far; for so far, I fancy, we have some
+excuse.  Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful.  What is
+wanting to my custom, I reckon is wanting to me; and I should be almost
+as well content that they took away my life as cut me short in the way
+wherein I have so long lived.  I am no longer in condition for any great
+change, nor to put myself into a new and unwonted course, not even to
+augmentation.  'Tis past the time for me to become other than what I am;
+and as I should complain of any great good hap that should now befall me,
+that it came not in time to be enjoyed:
+
+               "Quo mihi fortunas, si non conceditur uti?"
+
+     ["What is the good fortune to me, if it is not granted to me
+     to use it."--Horace, Ep., i. 5, 12.]
+
+so should I complain of any inward acquisition.  It were almost better
+never, than so late, to become an honest man, and well fit to live, when
+one has no longer to live.  I, who am about to make my exit out of the
+world, would easily resign to any newcomer, who should desire it, all the
+prudence I am now acquiring in the world's commerce; after meat, mustard.
+I have no need of goods of which I can make no use; of what use is
+knowledge to him who has lost his head?  'Tis an injury and unkindness in
+fortune to tender us presents that will only inspire us with a just
+despite that we had them not in their due season.  Guide me no more; I
+can no longer go.  Of so many parts as make up a sufficiency, patience is
+the most sufficient.  Give the capacity of an excellent treble to the
+chorister who has rotten lungs, and eloquence to a hermit exiled into the
+deserts of Arabia.  There needs no art to help a fall; the end finds
+itself of itself at the conclusion of every affair.  My world is at an
+end, my form expired; I am totally of the past, and am bound to authorise
+it, and to conform my outgoing to it.  I will here declare, by way of
+example, that the Pope's late ten days' diminution
+
+     [Gregory XIII., in 1582, reformed the Calendar, and, in consequence,
+     in France they all at once passed from the 9th to the 20th
+     December.]
+
+has taken me so aback that I cannot well reconcile myself to it; I belong
+to the years wherein we kept another kind of account.  So ancient and so
+long a custom challenges my adherence to it, so that I am constrained to
+be somewhat heretical on that point incapable of any, though corrective,
+innovation.  My imagination, in spite of my teeth, always pushes me ten
+days forward or backward, and is ever murmuring in my ears: "This rule
+concerns those who are to begin to be."  If health itself, sweet as it
+is, returns to me by fits, 'tis rather to give me cause of regret than
+possession of it; I have no place left to keep it in.  Time leaves me;
+without which nothing can be possessed.  Oh, what little account should I
+make of those great elective dignities that I see in such esteem in the
+world, that are never conferred but upon men who are taking leave of it;
+wherein they do not so much regard how well the man will discharge his
+trust, as how short his administration will be: from the very entry they
+look at the exit.  In short, I am about finishing this man, and not
+rebuilding another.  By long use, this form is in me turned into
+substance, and fortune into nature.
+
+I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is excusable in
+thinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; but
+withal, beyond these limits, 'tis nothing but confusion; 'tis the largest
+extent we can grant to our own claims.  The more we amplify our need and
+our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows of
+Fortune and adversities.  The career of our desires ought to be
+circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and most
+contiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be performed
+not in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of which the
+two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves.  Actions
+that are carried on without this reflection--a near and essential
+reflection, I mean--such as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and so
+many more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries them
+before themselves, such actions, I say; are erroneous and sickly.
+
+Most of our business is farce:
+
+               "Mundus universus exercet histrioniam."
+               --[Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8.]
+
+We must play our part properly, but withal as a part of a borrowed
+personage; we must not make real essence of a mask and outward
+appearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we cannot distinguish the
+skin from the shirt: 'tis enough to meal the face, without mealing the
+breast.  I see some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into as
+many new shapes and new beings as they undertake new employments; and who
+strut and fume even to the heart and liver, and carry their state along
+with them even to the close-stool: I cannot make them distinguish the
+salutations made to themselves from those made to their commission, their
+train, or their mule:
+
+     "Tantum se fortunx permittunt, etiam ut naturam dediscant."
+
+     ["They so much give themselves up to fortune, as even to unlearn
+     nature."--Quintus Curtius, iii. 2.]
+
+They swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking,
+according to the height of their magisterial place.  The Mayor of
+Bordeaux and Montaigne have ever been two by very manifest separation.
+Because one is an advocate or a financier, he must not ignore the knavery
+there is in such callings; an honest man is not accountable for the vice
+or absurdity of his employment, and ought not on that account refuse to
+take the calling upon him: 'tis the usage of his country, and there is
+money to be got by it; a man must live by the world; and make his best of
+it, such as it is.  But the judgment of an emperor ought to be above his
+empire, and see and consider it as a foreign accident; and he ought to
+know how to enjoy himself apart from it, and to communicate himself as
+James and Peter, to himself, at all events.
+
+I cannot engage myself so deep and so entire; when my will gives me to
+anything, 'tis not with so violent an obligation that my judgment is
+infected with it.  In the present broils of this kingdom, my own interest
+has not made me blind to the laudable qualities of our adversaries, nor
+to those that are reproachable in those men of our party.  Others adore
+all of their own side; for my part, I do not so much as excuse most
+things in those of mine: a good work has never the worst grace with me
+for being made against me.  The knot of the controversy excepted, I have
+always kept myself in equanimity and pure indifference:
+
+     "Neque extra necessitates belli praecipuum odium gero;"
+
+     ["Nor bear particular hatred beyond the necessities of war."]
+
+for which I am pleased with myself; and the more because I see others
+commonly fail in the contrary direction.  Such as extend their anger and
+hatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that they
+spring from some other occasion and private cause; like one who, being
+cured of an ulcer, has yet a fever remaining, by which it appears that
+the ulcer had another more concealed beginning.  The reason is that they
+are not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to the
+state and general interest; but are only nettled by reason of their
+particular concern.  This is why they are so especially animated, and to
+a degree so far beyond justice and public reason:
+
+          "Non tam omnia universi, quam ea, quae ad quemque pertinent,
+          singuli carpebant."
+
+     ["Every one was not so much angry against things in general, as
+     against those that particularly concern himself."
+     --Livy, xxxiv. 36.]
+
+I would have the advantage on our side; but if it be not, I shall not run
+mad.  I am heartily for the right party; but I do not want to be taken
+notice of as an especial enemy to others, and beyond the general quarrel.
+I marvellously challenge this vicious form of opinion: "He is of the
+League because he admires the graciousness of Monsieur de Guise; he is
+astonished at the King of Navarre's energy, therefore he is a Huguenot;
+he finds this to say of the manners of the king, he is therefore
+seditious in his heart."  And I did not grant to the magistrate himself
+that he did well in condemning a book because it had placed a heretic--
+[Theodore de Beza.]-- amongst the best poets of the time.  Shall we not
+dare to say of a thief that he has a handsome leg?  If a woman be a
+strumpet, must it needs follow that she has a foul smell?  Did they in
+the wisest ages revoke the proud title of Capitolinus they had before
+conferred on Marcus Manlius as conservator of religion and the public
+liberty, and stifle the memory of his liberality, his feats of arms, and
+military recompenses granted to his valour, because he, afterwards
+aspired to the sovereignty, to the prejudice of the laws of his country?
+If we take a hatred against an advocate, he will not be allowed the next
+day to be eloquent.  I have elsewhere spoken of the zeal that pushed on
+worthy men to the like faults.  For my part, I can say, "Such an one does
+this thing ill, and another thing virtuously and well."  So in the
+prognostication or sinister events of affairs they would have every one
+in his party blind or a blockhead, and that our persuasion and judgment
+should subserve not truth, but to the project of our desires.  I should
+rather incline towards the other extreme; so much I fear being suborned
+by my desire; to which may be added that I am a little tenderly
+distrustful of things that I wish.
+
+I have in my time seen wonders in the indiscreet and prodigious facility
+of people in suffering their hopes and belief to be led and governed,
+which way best pleased and served their leaders, despite a hundred
+mistakes one upon another, despite mere dreams and phantasms.  I no more
+wonder at those who have been blinded and seduced by the fooleries of
+Apollonius and Mahomet.  Their sense and understanding are absolutely
+taken away by their passion; their discretion has no more any other
+choice than that which smiles upon them and encourages their cause.
+I had principally observed this in the beginning of our intestine
+distempers; that other, which has sprung up since, in imitating, has
+surpassed it; by which I am satisfied that it is a quality inseparable
+from popular errors; after the first, that rolls, opinions drive on one
+another like waves with the wind: a man is not a member of the body, if
+it be in his power to forsake it, and if he do not roll the common way.
+But, doubtless, they wrong the just side when they go about to assist it
+with fraud; I have ever been against that practice: 'tis only fit to work
+upon weak heads; for the sound, there are surer and more honest ways to
+keep up their courage and to excuse adverse accidents.
+
+Heaven never saw a greater animosity than that betwixt Caesar and Pompey,
+nor ever shall; and yet I observe, methinks, in those brave souls,
+a great moderation towards one another: it was a jealousy of honour and
+command, which did not transport them to a furious and indiscreet hatred,
+and was without malignity and detraction: in their hottest exploits upon
+one another, I discover some remains of respect and good-will: and am
+therefore of opinion that, had, it been possible, each of them would
+rather have done his business without the ruin of the other than with it.
+Take notice how much otherwise matters went with Marius and Sylla.
+
+We must not precipitate ourselves so headlong after our affections and
+interests.  As, when I was young, I opposed myself to the progress of
+love which I perceived to advance too fast upon me, and had a care lest
+it should at last become so pleasing as to force, captivate, and wholly
+reduce me to its mercy: so I do the same upon all other occasions where
+my will is running on with too warm an appetite.  I lean opposite to the
+side it inclines to; as I find it going to plunge and make itself drunk
+with its own wine; I evade nourishing its pleasure so far, that I cannot
+recover it without infinite loss.  Souls that, through their own
+stupidity, only discern things by halves, have this happiness, that they
+smart less with hurtful things: 'tis a spiritual leprosy that has some
+show of health, and such a health as philosophy does not altogether
+contemn; but yet we have no reason to call it wisdom, as we often do.
+And after this manner some one anciently mocked Diogeries, who, in the
+depth of winter and quite naked, went embracing an image of snow for a
+trial of his endurance: the other seeing him in this position, "Art thou
+now very cold?"  said he.  "Not at all," replied Diogenes.  "Why, then,"
+pursued the other, "what difficult and exemplary thing dost thou think
+thou doest in embracing that snow?"  To take a true measure of constancy,
+one must necessarily know what the suffering is.
+
+But souls that are to meet with adverse events and the injuries of
+fortune, in their depth and sharpness, that are to weigh and taste them
+according to their natural weight and bitterness, let such show their
+skill in avoiding the causes and diverting the blow.  What did King Cotys
+do?  He paid liberally for the rich and beautiful vessel that had been
+presented to him, but, seeing it was exceedingly brittle, he immediately
+broke it betimes, to prevent so easy a matter of displeasure against his
+servants. In like manner, I have willingly avoided all confusion in my
+affairs, and never coveted to have my estate contiguous to those of my
+relations, and such with whom I coveted a strict friendship; for thence
+matter of unkindness and falling out often proceeds.  I formerly loved
+hazardous games of cards and dice; but have long since left them off,
+only for this reason that, with whatever good air I carried my losses,
+I could not help feeling vexed within.  A man of honour, who ought to be
+touchily sensible of the lie or of an insult, and who is not to take a
+scurvy excuse for satisfaction, should avoid occasions of dispute.
+I shun melancholy, crabbed men, as I would the plague; and in matters I
+cannot talk of without emotion and concern I never meddle, if not
+compelled by my duty:
+
+               "Melius non incipient, quam desinent."
+
+     ["They had better never to begin than to have to desist."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 72.]
+
+The surest way, therefore, is to prepare one's self beforehand for
+occasions.
+
+I know very well that some wise men have taken another way, and have not
+feared to grapple and engage to the utmost upon several subjects these
+are confident of their own strength, under which they protect themselves
+in all ill successes, making their patience wrestle and contend with
+disaster:
+
+               "Velut rupes, vastum quae prodit in aequor,
+               Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto,
+               Vim cunctam atque minas perfert coelique marisque;
+               Ipsa immota manens."
+
+     ["As a rock, which projects into the vast ocean, exposed to the
+     furious winds and the raging sea, defies the force and menaces of
+     sky and sea, itself unshaken."--Virgil, AEneid, x. 693.]
+
+Let us not attempt these examples; we shall never come up to them.  They
+set themselves resolutely, and without agitation, to behold the ruin of
+their country, which possessed and commanded all their will: this is too
+much, and too hard a task for our commoner souls.  Cato gave up the
+noblest life that ever was upon this account; we meaner spirits must fly
+from the storm as far as we can; we must provide for sentiment, and not
+for patience, and evade the blows we cannot meet.  Zeno, seeing
+Chremonides, a young man whom he loved, draw near to sit down by him,
+suddenly started up; and Cleanthes demanding of him the reason why he did
+so, "I hear," said he, "that physicians especially order repose, and
+forbid emotion in all tumours."  Socrates does not say: "Do not surrender
+to the charms of beauty; stand your ground, and do your utmost to oppose
+it."  "Fly it," says he; "shun the fight and encounter of it, as of a
+powerful poison that darts and wounds at a distance."  And his good
+disciple, feigning or reciting, but, in my opinion, rather reciting than
+feigning, the rare perfections of the great Cyrus, makes him distrustful
+of his own strength to resist the charms of the divine beauty of that
+illustrous Panthea, his captive, and committing the visiting and keeping
+her to another, who could not have so much liberty as himself.  And the
+Holy Ghost in like manner:
+
+                    "Ne nos inducas in tentationem."
+
+          ["Lead us not into temptation."--St. Matthew, vi. 13.]
+
+We do not pray that our reason may not be combated and overcome by
+concupiscence, but that it should not be so much as tried by it; that we
+should not be brought into a state wherein we are so much as to suffer
+the approaches, solicitations, and temptations of sin: and we beg of
+Almighty God to keep our consciences quiet, fully and perfectly delivered
+from all commerce of evil.
+
+Such as say that they have reason for their revenging passion, or any
+other sort of troublesome agitation of mind, often say true, as things
+now are, but not as they were: they speak to us when the causes of their
+error are by themselves nourished and advanced; but look backward--recall
+these causes to their beginning--and there you will put them to a
+nonplus.  Will they have their faults less, for being of longer
+continuance; and that of an unjust beginning, the sequel can be just?
+Whoever shall desire the good of his country, as I do, without fretting
+or pining himself, will be troubled, but will not swoon to see it
+threatening either its own ruin, or a no less ruinous continuance; poor
+vessel, that the waves, the winds, and the pilot toss and steer to so
+contrary designs!
+
+                        "In tam diversa magister
+                         Ventus et unda trahunt."
+
+He who does not gape after the favour of princes, as after a thing he
+cannot live without, does not much concern himself at the coldness of
+their reception and countenance, nor at the inconstancy of their wills.
+He who does not brood over his children or his honours with a slavish
+propension, ceases not to live commodiously enough after their loss.  He
+who does good principally for his own satisfaction will not be much
+troubled to see men judge of his actions contrary to his merit.  A
+quarter of an ounce of patience will provide sufficiently against such
+inconveniences.  I find ease in this receipt, redeeming myself in the
+beginning as good cheap as I can; and find that by this means I have
+escaped much trouble and many difficulties.  With very little ado I stop
+the first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to be
+troublesome before it transports me.  He who stops not the start will
+never be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never,
+get them out when they are once got in; and he who cannot arrive at the
+beginning will never arrive at the end of all.  Nor will he bear the fall
+who cannot sustain the shock:
+
+     "Etenim ipsae se impellunt, ubi semel a ratione discessum est;
+     ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur
+     imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi."
+
+     ["For they throw themselves headlong when once they lose their
+     reason; and infirmity so far indulges itself, and from want of
+     prudence is carried out into deep water, nor finds a place to
+     shelter it."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 18.]
+
+I am betimes sensible of the little breezes that begin to sing and
+whistle within, forerunners of the storm:
+
+                              "Ceu flamina prima
+               Cum deprensa fremunt sylvis et caeca volutant
+               Murmura, venturos nautis prodentia ventos."
+
+     ["As the breezes, pent in the woods, first send out dull murmurs,
+     announcing the approach of winds to mariners."--AEneid, x. 97.]
+
+How often have I done myself a manifest injustice to avoid the hazard of
+having yet a worse done me by the judges, after an age of vexations,
+dirty and vile practices, more enemies to my nature than fire or the
+rack?
+
+     "Convenit a litibus, quantum licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam
+     quam licet, abhorrentem esse: est enim non modo liberale, paululum
+     nonnunquam de suo jure decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum."
+
+     ["A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may, and I know not
+     whether not something more; for 'tis not only liberal, but sometimes
+     also advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right.
+     --"Cicero, De Offic., ii. 18.]
+
+Were we wise, we ought to rejoice and boast, as I one day heard a young
+gentleman of a good family very innocently do, that his mother had lost
+her cause, as if it had been a cough, a fever, or something very
+troublesome to keep.  Even the favours that fortune might have given me
+through relationship or acquaintance with those who have sovereign
+authority in those affairs, I have very conscientiously and very
+carefully avoided employing them to the prejudice of others, and of
+advancing my pretensions above their true right.  In fine, I have so much
+prevailed by my endeavours (and happily I may say it) that I am to this
+day a virgin from all suits in law; though I have had very fair offers
+made me, and with very just title, would I have hearkened to them, and a
+virgin from quarrels too.  I have almost passed over a long life without
+any offence of moment, either active or passive, or without ever hearing
+a worse word than my own name: a rare favour of Heaven.
+
+Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes: what ruin did
+our last Duke of Burgundy run into about a cartload of sheepskins!
+And was not the graving of a seal the first and principal cause of the
+greatest commotion that this machine of the world ever underwent?
+--[The civil war between Marius and Sylla; see Plutarch's Life of Marius,
+c. 3.]-- for Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of
+the two others: and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in this
+kingdom assembled with great ceremony, and at the public expense, about
+treaties and agreements, of which the true decision, in the meantime,
+absolutely depended upon the ladies' cabinet council, and the inclination
+of some bit of a woman.
+
+The poets very well understood this when they put all Greece and Asia to
+fire and sword about an apple.  Look why that man hazards his life and
+honour upon the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him acquaint you
+with the occasion of the quarrel; he cannot do it without blushing: the
+occasion is so idle and frivolous.
+
+A little thing will engage you in it; but being once embarked, all the
+cords draw; great provisions are then required, more hard and more
+important.  How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out.?
+Now we should proceed contrary to the reed, which, at its first
+springing, produces a long and straight shoot, but afterwards, as if
+tired and out of breath, it runs into thick and frequent joints and
+knots, as so many pauses which demonstrate that it has no more its first
+vigour and firmness; 'twere better to begin gently and coldly, and to
+keep one's breath and vigorous efforts for the height and stress of the
+business.  We guide affairs in their beginnings, and have them in our own
+power; but afterwards, when they are once at work, 'tis they that guide
+and govern us, and we are to follow them.
+
+Yet do I not mean to say that this counsel has discharged me of all
+difficulty, and that I have not often had enough to do to curb and
+restrain my passions; they are not always to be governed according to the
+measure of occasions, and often have their entries very sharp and
+violent.  But still good fruit and profit may thence be reaped; except
+for those who in well-doing are not satisfied with any benefit, if
+reputation be wanting; for, in truth, such an effect is not valued but by
+every one to himself; you are better contented, but not more esteemed,
+seeing you reformed yourself before you got into the whirl of the dance,
+or that the provocative matter was in sight.  Yet not in this only, but
+in all other duties of life also, the way of those who aim at honour is
+very different from that they proceed by, who propose to themselves order
+and reason.  I find some who rashly and furiously rush into the lists and
+cool in the course.  As Plutarch says, that those who, through false
+shame, are soft and facile to grant whatever is desired of them, are
+afterwards as facile to break their word and to recant; so he who enters
+lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it.  The same
+difficulty that keeps me from entering into it, would, when once hot and
+engaged in quarrel, incite me to maintain it with great obstinacy and
+resolution.  'Tis the tyranny of custom; when a man is once engaged; he
+must go through with it, or die.  "Undertake coolly," said Bias,
+"but pursue with ardour."  For want of prudence, men fall into want of
+courage, which is still more intolerable.
+
+Most accommodations of the quarrels of these days of ours are shameful
+and false; we only seek to save appearances, and in the meantime betray
+and disavow our true intentions; we salve over the fact.  We know very
+well how we said the thing, and in what sense we spoke it, and the
+company know it, and our friends whom we have wished to make sensible of
+our advantage, understand it well enough too: 'tis at the expense of our
+frankness and of the honour of our courage, that we disown our thoughts,
+and seek refuge in falsities, to make matters up.  We give ourselves the
+lie, to excuse the lie we have given to another.  You are not to consider
+if your word or action may admit of another interpretation; 'tis your own
+true and sincere interpretation, your real meaning in what you said or
+did, that you are thenceforward to maintain, whatever it cost you.  Men
+speak to your virtue and conscience, which are not things to be put under
+a mask; let us leave these pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of
+the law.  The excuses and reparations that I see every day made and given
+to repair indiscretion, seem to me more scandalous than the indiscretion
+itself.  It were better to affront your adversary a second time than to
+offend yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction.  You have braved
+him in your heat and anger, and you would flatter and appease him in your
+cooler and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at his
+feet, whom before you pretended to overtop.  I do not find anything a
+gentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is
+infamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him;
+forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour than
+pusillanimity.  Passions are as easy for me to evade, as they are hard
+for me to moderate:
+
+          "Exscinduntur facilius ammo, quam temperantur."
+
+     ["They are more easily to be eradicated than governed."]
+
+He who cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him secure
+himself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what they
+performed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament.  The middle
+region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers
+and peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness:
+
+               "Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
+               Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
+               Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!
+               Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
+               Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!"
+
+     ["Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place
+     under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of
+     rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan,
+     and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs."--Virgil, Georg., ii. 490.]
+
+The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we should
+have our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, the
+danger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as little
+to be found.  I had every day encountered a million of crosses, harder to
+digest in the progress of ambition, than it has been hard for me to curb
+the natural propension that inclined me to it:
+
+                    "Jure perhorrui
+                    Lath conspicuum tollere verticem."
+
+          ["I ever justly feared to raise my head too high."
+          --Horace, Od.,iii. 16, 18.]
+
+All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations;
+for too many heads judge of them.  Some say of this civic employment of
+mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is
+worth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that
+I have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid
+temperament; and they have some colour for what they say.  I endeavoured
+to keep my mind and my thoughts in repose;
+
+          "Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus;"
+
+          ["As being always quiet by nature, so also now by age."
+          --Cicero, De Petit. Consul., c. 2.]
+
+and if they sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression,
+'tis in truth without my advice.  Yet from this natural heaviness of
+mine, men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for want of care
+and want of sense are two very different things), and much less any
+unkindness or ingratitude towards that corporation who employed the
+utmost means they had in their power to oblige me, both before they knew
+me and after; and they did much more for me in choosing me anew than in
+conferring that honour upon me at first.  I wish them all imaginable
+good; and assuredly had occasion been, there is nothing I would have
+spared for their service; I did for them as I would have done for myself.
+'Tis a good, warlike, and generous people, but capable of obedience and
+discipline, and of whom the best use may be made, if well guided.  They
+say also that my administration passed over without leaving any mark or
+trace.  Good!  They moreover accuse my cessation in a time when everybody
+almost was convicted of doing too much.  I am impatient to be doing where
+my will spurs me on; but this itself is an enemy to perseverance.  Let
+him who will make use of me according to my own way, employ me in affairs
+where vigour and liberty are required, where a direct, short, and,
+moreover, a hazardous conduct are necessary; I may do something; but if
+it must be long, subtle, laborious, artificial and intricate, he had
+better call in somebody else.  All important offices are not necessarily
+difficult: I came prepared to do somewhat rougher work, had there been
+great occasion; for it is in my power to do something more than I do, or
+than I love to do.  I did not, to my knowledge, omit anything that my
+duty really required.  I easily forgot those offices that ambition mixes
+with duty and palliates with its title; these are they that, for the most
+part, fill the eyes and ears, and give men the most satisfaction; not the
+thing but the appearance contents them; if they hear no noise, they think
+men sleep.  My humour is no friend to tumult; I could appease a commotion
+without commotion, and chastise a disorder without being myself
+disorderly; if I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it,
+and put it on.  My manners are languid, rather faint than sharp.  I do
+not condemn a magistrate who sleeps, provided the people under his charge
+sleep as well as he: the laws in that case sleep too.  For my part, I
+commend a gliding, staid, and silent life:
+
+          "Neque submissam et abjectam, neque se efferentem;"
+
+          ["Neither subject and abject, nor obtrusive."
+          --Cicero, De Offic., i. 34]
+
+my fortune will have it so.  I am descended from a family that has lived
+without lustre or tumult, and, time out of mind, particularly ambitious
+of a character for probity.
+
+Our people nowadays are so bred up to bustle and ostentation, that good
+nature, moderation, equability, constancy, and such like quiet and
+obscure qualities, are no more thought on or regarded.  Rough bodies make
+themselves felt; the smooth are imperceptibly handled: sickness is felt,
+health little or not at all; no more than the oils that foment us, in
+comparison of the pains for which we are fomented.  'Tis acting for one's
+particular reputation and profit, not for the public good, to refer that
+to be done in the public squares which one may do in the council chamber;
+and to noon day what might have been done the night before; and to be
+jealous to do that himself which his colleague can do as well as he; so
+were some surgeons of Greece wont to perform their operations upon
+scaffolds in the sight of the people, to draw more practice and profit.
+They think that good rules cannot be understood but by the sound of
+trumpet.  Ambition is not a vice of little people, nor of such modest
+means as ours.  One said to Alexander: "Your father will leave you a
+great dominion, easy and pacific"; this youth was emulous of his father's
+victories and of the justice of his government; he would not have enjoyed
+the empire of the world in ease and peace.  Alcibiades, in Plato, had
+rather die young, beautiful, rich, noble, and learned, and all this in
+full excellence, than to stop short of such condition; this disease is,
+peradventure, excusable in so strong and so full a soul.  When wretched
+and dwarfish little souls cajole and deceive themselves, and think to
+spread their fame for having given right judgment in an affair, or
+maintained the discipline of the guard of a gate of their city, the more
+they think to exalt their heads the more they show their tails.  This
+little well-doing has neither body nor life; it vanishes in the first
+mouth, and goes no further than from one street to another.  Talk of it
+by all means to your son or your servant, like that old fellow who,
+having no other auditor of his praises nor approver of his valour,
+boasted to his chambermaid, crying, "O Perrete, what a brave, clever man
+hast thou for thy master!  "At the worst, talk of it to yourself, like a
+councillor of my acquaintance, who, having disgorged a whole cartful of
+law jargon with great heat and as great folly, coming out of the council
+chamber to make water, was heard very complacently to mutter betwixt his
+teeth:
+
+          "Non nobis, domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam."
+
+     ["Not unto us, O Lord, not to us: but unto Thy name be the glory."
+     --Psalm cxiii. I.]
+
+He who gets it of nobody else, let him pay himself out of his own purse.
+
+Fame is not prostituted at so cheap a rate: rare and exemplary actions,
+to which it is due, would not endure the company of this prodigious crowd
+of petty daily performances.  Marble may exalt your titles, as much as
+you please, for having repaired a rod of wall or cleansed a public sewer;
+but not men of sense.  Renown does not follow all good deeds, if novelty
+and difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, according
+to the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; nor
+will they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, abstains from an
+old blear-eyed crone.  Those who have known the admirable qualities of
+Scipio Africanus, deny him the glory that Panaetius attributes to him, of
+being abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of his
+age.  We have pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of
+grandeur: our own are more natural, and by so much more solid and sure,
+as they are lower.  If not for that of conscience, yet at least for
+ambition's sake, let us reject ambition; let us disdain that thirst of
+honour and renown, so low and mendicant, that it makes us beg it of all
+sorts of people:
+
+          "Quae est ista laus quae: possit e macello peti?"
+
+     ["What praise is that which is to be got in the market-place (meat
+     market?"  "Cicero, De Fin., ii. 15.]
+
+by abject means, and at what cheap rate soever: 'tis dishonour to be so
+honoured.  Let us learn to be no more greedy, than we are capable, of
+glory.  To be puffed up with every action that is innocent or of use, is
+only for those with whom such things are extraordinary and rare: they
+will value it as it costs them.  The more a good effect makes a noise,
+the more do I abate of its goodness as I suspect that it was more
+performed for the noise, than upon account of the goodness: exposed upon
+the stall, 'tis half sold.  Those actions have much more grace and
+lustre, that slip from the hand of him that does them, negligently and
+without noise, and that some honest man thereafter finds out and raises
+from the shade, to produce it to the light upon its own account,
+
+          "Mihi quidem laudabiliora videntur omnia, quae sine
+          venditatione, et sine populo teste fiunt,"
+
+     ["All things truly seem more laudable to me that are performed
+     without ostentation, and without the testimony of the people."
+     --Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., ii. 26.]
+
+says the most ostentatious man that ever lived.
+
+I had but to conserve and to continue, which are silent and insensible
+effects: innovation is of great lustre; but 'tis interdicted in this age,
+when we are pressed upon and have nothing to defend ourselves from but
+novelties.  To forbear doing is often as generous as to do; but 'tis less
+in the light, and the little good I have in me is of this kind.  In fine,
+occasions in this employment of mine have been confederate with my
+humour, and I heartily thank them for it.  Is there any who desires to be
+sick, that he may see his physician at work? and would not the physician
+deserve to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst us, that he
+might put his art in practice?  I have never been of that wicked humour,
+and common enough, to desire that troubles and disorders in this city
+should elevate and honour my government; I have ever heartily contributed
+all I could to their tranquillity and ease.
+
+He who will not thank me for the order, the sweet and silent calm that
+has accompanied my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of the
+share that belongs to me by title of my good fortune.  And I am of such a
+composition, that I would as willingly be lucky as wise, and had rather
+owe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God, than to any
+operation of my own.  I had sufficiently published to the world my
+unfitness for such public offices; but I have something in me yet worse
+than incapacity itself; which is, that I am not much displeased at it,
+and that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of
+life that I have proposed to myself.
+
+Neither have I satisfied myself in this employment; but I have very near
+arrived at what I expected from my own performance, and have much
+surpassed what I promised them with whom I had to do: for I am apt to
+promise something less than what I am able to do, and than what I hope to
+make good.  I assure myself that I have left no offence or hatred behind
+me; to leave regret or desire for me amongst them, I at least know very
+well that I never much aimed at it:
+
+              "Mene huic confidere monstro!
+               Mene salis placidi vultum, fluctusque quietos
+               Ignorare?"
+
+     ["Should I place confidence in this monster?  Should I be ignorant
+     of the dangers of that seeming placid sea, those now quiet waves?"
+     --Virgil, Aeneid, V. 849.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+OF CRIPPLES
+
+'Tis now two or three years ago that they made the year ten days shorter
+in France.--[By the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.]--  How many
+changes may we expect should follow this reformation! it was really
+moving heaven and earth at once.  Yet nothing for all that stirs from its
+place my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, the
+opportunities of doing their business, the hurtful and propitious days,
+dust at the same time where they had, time out of mind, assigned them;
+there was no more error perceived in our old use, than there is amendment
+found in the alteration; so great an uncertainty there is throughout; so
+gross, obscure, and obtuse is our perception.  'Tis said that this
+regulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, by
+subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the
+Bissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, till
+we had exactly satisfied this debt, the which itself is not done by this
+correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear: and yet, by this
+means, such order might be taken for the future, arranging that after the
+revolution of such or such a number of years, the supernumerary day might
+be always thrown out, so that we could not, henceforward, err above four-
+and-twenty hours in our computation.  We have no other account of time
+but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only; and yet it
+is a measure that to this day we are not agreed upon, and one that we
+still doubt what form other nations have variously given to it, and what
+was the true use of it.  What does this saying of some mean, that the
+heavens in growing old bow themselves down nearer towards us, and put us
+into an uncertainty even of hours and days? and that which Plutarch says
+of the months, that astrology had not in his time determined as to the
+motion of the moon; what a fine condition are we in to keep records of
+things past.
+
+I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a free and roving thing
+human reason is.  I ordinarily see that men, in things propounded to
+them, more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth:
+they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of
+consequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes.  Pleasant
+talkers!  The knowledge of causes only concerns him who has the conduct
+of things; not us, who are merely to undergo them, and who have perfectly
+full and accomplished use of them, according to our need, without
+penetrating into the original and essence; wine is none the more pleasant
+to him who knows its first faculties.  On the contrary, both the body and
+the soul interrupt and weaken the right they have of the use of the world
+and of themselves, by mixing with it the opinion of learning; effects
+concern us, but the means not at all.  To determine and to distribute
+appertain to superiority and command; as it does to subjection to accept.
+Let me reprehend our custom.  They commonly begin thus: " How is such a
+thing done?  " Whereas they should say, ".Is such a thing done?"  Our
+reason is able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out the
+beginnings and contexture; it needs neither matter nor foundation: let it
+but run on, it builds as well in the air as on the earth, and with
+inanity as well as with matter:
+
+                    "Dare pondus idonea fumo."
+
+          ["Able to give weight to smoke."--Persius, v. 20.]
+
+I find that almost throughout we should say, "there is no such thing,"
+and should myself often make use of this answer, but I dare not: for they
+cry that it is an evasion produced from ignorance and weakness of
+understanding; and I am fain, for the most part, to juggle for company,
+and prate of frivolous subjects and tales that I believe not a word of;
+besides that, in truth, 'tis a little rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny
+a stated fact; and few people but will affirm, especially in things hard
+to be believed, that they have seen them, or at least will name witnesses
+whose authority will stop our mouths from contradiction.  In this way, we
+know the foundations and means of things that never were; and the world
+scuffles about a thousand questions, of which both the Pro and the Con
+are false.
+
+          "Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in praecipitem
+          locum non debeat se sapiens committere."
+
+     ["False things are so near the true, that a wise man should not
+     trust himself in a precipitous place"--Cicero, Acad., ii.  21.]
+
+Truth and lies are faced alike; their port, taste, and proceedings are
+the same, and we look upon them with the same eye.  I find that we are
+not only remiss in defending ourselves from deceit, but that we seek and
+offer ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, as
+a thing conformable to our being.
+
+I have seen the birth of many miracles in my time; which, although they
+were abortive, yet have we not failed to foresee what they would have
+come to, had they lived their full age.  'Tis but finding the end of the
+clew, and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greater
+distance betwixt nothing and the least thing in the world than there is
+betwixt this and the greatest.  Now the first that are imbued with this
+beginning of novelty, when they set out with their tale, find, by the
+oppositions they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, and
+so caulk up that place with some false piece;
+
+     [Voltaire says of this passage, "He who would learn to doubt should
+     read this whole chapter of Montaigne, the least methodical of all
+     philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable."
+     --Melanges Historiques, xvii.  694, ed. of Lefevre.]
+
+besides that:
+
+     "Insita hominibus libido alendi de industria rumores,"
+
+          ["Men having a natural desire to nourish reports."
+          --Livy, xxviii. 24.]
+
+we naturally make a conscience of restoring what has been lent us,
+without some usury and accession of our own.  The particular error first
+makes the public error, and afterwards, in turn, the public error makes
+the particular one; and thus all this vast fabric goes forming and piling
+itself up from hand to hand, so that the remotest witness knows more
+about it than those who were nearest, and the last informed is better
+persuaded than the first.
+
+'Tis a natural progress; for whoever believes anything, thinks it a work
+of charity to persuade another into the same opinion; which the better to
+do, he will make no difficulty of adding as much of his own invention as
+he conceives necessary to his tale to encounter the resistance or want of
+conception he meets with in others.  I myself, who make a great
+conscience of lying, and am not very solicitous of giving credit and
+authority to what I say, yet find that in the arguments I have in hand,
+being heated with the opposition of another, or by the proper warmth of
+my own narration, I swell and puff up my subject by voice, motion,
+vigour, and force of words, and moreover, by extension and amplification,
+not without some prejudice to the naked truth; but I do it conditionally
+withal, that to the first who brings me to myself, and who asks me the
+plain and bare truth, I presently surrender my passion, and deliver the
+matter to him without exaggeration, without emphasis, or any painting of
+my own.  A quick and earnest way of speaking, as mine is, is apt to run
+into hyperbole.  There is nothing to which men commonly are more inclined
+than to make way for their own opinions; where the ordinary means fail
+us, we add command, force, fire, and sword.  'Tis a misfortune to be at
+such a pass, that the best test of truth is the multitude of believers in
+a crowd, where the number of fools so much exceeds the wise:
+
+     "Quasi vero quidquam sit tam valde, quam nil sapere, vulgare."
+
+          ["As if anything were so common as ignorance."
+          --Cicero, De Divin., ii.]
+
+          "Sanitatis patrocinium est, insanientium turba."
+
+     ["The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise."
+     --St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, vi. 10.]
+
+'Tis hard to resolve a man's judgment against the common opinions: the
+first persuasion, taken from the very subject itself, possesses the
+simple, and from them diffuses itself to the wise, under the authority of
+the number and antiquity of the witnesses.  For my part, what I should
+not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred and one: and I
+do not judge opinions by years.
+
+'Tis not long since one of our princes, in whom the gout had spoiled an
+excellent nature and sprightly disposition, suffered himself to be so far
+persuaded with the report made to him of the marvellous operations of a
+certain priest who by words and gestures cured all sorts of diseases,
+as to go a long journey to seek him out, and by the force of his mere
+imagination, for some hours so persuaded and laid his legs asleep, as to
+obtain that service from them they had long time forgotten.  Had fortune
+heaped up five or six such-like incidents, it had been enough to have
+brought this miracle into nature.  There was afterwards discovered so
+much simplicity and so little art in the author of these performances,
+that he was thought too contemptible to be punished, as would be thought
+of most such things, were they well examined:
+
+               "Miramur ex intervallo fallentia."
+
+     ["We admire after an interval (or at a distance) things that
+     deceive."--Seneca, Ep., 118, 2.]
+
+So does our sight often represent to us strange images at a distance that
+vanish on approaching near:
+
+               "Nunquam ad liquidum fama perducitur."
+
+               ["Report is never fully substantiated."
+               --Quintus Curtius, ix. 2.]
+
+'Tis wonderful from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes such
+famous impressions commonly, proceed.  This it is that obstructs
+information; for whilst we seek out causes and solid and weighty ends,
+worthy of so great a name, we lose the true ones; they escape our sight
+by their littleness.  And, in truth, a very prudent, diligent, and subtle
+inquisition is required in such searches, indifferent, and not
+prepossessed.  To this very hour, all these miracles and strange events
+have concealed themselves from me: I have never seen greater monster or
+miracle in the world than myself: one grows familiar with all strange
+things by time and custom, but the more I frequent and the better I know
+myself, the more does my own deformity astonish me, the less I understand
+myself.
+
+The principal right of advancing and producing such accidents is reserved
+to fortune.  Passing the day before yesterday through a village two
+leagues from my house, I found the place yet warm with a miracle that had
+lately failed of success there, where with first the neighbourhood had
+been several months amused; then the neighbouring provinces began to take
+it up, and to run thither in great companies of all sorts of people.
+A young fellow of the place had one night in sport counterfeited the
+voice of a spirit in his own house, without any other design at present,
+but only for sport; but this having succeeded with him better than he
+expected, to extend his farce with more actors he associated with him a
+stupid silly country girl, and at last there were three of them of the
+same age and understanding, who from domestic, proceeded to public,
+preachings, hiding themselves under the altar of the church, never
+speaking but by night, and forbidding any light to be brought.  From
+words which tended to the conversion of the world, and threats of the day
+of judgment (for these are subjects under the authority and reverence of
+which imposture most securely lurks), they proceeded to visions and
+gesticulations so simple and ridiculous that--nothing could hardly be so
+gross in the sports of little children.  Yet had fortune never so little
+favoured the design, who knows to what height this juggling might have at
+last arrived?  These poor devils are at present in prison, and are like
+shortly to pay for the common folly; and I know not whether some judge
+will not also make them smart for his.  We see clearly into this, which
+is discovered; but in many things of the like nature that exceed our
+knowledge, I am of opinion that we ought to suspend our judgment, whether
+as to rejection or as to reception.
+
+Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the
+abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of
+professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we
+are not able to refute: we speak of all things by precepts and decisions.
+The style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to having
+seen with his own eyes, and what a judge determined with his most certain
+knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking: "it seems to me."  They
+make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me
+as infallible.  I love these words which mollify and moderate the
+temerity of our propositions: "peradventure; in some sort; some; 'tis
+said, I think," and the like: and had I been set to train up children I
+had put this way of answering into their mouths, inquiring and not
+resolving: "What does this mean?  I understand it not; it may be: is it
+true?" so that they should rather have retained the form of pupils at
+threescore years old than to go out doctors, as they do, at ten.  Whoever
+will be cured of ignorance must confess it.
+
+Iris is the daughter of Thaumas;
+
+     [That is, of Admiration.  She (Iris, the rainbow) is beautiful, and
+     for that reason, because she has a face to be admired, she is said
+     to have been the daughter of Thamus."
+     --Cicero, De Nat. Deor., iii. 20.]
+
+admiration is the foundation of all philosophy, inquisition the progress,
+ignorance the end.  But there is a sort of ignorance, strong and
+generous, that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; an
+ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive
+knowledge itself.  I read in my younger years a trial that Corras,
+
+     [A celebrated Calvinist lawyer, born at Toulouse; 1513, and
+     assassinated there, 4th October 1572.]
+
+a councillor of Toulouse, printed, of a strange incident, of two men who
+presented themselves the one for the other.  I remember (and I hardly
+remember anything else) that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of
+him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful and so far exceeding both
+our knowledge and his own, who was the judge, that I thought it a very
+bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged.  Let us have some form of
+decree that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter" more
+freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who, finding themselves
+perplexed with a cause they could not unravel, ordered the parties to
+appear again after a hundred years.
+
+The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon the
+report of every new author who seeks to give body to their dreams.  To
+accommodate the examples that Holy Writ gives us of such things, most
+certain and irrefragable examples, and to tie them to our modern events,
+seeing that we neither see the causes nor the means, will require another
+sort-of wit than ours.  It, peradventure, only appertains to that sole
+all-potent testimony to tell us.  "This is, and that is, and not that
+other."  God ought to be believed; and certainly with very good reason;
+but not one amongst us for all that who is astonished at his own
+narration (and he must of necessity be astonished if he be not out of his
+wits), whether he employ it about other men's affairs or against himself.
+
+I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable, avoiding
+those ancient reproaches:
+
+          "Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis, quae non intelligunt;
+          --Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur."
+
+     ["Men are most apt to believe what they least understand: and from
+     the acquisitiveness of the human intellect, obscure things are more
+     easily credited." The second sentence is from Tacitus, Hist. 1. 22.]
+
+I see very well that men get angry, and that I am forbidden to doubt upon
+pain of execrable injuries; a new way of persuading!  Thank God, I am not
+to be cuffed into belief.  Let them be angry with those who accuse their
+opinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness, and
+condemn the opposite affirmation equally, if not so imperiously, with
+them.  He who will establish this proposition by authority and huffing
+discovers his reason to be very weak.  For a verbal and scholastic
+altercation let them have as much appearance as their contradictors;
+
+               "Videantur sane, non affirmentur modo;"
+
+     ["They may indeed appear to be; let them not be affirmed (Let them
+     state the probabilities, but not affirm.)"
+     --Cicero, Acad., n. 27.]
+
+but in the real consequence they draw from it these have much the
+advantage.  To kill men, a clear and strong light is required, and our
+life is too real and essential to warrant these supernatural and
+fantastic accidents.
+
+As to drugs and poisons, I throw them out of my count, as being the worst
+sort of homicides: yet even in this, 'tis said, that men are not always
+to rely upon the personal confessions of these people; for they have
+sometimes been known to accuse themselves of the murder of persons who
+have afterwards been found living and well.  In these other extravagant
+accusations, I should be apt to say, that it is sufficient a man, what
+recommendation soever he may have, be believed as to human things; but of
+what is beyond his conception, and of supernatural effect, he ought then
+only to be believed when authorised by a supernatural approbation.  The
+privilege it has pleased Almighty God to give to some of our witnesses,
+ought not to be lightly communicated and made cheap.  I have my ears
+battered with a thousand such tales as these: "Three persons saw him such
+a day in the east three, the next day in the west: at such an hour, in
+such a place, and in such habit"; assuredly I should not believe it
+myself.  How much more natural and likely do I find it that two men
+should lie than that one man in twelve hours' time should fly with the
+wind from east to west?  How much more natural that our understanding
+should be carried from its place by the volubility of our disordered
+minds, than that one of us should be carried by a strange spirit upon a
+broomstaff, flesh and bones as we are, up the shaft of a chimney?  Let
+not us seek illusions from without and unknown, we who are perpetually
+agitated with illusions domestic and our own.  Methinks one is pardonable
+in disbelieving a miracle, at least, at all events where one can elude
+its verification as such, by means not miraculous; and I am of St.
+Augustine's opinion, that ,'tis better to lean towards doubt than
+assurance, in things hard to prove and dangerous to believe."
+
+'Tis now some years ago that I travelled through the territories of a
+sovereign prince, who, in my favour, and to abate my incredulity, did me
+the honour to let me see, in his own presence, and in a private place,
+ten or twelve prisoners of this kind, and amongst others, an old woman,
+a real witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in that
+profession.  I saw both proofs and free confessions, and I know not what
+insensible mark upon the miserable creature: I examined and talked with
+her and the rest as much and as long as I would, and gave the best and
+soundest attention I could, and I am not a man to suffer my judgment to
+be made captive by prepossession.  In the end, and in all conscience, I
+should rather have prescribed them hellebore than hemlock;
+
+     "Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis similis visa;"
+
+     ["The thing was rather to be attributed to madness, than malice."
+     ("The thing seemed to resemble minds possessed rather than guilty.")
+     --Livy, viii, 18.]
+
+justice has its corrections proper for such maladies.  As to the
+oppositions and arguments that worthy men have made to me, both there,
+and often in other places, I have met with none that have convinced me,
+and that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions.
+It is true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon
+experience and fact, I do not go about to untie, neither have they any
+end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot.  After all,
+'tis setting a man's conjectures at a very high price upon them to cause
+a man to be roasted alive.
+
+We are told by several examples, as Praestantius of his father, that
+being more profoundly, asleep than men usually are, he fancied himself
+to be a mare, and that he served the soldiers for a sumpter; and what
+he fancied himself to be, he really proved.  If sorcerers dream so
+materially; if dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with
+effects, still I cannot believe that therefore our will should be
+accountable to justice; which I say as one who am neither judge nor privy
+councillor, and who think myself by many degrees unworthy so to be, but a
+man of the common sort, born and avowed to the obedience of the public
+reason, both in its words and acts.  He who should record my idle talk as
+being to the prejudice of the pettiest law, opinion, or custom of his
+parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more; for, in
+what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but that 'tis what I had then
+in my thought, a tumultuous and wavering thought.  All I say is by way of
+discourse, and nothing by way of advice:
+
+          "Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam;"
+
+     ["Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what
+     I do not know."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]
+
+I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed; and so I
+told a great man, who complained of the tartness and contentiousness of
+my exhortations.  Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, I
+propose to you the other, with all the diligence and care I can, to clear
+your judgment, not to compel it.  God has your hearts in His hands, and
+will furnish you with the means of choice.  I am not so presumptuous even
+as to desire that my opinions should bias you--in a thing of so great
+importance: my fortune has not trained them up to so potent and elevated
+conclusions.  Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also a
+great many opinions, that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I
+had one.  What, if the truest are not always the most commodious to man,
+being of so wild a composition?
+
+Whether it be to the purpose or not, tis no great matter: 'tis a common
+proverb in Italy, that he knows not Venus in her perfect sweetness who
+has never lain with a lame mistress.  Fortune, or some particular
+incident, long ago put this saying into the mouths of the people; and the
+same is said of men as well as of women; for the queen of the Amazons
+answered the Scythian who courted her to love, "Lame men perform best."
+In this feminine republic, to evade the dominion of the males, they
+lamed them in their infancy--arms, legs, and other members that gave them
+advantage over them, and only made use of them in that wherein we, in
+these parts of the world, make use of them.  I should have been apt to
+think; that the shuffling pace of the lame mistress added some new
+pleasure to the work, and some extraordinary titillation to those who
+were at the sport; but I have lately learnt that ancient philosophy has
+itself determined it, which says that the legs and thighs of lame women,
+not receiving, by reason of their imperfection, their due aliment, it
+falls out that the genital parts above are fuller and better supplied and
+much more vigorous; or else that this defect, hindering exercise, they
+who are troubled with it less dissipate their strength, and come more
+entire to the sports of Venus; which also is the reason why the Greeks
+decried the women-weavers as being more hot than other women by reason of
+their sedentary trade, which they carry on without any great exercise of
+the body.  What is it we may not reason of at this rate?  I might also
+say of these, that the jaggling about whilst so sitting at work, rouses
+and provokes their desire, as the swinging and jolting of coaches does
+that of our ladies.
+
+Do not these examples serve to make good what I said at first: that our
+reasons often anticipate the effect, and have so infinite an extent of
+jurisdiction that they judge and exercise themselves even on inanity
+itself and non-existency?  Besides the flexibility of our invention to
+forge reasons of all sorts of dreams, our imagination is equally facile
+to receive impressions of falsity by very frivolous appearances; for, by
+the sole authority of the ancient and common use of this proverb, I have
+formerly made myself believe that I have had more pleasure in a woman by
+reason she was not straight, and accordingly reckoned that deformity
+amongst her graces.
+
+Torquato Tasso, in the comparison he makes betwixt France and Italy,
+says that he has observed that our legs are generally smaller than those
+of the Italian gentlemen, and attributes the cause of it to our being
+continually on horseback; which is the very same cause from which
+Suetonius draws a quite opposite conclusion; for he says, on the
+contrary, that Germanicus had made his legs bigger by the continuation of
+the same exercise.
+
+Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding; it is the shoe of
+Theramenes, fit for all feet.  It is double and diverse, and the matters
+are double and diverse too.  "Give me a drachm of silver," said a Cynic
+philosopher to Antigonus.  "That is not a present befitting a king,"
+replied he.  "Give me then a talent," said the other.  "That is not a
+present befitting a Cynic."
+
+              "Seu plures calor ille vias et caeca relaxat
+               Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in herbas
+               Seu durat magis, et venas astringit hiantes;
+               Ne tenues pluviae, rapidive potentia colic
+               Acrior, aut Boreae penetrabile frigus adurat."
+
+     ["Whether the heat opens more passages and secret pores through
+     which the sap may be derived into the new-born herbs; or whether it
+     rather hardens and binds the gaping veins that the small showers and
+     keen influence of the violent sun or penetrating cold of Boreas may
+     not hurt them."--Virg., Georg., i. 89.]
+
+                    "Ogni medaglia ha il suo rovescio."
+
+          ["Every medal has its reverse."--Italian Proverb.]
+
+This is the reason why Clitomachus said of old that Carneades had outdone
+the labours of Hercules, in having eradicated consent from men, that is
+to say, opinion and the courage of judging.  This so vigorous fancy of
+Carneades sprang, in my opinion, anciently from the impudence of those
+who made profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit.
+AEsop was set to sale with two other slaves; the buyer asked the first of
+these what he could do; he, to enhance his own value, promised mountains
+and marvels, saying he could do this and that, and I know not what; the
+second said as much of himself or more: when it came to AEsop's turn, and
+that he was also asked what he could do; "Nothing," said he, "for these
+two have taken up all before me; they know everything."  So has it
+happened in the school of philosophy: the pride of those who attributed
+the capacity of all things to the human mind created in others, out of
+despite and emulation, this opinion, that it is capable of nothing: the
+one maintain the same extreme in ignorance that the others do in
+knowledge; to make it undeniably manifest that man is immoderate
+throughout, and can never stop but of necessity and the want of ability
+to proceed further.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+OF PHYSIOGNOMY
+
+Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and trust; and
+'tis not amiss; we could not choose worse than by ourselves in so weak an
+age.  That image of Socrates' discourses, which his friends have
+transmitted to us, we approve upon no other account than a reverence to
+public sanction: 'tis not according to our own knowledge; they are not
+after our way; if anything of the kind should spring up now, few men
+would value them.  We discern no graces that are not pointed and puffed
+out and inflated by art; such as glide on in their own purity and
+simplicity easily escape so gross a sight as ours; they have a delicate
+and concealed beauty, such as requires a clear and purified sight to
+discover its secret light.  Is not simplicity, as we take it, cousin-
+german to folly and a quality of reproach?  Socrates makes his soul move
+a natural and common motion: a peasant said this; a woman said that; he
+has never anybody in his mouth but carters, joiners, cobblers, and
+masons; his are inductions and similitudes drawn from the most common and
+known actions of men; every one understands him.  We should never have
+recognised the nobility and splendour of his admirable conceptions under
+so mean a form; we, who think all things low and flat that are not
+elevated, by learned doctrine, and who discern no riches but in pomp and
+show.  This world of ours is only formed for ostentation: men are only
+puffed up with wind, and are bandied to and fro like tennis-balls.  He
+proposed to himself no vain and idle fancies; his design was to furnish
+us with precepts and things that more really and fitly serve to the use
+of life;
+
+                       "Servare modum, finemque tenere,
+                    Naturamque sequi."
+
+               ["To keep a just mean, to observe a just limit,
+               and to follow Nature."--Lucan, ii. 381.]
+
+He was also always one and the same, and raised himself, not by starts
+but by complexion, to the highest pitch of vigour; or, to say better,
+mounted not at all, but rather brought down, reduced, and subjected all
+asperities and difficulties to his original and natural condition; for in
+Cato 'tis most manifest that 'tis a procedure extended far beyond the
+common ways of men: in the brave exploits of his life, and in his death,
+we find him always mounted upon the great horse; whereas the other ever
+creeps upon the ground, and with a gentle and ordinary pace, treats of
+the most useful matters, and bears himself, both at his death and in the
+rudest difficulties that could present themselves, in the ordinary way of
+human life.
+
+It has fallen out well that the man most worthy to be known and to be
+presented to the world for example should be he of whom we have the most
+certain knowledge; he has been pried into by the most clear-sighted men
+that ever were; the testimonies we have of him are admirable both in
+fidelity and fulness.  'Tis a great thing that he was able so to order
+the pure imaginations of a child, that, without altering or wresting
+them, he thereby produced the most beautiful effects of our soul: he
+presents it neither elevated nor rich; he only represents it sound, but
+assuredly with a brisk and full health.  By these common and natural
+springs, by these ordinary and popular fancies, without being moved or
+put out, he set up not only the most regular, but the most high and
+vigorous beliefs, actions, and manners that ever were.  'Tis he who
+brought again from heaven, where she lost her time, human wisdom, to
+restore her to man with whom her most just and greatest business lies.
+See him plead before his judges; observe by what reasons he rouses his
+courage to the hazards of war; with what arguments he fortifies his
+patience against calumny, tyranny, death, and the perverseness of his
+wife: you will find nothing in all this borrowed from arts and sciences:
+the simplest may there discover their own means and strength; 'tis not
+possible more to retire or to creep more low.  He has done human nature a
+great kindness in showing it how much it can do of itself.
+
+We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow
+and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of
+our own.  Man can in nothing fix himself to his actual necessity: of
+pleasure, wealth, and power, he grasps at more than he can hold; his
+greediness is incapable of moderation.  And I find that in curiosity of
+knowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, and
+more than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge to the full
+of its matter:
+
+     "Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus."
+
+     ["We carry intemperance into the study of literature, as well as
+     into everything else."--Seneca, Ep., 106.]
+
+And Tacitus had reason to commend the mother of Agricola for having
+restrained her son in his too violent appetite for learning.
+
+Tis a good, if duly considered, which has in it, as the other goods of
+men have, a great deal of vanity and weakness, proper and natural to
+itself, and that costs very dear.  Its acquisition is far more hazardous
+than that of all other meat or drink; for, as to other things, what we
+have bought we carry home in some vessel, and there have full leisure to
+examine our purchase, how much we shall eat or drink of it, and when: but
+sciences we can, at the very first, stow into no other vessel than the
+soul; we swallow them in buying, and return from the market, either
+already infected or amended: there are some that only burden and
+overcharge the stomach, instead of nourishing; and, moreover, some that,
+under colour of curing, poison us.  I have been pleased, in places where
+I have been, to see men in devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity,
+poverty, and penitence: 'tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites, to
+blunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and to
+deprive the soul of this voluptuous complacency that tickles us with the
+opinion of knowledge: and 'tis plenarily to accomplish the vow of
+poverty, to add unto it that of the mind.  We need little doctrine to
+live at our ease; and Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the way
+how to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency which
+exceeds the natural is well-nigh superfluous and vain: 'tis much if it
+does not rather burden and cumber us than do us good:
+
+               "Paucis opus est literis ad mentem bonam:"
+
+          ["Little learning is needed to form a sound mind."
+          --Seneca, Ep., 106.]
+
+'tis a feverish excess of the mind; a tempestuous and unquiet instrument.
+Do but recollect yourself, and you will find in yourself natural
+arguments against death, true, and the fittest to serve you in time of
+necessity: 'tis they that make a peasant, and whole nations, die with as
+much firmness as a philosopher.  Should I have died less cheerfully
+before I had read Cicero's Tusculan Quastiones?  I believe not; and when
+I find myself at the best, I perceive that my tongue is enriched indeed,
+but my courage little or nothing elevated by them; that is just as nature
+framed it at first, and defends itself against the conflict only after a
+natural and ordinary way.  Books have not so much served me for
+instruction as exercise.  What if knowledge, trying to arm us with new
+defences against natural inconveniences, has more imprinted in our
+fancies their weight and greatness, than her reasons and subtleties to
+secure us from them?  They are subtleties, indeed, with which she often
+alarms us to little purpose.  Do but observe how many slight and
+frivolous, and, if nearly examined, incorporeal arguments, the closest
+and wisest authors scatter about one good one: they are but verbal quirks
+and fallacies to amuse and gull us: but forasmuch as it may be with some
+profit, I will sift them no further; many of that sort are here and there
+dispersed up and down this book, either borrowed or by imitation.
+Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which is
+only a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, or
+that good which is only fine:
+
+               "Quae magis gustata quam potata, delectant,"
+
+          ["Which more delight in the tasting than in being drunk."
+          --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 5.]
+
+everything that pleases does not nourish:
+
+               "Ubi non ingenii, sed animi negotium agitur."
+
+     ["Where the question is not about the wit, but about the soul."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 75.]
+
+To see the trouble that Seneca gives himself to fortify himself against
+death; to see him so sweat and pant to harden and encourage himself, and
+bustle so long upon this perch, would have lessened his reputation with
+me, had he not very bravely held himself at the last.  His so ardent and
+frequent agitations discover that he was in himself impetuous and
+passionate,
+
+          "Magnus animus remissius loquitur, et securius .  .  .
+          non est alius ingenio, alius ammo color;"
+
+     ["A great courage speaks more calmly and more securely.  There is
+     not one complexion for the wit and another for the mind."
+     --Seneca, Ep. 114, 115]
+
+he must be convinced at his own expense; and he in some sort discovers
+that he was hard pressed by his enemy.  Plutarch's way, by how much it is
+more disdainful and farther stretched, is, in my opinion, so much more
+manly and persuasive: and I am apt to believe that his soul had more
+assured and more regular motions.  The one more sharp, pricks and makes
+us start, and more touches the soul; the other more constantly solid,
+forms, establishes, and supports us, and more touches the understanding.
+That ravishes the judgment, this wins it.  I have likewise seen other
+writings, yet more reverenced than these, that in the representation of
+the conflict they maintain against the temptations of the flesh, paint
+them, so sharp, so powerful and invincible, that we ourselves, who are of
+the common herd, are as much to wonder at the strangeness and unknown
+force of their temptation, as at the resisting it.
+
+To what end do we so arm ourselves with this harness of science?  Let us
+look down upon the poor people that we see scattered upon the face of the
+earth, prone and intent upon their business, that neither know Aristotle
+nor Cato, example nor precept; from these nature every day extracts
+effects of constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so
+inquisitively study in the schools: how many do I ordinarily see who
+slight poverty?  how many who desire to die, or who die without alarm or
+regret?  He who is now digging in my garden, has this morning buried his
+father or his son.  The very names by which they call diseases sweeten
+and mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more than
+a cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as
+they gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great
+and grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never
+keep their beds but to die:
+
+          "Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscuram et solertem
+          scientiam versa est."
+
+     ["That overt and simple virtue is converted into an obscure and
+     subtle science."--Seneca, Ep., 95.]
+
+I was writing this about the time when a great load of our intestine
+troubles for several months lay with all its weight upon me; I had the
+enemy at my door on one side, and the freebooters, worse enemies, on the
+other,
+
+               "Non armis, sed vitiis, certatur;"
+
+     ["The fight is not with arms, but with vices."--Seneca, Ep. 95.]
+
+and underwent all sorts of military injuries at once:
+
+         "Hostis adest dextra laevaque a parte timendus.
+          Vicinoque malo terret utrumque latus."
+
+     ["Right and left a formidable enemy is to be feared, and threatens
+     me on both sides with impending danger."--Ovid, De Ponto, i. 3, 57.]
+
+A monstrous war!  Other wars are bent against strangers, this against
+itself, destroying itself with its own poison.  It is of so malignant and
+ruinous a nature, that it ruins itself with the rest; and with its own
+rage mangles and tears itself to pieces.  We more often see it dissolve
+of itself than through scarcity of any necessary thing or by force of the
+enemy.  All discipline evades it; it comes to compose sedition, and is
+itself full of it; would chastise disobedience, and itself is the
+example; and, employed for the defence of the laws, rebels against its
+own.  What a condition are we in!  Our physic makes us sick!
+
+                    "Nostre mal s'empoisonne
+                    Du secours qu'on luy donne."
+
+               "Exuperat magis, aegrescitque medendo."
+
+     ["Our disease is poisoned with its very remedies"--AEnead, xii. 46.]
+
+               "Omnia fanda, nefanda, malo permista furore,
+               Justificam nobis mentem avertere deorum."
+
+     ["Right and wrong, all shuffled together in this wicked fury, have
+     deprived us of the gods' protection:
+     --Catullus, De Nuptiis Pelei et Thetidos, V. 405.]
+
+In the beginning of these popular maladies, one may distinguish the sound
+from the sick; but when they come to continue, as ours have done, the
+whole body is then infected from head to foot; no part is free from
+corruption, for there is no air that men so greedily draw in that
+diffuses itself so soon and that penetrates so deep as that of licence.
+Our armies only subsist and are kept together by the cement of
+foreigners; for of Frenchmen there is now no constant and regular army to
+be made.  What a shame it is! there is no longer any discipline but what
+we see in the mercenary soldiers.  As to ourselves, our conduct is at
+discretion, and that not of the chief, but every one at his own.  The
+general has a harder game to play within than he has without; he it is
+who has to follow, to court the soldiers, to give way to them; he alone
+has to obey: all the rest if disolution and free licence.  It pleases me
+to observe how much pusillanimity and cowardice there is in ambition; by
+how abject and servile ways it must arrive at its end; but it displeases
+me to see good and generous natures, and that are capable of justice,
+every day corrupted in the management and command of this confusion.
+Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation.  We had ill-
+formed souls enough, without spoiling those that were generous and good;
+so that, if we hold on, there will scarcely remain any with whom to
+intrust the health of this State of ours, in case fortune chance to
+restore it:
+
+              "Hunc saltem everso juvenem succurrere seclo,
+               Ne prohibete."
+
+     ["Forbid not, at least, that this young man repair this ruined age."
+     --Virgil, Georg., i.  500.  Montaigne probably refers to Henry, king
+     of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV.]
+
+What has become of the old precept, "That soldiers ought more to fear
+their chief than the enemy"?--[Valerius Maximus, Ext. 2.]-- and of that
+wonderful example, that an orchard being enclosed within the precincts of
+a camp of the Roman army, was seen at their dislodgment the next day in
+the same condition, not an apple, though ripe and delicious, being pulled
+off, but all left to the possessor?  I could wish that our youth, instead
+of the time they spend in less fruitful travels and less honourable
+employments, would bestow one half of that time in being an eye-witness
+of naval exploits, under some good captain of Rhodes, and the other half
+in observing the discipline of the Turkish armies; for they have many
+differences and advantages over ours; one of these is, that our soldiers
+become more licentious in expeditions, theirs more temperate and
+circumspect; for the thefts and insolencies committed upon the common
+people, which are only punished with a cudgel in peace, are capital in
+war; for an egg taken by a Turkish soldier without paying for it, fifty
+blows with a stick is the fixed rate; for anything else, of what sort or
+how trivial soever, not necessary to nourishment, they are presently
+impaled or beheaded without mercy.  I am astonished, in the history of
+Selim, the most cruel conqueror that ever was, to see that when he
+subdued Egypt, the beautiful gardens about Damascus being all open, and
+in a conquered land, and his army encamped upon the very place, should be
+left untouched by the hands of the soldiers, by reason they had not
+received the signal of pillage.
+
+But is there any disease in a government that it is worth while to physic
+with such a mortal drug? --[i.e.  as civil war.]-- No, said Favonius, not
+even the tyrannical usurpation of a Commonwealth.  Plato, likewise, will
+not consent that a man should violate the peace of his country in order
+to cure it, and by no means approves of a reformation that disturbs and
+hazards all, and that is to be purchased at the price of the citizens'
+blood and ruin; determining it to be the duty of a good patriot in such a
+case to let it alone, and only to pray to God for his extraordinary
+assistance: and he seems to be angry with his great friend Dion, for
+having proceeded somewhat after another manner.  I was a Platonist in
+this point before I knew there had ever been such a man as Plato in the
+world.  And if this person ought absolutely to be rejected from our
+society (he who by the sincerity of his conscience merited from the
+divine favour to penetrate so far into the Christian light, through the
+universal darkness wherein the world was involved in his time), I do not
+think it becomes us to suffer ourselves to be instructed by a heathen,
+how great an impiety it is not to expect from God any relief simply his
+own and without our co-operation.  I often doubt, whether amongst so many
+men as meddle in such affairs, there is not to be found some one of so
+weak understanding as to have been really persuaded that he went towards
+reformation by the worst of deformations; and advanced towards salvation
+by the most express causes that we have of most assured damnation; that
+by overthrowing government, the magistracy, and the laws, in whose
+protection God has placed him, by dismembering his good mother, and
+giving her limbs to be mangled by her old enemies, filling fraternal
+hearts with parricidal hatreds, calling devils and furies to his aid, he
+can assist the most holy sweetness and justice of the divine law.
+Ambition, avarice, cruelty, and revenge have not sufficient natural
+impetuosity of their own; let us bait them with the glorious titles of
+justice and devotion.  There cannot a worse state of things be imagined
+than where wickedness comes to be legitimate, and assumes, with the
+magistrates' permission, the cloak of virtue:
+
+          "Nihil in speciem fallacius, quam prava religio,
+          ubi deorum numen prxtenditur sceleribus."
+
+     ["Nothing has a more deceiving face than false religion, where the
+     divinity of the gods is obscured by crimes."--Livy, xxxix. 16.]
+
+The extremest sort of injustice, according to Plato,  is where that which
+is unjust should be reputed for just.
+
+The common people then suffered very much, and not present damage only:
+
+                              "Undique totis
+                    Usque adeo turbatur agris,"
+
+          ["Such great disorders overtake our fields on every side."
+          --Virgil, Eclog., i. II.]
+
+but future too; the living were to suffer, and so were they who were yet
+unborn; they stript them, and consequently myself, even of hope, taking
+from them all they had laid up in store to live on for many years:
+
+         "Quae nequeunt secum ferre aut abducere, perdunt;
+          Et cremat insontes turba scelesta casas .  .  .
+          Muris nulla fides, squalent populatibus agri."
+
+     ["What they cannot bear away, they spoil; and the wicked mob burn
+     harmless houses; walls cannot secure their masters, and the fields
+     are squalid with devastation."
+     --Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 35; Claudianus, In Eutyop., i. 244.]
+
+Besides this shock, I suffered others: I underwent the inconveniences
+that moderation brings along with it in such a disease: I was robbed on
+all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, and to the Guelph a
+Ghibelline"; one of my poets expresses this very well, but I know not
+where it is.
+
+     ["So Tories called me Whig, and Whigs a Tory."--Pope, after Horace.]
+
+The situation of my house, and my friendliness with my neighbours,
+presented me with one face; my life and my actions with another.  They
+did not lay formal accusations to my charge, for they had no foundation
+for so doing; I never hide my head from the laws, and whoever would have
+questioned me, would have done himself a greater prejudice than me; they
+were only mute suspicions that were whispered about, which never want
+appearance in so confused a mixture, no more than envious or idle heads.
+I commonly myself lend a hand to injurious presumptions that fortune
+scatters abroad against me, by a way I have ever had of evading to
+justify, excuse, or explain myself; conceiving that it were to compromise
+my conscience to plead in its behalf:
+
+               "Perspicuitas enim argumentatione elevatur;"
+
+     ["For perspicuity is lessened by argument."
+     ("The clearness of a cause is clouded by argumentation.")
+     --Cicero, De Nat.  Deor., iii.  4.]
+
+and, as if every one saw as clearly into me as I do myself, instead of
+retiring from an accusation, I step up to meet it, and rather give it
+some kind of colour by an ironical and scoffing confession, if I do not
+sit totally mute, as of a thing not worth my answer.  But such as look
+upon this kind of behaviour of mine as too haughty a confidence, have as
+little kindness for me as they who interpret the weakness of an
+indefensible cause; namely, the great folks, towards whom want of
+submission is the great fault, harsh towards all justice that knows and
+feels itself, and is not submissive humble, and suppliant; I have often
+knocked my head against this pillar.  So it is that at what then befell
+me, an ambitious man would have hanged himself, and a covetous man would
+have done the same.  I have no manner of care of getting;
+
+         "Si mihi, quod nunc est, etiam minus; et mihi vivam
+          Quod superest aevi, si quid superesse volent dii:"
+
+     ["If I may have what I now own, or even less, and may live for
+     myself what of life remains, if the gods grant me remaining years."
+     --Horace, Ep., i. 18, 107.]
+
+but the losses that befall me by the injury of others, whether by theft
+or violence, go almost as near my heart as they would to that of the most
+avaricious man.  The offence troubles me, without comparison, more than
+the loss.  A thousand several sorts of mischiefs fell upon me in the neck
+of one another; I could more cheerfully have borne them all at once.
+
+I was already considering to whom, amongst my friends, I might commit a
+necessitous and discredited old age; and having turned my eyes quite
+round, I found myself bare.  To let one's self fall plump down, and from
+so great a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and
+fortunate friendship: these are very rare, if there be any.  At last, I
+saw that it was safest for me to trust to myself in my necessity; and if
+it should so fall out, that I should be but upon cold terms in Fortune's
+favour, I should so much the more pressingly recommend me to my own, and
+attach myself and look to myself all the more closely.  Men on all
+occasions throw themselves upon foreign assistance to spare their own,
+which is alone certain and sufficient to him who knows how therewith to
+arm himself.  Every one runs elsewhere, and to the future, forasmuch as
+no one is arrived at himself.  And I was satisfied that they were
+profitable inconveniences; forasmuch as, first, ill scholars are to be
+admonished with the rod, when reason will not do, as a crooked piece of
+wood is by fire and straining reduced to straightness.  I have a great
+while preached to myself to stick close to my own concerns, and separate
+myself from the affairs of others; yet I am still turning my eyes aside.
+A bow, a favourable word, a kind look from a great person tempts me; of
+which God knows if there is scarcity in these days, and what they
+signify.  I, moreover, without wrinkling my forehead, hearken to the
+persuasions offered me, to draw me into the marketplace, and so gently
+refuse, as if I were half willing to be overcome.  Now for so indocile a
+spirit blows are required; this vessel which thus chops and cleaves, and
+is ready to fall one piece from another, must have the hoops forced down
+with good sound strokes of a mallet.  Secondly, that this accident served
+me for exercise to prepare me for worse, if I, who both by the benefit of
+fortune, and by the condition of my manners, hoped to be among the last,
+should happen to be one of the first assailed by this storm; instructing
+myself betimes to constrain my life, and fit it for a new state.  The
+true liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself:
+
+          "Potentissimus est, qui se habet in potestate."
+
+     ["He is most potent who is master of himself."--Seneca, Ep., 94.]
+
+In an ordinary and quiet time, a man prepares himself for moderate and
+common accidents; but in the confusion wherein we have been for these
+thirty years, every Frenchman, whether personal or in general, sees
+himself every hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his
+fortune: by so much the more ought he to have his courage supplied with
+the strongest and most vigorous provisions.  Let us thank fortune, that
+has not made us live in an effeminate, idle, and languishing age; some
+who could never have been so by other means will be made famous by their
+misfortunes.  As I seldom read in histories the confusions of other
+states without regret that I was not present, the better to consider
+them, so does my curiosity make me in some sort please myself in seeing
+with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its form and
+symptoms; and since I cannot hinder it, I am content to have been
+destined to be present therein, and thereby to instruct myself.  So do
+we eagerly covet to see, though but in shadow and the fables of theatres,
+the pomp of tragic representations of human fortune; 'tis not without
+compassion at what we hear, but we please ourselves in rousing our
+displeasure, by the rarity of these pitiable events.  Nothing tickles
+that does not pinch.  And good historians skip over, as stagnant water
+and dead sea, calm narrations, to return to seditions, to wars, to which
+they know that we invite them.
+
+I question whether I can decently confess with how small a sacrifice of
+its repose and tranquillity I have passed over above the one half of my
+life amid the ruin of my country.  I lend myself my patience somewhat too
+cheap, in accidents that do not privately assail me; and do not so much
+regard what they take from me, as what remains safe, both within and
+without.  There is comfort in evading, one while this, another while
+that, of the evils that are levelled at ourselves too, at last, but at
+present hurt others only about us; as also, that in matters of public
+interest, the more universally my affection is dispersed, the weaker it
+is: to which may be added, that it is half true:
+
+               "Tantum ex publicis malis sentimus,
+               quantum ad privatas res pertinet;"
+
+     ["We are only so far sensible of public evils as they respect our
+     private affairs."--Livy, xxx. 44.]
+
+and that the health from which we fell was so ill, that itself relieves
+the regret we should have for it.  It was health, but only in comparison
+with the sickness that has succeeded it: we are not fallen from any great
+height; the corruption and brigandage which are in dignity and office
+seem to me the least supportable: we are less injuriously rifled in a
+wood than in a place of security.  It was an universal juncture of
+particular members, each corrupted by emulation of the others, and most
+of them with old ulcers, that neither received nor required any cure.
+This convulsion, therefore, really more animated than pressed me, by the
+assistance of my conscience, which was not only at peace within itself,
+but elevated, and I did not find any reason to complain of myself.  Also,
+as God never sends evils, any more than goods, absolutely pure to men,
+my health continued at that time more than usually good; and, as I can
+do nothing without it, there are few things that I cannot do with it.
+It afforded me means to rouse up all my faculties, and to lay my hand
+before the wound that would else, peradventure, have gone farther; and I
+experienced, in my patience, that I had some stand against fortune, and
+that it must be a great shock could throw me out of the saddle.  I do not
+say this to provoke her to give me a more vigorous charge: I am her
+humble servant, and submit to her pleasure: let her be content, in God's
+name.  Am I sensible of her assaults?  Yes, I am. But, as those who are
+possessed and oppressed with sorrow sometimes suffer themselves,
+nevertheless, by intervals to taste a little pleasure, and are sometimes
+surprised with a smile, so have I so much power over myself, as to make
+my ordinary condition quiet and free from disturbing thoughts; yet I
+suffer myself, withal, by fits to be surprised with the stings of those
+unpleasing imaginations that assault me, whilst I am arming myself to
+drive them away, or at least to wrestle with them.
+
+But behold another aggravation of the evil which befell me in the tail of
+the rest: both without doors and within I was assailed with a most
+violent plague, violent in comparison of all others; for as sound bodies
+are subject to more grievous maladies, forasmuch as they, are not to be
+forced but by such, so my very healthful air, where no contagion, however
+near, in the memory of man, ever took footing, coming to be corrupted,
+produced strange effects:
+
+         "Mista senum et juvenum densentur funera; nullum
+          Saeva caput Proserpina fugit;"
+
+     ["Old and young die in mixed heaps.  Cruel Proserpine forbears
+     none."--Horace, Od., i. 28, 19.]
+
+I had to suffer this pleasant condition, that the sight of my house, was
+frightful to me; whatever I had there was without guard, and left to the
+mercy of any one who wished to take it.  I myself, who am so hospitable,
+was in very great distress for a retreat for my family; a distracted
+family, frightful both to its friends and itself, and filling every place
+with horror where it attempted to settle, having to shift its abode so
+soon as any one's finger began but to ache; all diseases are then
+concluded to be the plague, and people do not stay to examine whether
+they are so or no.  And the mischief on't is that, according to the rules
+of art, in every danger that a man comes near, he must undergo a
+quarantine in fear of the evil, your imagination all the while tormenting
+you at pleasure, and turning even your health itself into a fever.  Yet
+all this would have much less affected me had I not withal been compelled
+to be sensible of the sufferings of others, and miserably to serve six
+months together for a guide to this caravan; for I carry my own antidotes
+within myself, which are resolution and patience.  Apprehension, which is
+particularly feared in this disease, does not much trouble me; and, if
+being alone, I should have been taken, it had been a less cheerless and
+more remote departure; 'tis a kind of death that I do not think of the
+worst sort; 'tis commonly short, stupid, without pain, and consoled by
+the public condition; without ceremony, without mourning, without a
+crowd.  But as to the people about us, the hundredth part of them could
+not be saved:
+
+              "Videas desertaque regna
+               Pastorum, et longe saltus lateque vacantes."
+
+     ["You would see shepherds' haunts deserted, and far and wide empty
+     pastures."--Virgil, Georg., iii. 476.]
+
+In this place my largest revenue is manual: what an hundred men ploughed
+for me, lay a long time fallow.
+
+But then, what example of resolution did we not see in the simplicity of
+all this people?  Generally, every one renounced all care of life; the
+grapes, the principal wealth of the country, remained untouched upon the
+vines; every man indifferently prepared for and expected death, either
+to-night or to-morrow, with a countenance and voice so far from fear,
+as if they had come to terms with this necessity, and that it was an
+universal and inevitable sentence.  'Tis always such; but how slender
+hold has the resolution of dying?  The distance and difference of a few
+hours, the sole consideration of company, renders its apprehension
+various to us.  Observe these people; by reason that they die in the same
+month, children, young people, and old, they are no longer astonished at
+it; they no longer lament.  I saw some who were afraid of staying behind,
+as in a dreadful solitude; and I did not commonly observe any other
+solicitude amongst them than that of sepulture; they were troubled to see
+the dead bodies scattered about the fields, at the mercy of the wild
+beasts that presently flocked thither.  How differing are the fancies of
+men; the Neorites, a nation subjected by Alexander, threw the bodies of
+their dead into the deepest and less frequented part of their woods, on
+purpose to have them there eaten; the only sepulture reputed happy
+amongst them.  Some, who were yet in health, dug their own graves; others
+laid themselves down in them whilst alive; and a labourer of mine, in
+dying, with his hands and feet pulled the earth upon him.  Was not this
+to nestle and settle himself to sleep at greater ease?  A bravery in some
+sort like that of the Roman soldiers who, after the battle of Cannae,
+were found with their heads thrust into holes in the earth, which they
+had made, and in suffocating themselves, with their own hands pulled the
+earth about their ears.  In short, a whole province was, by the common
+usage, at once brought to a course nothing inferior in undauntedness to
+the most studied and premeditated resolution.
+
+Most of the instructions of science to encourage us herein have in them
+more of show than of force, and more of ornament than of effect.  We have
+abandoned Nature, and will teach her what to do; teach her who so happily
+and so securely conducted us; and in the meantime, from the footsteps of
+her instruction, and that little which, by the benefit of ignorance,
+remains of her image imprinted in the life of this rustic rout of
+unpolished men, science is constrained every day to borrow patterns for
+her disciples of constancy, tranquillity, and innocence.  It is pretty to
+see that these persons, full of so much fine knowledge, have to imitate
+this foolish simplicity, and this in the primary actions of virtue; and
+that our wisdom must learn even from beasts the most profitable
+instructions in the greatest and most necessary concerns of our life;
+as, how we are to live and die, manage our property, love and bring up
+our children, maintain justice: a singular testimony of human infirmity;
+and that this reason we so handle at our pleasure, finding evermore some
+diversity and novelty, leaves in us no apparent trace of nature.  Men
+have done with nature as perfumers with oils; they have sophisticated her
+with so many argumentations and far-fetched discourses, that she is
+become variable and particular to each, and has lost her proper,
+constant, and universal face; so that we must seek testimony from beasts,
+not subject to favour, corruption, or diversity of opinions.  It is,
+indeed, true that even these themselves do not always go exactly in the
+path of nature, but wherein they swerve, it is so little that you may
+always see the track; as horses that are led make many bounds and
+curvets, but 'tis always at the length of the halter, and still follow
+him that leads them; and as a young hawk takes its flight, but still
+under the restraint of its tether:
+
+          "Exsilia, torments, bells, morbos, naufragia meditare .  .  .
+          ut nullo sis malo tiro."
+
+     ["To meditate upon banishments, tortures, wars, diseases, and
+     shipwrecks, that thou mayest not be a novice in any disaster."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 91, 107.]
+
+What good will this curiosity do us, to anticipate all the inconveniences
+of human nature, and to prepare ourselves with so much trouble against
+things which, peradventure, will never befall us?
+
+          "Parem passis tristitiam facit, pati posse;"
+
+          ["It troubles men as much that they may possibly suffer,
+          as if they really did suffer."--Idem, ibid., 74.]
+
+not only the blow, but the wind of the blow strikes us: or, like
+phrenetic people--for certainly it is a phrensy--to go immediately and
+whip yourself, because it may so fall out that Fortune may one day make
+you undergo it; and to put on your furred gown at Midsummer, because you
+will stand in need of it at Christmas!  Throw yourselves, say they, into
+the experience of all the evils, the most extreme evils that can possibly
+befall you, and so be assured of them.  On the contrary, the most easy
+and most natural way would be to banish even the thoughts of them; they
+will not come soon enough; their true being will not continue with us
+long enough; our mind must lengthen and extend them; we must incorporate
+them in us beforehand, and there entertain them, as if they would not
+otherwise sufficiently press upon our senses.  "We shall find them heavy
+enough when they come," says one of our masters, of none of the tender
+sects, but of the most severe; "in the meantime, favour thyself; believe
+what pleases thee best; what good will it do thee to anticipate thy ill
+fortune, to lose the present for fear of the future: and to make thyself
+miserable now, because thou art to be so in time?"  These are his words.
+Science, indeed, does us one good office in instructing us exactly as to
+the dimensions of evils,
+
+                    "Curis acuens mortalia corda!"
+
+     ["Probing mortal hearts with cares."--Virgil, Georg., i. 23.]
+
+'Twere pity that any part of their greatness should escape our sense and
+knowledge.
+
+'Tis certain that for the most part the preparation for death has
+administered more torment than the thing itself.  It was of old truly
+said, and by a very judicious author:
+
+          "Minus afficit sensus fatigatio, quam cogitatio."
+
+     ["Suffering itself less afflicts the senses than the apprehension
+     of suffering."--Quintilian, Inst. Orat., i. 12.]
+
+The sentiment of present death sometimes, of itself, animates us with a
+prompt resolution not to avoid a thing that is utterly inevitable: many
+gladiators have been seen in the olden time, who, after having fought
+timorously and ill, have courageously entertained death, offering their
+throats to the enemies' sword and bidding them despatch.  The sight of
+future death requires a courage that is slow, and consequently hard to be
+got.  If you know not how to die, never trouble yourself; nature will, at
+the time, fully and sufficiently instruct you: she will exactly do that
+business for you; take you no care--
+
+              "Incertam frustra, mortales, funeris horam,
+               Quaeritis et qua sit mors aditura via....
+               Poena minor certam subito perferre ruinam;
+               Quod timeas, gravius sustinuisse diu."
+
+     ["Mortals, in vain you seek to know the uncertain hour of death,
+     and by what channel it will come upon you."--Propertius, ii. 27, 1.
+     "'Tis less painful to undergo sudden destruction; 'tis hard to bear
+     that which you long fear."--Incert. Auct.]
+
+We trouble life by the care of death, and death by the care of life: the
+one torments, the other frights us.  It is not against death that we
+prepare, that is too momentary a thing; a quarter of an hour's suffering,
+without consequence and without damage, does not deserve especial
+precepts: to say the truth, we prepare ourselves against the preparations
+of death.  Philosophy ordains that we should always have death before our
+eyes, to see and consider it before the time, and then gives us rules and
+precautions to provide that this foresight and thought do us no harm;
+just so do physicians, who throw us into diseases, to the end they may
+have whereon to employ their drugs and their art.  If we have not known
+how to live, 'tis injustice to teach us how to die, and make the end
+difform from all the rest; if we have known how to live firmly and
+quietly, we shall know how to die so too.  They may boast as much as they
+please:
+
+          "Tota philosophorum vita commentatio mortis est;"
+
+     ["The whole life of philosophers is the meditation of death."
+     --Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., ii. 30.]
+
+but I fancy that, though it be the end, it is not the aim of life; 'tis
+its end, its extremity, but not, nevertheless, its object; it ought
+itself to be its own aim and design; its true study is to order, govern,
+and suffer itself.  In the number of several other offices, that the
+general and principal chapter of Knowing how to live comprehends, is this
+article of Knowing how to die; and, did not our fears give it weight,
+one of the lightest too.
+
+To judge of them by utility and by the naked truth, the lessons of
+simplicity are not much inferior to those which learning teaches us: nay,
+quite the contrary.  Men differ in sentiment and force; we must lead them
+to their own good according to their capacities and by various ways:
+
+          "Quo me comque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes."
+
+     ["Wherever the season takes me,(where the tempest drives me)
+     there I am carried as a guest." --Horace, Ep., i. i, 15.]
+
+I never saw any peasant among my neighbours cogitate with what
+countenance and assurance he should pass over his last hour; nature
+teaches him not to think of death till he is dying; and then he does it
+with a better grace than Aristotle, upon whom death presses with a double
+weight, both of itself and from so long a premeditation; and, therefore,
+it was the opinion of Caesar, that the least premeditated death was the
+easiest and the most happy:
+
+     "Plus dolet quam necesse est, qui ante dolet, quam necesse est."
+
+     ["He grieves more than is necessary, who grieves before it is
+     necessary."--Seneca, Ep., 98.]
+
+The sharpness of this imagination springs from our curiosity: 'tis thus
+we ever impede ourselves, desiring to anticipate and regulate natural
+prescripts.  It is only for the doctors to dine worse for it, when in the
+best health, and to frown at the image of death; the common sort stand in
+need of no remedy or consolation, but just in the shock, and when the
+blow comes; and consider on't no more than just what they endure.  Is it
+not then, as we say, that the stolidity and want of apprehension in the
+vulgar give them that patience m present evils, and that profound
+carelessness of future sinister accidents?  That their souls, in being
+more gross and dull, are less penetrable and not so easily moved?  If it
+be so, let us henceforth, in God's name, teach nothing but ignorance;
+'tis the utmost fruit the sciences promise us, to which this stolidity so
+gently leads its disciples.
+
+We have no want of good masters, interpreters of natural simplicity.
+Socrates shall be one; for, as I remember, he speaks something to this
+purpose to the judges who sat upon his life and death.
+
+     [That which follows is taken from the Apology of Socrates in Plato,
+     chap.  17, &c.]
+
+"I am afraid, my masters, that if I entreat you not to put me to death, I
+shall confirm the charge of my accusers, which is, that I pretend to be
+wiser than others, as having some more secret knowledge of things that
+are above and below us.  I have neither frequented nor known death, nor
+have ever seen any person that has tried its qualities, from whom to
+inform myself.  Such as fear it, presuppose they know it; as for my part,
+I neither know what it is, nor what they do in the other world.  Death
+is, peradventure, an indifferent thing; peradventure, a thing to be
+desired.  'Tis nevertheless to be believed, if it be a transmigration
+from one place to another, that it is a bettering of one's condition to
+go and live with so many great persons deceased, and to be exempt from
+having any more to do with unjust and corrupt judges; if it be an
+annihilation of our being, 'tis yet a bettering of one's condition to
+enter into a long and peaceable night; we find nothing more sweet in life
+than quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams.  The things that
+I know to be evil, as to injure one's neighbour and to disobey one's
+superior, whether it be God or man, I carefully avoid; such as I do not
+know whether they be good or evil, I cannot fear them.  If I am to die
+and leave you alive, the gods alone only know whether it will go better
+with you or with me.  Wherefore, as to what concerns me, you may do as
+you shall think fit.  But according to my method of advising just and
+profitable things, I say that you will do your consciences more right to
+set me at liberty, unless you see further into my cause than I do; and,
+judging according to my past actions, both public and private, according
+to my intentions, and according to the profit that so many of our
+citizens, both young and old, daily extract from my conversation, and the
+fruit that you all reap from me, you cannot more duly acquit yourselves
+towards my merit than in ordering that, my poverty considered, I should
+be maintained at the Prytanaeum, at the public expense, a thing that I
+have often known you, with less reason, grant to others.  Do not impute
+it to obstinacy or disdain that I do not, according to the custom,
+supplicate and go about to move you to commiseration.  I have both
+friends and kindred, not being, as Homer says, begotten of wood or of
+stone, no more than others, who might well present themselves before you
+with tears and mourning, and I have three desolate children with whom to
+move you to compassion; but I should do a shame to our city at the age I
+am, and in the reputation of wisdom which is now charged against me, to
+appear in such an abject form.  What would men say of the other
+Athenians?  I have always admonished those who have frequented my
+lectures, not to redeem their lives by an unbecoming action; and in the
+wars of my country, at Amphipolis, Potidea, Delia, and other expeditions
+where I have been, I have effectually manifested how far I was from
+securing my safety by my shame.  I should, moreover, compromise your
+duty, and should invite you to unbecoming things; for 'tis not for my
+prayers to persuade you, but for the pure and solid reasons of justice.
+You have sworn to the gods to keep yourselves upright; and it would seem
+as if I suspected you, or would recriminate upon you that I do not
+believe that you are so; and I should testify against myself, not to
+believe them as I ought, mistrusting their conduct, and not purely
+committing my affair into their hands.  I wholly rely upon them; and hold
+myself assured they will do in this what shall be most fit both for you
+and for me: good men, whether living or dead, have no reason to fear the
+gods."
+
+Is not this an innocent child's pleading of an unimaginable loftiness,
+true, frank, and just, unexampled?--and in what a necessity employed!
+Truly, he had very good reason to prefer it before that which the great
+orator Lysias had penned for him: admirably couched, indeed, in the
+judiciary style, but unworthy of so noble a criminal.  Had a suppliant
+voice been heard out of the mouth of Socrates, that lofty virtue had
+struck sail in the height of its glory; and ought his rich and powerful
+nature to have committed her defence to art, and, in her highest proof,
+have renounced truth and simplicity, the ornaments of his speaking, to
+adorn and deck herself with the embellishments of figures and the
+flourishes of a premeditated speech?  He did very wisely, and like
+himself, not to corrupt the tenor of an incorrupt life, and so sacred an
+image of the human form, to spin out his decrepitude another year, and to
+betray the immortal memory of that glorious end.  He owed his life not to
+himself, but to the example of the world; had it not been a public
+damage, that he should have concluded it after a lazy and obscure manner?
+Assuredly, that careless and indifferent consideration of his death
+deserved that posterity should consider it so much the more, as indeed
+they did; and there is nothing so just in justice than that which fortune
+ordained for his recommendation; for the Athenians abominated all those
+who had been causers of his death to such a degree, that they avoided
+them as excommunicated persons, and looked upon everything as polluted
+that had been touched by them; no one would wash with them in the public
+baths, none would salute or own acquaintance with them: so that, at last,
+unable longer to support this public hatred, they hanged themselves.
+
+If any one shall think that, amongst so many other examples that I had to
+choose out of in the sayings of Socrates for my present purpose, I have
+made an ill choice of this, and shall judge this discourse of his
+elevated above common conceptions, I must tell them that I have properly
+selected it; for I am of another opinion, and hold it to be a discourse,
+in rank and simplicity, much below and behind common conceptions.  He
+represents, in an inartificial boldness and infantine security, the pure
+and first impression and ignorance of nature; for it is to be believed
+that we have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death, by reason of
+itself; 'tis a part of our being, and no less essential than living.
+
+To what end should nature have begotten in us a hatred to it and a horror
+of it, considering that it is of so great utility to her in maintaining
+the succession and vicissitude of her works? and that in this universal
+republic, it conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss or
+ruin?
+
+                  "Sic rerum summa novatur."
+
+               "Mille animas una necata dedit."
+
+"The failing of one life is the passage to a thousand other lives."
+
+Nature has imprinted in beasts the care of themselves and of their
+conservation; they proceed so far as hitting or hurting to be timorous of
+being worse, of themselves, of our haltering and beating them, accidents
+subject to their sense and experience; but that we should kill them, they
+cannot fear, nor have they the faculty to imagine and conclude such a
+thing as death; it is said, indeed, that we see them not only cheerfully
+undergo it, horses for the most part neighing and swans singing when they
+die, but, moreover, seek it at need, of which elephants have given many
+examples.
+
+Besides, the method of arguing, of which Socrates here makes use, is it
+not equally admirable both in simplicity and vehemence?  Truly it is much
+more easy to speak like Aristotle and to live like Caesar than to speak
+and live as Socrates did; there lies the extreme degree of perfection and
+difficulty; art cannot reach it.  Now, our faculties are not so trained
+up; we do not try, we do not know them; we invest ourselves with those of
+others, and let our own lie idle; as some one may say of me, that I have
+here only made a nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing of
+my own but the thread to tie them.
+
+Certainly I have so far yielded to public opinion, that those borrowed
+ornaments accompany me; but I do not mean that they shall cover me and
+hide me; that is quite contrary to my design, who desire to make a show
+of nothing but what is my own, and what is my own by nature; and had I
+taken my own advice, I had at all hazards spoken purely alone, I more and
+more load myself every day,
+
+     [In fact, the first edition of the Essays (Bordeaux, 1580) has very
+     few quotations.  These became more numerous in the edition of 1588;
+     but the multitude of classical texts which at times encumber
+     Montaigne's text, only dates from the posthumous edition of 1595, he
+     had made these collections in the four last years of his life, as an
+     amusement of his" idleness."--Le Clerc.  They grow, however, more
+     sparing in the Third Book.]
+
+beyond my purpose and first method, upon the account of idleness and the
+humour of the age.  If it misbecome me, as I believe it does, 'tis no
+matter; it may be of use to some others.  Such there are who quote Plato
+and Homer, who never saw either of them; and I also have taken things out
+of places far enough distant from their source.  Without pains and
+without learning, having a thousand volumes about me in the place where I
+write, I can presently borrow, if I please, from a dozen such scrap-
+gatherers, people about whom I do not much trouble myself, wherewith to
+trick up this treatise of Physiognomy; there needs no more but a
+preliminary epistle of a German to stuff me with quotations.  And so it
+is we go in quest of a tickling story to cheat the foolish world.  These
+lumber pies of commonplaces, wherewith so many furnish their studies, are
+of little use but to common subjects, and serve but to show us, and not
+to direct us: a ridiculous fruit of learning, that Socrates so pleasantly
+discusses against Euthydemus.  I have seen books made of things that were
+never either studied or understood; the author committing to several of
+his learned friends the examination of this and t'other matter to compile
+it, contenting himself, for his share, with having projected the design,
+and by his industry to have tied together this faggot of unknown
+provisions; the ink and paper, at least, are his.  This is to buy or
+borrow a book, and not to make one; 'tis to show men not that he can make
+a book, but that, whereof they may be in doubt, he cannot make one.
+A president, where I was, boasted that he had amassed together two
+hundred and odd commonplaces in one of his judgments; in telling which,
+he deprived himself of the glory he had got by it: in my opinion, a
+pusillanimous and absurd vanity for such a subject and such a person.
+I do the contrary; and amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can
+steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service; at the hazard
+of having it said that 'tis for want of understanding its natural use;
+I give it some particular touch of my own hand, to the end it may not be
+so absolutely foreign.  These set their thefts in show and value
+themselves upon them, and so have more credit with the laws than I have:
+we naturalists I think that there is a great and incomparable preference
+in the honour of invention over that of allegation.
+
+If I would have spoken by learning, I had spoken sooner; I had written of
+the time nearer to my studies, when I had more wit and better memory, and
+should sooner have trusted to the vigour of that age than of this, would
+I have made a business of writing.  And what if this gracious favour --
+[His acquaintance with Mademoiselle de Gournay.]-- which Fortune has
+lately offered me upon the account of this work, had befallen me in that
+time of my life, instead of this, wherein 'tis equally desirable to
+possess, soon to be lost!  Two of my acquaintance, great men in this
+faculty, have, in my opinion, lost half, in refusing to publish at forty
+years old, that they might stay till threescore.  Maturity has its
+defects as well as green years, and worse; and old age is as unfit for
+this kind of business as any other.  He who commits his decrepitude to
+the press plays the fool if he think to squeeze anything out thence that
+does not relish of dreaming, dotage, and drivelling; the mind grows
+costive and thick in growing old.  I deliver my ignorance in pomp and
+state, and my learning meagrely and poorly; this accidentally and
+accessorily, that principally and expressly; and write specifically of
+nothing but nothing, nor of any science but of that inscience.  I have
+chosen a time when my life, which I am to give an account of, lies wholly
+before me; what remains has more to do with death; and of my death
+itself, should I find it a prating death, as others do, I would willingly
+give an account at my departure.
+
+Socrates was a perfect exemplar in all great qualities, and I am vexed
+that he had so deformed a face and body as is said, and so unsuitable to
+the beauty of his soul, himself being so amorous and such an admirer of
+beauty: Nature did him wrong.  There is nothing more probable than the
+conformity and relation of the body to the soul:
+
+     "Ipsi animi magni refert, quali in corpore locati sint: multo enim a
+     corpore existunt, qux acuant mentem: multa qua obtundant;"
+
+     ["It is of great consequence in what bodies minds are placed, for
+     many things spring from the body that may sharpen the mind, and many
+     that may blunt it."--Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., i. 33.]
+
+this refers to an unnatural ugliness and deformity of limbs; but we call
+ugliness also an unseemliness at first sight, which is principally lodged
+in the face, and disgusts us on very slight grounds: by the complexion, a
+spot, a rugged countenance, for some reasons often wholly inexplicable,
+in members nevertheless of good symmetry and perfect.  The deformity,
+that clothed a very beautiful soul in La Boetie, was of this predicament:
+that superficial ugliness, which nevertheless is always the most
+imperious, is of least prejudice to the state of the mind, and of little
+certainty in the opinion of men.  The other, which is never properly
+called deformity, being more substantial, strikes deeper in.  Not every
+shoe of smooth shining leather, but every shoe well-made, shews the shape
+of the foot within.  As Socrates said of his, it betrayed equal ugliness
+in his soul, had he not corrected it by education; but in saying so, I
+hold he was in jest, as his custom was; never so excellent a soul formed
+itself.
+
+I cannot often enough repeat how great an esteem I have for beauty, that
+potent and advantageous quality; he (La Boetie) called it "a short
+tyranny," and Plato, "the privilege of nature."  We have nothing that
+excels it in reputation; it has the first place in the commerce of men;
+it presents itself in the front; seduces and prepossesses our judgments
+with great authority and wonderful impression.  Phryne had lost her cause
+in the hands of an excellent advocate, if, opening her robe, she had not
+corrupted her judges by the lustre of her beauty.  And I find that Cyrus,
+Alexander, and Caesar, the three masters of the world, never neglected
+beauty in their greatest affairs; no more did the first Scipio.  The same
+word in Greek signifies both fair and good; and the Holy Word often says
+good when it means fair: I should willingly maintain the priority in good
+things, according to the song that Plato calls an idle thing, taken out
+of some ancient poet: "health, beauty, riches."  Aristotle says that the
+right of command appertains to the beautiful; and that, when there is a
+person whose beauty comes near the images of the gods, veneration is
+equally due to him.  To him who asked why people oftener and longer
+frequent the company of handsome persons: "That question," said he, "is
+only to be asked by the blind."  Most of the philosophers, and the
+greatest, paid for their schooling, and acquired wisdom by the favour and
+mediation of their beauty.  Not only in the men that serve me, but also
+in the beasts, I consider it within two fingers' breadth of goodness.
+
+And yet I fancy that those features and moulds of face, and those
+lineaments, by which men guess at our internal complexions and our
+fortunes to come, is a thing that does not very directly and simply lie
+under the chapter of beauty and deformity, no more than every good odour
+and serenity of air promises health, nor all fog and stink infection in a
+time of pestilence.  Such as accuse ladies of contradicting their beauty
+by their manners, do not always hit right; for, in a face which is none
+of the best, there may dwell some air of probity and trust; as, on the
+contrary, I have read, betwixt two beautiful eyes, menaces of a dangerous
+and malignant nature.  There are favourable physiognomies, so that in a
+crowd of victorious enemies, you shall presently choose, amongst men you
+never saw before, one rather than another to whom to surrender, and with
+whom to intrust your life; and yet not properly upon the consideration of
+beauty.
+
+A person's look is but a feeble warranty; and yet it is something
+considerable too; and if I had to lash them, I would most severely
+scourge the wicked ones who belie and betray the promises that nature has
+planted in their foreheads; I should with greater severity punish malice
+under a mild and gentle aspect.  It seems as if there were some lucky and
+some unlucky faces; and I believe there is some art in distinguishing
+affable from merely simple faces, severe from rugged, malicious from
+pensive, scornful from melancholic, and such other bordering qualities.
+There are beauties which are not only haughty, but sour, and others that
+are not only gentle, but more than that, insipid; to prognosticate from
+them future events is a matter that I shall leave undecided.
+
+I have, as I have said elsewhere as to my own concern, simply and
+implicitly embraced this ancient rule, "That we cannot fail in following
+Nature," and that the sovereign precept is to conform ourselves to her.
+I have not, as Socrates did, corrected my natural composition by the
+force of reason, and have not in the least disturbed my inclination by
+art; I have let myself go as I came: I contend not; my two principal
+parts live, of their own accord, in peace and good intelligence, but my
+nurse's milk, thank God, was tolerably wholesome and good.  Shall I say
+this by the way, that I see in greater esteem than 'tis worth, and in use
+solely among ourselves, a certain image of scholastic probity, a slave to
+precepts, and fettered with hope and fear?  I would have it such as that
+laws and religions should not make, but perfect and authorise it; that
+finds it has wherewithal to support itself without help, born and rooted
+in us from the seed of universal reason, imprinted in every man by
+nature.  That reason which strengthens Socrates from his vicious bend
+renders him obedient to the gods and men of authority in his city:
+courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal, but because he is
+mortal.  'Tis a doctrine ruinous to all government, and much more hurtful
+than ingenious and subtle, which persuades the people that a religious
+belief is alone sufficient, and without conduct, to satisfy the divine
+justice.  Use demonstrates to us a vast distinction betwixt devotion and
+conscience.
+
+I have a favourable aspect, both in form and in interpretation:
+
+               "Quid dixi, habere me? imo habui, Chreme."
+
+          ["What did I say?  that I have?  no, Chremes, I had."
+          --Terence, Heaut., act i., sec. 2, v. 42.]
+
+               "Heu!  tantum attriti corporis ossa vides;"
+
+          ["Alas! of a worn body thou seest only the bones"]
+
+and that makes a quite contrary show to that of Socrates.  It has often
+befallen me, that upon the mere credit of my presence and air, persons
+who had no manner of knowledge of me have put a very great confidence in
+me, whether in their own affairs or mine; and I have in foreign parts
+thence obtained singular and rare favours.  But the two following
+examples are, peradventure, worth particular relation.  A certain person
+planned to surprise my house and me in it; his scheme was to come to my
+gates alone, and to be importunate to be let in.  I knew him by name,
+and had fair reason to repose confidence in him, as being my neighbour
+and something related to me.  I caused the gates to be opened to him,
+as I do to every one.  There I found him, with every appearance of alarm,
+his horse panting and very tired.  He entertained me with this story:
+"That, about half a league off, he had met with a certain enemy of his,
+whom I also knew, and had heard of their quarrel; that his enemy had
+given him a very brisk chase, and that having been surprised in disorder,
+and his party being too weak, he had fled to my gates for refuge;
+and that he was in great trouble for his followers, whom (he said) he
+concluded to be all either dead or taken."  I innocently did my best to
+comfort, assure, and refresh him.  Shortly after came four or five of his
+soldiers, who presented themselves in the same countenance and affright,
+to get in too; and after them more, and still more, very well mounted and
+armed, to the number of five-and-twenty or thirty, pretending that they
+had the enemy at their heels.  This mystery began a little to awaken my
+suspicion; I was not ignorant what an age I lived in, how much my house
+might be envied, and I had several examples of others of my acquaintance
+to whom a mishap of this sort had happened.  But thinking there was
+nothing to be got by having begun to do a courtesy, unless I went through
+with it, and that I could not disengage myself from them without spoiling
+all, I let myself go the most natural and simple way, as I always do, and
+invited them all to come in. And in truth I am naturally very little
+inclined to suspicion and distrust; I willingly incline towards excuse
+and the gentlest interpretation; I take men according to the common
+order, and do not more believe in those perverse and unnatural
+inclinations, unless convinced by manifest evidence, than I do in
+monsters and miracles; and I am, moreover, a man who willingly commit
+myself to Fortune, and throw myself headlong into her arms; and I have
+hitherto found more reason to applaud than to blame myself for so doing,
+having ever found her more discreet about, and a greater friend to, my
+affairs than I am myself.  There are some actions in my life whereof the
+conduct may justly be called difficult, or, if you please, prudent; of
+these, supposing the third part to have been my own, doubtless the other
+two-thirds were absolutely hers.  We make, methinks, a mistake in that we
+do not enough trust Heaven with our affairs, and pretend to more from our
+own conduct than appertains to us; and therefore it is that our designs
+so often miscarry. Heaven is jealous of the extent that we attribute to
+the right of human prudence above its own, and cuts it all the shorter by
+how much the more we amplify it.  The last comers remained on horseback
+in my courtyard, whilst their leader, who was with me in the parlour,
+would not have his horse put up in the stable, saying he should
+immediately retire, so soon as he had news of his men.  He saw himself
+master of his enterprise, and nothing now remained but its execution.
+He has since several times said (for he was not ashamed to tell the story
+himself) that my countenance and frankness had snatched the treachery out
+of his hands.  He again mounted his horse; his followers, who had their
+eyes intent upon him, to see when he would give the signal, being very
+much astonished to find him come away and leave his prey behind him.
+
+Another time, relying upon some truce just published in the army, I took
+a journey through a very ticklish country.  I had not ridden far, but I
+was discovered, and two or three parties of horse, from various places,
+were sent out to seize me; one of them overtook me on the third day, and
+I was attacked by fifteen or twenty gentlemen in vizors, followed at a
+distance by a band of foot-soldiers.  I was taken, withdrawn into the
+thick of a neighbouring forest, dismounted, robbed, my trunks rifled, my
+money-box taken, and my horses and equipage divided amongst new masters.
+We had, in this copse, a very long contest about my ransom, which they
+set so high, that it was manifest that I was not known to them.  They
+were, moreover, in a very great debate about my life; and, in truth,
+there were various circumstances that clearly showed the danger I was in:
+
+          "Tunc animis opus, AEnea, tunc pectore firmo."
+
+     [Then, AEneas, there is need of courage, of a firm heart."
+     --AEneid, vi. 261.]
+
+I still insisted upon the truce, too willing they should have the gain of
+what they had already taken from me, which was not to be despised,
+without promise of any other ransom.  After two or three hours that we
+had been in this place, and that they had mounted me upon a horse that
+was not likely to run from them, and committed me to the guard of fifteen
+or twenty harquebusiers, and dispersed my servants to others, having
+given order that they should carry us away prisoners several ways, and I
+being already got some two or three musket-shots from the place,
+
+          "Jam prece Pollucis, jam Castoris, implorata,"
+
+          ["By a prayer addressed now to Pollux, now to Castor."
+          --Catullus, lxvi. 65.]
+
+behold a sudden and unexpected alteration; I saw the chief return to me
+with gentler language, making search amongst the troopers for my
+scattered property, and causing as much as could be recovered to be
+restored to me, even to my money-box; but the best present they made was
+my liberty, for the rest did not much concern me at that time.  The true
+cause of so sudden a change, and of this reconsideration, without any
+apparent impulse, and of so miraculous a repentance, in such a time, in a
+planned and deliberate enterprise, and become just by usage (for, at the
+first dash, I plainly confessed to them of what party I was, and whither
+I was going), truly, I do not yet rightly understand.  The most prominent
+amongst them, who pulled off his vizor and told me his name, repeatedly
+told me at the time, over and over again, that I owed my deliverance to
+my countenance, and the liberty and boldness of my speech, that rendered
+me unworthy of such a misadventure, and should secure me from its
+repetition.  'Tis possible that the Divine goodness willed to make use of
+this vain instrument for my preservation; and it, moreover, defended me
+the next day from other and worse ambushes, of which these my assailants
+had given me warning.  The last of these two gentlemen is yet living
+himself to tell the story; the first was killed not long ago.
+
+If my face did not answer for me, if men did not read in my eyes and in
+my voice the innocence of intention, I had not lived so long without
+quarrels and without giving offence, seeing the indiscreet whatever comes
+into my head, and to judge so rashly of things.  This way may, with
+reason, appear uncivil, and ill adapted to our way of conversation; but
+I have never met with any who judged it outrageous or malicious, or that
+took offence at my liberty, if he had it from my own mouth; words
+repeated have another kind of sound and sense.  Nor do I hate any person;
+and I am so slow to offend, that I cannot do it, even upon the account of
+reason itself; and when occasion has required me to sentence criminals,
+I have rather chosen to fail in point of justice than to do it:
+
+               "Ut magis peccari nolim, quam satis animi
+               ad vindicanda peccata habeam."
+
+     ["So that I had rather men should not commit faults than that I
+     should have sufficient courage to condemn them."---Livy, xxxix. 21.]
+
+Aristotle, 'tis said, was reproached for having been too merciful to a
+wicked man: "I was indeed," said he, "merciful to the man, but not to his
+wickedness."  Ordinary judgments exasperate themselves to punishment by
+the horror of the fact: but it cools mine; the horror of the first murder
+makes me fear a second; and the deformity of the first cruelty makes me
+abhor all imitation of it.' That may be applied to me, who am but a
+Squire of Clubs, which was said of Charillus, king of Sparta: "He cannot
+be good, seeing he is not evil even to the wicked."  Or thus--for
+Plutarch delivers it both these ways, as he does a thousand other things,
+variously and contradictorily--"He must needs be good, because he is so
+even to the wicked."  Even as in lawful actions I dislike to employ
+myself when for such as are displeased at it; so, to say the truth, in
+unlawful things I do not make conscience enough of employing myself when
+it is for such as are willing.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may
+A person's look is but a feeble warranty
+Accept all things we are not able to refute
+Admiration is the foundation of all philosophy
+Advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right
+All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice
+Apt to promise something less than what I am able to do
+As if anything were so common as ignorance
+Authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses
+Best test of truth is the multitude of believers in a crowd
+Books have not so much served me for instruction as exercise
+Books of things that were never either studied or understood
+Condemn the opposite affirmation equally
+Courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal--Socrates
+Death conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss
+Decree that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter
+Deformity of the first cruelty makes me abhor all imitation
+Enters lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it
+Establish this proposition by authority and huffing
+Extend their anger and hatred beyond the dispute in question
+Fabric goes forming and piling itself up from hand to hand
+Fortune heaped up five or six such-like incidents
+Hard to resolve a man's judgment against the common opinions
+Haste trips up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself
+He cannot be good, seeing he is not evil even to the wicked
+He who stops not the start will never be able to stop the course
+"How many things," said he, "I do not desire!"
+How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out
+I am a little tenderly distrustful of things that I wish
+I am no longer in condition for any great change
+I am not to be cuffed into belief
+I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable
+I do not judge opinions by years
+I ever justly feared to raise my head too high
+I would as willingly be lucky as wise
+If I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it
+If they hear no noise, they think men sleep
+Impose them upon me as infallible
+Inconveniences that moderation brings (in civil war)
+Lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself
+Let not us seek illusions from without and unknown
+"Little learning is needed to form a sound mind." --Seneca
+Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation
+Men are not always to rely upon the personal confessions
+Merciful to the man, but not to his wickedness--Aristotle
+Miracles and strange events have concealed themselves from me
+My humour is no friend to tumult
+Nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing of my own
+Not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred
+Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding
+Number of fools so much exceeds the wise
+Opinions we have are taken on authority and trust
+Others adore all of their own side
+Pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of the law
+Prepare ourselves against the preparations of death
+Profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit
+Quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams
+Reasons often anticipate the effect
+Refusin  to justify, excuse, or explain myself
+Remotest witness knows more about it than those who were nearest
+Restoring what has been lent us, wit  usury and accession
+Richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow
+Right of command appertains to the beautiful-Aristotle
+Rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny a stated fact
+Suffer my judgment to be made captive by prepossession
+Swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking
+Taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance
+The last informed is better persuaded than the first
+The mind grows costive and thick in growing old
+The particular error first makes the public error
+Their souls seek repose in agitation
+They gently name them, so they patiently endure them (diseases)
+Those oppressed with sorrow sometimes surprised by a smile
+Threats of the day of judgment
+Tis better to lean towards doubt than assurance--Augustine
+Tis no matter; it may be of use to some others
+To forbear doing is often as generous as to do
+To kill men, a clear and strong light is required
+Too contemptible to be punished
+True liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself
+Vast distinction betwixt devotion and conscience
+We have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death
+What did I say?  that I have?  no, Chremes, I had
+Who discern no riches but in pomp and show
+Whoever will be cured of ignorance must confess it
+Would have every one in his party blind or a blockhead
+Wrong the just side when they go about to assist it with fraud
+Yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Essays of Montaigne, V18
+By Michel de Montaigne
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of  The Essays of Montaigne, V18
+#18 in our series by Michel de Montaigne, Translator: Cotton
+Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, 1877
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+Title: The Essays of Montaigne, V18
+
+Author: Michel de Montaigne
+
+Official Release Date: October, 2002 [Etext #3598]
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+[The actual date this file first posted = 05/28/01]
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+Edition: 11
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, V18
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+
+ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
+
+Translated by Charles Cotton
+
+Edited by William Carew Hazilitt
+
+1877
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOLUME 18.
+
+X.        Of Managing the Will.
+XI.       Of Cripples.
+XII.      Of Physiognomy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OF MANAGING THE WILL
+
+Few things, in comparison of what commonly affect other men, move, or, to
+say better, possess me: for 'tis but reason they should concern a man,
+provided they do not possess him.  I am very solicitous, both by study
+and argument, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in me
+naturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I espouse and
+am very much moved with very few things.  I have a clear sight enough,
+but I fix it upon very few objects; I have a sense delicate and tender
+enough; but an apprehension and application hard and negligent.  I am
+very unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself
+wholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb
+and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into
+it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over
+which fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I
+so much value, 'tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to
+covet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable.  A man ought
+to moderate himself betwixt the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure:
+and Plato sets down a middle path of life betwixt the two.  But against
+such affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere,
+against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power.  'Tis my
+opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself
+to himself.  Were my will easy to lend itself out and to be swayed, I
+should not stick there; I am too tender both by nature and use:
+
+            "Fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus."
+
+          ["Avoiding affairs and born to secure ease."
+          --Ovid, De Trist., iii. 2, 9.]
+
+Hot and obstinate disputes, wherein my adversary would at last have the
+better, the issue that would render my heat and obstinacy disgraceful
+would peradventure vex me to the last degree.  Should I set myself to it
+at the rate that others do, my soul would never have the force to bear
+the emotion and alarms of those who grasp at so much; it would
+immediately be disordered by this inward agitation.  If, sometimes, I
+have been put upon the management of other men's affairs, I have promised
+to take them in hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them upon
+me, not to incorporate them; to take pains, yes: to be impassioned about
+it, by no means; I have a care of them, but I will not sit upon them.
+I have enough to do to order and govern the domestic throng of those that
+I have in my own veins and bowels, without introducing a crowd of other
+men's affairs; and am sufficiently concerned about my own proper and
+natural business, without meddling with the concerns of others.  Such as
+know how much they owe to themselves, and how many offices they are bound
+to of their own, find that nature has cut them out work enough of their
+own to keep them from being idle.  "Thou hast business enough at home:
+look to that."
+
+Men let themselves out to hire; their faculties are not for themselves,
+but for those to whom they have enslaved themselves; 'tis their tenants
+occupy them, not themselves.  This common humour pleases not me.  We must
+be thrifty of the liberty of our souls, and never let it out but upon
+just occasions, which are very few, if we judge aright.  Do but observe
+such as have accustomed themselves to be at every one's call: they do it
+indifferently upon all, as well little as great, occasions; in that which
+nothing concerns them; as much as in what imports them most.  They thrust
+themselves in indifferently wherever there is work to do and obligation,
+and are without life when not in tumultuous bustle:
+
+                    "In negotiis sunt, negotii cause,"
+
+     ["They are in business for business' sake."--Seneca, Ep., 22.]
+
+It is not so much that they will go, as it is that they cannot stand
+still: like a rolling stone that cannot stop till it can go no further.
+Occupation, with a certain sort of men, is a mark of understanding and
+dignity: their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being
+rocked in a cradle; they may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their
+friends, as they are troublesome to themselves.  No one distributes his
+money to others, but every one distributes his time and his life: there
+is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of these two things, of which
+to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful.  I am of a quite
+contrary humour; I look to myself, and commonly covet with no great
+ardour what I do desire, and desire little; and I employ and busy myself
+at the same rate, rarely and temperately.  Whatever they take in hand,
+they do it with their utmost will and vehemence.  There are so many
+dangerous steps, that, for the more safety, we must a little lightly and
+superficially glide over the world, and not rush through it.  Pleasure
+itself is painful in profundity:
+
+                              "Incedis per ignes,
+                    Suppositos cineri doloso."
+
+          ["You tread on fire, hidden under deceitful ashes."
+          --Horace, Od., ii. i, 7.]
+
+The Parliament of Bordeaux chose me mayor of their city at a time when I
+was at a distance from France,--[At Bagno Della Villa, near Lucca,
+September 1581]--and still more remote from any such thought.
+I entreated to be excused, but I was told by my friends that I had
+committed an error in so doing, and the greater because the king had,
+moreover, interposed his command in that affair.  'Tis an office that
+ought to be looked upon so much more honourable, as it has no other
+salary nor advantage than the bare honour of its execution.  It continues
+two years, but may be extended by a second election, which very rarely
+happens; it was to me, and had never been so but twice before: some years
+ago to Monsieur de Lansac, and lately to Monsieur de Biron, Marshal of
+France, in whose place I succeeded; and, I left mine to Monsieur de
+Matignon, Marshal of France also: proud of so noble a fraternity--
+
+               "Uterque bonus pacis bellique minister."
+
+          ["Either one a good minister in peace and war."
+          --AEneid, xi. 658.]
+
+Fortune would have a hand in my promotion, by this particular
+circumstance which she put in of her own, not altogether vain; for
+Alexander disdained the ambassadors of Corinth, who came to offer him a
+burgess-ship of their city; but when they proceeded to lay before him
+that Bacchus and Hercules were also in the register, he graciously
+thanked them.
+
+At my arrival, I faithfully and conscientiously represented myself to
+them for such as I find myself to be--a man without memory, without
+vigilance, without experience, and without vigour; but withal, without
+hatred, without ambition, without avarice, and without violence; that
+they might be informed of my qualities, and know what they were to expect
+from my service.  And whereas the knowledge they had had of my late
+father, and the honour they had for his memory, had alone incited them to
+confer this favour upon me, I plainly told them that I should be very
+sorry anything should make so great an impression upon me as their
+affairs and the concerns of their city had made upon him, whilst he held
+the government to which they had preferred me.  I remembered, when a boy,
+to have seen him in his old age cruelly tormented with these public
+affairs, neglecting the soft repose of his own house, to which the
+declension of his age had reduced him for several years before, the
+management of his own affairs, and his health; and certainly despising
+his own life, which was in great danger of being lost, by being engaged
+in long and painful journeys on their behalf.  Such was he; and this
+humour of his proceeded from a marvellous good nature; never was there a
+more charitable and popular soul.  Yet this proceeding which I commend in
+others, I do not love to follow myself, and am not without excuse.
+
+He had learned that a man must forget himself for his neighbour, and that
+the particular was of no manner of consideration in comparison with the
+general.  Most of the rules and precepts of the world run this way; to
+drive us out of ourselves into the street for the benefit of public
+society; they thought to do a great feat to divert and remove us from
+ourselves, assuming we were but too much fixed there, and by a too
+natural inclination; and have said all they could to that purpose: for
+'tis no new thing for the sages to preach things as they serve, not as
+they are.  Truth has its obstructions, inconveniences, and
+incompatibilities with us; we must often deceive that we may not deceive
+ourselves; and shut our eyes and our understandings to redress and amend
+them:
+
+          "Imperiti enim judicant, et qui frequenter
+          in hoc ipsum fallendi sunt, ne errent."
+
+     ["For the ignorant judge, and therefore are oft to be deceived,
+     less they should err."--Quintil., Inst. Orat., xi. 17.]
+
+When they order us to love three, four, or fifty degrees of things above
+ourselves,  they do like archers, who, to hit the white, take their aim a
+great deal higher than the butt; to make a crooked stick straight, we
+bend it the contrary way.
+
+I believe that in the Temple of Pallas, as we see in all other religions,
+there were apparent mysteries to be exposed to the people; and others,
+more secret and high, that were only to be shown to such as were
+professed; 'tis likely that in these the true point of friendship that
+every one owes to himself is to be found; not a false friendship, that
+makes us embrace glory, knowledge, riches, and the like, with a principal
+and immoderate affection, as members of our being; nor an indiscreet and
+effeminate friendship, wherein it happens, as with ivy, that it decays
+and ruins the walls it embraces; but a sound and regular friendship,
+equally useful and pleasant.  He who knows the duties of this friendship
+and practises them is truly of the cabinet of the Muses, and has attained
+to the height of human wisdom and of our happiness, such an one, exactly
+knowing what he owes to himself, will on his part find that he ought to
+apply to himself the use of the world and of other men; and to do this,
+to contribute to public society the duties and offices appertaining to
+him.  He who does not in some sort live for others, does not live much
+for himself:
+
+     "Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse."
+
+     ["He who is his own friend, is a friend to everybody else."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 6.]
+
+The principal charge we have is, to every one his own conduct; and 'tis
+for this only that we here are.  As he who should forget to live a
+virtuous and holy life, and should think he acquitted himself of his duty
+in instructing and training others up to it, would be a fool; even so he
+who abandons his own particular healthful and pleasant living to serve
+others therewith, takes, in my opinion, a wrong and unnatural course.
+
+I would not that men should refuse, in the employments they take upon
+them, their attention, pains, eloquence, sweat, and blood if need be:
+
+                         "Non ipse pro caris amicis
+                    Aut patria, timidus perire:"
+
+     ["Himself not afraid to die for beloved friends, or for his
+     country."--Horace, Od., iv. 9, 51.]
+
+but 'tis only borrowed, and accidentally; his mind being always in repose
+and in health; not without action, but without vexation, without passion.
+To be simply acting costs him so little, that he acts even sleeping;
+but it must be set on going with discretion; for the body receives the
+offices imposed upon it just according to what they are; the mind often
+extends and makes them heavier at its own expense, giving them what
+measure it pleases.  Men perform like things with several sorts of
+endeavour, and different contention of will; the one does well enough
+without the other; for how many people hazard themselves every day in war
+without any concern which way it goes; and thrust themselves into the
+dangers of battles, the loss of which will not break their next night's
+sleep? and such a man may be at home, out of the danger which he durst
+not have looked upon, who is more passionately concerned for the issue of
+this war, and whose soul is more anxious about events than the soldier
+who therein stakes his blood and his life.  I could have engaged myself
+in public employments without quitting my own matters a nail's breadth,
+and have given myself to others without abandoning myself.  This
+sharpness and violence of desires more hinder than they advance the
+execution of what we undertake; fill us with impatience against slow or
+contrary events, and with heat and suspicion against those with whom we
+have to do.  We never carry on that thing well by which we are
+prepossessed and led:
+
+                         "Male cuncta ministrat
+                         Impetus."
+
+     ["Impulse manages all things ill."--Statius, Thebaid, x. 704.]
+
+He who therein employs only his judgment and address proceeds more
+cheerfully: he counterfeits, he gives way, he defers quite at his ease,
+according to the necessities of occasions; he fails in his attempt
+without trouble and affliction, ready and entire for a new enterprise;
+he always marches with the bridle in his hand.  In him who is intoxicated
+with this violent and tyrannical intention, we discover, of necessity,
+much imprudence and injustice; the impetuosity of his desire carries him
+away; these are rash motions, and, if fortune do not very much assist,
+of very little fruit.  Philosophy directs that, in the revenge of
+injuries received, we should strip ourselves of choler; not that the
+chastisement should be less, but, on the contrary, that the revenge may
+be the better and more heavily laid on, which, it conceives, will be by
+this impetuosity hindered.  For anger not only disturbs, but, of itself,
+also wearies the arms of those who chastise; this fire benumbs and wastes
+their force; as in precipitation, "festinatio tarda est,"--haste trips
+up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself:
+
+               "Ipsa se velocitas implicat."--Seneca, Ep. 44
+
+For example, according to what I commonly see, avarice has no greater
+impediment than itself; the more bent and vigorous it is, the less it
+rakes together, and commonly sooner grows rich when disguised in a visor
+of liberality.
+
+A very excellent gentleman, and a friend of mine, ran a risk of impairing
+his faculties by a too passionate attention and affection to the affairs
+of a certain prince his master;--[Probably the King of Navarre, afterward
+Henry IV.]--which master has thus portrayed himself to me; "that he
+foresees the weight of accidents as well as another, but that in those
+for which there is no remedy, he presently resolves upon suffering; in
+others, having taken all the necessary precautions which by the vivacity
+of his understanding he can presently do, he quietly awaits what may
+follow."  And, in truth, I have accordingly seen him maintain a great
+indifferency and liberty of actions and serenity of countenance in very
+great and difficult affairs: I find him much greater, and of greater
+capacity in adverse than in prosperous fortune; his defeats are to him
+more glorious than his victories, and his mourning than his triumph.
+
+Consider, that even in vain and frivolous actions, as at chess, tennis,
+and the like, this eager and ardent engaging with an impetuous desire,
+immediately throws the mind and members into indiscretion and disorder: a
+man astounds and hinders himself; he who carries himself more moderately,
+both towards gain and loss, has always his wits about him; the less
+peevish and passionate he is at play, he plays much more advantageously
+and surely.
+
+As to the rest, we hinder the mind's grasp and hold, in giving it so many
+things to seize upon; some things we should only offer to it; tie it to
+others, and with others incorporate it.  It can feel and discern all
+things, but ought to feed upon nothing but itself; and should be
+instructed in what properly concerns itself, and that is properly of its
+own having and substance.  The laws of nature teach us what justly we
+need.  After the sages have told us that no one is indigent according to
+nature, and that every one is so according to opinion, they very subtly
+distinguish betwixt the desires that proceed from her, and those that
+proceed from the disorder of our own fancy: those of which we can see the
+end are hers; those that fly before us, and of which we can see no end,
+are our own: the poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the
+soul is irreparable:
+
+         "Nam si, quod satis est homini, id satis esse potesset
+          Hoc sat erat: nunc, quum hoc non est, qui credimus porro
+          Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse?"
+
+     ["For if what is for man enough, could be enough, it were enough;
+     but since it is not so, how can I believe that any wealth can give
+     my mind content."--Lucilius aped Nonium Marcellinum, V. sec. 98.]
+
+Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniture
+carried in pomp through his city:  "How many things," said he, "I do not
+desire!"--[Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., V. 32.]--Metrodorus lived on twelve
+ounces a day, Epicurus upon less; Metrocles slept in winter abroad
+amongst sheep, in summer in the cloisters of churches:
+
+               "Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit."
+
+          ["Nature suffices for what he requires."--Seneca, Ep., 90.]
+
+Cleanthes lived by the labour of his own hands, and boasted that
+Cleanthes, if he would, could yet maintain another Cleanthes.
+
+If that which nature exactly and originally requires of us for the
+conservation of our being be too little (as in truth what it is, and how
+good cheap life may be maintained, cannot be better expressed than by
+this consideration, that it is so little that by its littleness it
+escapes the gripe and shock of fortune), let us allow ourselves a little
+more; let us call every one of our habits and conditions nature; let us
+rate and treat ourselves by this measure; let us stretch our
+appurtenances and accounts so far; for so far, I fancy, we have some
+excuse.  Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful.  What is
+wanting to my custom, I reckon is wanting to me; and I should be almost
+as well content that they took away my life as cut me short in the way
+wherein I have so long lived.  I am no longer in condition for any great
+change, nor to put myself into a new and unwonted course, not even to
+augmentation.  'Tis past the time for me to become other than what I am;
+and as I should complain of any great good hap that should now befall me,
+that it came not in time to be enjoyed:
+
+               "Quo mihi fortunas, si non conceditur uti?"
+
+     ["What is the good fortune to me, if it is not granted to me
+     to use it."--Horace, Ep., i. 5, 12.]
+
+so should I complain of any inward acquisition.  It were almost better
+never, than so late, to become an honest man, and well fit to live, when
+one has no longer to live.  I, who am about to make my exit out of the
+world, would easily resign to any newcomer, who should desire it, all the
+prudence I am now acquiring in the world's commerce; after meat, mustard.
+I have no need of goods of which I can make no use; of what use is
+knowledge to him who has lost his head?  'Tis an injury and unkindness in
+fortune to tender us presents that will only inspire us with a just
+despite that we had them not in their due season.  Guide me no more; I
+can no longer go.  Of so many parts as make up a sufficiency, patience is
+the most sufficient.  Give the capacity of an excellent treble to the
+chorister who has rotten lungs, and eloquence to a hermit exiled into the
+deserts of Arabia.  There needs no art to help a fall; the end finds
+itself of itself at the conclusion of every affair.  My world is at an
+end, my form expired; I am totally of the past, and am bound to authorise
+it, and to conform my outgoing to it.  I will here declare, by way of
+example, that the Pope's late ten days' diminution
+
+     [Gregory XIII., in 1582, reformed the Calendar, and, in consequence,
+     in France they all at once passed from the 9th to the 20th
+     December.]
+
+has taken me so aback that I cannot well reconcile myself to it; I belong
+to the years wherein we kept another kind of account.  So ancient and so
+long a custom challenges my adherence to it, so that I am constrained to
+be somewhat heretical on that point incapable of any, though corrective,
+innovation.  My imagination, in spite of my teeth, always pushes me ten
+days forward or backward, and is ever murmuring in my ears: "This rule
+concerns those who are to begin to be."  If health itself, sweet as it
+is, returns to me by fits, 'tis rather to give me cause of regret than
+possession of it; I have no place left to keep it in.  Time leaves me;
+without which nothing can be possessed.  Oh, what little account should I
+make of those great elective dignities that I see in such esteem in the
+world, that are never conferred but upon men who are taking leave of it;
+wherein they do not so much regard how well the man will discharge his
+trust, as how short his administration will be: from the very entry they
+look at the exit.  In short, I am about finishing this man, and not
+rebuilding another.  By long use, this form is in me turned into
+substance, and fortune into nature.
+
+I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is excusable in
+thinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; but
+withal, beyond these limits, 'tis nothing but confusion; 'tis the largest
+extent we can grant to our own claims.  The more we amplify our need and
+our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows of
+Fortune and adversities.  The career of our desires ought to be
+circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and most
+contiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be performed
+not in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of which the
+two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves.  Actions
+that are carried on without this reflection--a near and essential
+reflection, I mean--such as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and so
+many more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries them
+before themselves, such actions, I say; are erroneous and sickly.
+
+Most of our business is farce:
+
+               "Mundus universus exercet histrioniam."
+               --[Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8.]
+
+We must play our part properly, but withal as a part of a borrowed
+personage; we must not make real essence of a mask and outward
+appearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we cannot distinguish the
+skin from the shirt: 'tis enough to meal the face, without mealing the
+breast.  I see some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into as
+many new shapes and new beings as they undertake new employments; and who
+strut and fume even to the heart and liver, and carry their state along
+with them even to the close-stool: I cannot make them distinguish the
+salutations made to themselves from those made to their commission, their
+train, or their mule:
+
+     "Tantum se fortunx permittunt, etiam ut naturam dediscant."
+
+     ["They so much give themselves up to fortune, as even to unlearn
+     nature."--Quintus Curtius, iii. 2.]
+
+They swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking,
+according to the height of their magisterial place.  The Mayor of
+Bordeaux and Montaigne have ever been two by very manifest separation.
+Because one is an advocate or a financier, he must not ignore the knavery
+there is in such callings; an honest man is not accountable for the vice
+or absurdity of his employment, and ought not on that account refuse to
+take the calling upon him: 'tis the usage of his country, and there is
+money to be got by it; a man must live by the world; and make his best of
+it, such as it is.  But the judgment of an emperor ought to be above his
+empire, and see and consider it as a foreign accident; and he ought to
+know how to enjoy himself apart from it, and to communicate himself as
+James and Peter, to himself, at all events.
+
+I cannot engage myself so deep and so entire; when my will gives me to
+anything, 'tis not with so violent an obligation that my judgment is
+infected with it.  In the present broils of this kingdom, my own interest
+has not made me blind to the laudable qualities of our adversaries, nor
+to those that are reproachable in those men of our party.  Others adore
+all of their own side; for my part, I do not so much as excuse most
+things in those of mine: a good work has never the worst grace with me
+for being made against me.  The knot of the controversy excepted, I have
+always kept myself in equanimity and pure indifference:
+
+     "Neque extra necessitates belli praecipuum odium gero;"
+
+     ["Nor bear particular hatred beyond the necessities of war."]
+
+for which I am pleased with myself; and the more because I see others
+commonly fail in the contrary direction.  Such as extend their anger and
+hatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that they
+spring from some other occasion and private cause; like one who, being
+cured of an ulcer, has yet a fever remaining, by which it appears that
+the ulcer had another more concealed beginning.  The reason is that they
+are not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to the
+state and general interest; but are only nettled by reason of their
+particular concern.  This is why they are so especially animated, and to
+a degree so far beyond justice and public reason:
+
+          "Non tam omnia universi, quam ea, quae ad quemque pertinent,
+          singuli carpebant."
+
+     ["Every one was not so much angry against things in general, as
+     against those that particularly concern himself."
+     --Livy, xxxiv. 36.]
+
+I would have the advantage on our side; but if it be not, I shall not run
+mad.  I am heartily for the right party; but I do not want to be taken
+notice of as an especial enemy to others, and beyond the general quarrel.
+I marvellously challenge this vicious form of opinion: "He is of the
+League because he admires the graciousness of Monsieur de Guise; he is
+astonished at the King of Navarre's energy, therefore he is a Huguenot;
+he finds this to say of the manners of the king, he is therefore
+seditious in his heart."  And I did not grant to the magistrate himself
+that he did well in condemning a book because it had placed a heretic--
+[Theodore de Beza.]--amongst the best poets of the time.  Shall we not
+dare to say of a thief that he has a handsome leg?  If a woman be a
+strumpet, must it needs follow that she has a foul smell?  Did they in
+the wisest ages revoke the proud title of Capitolinus they had before
+conferred on Marcus Manlius as conservator of religion and the public
+liberty, and stifle the memory of his liberality, his feats of arms, and
+military recompenses granted to his valour, because he, afterwards
+aspired to the sovereignty, to the prejudice of the laws of his country?
+If we take a hatred against an advocate, he will not be allowed the next
+day to be eloquent.  I have elsewhere spoken of the zeal that pushed on
+worthy men to the like faults.  For my part, I can say, "Such an one does
+this thing ill, and another thing virtuously and well."  So in the
+prognostication or sinister events of affairs they would have every one
+in his party blind or a blockhead, and that our persuasion and judgment
+should subserve not truth, but to the project of our desires.  I should
+rather incline towards the other extreme; so much I fear being suborned
+by my desire; to which may be added that I am a little tenderly
+distrustful of things that I wish.
+
+I have in my time seen wonders in the indiscreet and prodigious facility
+of people in suffering their hopes and belief to be led and governed,
+which way best pleased and served their leaders, despite a hundred
+mistakes one upon another, despite mere dreams and phantasms.  I no more
+wonder at those who have been blinded and seduced by the fooleries of
+Apollonius and Mahomet.  Their sense and understanding are absolutely
+taken away by their passion; their discretion has no more any other
+choice than that which smiles upon them and encourages their cause.
+I had principally observed this in the beginning of our intestine
+distempers; that other, which has sprung up since, in imitating, has
+surpassed it; by which I am satisfied that it is a quality inseparable
+from popular errors; after the first, that rolls, opinions drive on one
+another like waves with the wind: a man is not a member of the body, if
+it be in his power to forsake it, and if he do not roll the common way.
+But, doubtless, they wrong the just side when they go about to assist it
+with fraud; I have ever been against that practice: 'tis only fit to work
+upon weak heads; for the sound, there are surer and more honest ways to
+keep up their courage and to excuse adverse accidents.
+
+Heaven never saw a greater animosity than that betwixt Caesar and Pompey,
+nor ever shall; and yet I observe, methinks, in those brave souls,
+a great moderation towards one another: it was a jealousy of honour and
+command, which did not transport them to a furious and indiscreet hatred,
+and was without malignity and detraction: in their hottest exploits upon
+one another, I discover some remains of respect and good-will: and am
+therefore of opinion that, had, it been possible, each of them would
+rather have done his business without the ruin of the other than with it.
+Take notice how much otherwise matters went with Marius and Sylla.
+
+We must not precipitate ourselves so headlong after our affections and
+interests.  As, when I was young, I opposed myself to the progress of
+love which I perceived to advance too fast upon me, and had a care lest
+it should at last become so pleasing as to force, captivate, and wholly
+reduce me to its mercy: so I do the same upon all other occasions where
+my will is running on with too warm an appetite.  I lean opposite to the
+side it inclines to; as I find it going to plunge and make itself drunk
+with its own wine; I evade nourishing its pleasure so far, that I cannot
+recover it without infinite loss.  Souls that, through their own
+stupidity, only discern things by halves, have this happiness, that they
+smart less with hurtful things: 'tis a spiritual leprosy that has some
+show of health, and such a health as philosophy does not altogether
+contemn; but yet we have no reason to call it wisdom, as we often do.
+And after this manner some one anciently mocked Diogeries, who, in the
+depth of winter and quite naked, went embracing an image of snow for a
+trial of his endurance: the other seeing him in this position, "Art thou
+now very cold?"  said he.  "Not at all," replied Diogenes.  "Why, then,"
+pursued the other, "what difficult and exemplary thing dost thou think
+thou doest in embracing that snow?"  To take a true measure of constancy,
+one must necessarily know what the suffering is.
+
+But souls that are to meet with adverse events and the injuries of
+fortune, in their depth and sharpness, that are to weigh and taste them
+according to their natural weight and bitterness, let such show their
+skill in avoiding the causes and diverting the blow.  What did King Cotys
+do?  He paid liberally for the rich and beautiful vessel that had been
+presented to him, but, seeing it was exceedingly brittle, he immediately
+broke it betimes, to prevent so easy a matter of displeasure against his
+servants. In like manner, I have willingly avoided all confusion in my
+affairs, and never coveted to have my estate contiguous to those of my
+relations, and such with whom I coveted a strict friendship; for thence
+matter of unkindness and falling out often proceeds.  I formerly loved
+hazardous games of cards and dice; but have long since left them off,
+only for this reason that, with whatever good air I carried my losses,
+I could not help feeling vexed within.  A man of honour, who ought to be
+touchily sensible of the lie or of an insult, and who is not to take a
+scurvy excuse for satisfaction, should avoid occasions of dispute.
+I shun melancholy, crabbed men, as I would the plague; and in matters I
+cannot talk of without emotion and concern I never meddle, if not
+compelled by my duty:
+
+               "Melius non incipient, quam desinent."
+
+     ["They had better never to begin than to have to desist."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 72.]
+
+The surest way, therefore, is to prepare one's self beforehand for
+occasions.
+
+I know very well that some wise men have taken another way, and have not
+feared to grapple and engage to the utmost upon several subjects these
+are confident of their own strength, under which they protect themselves
+in all ill successes, making their patience wrestle and contend with
+disaster:
+
+               "Velut rupes, vastum quae prodit in aequor,
+               Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto,
+               Vim cunctam atque minas perfert coelique marisque;
+               Ipsa immota manens."
+
+     ["As a rock, which projects into the vast ocean, exposed to the
+     furious winds and the raging sea, defies the force and menaces of
+     sky and sea, itself unshaken."--Virgil, AEneid, x. 693.]
+
+Let us not attempt these examples; we shall never come up to them.  They
+set themselves resolutely, and without agitation, to behold the ruin of
+their country, which possessed and commanded all their will: this is too
+much, and too hard a task for our commoner souls.  Cato gave up the
+noblest life that ever was upon this account; we meaner spirits must fly
+from the storm as far as we can; we must provide for sentiment, and not
+for patience, and evade the blows we cannot meet.  Zeno, seeing
+Chremonides, a young man whom he loved, draw near to sit down by him,
+suddenly started up; and Cleanthes demanding of him the reason why he did
+so, "I hear," said he, "that physicians especially order repose, and
+forbid emotion in all tumours."  Socrates does not say: "Do not surrender
+to the charms of beauty; stand your ground, and do your utmost to oppose
+it."  "Fly it," says he; "shun the fight and encounter of it, as of a
+powerful poison that darts and wounds at a distance."  And his good
+disciple, feigning or reciting, but, in my opinion, rather reciting than
+feigning, the rare perfections of the great Cyrus, makes him distrustful
+of his own strength to resist the charms of the divine beauty of that
+illustrous Panthea, his captive, and committing the visiting and keeping
+her to another, who could not have so much liberty as himself.  And the
+Holy Ghost in like manner:
+
+                    "Ne nos inducas in tentationem."
+
+          ["Lead us not into temptation."--St. Matthew, vi. 13.]
+
+We do not pray that our reason may not be combated and overcome by
+concupiscence, but that it should not be so much as tried by it; that we
+should not be brought into a state wherein we are so much as to suffer
+the approaches, solicitations, and temptations of sin: and we beg of
+Almighty God to keep our consciences quiet, fully and perfectly delivered
+from all commerce of evil.
+
+Such as say that they have reason for their revenging passion, or any
+other sort of troublesome agitation of mind, often say true, as things
+now are, but not as they were: they speak to us when the causes of their
+error are by themselves nourished and advanced; but look backward--recall
+these causes to their beginning--and there you will put them to a
+nonplus.  Will they have their faults less, for being of longer
+continuance; and that of an unjust beginning, the sequel can be just?
+Whoever shall desire the good of his country, as I do, without fretting
+or pining himself, will be troubled, but will not swoon to see it
+threatening either its own ruin, or a no less ruinous continuance; poor
+vessel, that the waves, the winds, and the pilot toss and steer to so
+contrary designs!
+
+                        "In tam diversa magister
+                         Ventus et unda trahunt."
+
+He who does not gape after the favour of princes, as after a thing he
+cannot live without, does not much concern himself at the coldness of
+their reception and countenance, nor at the inconstancy of their wills.
+He who does not brood over his children or his honours with a slavish
+propension, ceases not to live commodiously enough after their loss.  He
+who does good principally for his own satisfaction will not be much
+troubled to see men judge of his actions contrary to his merit.  A
+quarter of an ounce of patience will provide sufficiently against such
+inconveniences.  I find ease in this receipt, redeeming myself in the
+beginning as good cheap as I can; and find that by this means I have
+escaped much trouble and many difficulties.  With very little ado I stop
+the first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to be
+troublesome before it transports me.  He who stops not the start will
+never be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never,
+get them out when they are once got in; and he who cannot arrive at the
+beginning will never arrive at the end of all.  Nor will he bear the fall
+who cannot sustain the shock:
+
+     "Etenim ipsae se impellunt, ubi semel a ratione discessum est;
+     ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur
+     imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi."
+
+     ["For they throw themselves headlong when once they lose their
+     reason; and infirmity so far indulges itself, and from want of
+     prudence is carried out into deep water, nor finds a place to
+     shelter it."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 18.]
+
+I am betimes sensible of the little breezes that begin to sing and
+whistle within, forerunners of the storm:
+
+                              "Ceu flamina prima
+               Cum deprensa fremunt sylvis et caeca volutant
+               Murmura, venturos nautis prodentia ventos."
+
+     ["As the breezes, pent in the woods, first send out dull murmurs,
+     announcing the approach of winds to mariners."--AEneid, x. 97.]
+
+How often have I done myself a manifest injustice to avoid the hazard of
+having yet a worse done me by the judges, after an age of vexations,
+dirty and vile practices, more enemies to my nature than fire or the
+rack?
+
+     "Convenit a litibus, quantum licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam
+     quam licet, abhorrentem esse: est enim non modo liberale, paululum
+     nonnunquam de suo jure decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum."
+
+     ["A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may, and I know not
+     whether not something more; for 'tis not only liberal, but sometimes
+     also advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right.
+     --"Cicero, De Offic., ii. 18.]
+
+Were we wise, we ought to rejoice and boast, as I one day heard a young
+gentleman of a good family very innocently do, that his mother had lost
+her cause, as if it had been a cough, a fever, or something very
+troublesome to keep.  Even the favours that fortune might have given me
+through relationship or acquaintance with those who have sovereign
+authority in those affairs, I have very conscientiously and very
+carefully avoided employing them to the prejudice of others, and of
+advancing my pretensions above their true right.  In fine, I have so much
+prevailed by my endeavours (and happily I may say it) that I am to this
+day a virgin from all suits in law; though I have had very fair offers
+made me, and with very just title, would I have hearkened to them, and a
+virgin from quarrels too.  I have almost passed over a long life without
+any offence of moment, either active or passive, or without ever hearing
+a worse word than my own name: a rare favour of Heaven.
+
+Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes: what ruin did
+our last Duke of Burgundy run into about a cartload of sheepskins!
+And was not the graving of a seal the first and principal cause of the
+greatest commotion that this machine of the world ever underwent?
+--[The civil war between Marius and Sylla; see Plutarch's Life of Marius,
+c. 3.]--for Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of
+the two others: and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in this
+kingdom assembled with great ceremony, and at the public expense, about
+treaties and agreements, of which the true decision, in the meantime,
+absolutely depended upon the ladies' cabinet council, and the inclination
+of some bit of a woman.
+
+The poets very well understood this when they put all Greece and Asia to
+fire and sword about an apple.  Look why that man hazards his life and
+honour upon the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him acquaint you
+with the occasion of the quarrel; he cannot do it without blushing: the
+occasion is so idle and frivolous.
+
+A little thing will engage you in it; but being once embarked, all the
+cords draw; great provisions are then required, more hard and more
+important.  How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out?
+Now we should proceed contrary to the reed, which, at its first
+springing, produces a long and straight shoot, but afterwards, as if
+tired and out of breath, it runs into thick and frequent joints and
+knots, as so many pauses which demonstrate that it has no more its first
+vigour and firmness; 'twere better to begin gently and coldly, and to
+keep one's breath and vigorous efforts for the height and stress of the
+business.  We guide affairs in their beginnings, and have them in our own
+power; but afterwards, when they are once at work, 'tis they that guide
+and govern us, and we are to follow them.
+
+Yet do I not mean to say that this counsel has discharged me of all
+difficulty, and that I have not often had enough to do to curb and
+restrain my passions; they are not always to be governed according to the
+measure of occasions, and often have their entries very sharp and
+violent.  But still good fruit and profit may thence be reaped; except
+for those who in well-doing are not satisfied with any benefit, if
+reputation be wanting; for, in truth, such an effect is not valued but by
+every one to himself; you are better contented, but not more esteemed,
+seeing you reformed yourself before you got into the whirl of the dance,
+or that the provocative matter was in sight.  Yet not in this only, but
+in all other duties of life also, the way of those who aim at honour is
+very different from that they proceed by, who propose to themselves order
+and reason.  I find some who rashly and furiously rush into the lists and
+cool in the course.  As Plutarch says, that those who, through false
+shame, are soft and facile to grant whatever is desired of them, are
+afterwards as facile to break their word and to recant; so he who enters
+lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it.  The same
+difficulty that keeps me from entering into it, would, when once hot and
+engaged in quarrel, incite me to maintain it with great obstinacy and
+resolution.  'Tis the tyranny of custom; when a man is once engaged; he
+must go through with it, or die.  "Undertake coolly," said Bias,
+"but pursue with ardour."  For want of prudence, men fall into want of
+courage, which is still more intolerable.
+
+Most accommodations of the quarrels of these days of ours are shameful
+and false; we only seek to save appearances, and in the meantime betray
+and disavow our true intentions; we salve over the fact.  We know very
+well how we said the thing, and in what sense we spoke it, and the
+company know it, and our friends whom we have wished to make sensible of
+our advantage, understand it well enough too: 'tis at the expense of our
+frankness and of the honour of our courage, that we disown our thoughts,
+and seek refuge in falsities, to make matters up.  We give ourselves the
+lie, to excuse the lie we have given to another.  You are not to consider
+if your word or action may admit of another interpretation; 'tis your own
+true and sincere interpretation, your real meaning in what you said or
+did, that you are thenceforward to maintain, whatever it cost you.  Men
+speak to your virtue and conscience, which are not things to be put under
+a mask; let us leave these pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of
+the law.  The excuses and reparations that I see every day made and given
+to repair indiscretion, seem to me more scandalous than the indiscretion
+itself.  It were better to affront your adversary a second time than to
+offend yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction.  You have braved
+him in your heat and anger, and you would flatter and appease him in your
+cooler and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at his
+feet, whom before you pretended to overtop.  I do not find anything a
+gentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is
+infamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him;
+forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour than
+pusillanimity.  Passions are as easy for me to evade, as they are hard
+for me to moderate:
+
+          "Exscinduntur facilius ammo, quam temperantur."
+
+     ["They are more easily to be eradicated than governed."]
+
+He who cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him secure
+himself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what they
+performed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament.  The middle
+region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers
+and peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness:
+
+               "Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
+               Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
+               Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!
+               Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
+               Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!"
+
+     ["Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place
+     under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of
+     rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan,
+     and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs."--Virgil, Georg., ii. 490.]
+
+The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we should
+have our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, the
+danger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as little
+to be found.  I had every day encountered a million of crosses, harder to
+digest in the progress of ambition, than it has been hard for me to curb
+the natural propension that inclined me to it:
+
+                    "Jure perhorrui
+                    Lath conspicuum tollere verticem."
+
+          ["I ever justly feared to raise my head too high."
+          --Horace, Od.,iii. 16, 18.]
+
+All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations;
+for too many heads judge of them.  Some say of this civic employment of
+mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is
+worth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that
+I have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid
+temperament; and they have some colour for what they say.  I endeavoured
+to keep my mind and my thoughts in repose;
+
+          "Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus;"
+
+          ["As being always quiet by nature, so also now by age."
+          --Cicero, De Petit. Consul., c. 2.]
+
+and if they sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression,
+'tis in truth without my advice.  Yet from this natural heaviness of
+mine, men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for want of care
+and want of sense are two very different things), and much less any
+unkindness or ingratitude towards that corporation who employed the
+utmost means they had in their power to oblige me, both before they knew
+me and after; and they did much more for me in choosing me anew than in
+conferring that honour upon me at first.  I wish them all imaginable
+good; and assuredly had occasion been, there is nothing I would have
+spared for their service; I did for them as I would have done for myself.
+'Tis a good, warlike, and generous people, but capable of obedience and
+discipline, and of whom the best use may be made, if well guided.  They
+say also that my administration passed over without leaving any mark or
+trace.  Good!  They moreover accuse my cessation in a time when everybody
+almost was convicted of doing too much.  I am impatient to be doing where
+my will spurs me on; but this itself is an enemy to perseverance.  Let
+him who will make use of me according to my own way, employ me in affairs
+where vigour and liberty are required, where a direct, short, and,
+moreover, a hazardous conduct are necessary; I may do something; but if
+it must be long, subtle, laborious, artificial and intricate, he had
+better call in somebody else.  All important offices are not necessarily
+difficult: I came prepared to do somewhat rougher work, had there been
+great occasion; for it is in my power to do something more than I do, or
+than I love to do.  I did not, to my knowledge, omit anything that my
+duty really required.  I easily forgot those offices that ambition mixes
+with duty and palliates with its title; these are they that, for the most
+part, fill the eyes and ears, and give men the most satisfaction; not the
+thing but the appearance contents them; if they hear no noise, they think
+men sleep.  My humour is no friend to tumult; I could appease a commotion
+without commotion, and chastise a disorder without being myself
+disorderly; if I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it,
+and put it on.  My manners are languid, rather faint than sharp.  I do
+not condemn a magistrate who sleeps, provided the people under his charge
+sleep as well as he: the laws in that case sleep too.  For my part, I
+commend a gliding, staid, and silent life:
+
+          "Neque submissam et abjectam, neque se efferentem;"
+
+          ["Neither subject and abject, nor obtrusive."
+          --Cicero, De Offic., i. 34]
+
+my fortune will have it so.  I am descended from a family that has lived
+without lustre or tumult, and, time out of mind, particularly ambitious
+of a character for probity.
+
+Our people nowadays are so bred up to bustle and ostentation, that good
+nature, moderation, equability, constancy, and such like quiet and
+obscure qualities, are no more thought on or regarded.  Rough bodies make
+themselves felt; the smooth are imperceptibly handled: sickness is felt,
+health little or not at all; no more than the oils that foment us, in
+comparison of the pains for which we are fomented.  'Tis acting for one's
+particular reputation and profit, not for the public good, to refer that
+to be done in the public squares which one may do in the council chamber;
+and to noon day what might have been done the night before; and to be
+jealous to do that himself which his colleague can do as well as he; so
+were some surgeons of Greece wont to perform their operations upon
+scaffolds in the sight of the people, to draw more practice and profit.
+They think that good rules cannot be understood but by the sound of
+trumpet.  Ambition is not a vice of little people, nor of such modest
+means as ours.  One said to Alexander: "Your father will leave you a
+great dominion, easy and pacific"; this youth was emulous of his father's
+victories and of the justice of his government; he would not have enjoyed
+the empire of the world in ease and peace.  Alcibiades, in Plato, had
+rather die young, beautiful, rich, noble, and learned, and all this in
+full excellence, than to stop short of such condition; this disease is,
+peradventure, excusable in so strong and so full a soul.  When wretched
+and dwarfish little souls cajole and deceive themselves, and think to
+spread their fame for having given right judgment in an affair, or
+maintained the discipline of the guard of a gate of their city, the more
+they think to exalt their heads the more they show their tails.  This
+little well-doing has neither body nor life; it vanishes in the first
+mouth, and goes no further than from one street to another.  Talk of it
+by all means to your son or your servant, like that old fellow who,
+having no other auditor of his praises nor approver of his valour,
+boasted to his chambermaid, crying, "O Perrete, what a brave, clever man
+hast thou for thy master!  "At the worst, talk of it to yourself, like a
+councillor of my acquaintance, who, having disgorged a whole cartful of
+law jargon with great heat and as great folly, coming out of the council
+chamber to make water, was heard very complacently to mutter betwixt his
+teeth:
+
+          "Non nobis, domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam."
+
+     ["Not unto us, O Lord, not to us: but unto Thy name be the glory."
+     --Psalm cxiii. I.]
+
+He who gets it of nobody else, let him pay himself out of his own purse.
+
+Fame is not prostituted at so cheap a rate: rare and exemplary actions,
+to which it is due, would not endure the company of this prodigious crowd
+of petty daily performances.  Marble may exalt your titles, as much as
+you please, for having repaired a rod of wall or cleansed a public sewer;
+but not men of sense.  Renown does not follow all good deeds, if novelty
+and difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, according
+to the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; nor
+will they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, abstains from an
+old blear-eyed crone.  Those who have known the admirable qualities of
+Scipio Africanus, deny him the glory that Panaetius attributes to him, of
+being abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of his
+age.  We have pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of
+grandeur: our own are more natural, and by so much more solid and sure,
+as they are lower.  If not for that of conscience, yet at least for
+ambition's sake, let us reject ambition; let us disdain that thirst of
+honour and renown, so low and mendicant, that it makes us beg it of all
+sorts of people:
+
+          "Quae est ista laus quae: possit e macello peti?"
+
+     ["What praise is that which is to be got in the market-place (meat
+     market)?"  Cicero, De Fin., ii. 15.]
+
+by abject means, and at what cheap rate soever: 'tis dishonour to be so
+honoured.  Let us learn to be no more greedy, than we are capable, of
+glory.  To be puffed up with every action that is innocent or of use, is
+only for those with whom such things are extraordinary and rare: they
+will value it as it costs them.  The more a good effect makes a noise,
+the more do I abate of its goodness as I suspect that it was more
+performed for the noise, than upon account of the goodness: exposed upon
+the stall, 'tis half sold.  Those actions have much more grace and
+lustre, that slip from the hand of him that does them, negligently and
+without noise, and that some honest man thereafter finds out and raises
+from the shade, to produce it to the light upon its own account,
+
+          "Mihi quidem laudabiliora videntur omnia, quae sine
+          venditatione, et sine populo teste fiunt,"
+
+     ["All things truly seem more laudable to me that are performed
+     without ostentation, and without the testimony of the people."
+     --Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., ii. 26.]
+
+says the most ostentatious man that ever lived.
+
+I had but to conserve and to continue, which are silent and insensible
+effects: innovation is of great lustre; but 'tis interdicted in this age,
+when we are pressed upon and have nothing to defend ourselves from but
+novelties.  To forbear doing is often as generous as to do; but 'tis less
+in the light, and the little good I have in me is of this kind.  In fine,
+occasions in this employment of mine have been confederate with my
+humour, and I heartily thank them for it.  Is there any who desires to be
+sick, that he may see his physician at work? and would not the physician
+deserve to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst us, that he
+might put his art in practice?  I have never been of that wicked humour,
+and common enough, to desire that troubles and disorders in this city
+should elevate and honour my government; I have ever heartily contributed
+all I could to their tranquillity and ease.
+
+He who will not thank me for the order, the sweet and silent calm that
+has accompanied my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of the
+share that belongs to me by title of my good fortune.  And I am of such a
+composition, that I would as willingly be lucky as wise, and had rather
+owe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God, than to any
+operation of my own.  I had sufficiently published to the world my
+unfitness for such public offices; but I have something in me yet worse
+than incapacity itself; which is, that I am not much displeased at it,
+and that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of
+life that I have proposed to myself.
+
+Neither have I satisfied myself in this employment; but I have very near
+arrived at what I expected from my own performance, and have much
+surpassed what I promised them with whom I had to do: for I am apt to
+promise something less than what I am able to do, and than what I hope to
+make good.  I assure myself that I have left no offence or hatred behind
+me; to leave regret or desire for me amongst them, I at least know very
+well that I never much aimed at it:
+
+              "Mene huic confidere monstro!
+               Mene salis placidi vultum, fluctusque quietos
+               Ignorare?"
+
+     ["Should I place confidence in this monster?  Should I be ignorant
+     of the dangers of that seeming placid sea, those now quiet waves?"
+     --Virgil, Aeneid, V. 849.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+OF CRIPPLES
+
+'Tis now two or three years ago that they made the year ten days shorter
+in France.--[By the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.]--How many
+changes may we expect should follow this reformation! it was really
+moving heaven and earth at once.  Yet nothing for all that stirs from its
+place my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, the
+opportunities of doing their business, the hurtful and propitious days,
+dust at the same time where they had, time out of mind, assigned them;
+there was no more error perceived in our old use, than there is amendment
+found in the alteration; so great an uncertainty there is throughout; so
+gross, obscure, and obtuse is our perception.  'Tis said that this
+regulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, by
+subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the
+Bissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, till
+we had exactly satisfied this debt, the which itself is not done by this
+correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear: and yet, by this
+means, such order might be taken for the future, arranging that after the
+revolution of such or such a number of years, the supernumerary day might
+be always thrown out, so that we could not, henceforward, err above four-
+and-twenty hours in our computation.  We have no other account of time
+but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only; and yet it
+is a measure that to this day we are not agreed upon, and one that we
+still doubt what form other nations have variously given to it, and what
+was the true use of it.  What does this saying of some mean, that the
+heavens in growing old bow themselves down nearer towards us, and put us
+into an uncertainty even of hours and days? and that which Plutarch says
+of the months, that astrology had not in his time determined as to the
+motion of the moon; what a fine condition are we in to keep records of
+things past.
+
+I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a free and roving thing
+human reason is.  I ordinarily see that men, in things propounded to
+them, more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth:
+they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of
+consequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes.  Pleasant
+talkers!  The knowledge of causes only concerns him who has the conduct
+of things; not us, who are merely to undergo them, and who have perfectly
+full and accomplished use of them, according to our need, without
+penetrating into the original and essence; wine is none the more pleasant
+to him who knows its first faculties.  On the contrary, both the body and
+the soul interrupt and weaken the right they have of the use of the world
+and of themselves, by mixing with it the opinion of learning; effects
+concern us, but the means not at all.  To determine and to distribute
+appertain to superiority and command; as it does to subjection to accept.
+Let me reprehend our custom.  They commonly begin thus: "How is such a
+thing done?"  Whereas they should say, "Is such a thing done?"  Our
+reason is able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out the
+beginnings and contexture; it needs neither matter nor foundation: let it
+but run on, it builds as well in the air as on the earth, and with
+inanity as well as with matter:
+
+                    "Dare pondus idonea fumo."
+
+          ["Able to give weight to smoke."--Persius, v. 20.]
+
+I find that almost throughout we should say, "there is no such thing,"
+and should myself often make use of this answer, but I dare not: for they
+cry that it is an evasion produced from ignorance and weakness of
+understanding; and I am fain, for the most part, to juggle for company,
+and prate of frivolous subjects and tales that I believe not a word of;
+besides that, in truth, 'tis a little rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny
+a stated fact; and few people but will affirm, especially in things hard
+to be believed, that they have seen them, or at least will name witnesses
+whose authority will stop our mouths from contradiction.  In this way, we
+know the foundations and means of things that never were; and the world
+scuffles about a thousand questions, of which both the Pro and the Con
+are false.
+
+          "Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in praecipitem
+          locum non debeat se sapiens committere."
+
+     ["False things are so near the true, that a wise man should not
+     trust himself in a precipitous place"--Cicero, Acad., ii.  21.]
+
+Truth and lies are faced alike; their port, taste, and proceedings are
+the same, and we look upon them with the same eye.  I find that we are
+not only remiss in defending ourselves from deceit, but that we seek and
+offer ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, as
+a thing conformable to our being.
+
+I have seen the birth of many miracles in my time; which, although they
+were abortive, yet have we not failed to foresee what they would have
+come to, had they lived their full age.  'Tis but finding the end of the
+clew, and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greater
+distance betwixt nothing and the least thing in the world than there is
+betwixt this and the greatest.  Now the first that are imbued with this
+beginning of novelty, when they set out with their tale, find, by the
+oppositions they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, and
+so caulk up that place with some false piece;
+
+     [Voltaire says of this passage, "He who would learn to doubt should
+     read this whole chapter of Montaigne, the least methodical of all
+     philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable."
+     --Melanges Historiques, xvii.  694, ed. of Lefevre.]
+
+besides that:
+
+     "Insita hominibus libido alendi de industria rumores,"
+
+          ["Men having a natural desire to nourish reports."
+          --Livy, xxviii. 24.]
+
+we naturally make a conscience of restoring what has been lent us,
+without some usury and accession of our own.  The particular error first
+makes the public error, and afterwards, in turn, the public error makes
+the particular one; and thus all this vast fabric goes forming and piling
+itself up from hand to hand, so that the remotest witness knows more
+about it than those who were nearest, and the last informed is better
+persuaded than the first.
+
+'Tis a natural progress; for whoever believes anything, thinks it a work
+of charity to persuade another into the same opinion; which the better to
+do, he will make no difficulty of adding as much of his own invention as
+he conceives necessary to his tale to encounter the resistance or want of
+conception he meets with in others.  I myself, who make a great
+conscience of lying, and am not very solicitous of giving credit and
+authority to what I say, yet find that in the arguments I have in hand,
+being heated with the opposition of another, or by the proper warmth of
+my own narration, I swell and puff up my subject by voice, motion,
+vigour, and force of words, and moreover, by extension and amplification,
+not without some prejudice to the naked truth; but I do it conditionally
+withal, that to the first who brings me to myself, and who asks me the
+plain and bare truth, I presently surrender my passion, and deliver the
+matter to him without exaggeration, without emphasis, or any painting of
+my own.  A quick and earnest way of speaking, as mine is, is apt to run
+into hyperbole.  There is nothing to which men commonly are more inclined
+than to make way for their own opinions; where the ordinary means fail
+us, we add command, force, fire, and sword.  'Tis a misfortune to be at
+such a pass, that the best test of truth is the multitude of believers in
+a crowd, where the number of fools so much exceeds the wise:
+
+     "Quasi vero quidquam sit tam valde, quam nil sapere, vulgare."
+
+          ["As if anything were so common as ignorance."
+          --Cicero, De Divin., ii.]
+
+          "Sanitatis patrocinium est, insanientium turba."
+
+     ["The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise."
+     --St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, vi. 10.]
+
+'Tis hard to resolve a man's judgment against the common opinions: the
+first persuasion, taken from the very subject itself, possesses the
+simple, and from them diffuses itself to the wise, under the authority of
+the number and antiquity of the witnesses.  For my part, what I should
+not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred and one: and I
+do not judge opinions by years.
+
+'Tis not long since one of our princes, in whom the gout had spoiled an
+excellent nature and sprightly disposition, suffered himself to be so far
+persuaded with the report made to him of the marvellous operations of a
+certain priest who by words and gestures cured all sorts of diseases,
+as to go a long journey to seek him out, and by the force of his mere
+imagination, for some hours so persuaded and laid his legs asleep, as to
+obtain that service from them they had long time forgotten.  Had fortune
+heaped up five or six such-like incidents, it had been enough to have
+brought this miracle into nature.  There was afterwards discovered so
+much simplicity and so little art in the author of these performances,
+that he was thought too contemptible to be punished, as would be thought
+of most such things, were they well examined:
+
+               "Miramur ex intervallo fallentia."
+
+     ["We admire after an interval (or at a distance) things that
+     deceive."--Seneca, Ep., 118, 2.]
+
+So does our sight often represent to us strange images at a distance that
+vanish on approaching near:
+
+               "Nunquam ad liquidum fama perducitur."
+
+               ["Report is never fully substantiated."
+               --Quintus Curtius, ix. 2.]
+
+'Tis wonderful from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes such
+famous impressions commonly, proceed.  This it is that obstructs
+information; for whilst we seek out causes and solid and weighty ends,
+worthy of so great a name, we lose the true ones; they escape our sight
+by their littleness.  And, in truth, a very prudent, diligent, and subtle
+inquisition is required in such searches, indifferent, and not
+prepossessed.  To this very hour, all these miracles and strange events
+have concealed themselves from me: I have never seen greater monster or
+miracle in the world than myself: one grows familiar with all strange
+things by time and custom, but the more I frequent and the better I know
+myself, the more does my own deformity astonish me, the less I understand
+myself.
+
+The principal right of advancing and producing such accidents is reserved
+to fortune.  Passing the day before yesterday through a village two
+leagues from my house, I found the place yet warm with a miracle that had
+lately failed of success there, where with first the neighbourhood had
+been several months amused; then the neighbouring provinces began to take
+it up, and to run thither in great companies of all sorts of people.
+A young fellow of the place had one night in sport counterfeited the
+voice of a spirit in his own house, without any other design at present,
+but only for sport; but this having succeeded with him better than he
+expected, to extend his farce with more actors he associated with him a
+stupid silly country girl, and at last there were three of them of the
+same age and understanding, who from domestic, proceeded to public,
+preachings, hiding themselves under the altar of the church, never
+speaking but by night, and forbidding any light to be brought.  From
+words which tended to the conversion of the world, and threats of the day
+of judgment (for these are subjects under the authority and reverence of
+which imposture most securely lurks), they proceeded to visions and
+gesticulations so simple and ridiculous that--nothing could hardly be so
+gross in the sports of little children.  Yet had fortune never so little
+favoured the design, who knows to what height this juggling might have at
+last arrived?  These poor devils are at present in prison, and are like
+shortly to pay for the common folly; and I know not whether some judge
+will not also make them smart for his.  We see clearly into this, which
+is discovered; but in many things of the like nature that exceed our
+knowledge, I am of opinion that we ought to suspend our judgment, whether
+as to rejection or as to reception.
+
+Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the
+abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of
+professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we
+are not able to refute: we speak of all things by precepts and decisions.
+The style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to having
+seen with his own eyes, and what a judge determined with his most certain
+knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking: "it seems to me."  They
+make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me
+as infallible.  I love these words which mollify and moderate the
+temerity of our propositions: "peradventure; in some sort; some; 'tis
+said, I think," and the like: and had I been set to train up children I
+had put this way of answering into their mouths, inquiring and not
+resolving: "What does this mean?  I understand it not; it may be: is it
+true?" so that they should rather have retained the form of pupils at
+threescore years old than to go out doctors, as they do, at ten.  Whoever
+will be cured of ignorance must confess it.
+
+Iris is the daughter of Thaumas;
+
+     ["That is, of Admiration.  She (Iris, the rainbow) is beautiful, and
+     for that reason, because she has a face to be admired, she is said
+     to have been the daughter of Thamus."
+     --Cicero, De Nat. Deor., iii. 20.]
+
+admiration is the foundation of all philosophy, inquisition the progress,
+ignorance the end.  But there is a sort of ignorance, strong and
+generous, that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; an
+ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive
+knowledge itself.  I read in my younger years a trial that Corras,
+
+     [A celebrated Calvinist lawyer, born at Toulouse; 1513, and
+     assassinated there, 4th October 1572.]
+
+a councillor of Toulouse, printed, of a strange incident, of two men who
+presented themselves the one for the other.  I remember (and I hardly
+remember anything else) that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of
+him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful and so far exceeding both
+our knowledge and his own, who was the judge, that I thought it a very
+bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged.  Let us have some form of
+decree that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter" more
+freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who, finding themselves
+perplexed with a cause they could not unravel, ordered the parties to
+appear again after a hundred years.
+
+The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon the
+report of every new author who seeks to give body to their dreams.  To
+accommodate the examples that Holy Writ gives us of such things, most
+certain and irrefragable examples, and to tie them to our modern events,
+seeing that we neither see the causes nor the means, will require another
+sort-of wit than ours.  It, peradventure, only appertains to that sole
+all-potent testimony to tell us.  "This is, and that is, and not that
+other."  God ought to be believed; and certainly with very good reason;
+but not one amongst us for all that who is astonished at his own
+narration (and he must of necessity be astonished if he be not out of his
+wits), whether he employ it about other men's affairs or against himself.
+
+I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable, avoiding
+those ancient reproaches:
+
+          "Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis, quae non intelligunt;
+          --Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur."
+
+     ["Men are most apt to believe what they least understand: and from
+     the acquisitiveness of the human intellect, obscure things are more
+     easily credited." The second sentence is from Tacitus, Hist. 1. 22.]
+
+I see very well that men get angry, and that I am forbidden to doubt upon
+pain of execrable injuries; a new way of persuading!  Thank God, I am not
+to be cuffed into belief.  Let them be angry with those who accuse their
+opinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness, and
+condemn the opposite affirmation equally, if not so imperiously, with
+them.  He who will establish this proposition by authority and huffing
+discovers his reason to be very weak.  For a verbal and scholastic
+altercation let them have as much appearance as their contradictors;
+
+               "Videantur sane, non affirmentur modo;"
+
+     ["They may indeed appear to be; let them not be affirmed (Let them
+     state the probabilities, but not affirm.)"
+     --Cicero, Acad., n. 27.]
+
+but in the real consequence they draw from it these have much the
+advantage.  To kill men, a clear and strong light is required, and our
+life is too real and essential to warrant these supernatural and
+fantastic accidents.
+
+As to drugs and poisons, I throw them out of my count, as being the worst
+sort of homicides: yet even in this, 'tis said, that men are not always
+to rely upon the personal confessions of these people; for they have
+sometimes been known to accuse themselves of the murder of persons who
+have afterwards been found living and well.  In these other extravagant
+accusations, I should be apt to say, that it is sufficient a man, what
+recommendation soever he may have, be believed as to human things; but of
+what is beyond his conception, and of supernatural effect, he ought then
+only to be believed when authorised by a supernatural approbation.  The
+privilege it has pleased Almighty God to give to some of our witnesses,
+ought not to be lightly communicated and made cheap.  I have my ears
+battered with a thousand such tales as these: "Three persons saw him such
+a day in the east three, the next day in the west: at such an hour, in
+such a place, and in such habit"; assuredly I should not believe it
+myself.  How much more natural and likely do I find it that two men
+should lie than that one man in twelve hours' time should fly with the
+wind from east to west?  How much more natural that our understanding
+should be carried from its place by the volubility of our disordered
+minds, than that one of us should be carried by a strange spirit upon a
+broomstaff, flesh and bones as we are, up the shaft of a chimney?  Let
+not us seek illusions from without and unknown, we who are perpetually
+agitated with illusions domestic and our own.  Methinks one is pardonable
+in disbelieving a miracle, at least, at all events where one can elude
+its verification as such, by means not miraculous; and I am of St.
+Augustine's opinion, that, "'tis better to lean towards doubt than
+assurance, in things hard to prove and dangerous to believe."
+
+'Tis now some years ago that I travelled through the territories of a
+sovereign prince, who, in my favour, and to abate my incredulity, did me
+the honour to let me see, in his own presence, and in a private place,
+ten or twelve prisoners of this kind, and amongst others, an old woman,
+a real witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in that
+profession.  I saw both proofs and free confessions, and I know not what
+insensible mark upon the miserable creature: I examined and talked with
+her and the rest as much and as long as I would, and gave the best and
+soundest attention I could, and I am not a man to suffer my judgment to
+be made captive by prepossession.  In the end, and in all conscience, I
+should rather have prescribed them hellebore than hemlock;
+
+     "Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis similis visa;"
+
+     ["The thing was rather to be attributed to madness, than malice."
+     ("The thing seemed to resemble minds possessed rather than guilty.")
+     --Livy, viii, 18.]
+
+justice has its corrections proper for such maladies.  As to the
+oppositions and arguments that worthy men have made to me, both there,
+and often in other places, I have met with none that have convinced me,
+and that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions.
+It is true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon
+experience and fact, I do not go about to untie, neither have they any
+end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot.  After all,
+'tis setting a man's conjectures at a very high price upon them to cause
+a man to be roasted alive.
+
+We are told by several examples, as Praestantius of his father, that
+being more profoundly, asleep than men usually are, he fancied himself
+to be a mare, and that he served the soldiers for a sumpter; and what
+he fancied himself to be, he really proved.  If sorcerers dream so
+materially; if dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with
+effects, still I cannot believe that therefore our will should be
+accountable to justice; which I say as one who am neither judge nor privy
+councillor, and who think myself by many degrees unworthy so to be, but a
+man of the common sort, born and avowed to the obedience of the public
+reason, both in its words and acts.  He who should record my idle talk as
+being to the prejudice of the pettiest law, opinion, or custom of his
+parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more; for, in
+what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but that 'tis what I had then
+in my thought, a tumultuous and wavering thought.  All I say is by way of
+discourse, and nothing by way of advice:
+
+          "Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam;"
+
+     ["Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what
+     I do not know."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]
+
+I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed; and so I
+told a great man, who complained of the tartness and contentiousness of
+my exhortations.  Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, I
+propose to you the other, with all the diligence and care I can, to clear
+your judgment, not to compel it.  God has your hearts in His hands, and
+will furnish you with the means of choice.  I am not so presumptuous even
+as to desire that my opinions should bias you--in a thing of so great
+importance: my fortune has not trained them up to so potent and elevated
+conclusions.  Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also a
+great many opinions, that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I
+had one.  What, if the truest are not always the most commodious to man,
+being of so wild a composition?
+
+Whether it be to the purpose or not, tis no great matter: 'tis a common
+proverb in Italy, that he knows not Venus in her perfect sweetness who
+has never lain with a lame mistress.  Fortune, or some particular
+incident, long ago put this saying into the mouths of the people; and the
+same is said of men as well as of women; for the queen of the Amazons
+answered the Scythian who courted her to love, "Lame men perform best."
+In this feminine republic, to evade the dominion of the males, they
+lamed them in their infancy--arms, legs, and other members that gave them
+advantage over them, and only made use of them in that wherein we, in
+these parts of the world, make use of them.  I should have been apt to
+think; that the shuffling pace of the lame mistress added some new
+pleasure to the work, and some extraordinary titillation to those who
+were at the sport; but I have lately learnt that ancient philosophy has
+itself determined it, which says that the legs and thighs of lame women,
+not receiving, by reason of their imperfection, their due aliment, it
+falls out that the genital parts above are fuller and better supplied and
+much more vigorous; or else that this defect, hindering exercise, they
+who are troubled with it less dissipate their strength, and come more
+entire to the sports of Venus; which also is the reason why the Greeks
+decried the women-weavers as being more hot than other women by reason of
+their sedentary trade, which they carry on without any great exercise of
+the body.  What is it we may not reason of at this rate?  I might also
+say of these, that the jaggling about whilst so sitting at work, rouses
+and provokes their desire, as the swinging and jolting of coaches does
+that of our ladies.
+
+Do not these examples serve to make good what I said at first: that our
+reasons often anticipate the effect, and have so infinite an extent of
+jurisdiction that they judge and exercise themselves even on inanity
+itself and non-existency?  Besides the flexibility of our invention to
+forge reasons of all sorts of dreams, our imagination is equally facile
+to receive impressions of falsity by very frivolous appearances; for, by
+the sole authority of the ancient and common use of this proverb, I have
+formerly made myself believe that I have had more pleasure in a woman by
+reason she was not straight, and accordingly reckoned that deformity
+amongst her graces.
+
+Torquato Tasso, in the comparison he makes betwixt France and Italy,
+says that he has observed that our legs are generally smaller than those
+of the Italian gentlemen, and attributes the cause of it to our being
+continually on horseback; which is the very same cause from which
+Suetonius draws a quite opposite conclusion; for he says, on the
+contrary, that Germanicus had made his legs bigger by the continuation of
+the same exercise.
+
+Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding; it is the shoe of
+Theramenes, fit for all feet.  It is double and diverse, and the matters
+are double and diverse too.  "Give me a drachm of silver," said a Cynic
+philosopher to Antigonus.  "That is not a present befitting a king,"
+replied he.  "Give me then a talent," said the other.  "That is not a
+present befitting a Cynic."
+
+              "Seu plures calor ille vias et caeca relaxat
+               Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in herbas
+               Seu durat magis, et venas astringit hiantes;
+               Ne tenues pluviae, rapidive potentia colic
+               Acrior, aut Boreae penetrabile frigus adurat."
+
+     ["Whether the heat opens more passages and secret pores through
+     which the sap may be derived into the new-born herbs; or whether it
+     rather hardens and binds the gaping veins that the small showers and
+     keen influence of the violent sun or penetrating cold of Boreas may
+     not hurt them."--Virg., Georg., i. 89.]
+
+                    "Ogni medaglia ha il suo rovescio."
+
+          ["Every medal has its reverse."--Italian Proverb.]
+
+This is the reason why Clitomachus said of old that Carneades had outdone
+the labours of Hercules, in having eradicated consent from men, that is
+to say, opinion and the courage of judging.  This so vigorous fancy of
+Carneades sprang, in my opinion, anciently from the impudence of those
+who made profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit.
+AEsop was set to sale with two other slaves; the buyer asked the first of
+these what he could do; he, to enhance his own value, promised mountains
+and marvels, saying he could do this and that, and I know not what; the
+second said as much of himself or more: when it came to AEsop's turn, and
+that he was also asked what he could do; "Nothing," said he, "for these
+two have taken up all before me; they know everything."  So has it
+happened in the school of philosophy: the pride of those who attributed
+the capacity of all things to the human mind created in others, out of
+despite and emulation, this opinion, that it is capable of nothing: the
+one maintain the same extreme in ignorance that the others do in
+knowledge; to make it undeniably manifest that man is immoderate
+throughout, and can never stop but of necessity and the want of ability
+to proceed further.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+OF PHYSIOGNOMY
+
+Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and trust; and
+'tis not amiss; we could not choose worse than by ourselves in so weak an
+age.  That image of Socrates' discourses, which his friends have
+transmitted to us, we approve upon no other account than a reverence to
+public sanction: 'tis not according to our own knowledge; they are not
+after our way; if anything of the kind should spring up now, few men
+would value them.  We discern no graces that are not pointed and puffed
+out and inflated by art; such as glide on in their own purity and
+simplicity easily escape so gross a sight as ours; they have a delicate
+and concealed beauty, such as requires a clear and purified sight to
+discover its secret light.  Is not simplicity, as we take it, cousin-
+german to folly and a quality of reproach?  Socrates makes his soul move
+a natural and common motion: a peasant said this; a woman said that; he
+has never anybody in his mouth but carters, joiners, cobblers, and
+masons; his are inductions and similitudes drawn from the most common and
+known actions of men; every one understands him.  We should never have
+recognised the nobility and splendour of his admirable conceptions under
+so mean a form; we, who think all things low and flat that are not
+elevated, by learned doctrine, and who discern no riches but in pomp and
+show.  This world of ours is only formed for ostentation: men are only
+puffed up with wind, and are bandied to and fro like tennis-balls.  He
+proposed to himself no vain and idle fancies; his design was to furnish
+us with precepts and things that more really and fitly serve to the use
+of life;
+
+                       "Servare modum, finemque tenere,
+                    Naturamque sequi."
+
+               ["To keep a just mean, to observe a just limit,
+               and to follow Nature."--Lucan, ii. 381.]
+
+He was also always one and the same, and raised himself, not by starts
+but by complexion, to the highest pitch of vigour; or, to say better,
+mounted not at all, but rather brought down, reduced, and subjected all
+asperities and difficulties to his original and natural condition; for in
+Cato 'tis most manifest that 'tis a procedure extended far beyond the
+common ways of men: in the brave exploits of his life, and in his death,
+we find him always mounted upon the great horse; whereas the other ever
+creeps upon the ground, and with a gentle and ordinary pace, treats of
+the most useful matters, and bears himself, both at his death and in the
+rudest difficulties that could present themselves, in the ordinary way of
+human life.
+
+It has fallen out well that the man most worthy to be known and to be
+presented to the world for example should be he of whom we have the most
+certain knowledge; he has been pried into by the most clear-sighted men
+that ever were; the testimonies we have of him are admirable both in
+fidelity and fulness.  'Tis a great thing that he was able so to order
+the pure imaginations of a child, that, without altering or wresting
+them, he thereby produced the most beautiful effects of our soul: he
+presents it neither elevated nor rich; he only represents it sound, but
+assuredly with a brisk and full health.  By these common and natural
+springs, by these ordinary and popular fancies, without being moved or
+put out, he set up not only the most regular, but the most high and
+vigorous beliefs, actions, and manners that ever were.  'Tis he who
+brought again from heaven, where she lost her time, human wisdom, to
+restore her to man with whom her most just and greatest business lies.
+See him plead before his judges; observe by what reasons he rouses his
+courage to the hazards of war; with what arguments he fortifies his
+patience against calumny, tyranny, death, and the perverseness of his
+wife: you will find nothing in all this borrowed from arts and sciences:
+the simplest may there discover their own means and strength; 'tis not
+possible more to retire or to creep more low.  He has done human nature a
+great kindness in showing it how much it can do of itself.
+
+We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow
+and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of
+our own.  Man can in nothing fix himself to his actual necessity: of
+pleasure, wealth, and power, he grasps at more than he can hold; his
+greediness is incapable of moderation.  And I find that in curiosity of
+knowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, and
+more than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge to the full
+of its matter:
+
+     "Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus."
+
+     ["We carry intemperance into the study of literature, as well as
+     into everything else."--Seneca, Ep., 106.]
+
+And Tacitus had reason to commend the mother of Agricola for having
+restrained her son in his too violent appetite for learning.
+
+Tis a good, if duly considered, which has in it, as the other goods of
+men have, a great deal of vanity and weakness, proper and natural to
+itself, and that costs very dear.  Its acquisition is far more hazardous
+than that of all other meat or drink; for, as to other things, what we
+have bought we carry home in some vessel, and there have full leisure to
+examine our purchase, how much we shall eat or drink of it, and when: but
+sciences we can, at the very first, stow into no other vessel than the
+soul; we swallow them in buying, and return from the market, either
+already infected or amended: there are some that only burden and
+overcharge the stomach, instead of nourishing; and, moreover, some that,
+under colour of curing, poison us.  I have been pleased, in places where
+I have been, to see men in devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity,
+poverty, and penitence: 'tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites, to
+blunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and to
+deprive the soul of this voluptuous complacency that tickles us with the
+opinion of knowledge: and 'tis plenarily to accomplish the vow of
+poverty, to add unto it that of the mind.  We need little doctrine to
+live at our ease; and Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the way
+how to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency which
+exceeds the natural is well-nigh superfluous and vain: 'tis much if it
+does not rather burden and cumber us than do us good:
+
+               "Paucis opus est literis ad mentem bonam:"
+
+          ["Little learning is needed to form a sound mind."
+          --Seneca, Ep., 106.]
+
+'tis a feverish excess of the mind; a tempestuous and unquiet instrument.
+Do but recollect yourself, and you will find in yourself natural
+arguments against death, true, and the fittest to serve you in time of
+necessity: 'tis they that make a peasant, and whole nations, die with as
+much firmness as a philosopher.  Should I have died less cheerfully
+before I had read Cicero's Tusculan Quastiones?  I believe not; and when
+I find myself at the best, I perceive that my tongue is enriched indeed,
+but my courage little or nothing elevated by them; that is just as nature
+framed it at first, and defends itself against the conflict only after a
+natural and ordinary way.  Books have not so much served me for
+instruction as exercise.  What if knowledge, trying to arm us with new
+defences against natural inconveniences, has more imprinted in our
+fancies their weight and greatness, than her reasons and subtleties to
+secure us from them?  They are subtleties, indeed, with which she often
+alarms us to little purpose.  Do but observe how many slight and
+frivolous, and, if nearly examined, incorporeal arguments, the closest
+and wisest authors scatter about one good one: they are but verbal quirks
+and fallacies to amuse and gull us: but forasmuch as it may be with some
+profit, I will sift them no further; many of that sort are here and there
+dispersed up and down this book, either borrowed or by imitation.
+Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which is
+only a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, or
+that good which is only fine:
+
+               "Quae magis gustata quam potata, delectant,"
+
+          ["Which more delight in the tasting than in being drunk."
+          --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 5.]
+
+everything that pleases does not nourish:
+
+               "Ubi non ingenii, sed animi negotium agitur."
+
+     ["Where the question is not about the wit, but about the soul."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 75.]
+
+To see the trouble that Seneca gives himself to fortify himself against
+death; to see him so sweat and pant to harden and encourage himself, and
+bustle so long upon this perch, would have lessened his reputation with
+me, had he not very bravely held himself at the last.  His so ardent and
+frequent agitations discover that he was in himself impetuous and
+passionate,
+
+          "Magnus animus remissius loquitur, et securius .  .  .
+          non est alius ingenio, alius ammo color;"
+
+     ["A great courage speaks more calmly and more securely.  There is
+     not one complexion for the wit and another for the mind."
+     --Seneca, Ep. 114, 115]
+
+he must be convinced at his own expense; and he in some sort discovers
+that he was hard pressed by his enemy.  Plutarch's way, by how much it is
+more disdainful and farther stretched, is, in my opinion, so much more
+manly and persuasive: and I am apt to believe that his soul had more
+assured and more regular motions.  The one more sharp, pricks and makes
+us start, and more touches the soul; the other more constantly solid,
+forms, establishes, and supports us, and more touches the understanding.
+That ravishes the judgment, this wins it.  I have likewise seen other
+writings, yet more reverenced than these, that in the representation of
+the conflict they maintain against the temptations of the flesh, paint
+them, so sharp, so powerful and invincible, that we ourselves, who are of
+the common herd, are as much to wonder at the strangeness and unknown
+force of their temptation, as at the resisting it.
+
+To what end do we so arm ourselves with this harness of science?  Let us
+look down upon the poor people that we see scattered upon the face of the
+earth, prone and intent upon their business, that neither know Aristotle
+nor Cato, example nor precept; from these nature every day extracts
+effects of constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so
+inquisitively study in the schools: how many do I ordinarily see who
+slight poverty?  how many who desire to die, or who die without alarm or
+regret?  He who is now digging in my garden, has this morning buried his
+father or his son.  The very names by which they call diseases sweeten
+and mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more than
+a cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as
+they gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great
+and grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never
+keep their beds but to die:
+
+          "Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscuram et solertem
+          scientiam versa est."
+
+     ["That overt and simple virtue is converted into an obscure and
+     subtle science."--Seneca, Ep., 95.]
+
+I was writing this about the time when a great load of our intestine
+troubles for several months lay with all its weight upon me; I had the
+enemy at my door on one side, and the freebooters, worse enemies, on the
+other,
+
+               "Non armis, sed vitiis, certatur;"
+
+     ["The fight is not with arms, but with vices."--Seneca, Ep. 95.]
+
+and underwent all sorts of military injuries at once:
+
+         "Hostis adest dextra laevaque a parte timendus.
+          Vicinoque malo terret utrumque latus."
+
+     ["Right and left a formidable enemy is to be feared, and threatens
+     me on both sides with impending danger."--Ovid, De Ponto, i. 3, 57.]
+
+A monstrous war!  Other wars are bent against strangers, this against
+itself, destroying itself with its own poison.  It is of so malignant and
+ruinous a nature, that it ruins itself with the rest; and with its own
+rage mangles and tears itself to pieces.  We more often see it dissolve
+of itself than through scarcity of any necessary thing or by force of the
+enemy.  All discipline evades it; it comes to compose sedition, and is
+itself full of it; would chastise disobedience, and itself is the
+example; and, employed for the defence of the laws, rebels against its
+own.  What a condition are we in!  Our physic makes us sick!
+
+                    "Nostre mal s'empoisonne
+                    Du secours qu'on luy donne."
+
+               "Exuperat magis, aegrescitque medendo."
+
+     ["Our disease is poisoned with its very remedies"--AEnead, xii. 46.]
+
+               "Omnia fanda, nefanda, malo permista furore,
+               Justificam nobis mentem avertere deorum."
+
+     ["Right and wrong, all shuffled together in this wicked fury, have
+     deprived us of the gods' protection."
+     --Catullus, De Nuptiis Pelei et Thetidos, V. 405.]
+
+In the beginning of these popular maladies, one may distinguish the sound
+from the sick; but when they come to continue, as ours have done, the
+whole body is then infected from head to foot; no part is free from
+corruption, for there is no air that men so greedily draw in that
+diffuses itself so soon and that penetrates so deep as that of licence.
+Our armies only subsist and are kept together by the cement of
+foreigners; for of Frenchmen there is now no constant and regular army to
+be made.  What a shame it is! there is no longer any discipline but what
+we see in the mercenary soldiers.  As to ourselves, our conduct is at
+discretion, and that not of the chief, but every one at his own.  The
+general has a harder game to play within than he has without; he it is
+who has to follow, to court the soldiers, to give way to them; he alone
+has to obey: all the rest if disolution and free licence.  It pleases me
+to observe how much pusillanimity and cowardice there is in ambition; by
+how abject and servile ways it must arrive at its end; but it displeases
+me to see good and generous natures, and that are capable of justice,
+every day corrupted in the management and command of this confusion.
+Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation.  We had ill-
+formed souls enough, without spoiling those that were generous and good;
+so that, if we hold on, there will scarcely remain any with whom to
+intrust the health of this State of ours, in case fortune chance to
+restore it:
+
+              "Hunc saltem everso juvenem succurrere seclo,
+               Ne prohibete."
+
+     ["Forbid not, at least, that this young man repair this ruined age."
+     --Virgil, Georg., i.  500.  Montaigne probably refers to Henry, king
+     of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV.]
+
+What has become of the old precept, "That soldiers ought more to fear
+their chief than the enemy"?--[Valerius Maximus, Ext. 2.]--and of that
+wonderful example, that an orchard being enclosed within the precincts of
+a camp of the Roman army, was seen at their dislodgment the next day in
+the same condition, not an apple, though ripe and delicious, being pulled
+off, but all left to the possessor?  I could wish that our youth, instead
+of the time they spend in less fruitful travels and less honourable
+employments, would bestow one half of that time in being an eye-witness
+of naval exploits, under some good captain of Rhodes, and the other half
+in observing the discipline of the Turkish armies; for they have many
+differences and advantages over ours; one of these is, that our soldiers
+become more licentious in expeditions, theirs more temperate and
+circumspect; for the thefts and insolencies committed upon the common
+people, which are only punished with a cudgel in peace, are capital in
+war; for an egg taken by a Turkish soldier without paying for it, fifty
+blows with a stick is the fixed rate; for anything else, of what sort or
+how trivial soever, not necessary to nourishment, they are presently
+impaled or beheaded without mercy.  I am astonished, in the history of
+Selim, the most cruel conqueror that ever was, to see that when he
+subdued Egypt, the beautiful gardens about Damascus being all open, and
+in a conquered land, and his army encamped upon the very place, should be
+left untouched by the hands of the soldiers, by reason they had not
+received the signal of pillage.
+
+But is there any disease in a government that it is worth while to physic
+with such a mortal drug?--[i.e.  as civil war.]--No, said Favonius, not
+even the tyrannical usurpation of a Commonwealth.  Plato, likewise, will
+not consent that a man should violate the peace of his country in order
+to cure it, and by no means approves of a reformation that disturbs and
+hazards all, and that is to be purchased at the price of the citizens'
+blood and ruin; determining it to be the duty of a good patriot in such a
+case to let it alone, and only to pray to God for his extraordinary
+assistance: and he seems to be angry with his great friend Dion, for
+having proceeded somewhat after another manner.  I was a Platonist in
+this point before I knew there had ever been such a man as Plato in the
+world.  And if this person ought absolutely to be rejected from our
+society (he who by the sincerity of his conscience merited from the
+divine favour to penetrate so far into the Christian light, through the
+universal darkness wherein the world was involved in his time), I do not
+think it becomes us to suffer ourselves to be instructed by a heathen,
+how great an impiety it is not to expect from God any relief simply his
+own and without our co-operation.  I often doubt, whether amongst so many
+men as meddle in such affairs, there is not to be found some one of so
+weak understanding as to have been really persuaded that he went towards
+reformation by the worst of deformations; and advanced towards salvation
+by the most express causes that we have of most assured damnation; that
+by overthrowing government, the magistracy, and the laws, in whose
+protection God has placed him, by dismembering his good mother, and
+giving her limbs to be mangled by her old enemies, filling fraternal
+hearts with parricidal hatreds, calling devils and furies to his aid, he
+can assist the most holy sweetness and justice of the divine law.
+Ambition, avarice, cruelty, and revenge have not sufficient natural
+impetuosity of their own; let us bait them with the glorious titles of
+justice and devotion.  There cannot a worse state of things be imagined
+than where wickedness comes to be legitimate, and assumes, with the
+magistrates' permission, the cloak of virtue:
+
+          "Nihil in speciem fallacius, quam prava religio,
+          ubi deorum numen prxtenditur sceleribus."
+
+     ["Nothing has a more deceiving face than false religion, where the
+     divinity of the gods is obscured by crimes."--Livy, xxxix. 16.]
+
+The extremest sort of injustice, according to Plato,  is where that which
+is unjust should be reputed for just.
+
+The common people then suffered very much, and not present damage only:
+
+                              "Undique totis
+                    Usque adeo turbatur agris,"
+
+          ["Such great disorders overtake our fields on every side."
+          --Virgil, Eclog., i. II.]
+
+but future too; the living were to suffer, and so were they who were yet
+unborn; they stript them, and consequently myself, even of hope, taking
+from them all they had laid up in store to live on for many years:
+
+         "Quae nequeunt secum ferre aut abducere, perdunt;
+          Et cremat insontes turba scelesta casas .  .  .
+          Muris nulla fides, squalent populatibus agri."
+
+     ["What they cannot bear away, they spoil; and the wicked mob burn
+     harmless houses; walls cannot secure their masters, and the fields
+     are squalid with devastation."
+     --Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 35; Claudianus, In Eutyop., i. 244.]
+
+Besides this shock, I suffered others: I underwent the inconveniences
+that moderation brings along with it in such a disease: I was robbed on
+all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, and to the Guelph a
+Ghibelline; one of my poets expresses this very well, but I know not
+where it is.
+
+     ["So Tories called me Whig, and Whigs a Tory."--Pope, after Horace.]
+
+The situation of my house, and my friendliness with my neighbours,
+presented me with one face; my life and my actions with another.  They
+did not lay formal accusations to my charge, for they had no foundation
+for so doing; I never hide my head from the laws, and whoever would have
+questioned me, would have done himself a greater prejudice than me; they
+were only mute suspicions that were whispered about, which never want
+appearance in so confused a mixture, no more than envious or idle heads.
+I commonly myself lend a hand to injurious presumptions that fortune
+scatters abroad against me, by a way I have ever had of evading to
+justify, excuse, or explain myself; conceiving that it were to compromise
+my conscience to plead in its behalf:
+
+               "Perspicuitas enim argumentatione elevatur;"
+
+     ["For perspicuity is lessened by argument."
+     ("The clearness of a cause is clouded by argumentation.")
+     --Cicero, De Nat.  Deor., iii.  4.]
+
+and, as if every one saw as clearly into me as I do myself, instead of
+retiring from an accusation, I step up to meet it, and rather give it
+some kind of colour by an ironical and scoffing confession, if I do not
+sit totally mute, as of a thing not worth my answer.  But such as look
+upon this kind of behaviour of mine as too haughty a confidence, have as
+little kindness for me as they who interpret the weakness of an
+indefensible cause; namely, the great folks, towards whom want of
+submission is the great fault, harsh towards all justice that knows and
+feels itself, and is not submissive humble, and suppliant; I have often
+knocked my head against this pillar.  So it is that at what then befell
+me, an ambitious man would have hanged himself, and a covetous man would
+have done the same.  I have no manner of care of getting;
+
+         "Si mihi, quod nunc est, etiam minus; et mihi vivam
+          Quod superest aevi, si quid superesse volent dii:"
+
+     ["If I may have what I now own, or even less, and may live for
+     myself what of life remains, if the gods grant me remaining years."
+     --Horace, Ep., i. 18, 107.]
+
+but the losses that befall me by the injury of others, whether by theft
+or violence, go almost as near my heart as they would to that of the most
+avaricious man.  The offence troubles me, without comparison, more than
+the loss.  A thousand several sorts of mischiefs fell upon me in the neck
+of one another; I could more cheerfully have borne them all at once.
+
+I was already considering to whom, amongst my friends, I might commit a
+necessitous and discredited old age; and having turned my eyes quite
+round, I found myself bare.  To let one's self fall plump down, and from
+so great a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and
+fortunate friendship: these are very rare, if there be any.  At last, I
+saw that it was safest for me to trust to myself in my necessity; and if
+it should so fall out, that I should be but upon cold terms in Fortune's
+favour, I should so much the more pressingly recommend me to my own, and
+attach myself and look to myself all the more closely.  Men on all
+occasions throw themselves upon foreign assistance to spare their own,
+which is alone certain and sufficient to him who knows how therewith to
+arm himself.  Every one runs elsewhere, and to the future, forasmuch as
+no one is arrived at himself.  And I was satisfied that they were
+profitable inconveniences; forasmuch as, first, ill scholars are to be
+admonished with the rod, when reason will not do, as a crooked piece of
+wood is by fire and straining reduced to straightness.  I have a great
+while preached to myself to stick close to my own concerns, and separate
+myself from the affairs of others; yet I am still turning my eyes aside.
+A bow, a favourable word, a kind look from a great person tempts me; of
+which God knows if there is scarcity in these days, and what they
+signify.  I, moreover, without wrinkling my forehead, hearken to the
+persuasions offered me, to draw me into the marketplace, and so gently
+refuse, as if I were half willing to be overcome.  Now for so indocile a
+spirit blows are required; this vessel which thus chops and cleaves, and
+is ready to fall one piece from another, must have the hoops forced down
+with good sound strokes of a mallet.  Secondly, that this accident served
+me for exercise to prepare me for worse, if I, who both by the benefit of
+fortune, and by the condition of my manners, hoped to be among the last,
+should happen to be one of the first assailed by this storm; instructing
+myself betimes to constrain my life, and fit it for a new state.  The
+true liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself:
+
+          "Potentissimus est, qui se habet in potestate."
+
+     ["He is most potent who is master of himself."--Seneca, Ep., 94.]
+
+In an ordinary and quiet time, a man prepares himself for moderate and
+common accidents; but in the confusion wherein we have been for these
+thirty years, every Frenchman, whether personal or in general, sees
+himself every hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his
+fortune: by so much the more ought he to have his courage supplied with
+the strongest and most vigorous provisions.  Let us thank fortune, that
+has not made us live in an effeminate, idle, and languishing age; some
+who could never have been so by other means will be made famous by their
+misfortunes.  As I seldom read in histories the confusions of other
+states without regret that I was not present, the better to consider
+them, so does my curiosity make me in some sort please myself in seeing
+with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its form and
+symptoms; and since I cannot hinder it, I am content to have been
+destined to be present therein, and thereby to instruct myself.  So do
+we eagerly covet to see, though but in shadow and the fables of theatres,
+the pomp of tragic representations of human fortune; 'tis not without
+compassion at what we hear, but we please ourselves in rousing our
+displeasure, by the rarity of these pitiable events.  Nothing tickles
+that does not pinch.  And good historians skip over, as stagnant water
+and dead sea, calm narrations, to return to seditions, to wars, to which
+they know that we invite them.
+
+I question whether I can decently confess with how small a sacrifice of
+its repose and tranquillity I have passed over above the one half of my
+life amid the ruin of my country.  I lend myself my patience somewhat too
+cheap, in accidents that do not privately assail me; and do not so much
+regard what they take from me, as what remains safe, both within and
+without.  There is comfort in evading, one while this, another while
+that, of the evils that are levelled at ourselves too, at last, but at
+present hurt others only about us; as also, that in matters of public
+interest, the more universally my affection is dispersed, the weaker it
+is: to which may be added, that it is half true:
+
+               "Tantum ex publicis malis sentimus,
+               quantum ad privatas res pertinet;"
+
+     ["We are only so far sensible of public evils as they respect our
+     private affairs."--Livy, xxx. 44.]
+
+and that the health from which we fell was so ill, that itself relieves
+the regret we should have for it.  It was health, but only in comparison
+with the sickness that has succeeded it: we are not fallen from any great
+height; the corruption and brigandage which are in dignity and office
+seem to me the least supportable: we are less injuriously rifled in a
+wood than in a place of security.  It was an universal juncture of
+particular members, each corrupted by emulation of the others, and most
+of them with old ulcers, that neither received nor required any cure.
+This convulsion, therefore, really more animated than pressed me, by the
+assistance of my conscience, which was not only at peace within itself,
+but elevated, and I did not find any reason to complain of myself.  Also,
+as God never sends evils, any more than goods, absolutely pure to men,
+my health continued at that time more than usually good; and, as I can
+do nothing without it, there are few things that I cannot do with it.
+It afforded me means to rouse up all my faculties, and to lay my hand
+before the wound that would else, peradventure, have gone farther; and I
+experienced, in my patience, that I had some stand against fortune, and
+that it must be a great shock could throw me out of the saddle.  I do not
+say this to provoke her to give me a more vigorous charge: I am her
+humble servant, and submit to her pleasure: let her be content, in God's
+name.  Am I sensible of her assaults?  Yes, I am. But, as those who are
+possessed and oppressed with sorrow sometimes suffer themselves,
+nevertheless, by intervals to taste a little pleasure, and are sometimes
+surprised with a smile, so have I so much power over myself, as to make
+my ordinary condition quiet and free from disturbing thoughts; yet I
+suffer myself, withal, by fits to be surprised with the stings of those
+unpleasing imaginations that assault me, whilst I am arming myself to
+drive them away, or at least to wrestle with them.
+
+But behold another aggravation of the evil which befell me in the tail of
+the rest: both without doors and within I was assailed with a most
+violent plague, violent in comparison of all others; for as sound bodies
+are subject to more grievous maladies, forasmuch as they, are not to be
+forced but by such, so my very healthful air, where no contagion, however
+near, in the memory of man, ever took footing, coming to be corrupted,
+produced strange effects:
+
+         "Mista senum et juvenum densentur funera; nullum
+          Saeva caput Proserpina fugit;"
+
+     ["Old and young die in mixed heaps.  Cruel Proserpine forbears
+     none."--Horace, Od., i. 28, 19.]
+
+I had to suffer this pleasant condition, that the sight of my house, was
+frightful to me; whatever I had there was without guard, and left to the
+mercy of any one who wished to take it.  I myself, who am so hospitable,
+was in very great distress for a retreat for my family; a distracted
+family, frightful both to its friends and itself, and filling every place
+with horror where it attempted to settle, having to shift its abode so
+soon as any one's finger began but to ache; all diseases are then
+concluded to be the plague, and people do not stay to examine whether
+they are so or no.  And the mischief on't is that, according to the rules
+of art, in every danger that a man comes near, he must undergo a
+quarantine in fear of the evil, your imagination all the while tormenting
+you at pleasure, and turning even your health itself into a fever.  Yet
+all this would have much less affected me had I not withal been compelled
+to be sensible of the sufferings of others, and miserably to serve six
+months together for a guide to this caravan; for I carry my own antidotes
+within myself, which are resolution and patience.  Apprehension, which is
+particularly feared in this disease, does not much trouble me; and, if
+being alone, I should have been taken, it had been a less cheerless and
+more remote departure; 'tis a kind of death that I do not think of the
+worst sort; 'tis commonly short, stupid, without pain, and consoled by
+the public condition; without ceremony, without mourning, without a
+crowd.  But as to the people about us, the hundredth part of them could
+not be saved:
+
+              "Videas desertaque regna
+               Pastorum, et longe saltus lateque vacantes."
+
+     ["You would see shepherds' haunts deserted, and far and wide empty
+     pastures."--Virgil, Georg., iii. 476.]
+
+In this place my largest revenue is manual: what an hundred men ploughed
+for me, lay a long time fallow.
+
+But then, what example of resolution did we not see in the simplicity of
+all this people?  Generally, every one renounced all care of life; the
+grapes, the principal wealth of the country, remained untouched upon the
+vines; every man indifferently prepared for and expected death, either
+to-night or to-morrow, with a countenance and voice so far from fear,
+as if they had come to terms with this necessity, and that it was an
+universal and inevitable sentence.  'Tis always such; but how slender
+hold has the resolution of dying?  The distance and difference of a few
+hours, the sole consideration of company, renders its apprehension
+various to us.  Observe these people; by reason that they die in the same
+month, children, young people, and old, they are no longer astonished at
+it; they no longer lament.  I saw some who were afraid of staying behind,
+as in a dreadful solitude; and I did not commonly observe any other
+solicitude amongst them than that of sepulture; they were troubled to see
+the dead bodies scattered about the fields, at the mercy of the wild
+beasts that presently flocked thither.  How differing are the fancies of
+men; the Neorites, a nation subjected by Alexander, threw the bodies of
+their dead into the deepest and less frequented part of their woods, on
+purpose to have them there eaten; the only sepulture reputed happy
+amongst them.  Some, who were yet in health, dug their own graves; others
+laid themselves down in them whilst alive; and a labourer of mine, in
+dying, with his hands and feet pulled the earth upon him.  Was not this
+to nestle and settle himself to sleep at greater ease?  A bravery in some
+sort like that of the Roman soldiers who, after the battle of Cannae,
+were found with their heads thrust into holes in the earth, which they
+had made, and in suffocating themselves, with their own hands pulled the
+earth about their ears.  In short, a whole province was, by the common
+usage, at once brought to a course nothing inferior in undauntedness to
+the most studied and premeditated resolution.
+
+Most of the instructions of science to encourage us herein have in them
+more of show than of force, and more of ornament than of effect.  We have
+abandoned Nature, and will teach her what to do; teach her who so happily
+and so securely conducted us; and in the meantime, from the footsteps of
+her instruction, and that little which, by the benefit of ignorance,
+remains of her image imprinted in the life of this rustic rout of
+unpolished men, science is constrained every day to borrow patterns for
+her disciples of constancy, tranquillity, and innocence.  It is pretty to
+see that these persons, full of so much fine knowledge, have to imitate
+this foolish simplicity, and this in the primary actions of virtue; and
+that our wisdom must learn even from beasts the most profitable
+instructions in the greatest and most necessary concerns of our life;
+as, how we are to live and die, manage our property, love and bring up
+our children, maintain justice: a singular testimony of human infirmity;
+and that this reason we so handle at our pleasure, finding evermore some
+diversity and novelty, leaves in us no apparent trace of nature.  Men
+have done with nature as perfumers with oils; they have sophisticated her
+with so many argumentations and far-fetched discourses, that she is
+become variable and particular to each, and has lost her proper,
+constant, and universal face; so that we must seek testimony from beasts,
+not subject to favour, corruption, or diversity of opinions.  It is,
+indeed, true that even these themselves do not always go exactly in the
+path of nature, but wherein they swerve, it is so little that you may
+always see the track; as horses that are led make many bounds and
+curvets, but 'tis always at the length of the halter, and still follow
+him that leads them; and as a young hawk takes its flight, but still
+under the restraint of its tether:
+
+          "Exsilia, torments, bells, morbos, naufragia meditare .  .  .
+          ut nullo sis malo tiro."
+
+     ["To meditate upon banishments, tortures, wars, diseases, and
+     shipwrecks, that thou mayest not be a novice in any disaster."
+     --Seneca, Ep., 91, 107.]
+
+What good will this curiosity do us, to anticipate all the inconveniences
+of human nature, and to prepare ourselves with so much trouble against
+things which, peradventure, will never befall us?
+
+          "Parem passis tristitiam facit, pati posse;"
+
+          ["It troubles men as much that they may possibly suffer,
+          as if they really did suffer."--Idem, ibid., 74.]
+
+not only the blow, but the wind of the blow strikes us: or, like
+phrenetic people--for certainly it is a phrensy--to go immediately and
+whip yourself, because it may so fall out that Fortune may one day make
+you undergo it; and to put on your furred gown at Midsummer, because you
+will stand in need of it at Christmas!  Throw yourselves, say they, into
+the experience of all the evils, the most extreme evils that can possibly
+befall you, and so be assured of them.  On the contrary, the most easy
+and most natural way would be to banish even the thoughts of them; they
+will not come soon enough; their true being will not continue with us
+long enough; our mind must lengthen and extend them; we must incorporate
+them in us beforehand, and there entertain them, as if they would not
+otherwise sufficiently press upon our senses.  "We shall find them heavy
+enough when they come," says one of our masters, of none of the tender
+sects, but of the most severe; "in the meantime, favour thyself; believe
+what pleases thee best; what good will it do thee to anticipate thy ill
+fortune, to lose the present for fear of the future: and to make thyself
+miserable now, because thou art to be so in time?"  These are his words.
+Science, indeed, does us one good office in instructing us exactly as to
+the dimensions of evils,
+
+                    "Curis acuens mortalia corda!"
+
+     ["Probing mortal hearts with cares."--Virgil, Georg., i. 23.]
+
+'Twere pity that any part of their greatness should escape our sense and
+knowledge.
+
+'Tis certain that for the most part the preparation for death has
+administered more torment than the thing itself.  It was of old truly
+said, and by a very judicious author:
+
+          "Minus afficit sensus fatigatio, quam cogitatio."
+
+     ["Suffering itself less afflicts the senses than the apprehension
+     of suffering."--Quintilian, Inst. Orat., i. 12.]
+
+The sentiment of present death sometimes, of itself, animates us with a
+prompt resolution not to avoid a thing that is utterly inevitable: many
+gladiators have been seen in the olden time, who, after having fought
+timorously and ill, have courageously entertained death, offering their
+throats to the enemies' sword and bidding them despatch.  The sight of
+future death requires a courage that is slow, and consequently hard to be
+got.  If you know not how to die, never trouble yourself; nature will, at
+the time, fully and sufficiently instruct you: she will exactly do that
+business for you; take you no care--
+
+              "Incertam frustra, mortales, funeris horam,
+               Quaeritis et qua sit mors aditura via....
+               Poena minor certam subito perferre ruinam;
+               Quod timeas, gravius sustinuisse diu."
+
+     ["Mortals, in vain you seek to know the uncertain hour of death,
+     and by what channel it will come upon you."--Propertius, ii. 27, 1.
+     "'Tis less painful to undergo sudden destruction; 'tis hard to bear
+     that which you long fear."--Incert. Auct.]
+
+We trouble life by the care of death, and death by the care of life: the
+one torments, the other frights us.  It is not against death that we
+prepare, that is too momentary a thing; a quarter of an hour's suffering,
+without consequence and without damage, does not deserve especial
+precepts: to say the truth, we prepare ourselves against the preparations
+of death.  Philosophy ordains that we should always have death before our
+eyes, to see and consider it before the time, and then gives us rules and
+precautions to provide that this foresight and thought do us no harm;
+just so do physicians, who throw us into diseases, to the end they may
+have whereon to employ their drugs and their art.  If we have not known
+how to live, 'tis injustice to teach us how to die, and make the end
+difform from all the rest; if we have known how to live firmly and
+quietly, we shall know how to die so too.  They may boast as much as they
+please:
+
+          "Tota philosophorum vita commentatio mortis est;"
+
+     ["The whole life of philosophers is the meditation of death."
+     --Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., ii. 30.]
+
+but I fancy that, though it be the end, it is not the aim of life; 'tis
+its end, its extremity, but not, nevertheless, its object; it ought
+itself to be its own aim and design; its true study is to order, govern,
+and suffer itself.  In the number of several other offices, that the
+general and principal chapter of Knowing how to live comprehends, is this
+article of Knowing how to die; and, did not our fears give it weight,
+one of the lightest too.
+
+To judge of them by utility and by the naked truth, the lessons of
+simplicity are not much inferior to those which learning teaches us: nay,
+quite the contrary.  Men differ in sentiment and force; we must lead them
+to their own good according to their capacities and by various ways:
+
+          "Quo me comque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes."
+
+     ["Wherever the season takes me,(where the tempest drives me)
+     there I am carried as a guest."--Horace, Ep., i. i, 15.]
+
+I never saw any peasant among my neighbours cogitate with what
+countenance and assurance he should pass over his last hour; nature
+teaches him not to think of death till he is dying; and then he does it
+with a better grace than Aristotle, upon whom death presses with a double
+weight, both of itself and from so long a premeditation; and, therefore,
+it was the opinion of Caesar, that the least premeditated death was the
+easiest and the most happy:
+
+     "Plus dolet quam necesse est, qui ante dolet, quam necesse est."
+
+     ["He grieves more than is necessary, who grieves before it is
+     necessary."--Seneca, Ep., 98.]
+
+The sharpness of this imagination springs from our curiosity: 'tis thus
+we ever impede ourselves, desiring to anticipate and regulate natural
+prescripts.  It is only for the doctors to dine worse for it, when in the
+best health, and to frown at the image of death; the common sort stand in
+need of no remedy or consolation, but just in the shock, and when the
+blow comes; and consider on't no more than just what they endure.  Is it
+not then, as we say, that the stolidity and want of apprehension in the
+vulgar give them that patience m present evils, and that profound
+carelessness of future sinister accidents?  That their souls, in being
+more gross and dull, are less penetrable and not so easily moved?  If it
+be so, let us henceforth, in God's name, teach nothing but ignorance;
+'tis the utmost fruit the sciences promise us, to which this stolidity so
+gently leads its disciples.
+
+We have no want of good masters, interpreters of natural simplicity.
+Socrates shall be one; for, as I remember, he speaks something to this
+purpose to the judges who sat upon his life and death.
+
+     [That which follows is taken from the Apology of Socrates in Plato,
+     chap.  17, &c.]
+
+"I am afraid, my masters, that if I entreat you not to put me to death, I
+shall confirm the charge of my accusers, which is, that I pretend to be
+wiser than others, as having some more secret knowledge of things that
+are above and below us.  I have neither frequented nor known death, nor
+have ever seen any person that has tried its qualities, from whom to
+inform myself.  Such as fear it, presuppose they know it; as for my part,
+I neither know what it is, nor what they do in the other world.  Death
+is, peradventure, an indifferent thing; peradventure, a thing to be
+desired.  'Tis nevertheless to be believed, if it be a transmigration
+from one place to another, that it is a bettering of one's condition to
+go and live with so many great persons deceased, and to be exempt from
+having any more to do with unjust and corrupt judges; if it be an
+annihilation of our being, 'tis yet a bettering of one's condition to
+enter into a long and peaceable night; we find nothing more sweet in life
+than quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams.  The things that
+I know to be evil, as to injure one's neighbour and to disobey one's
+superior, whether it be God or man, I carefully avoid; such as I do not
+know whether they be good or evil, I cannot fear them.  If I am to die
+and leave you alive, the gods alone only know whether it will go better
+with you or with me.  Wherefore, as to what concerns me, you may do as
+you shall think fit.  But according to my method of advising just and
+profitable things, I say that you will do your consciences more right to
+set me at liberty, unless you see further into my cause than I do; and,
+judging according to my past actions, both public and private, according
+to my intentions, and according to the profit that so many of our
+citizens, both young and old, daily extract from my conversation, and the
+fruit that you all reap from me, you cannot more duly acquit yourselves
+towards my merit than in ordering that, my poverty considered, I should
+be maintained at the Prytanaeum, at the public expense, a thing that I
+have often known you, with less reason, grant to others.  Do not impute
+it to obstinacy or disdain that I do not, according to the custom,
+supplicate and go about to move you to commiseration.  I have both
+friends and kindred, not being, as Homer says, begotten of wood or of
+stone, no more than others, who might well present themselves before you
+with tears and mourning, and I have three desolate children with whom to
+move you to compassion; but I should do a shame to our city at the age I
+am, and in the reputation of wisdom which is now charged against me, to
+appear in such an abject form.  What would men say of the other
+Athenians?  I have always admonished those who have frequented my
+lectures, not to redeem their lives by an unbecoming action; and in the
+wars of my country, at Amphipolis, Potidea, Delia, and other expeditions
+where I have been, I have effectually manifested how far I was from
+securing my safety by my shame.  I should, moreover, compromise your
+duty, and should invite you to unbecoming things; for 'tis not for my
+prayers to persuade you, but for the pure and solid reasons of justice.
+You have sworn to the gods to keep yourselves upright; and it would seem
+as if I suspected you, or would recriminate upon you that I do not
+believe that you are so; and I should testify against myself, not to
+believe them as I ought, mistrusting their conduct, and not purely
+committing my affair into their hands.  I wholly rely upon them; and hold
+myself assured they will do in this what shall be most fit both for you
+and for me: good men, whether living or dead, have no reason to fear the
+gods."
+
+Is not this an innocent child's pleading of an unimaginable loftiness,
+true, frank, and just, unexampled?--and in what a necessity employed!
+Truly, he had very good reason to prefer it before that which the great
+orator Lysias had penned for him: admirably couched, indeed, in the
+judiciary style, but unworthy of so noble a criminal.  Had a suppliant
+voice been heard out of the mouth of Socrates, that lofty virtue had
+struck sail in the height of its glory; and ought his rich and powerful
+nature to have committed her defence to art, and, in her highest proof,
+have renounced truth and simplicity, the ornaments of his speaking, to
+adorn and deck herself with the embellishments of figures and the
+flourishes of a premeditated speech?  He did very wisely, and like
+himself, not to corrupt the tenor of an incorrupt life, and so sacred an
+image of the human form, to spin out his decrepitude another year, and to
+betray the immortal memory of that glorious end.  He owed his life not to
+himself, but to the example of the world; had it not been a public
+damage, that he should have concluded it after a lazy and obscure manner?
+Assuredly, that careless and indifferent consideration of his death
+deserved that posterity should consider it so much the more, as indeed
+they did; and there is nothing so just in justice than that which fortune
+ordained for his recommendation; for the Athenians abominated all those
+who had been causers of his death to such a degree, that they avoided
+them as excommunicated persons, and looked upon everything as polluted
+that had been touched by them; no one would wash with them in the public
+baths, none would salute or own acquaintance with them: so that, at last,
+unable longer to support this public hatred, they hanged themselves.
+
+If any one shall think that, amongst so many other examples that I had to
+choose out of in the sayings of Socrates for my present purpose, I have
+made an ill choice of this, and shall judge this discourse of his
+elevated above common conceptions, I must tell them that I have properly
+selected it; for I am of another opinion, and hold it to be a discourse,
+in rank and simplicity, much below and behind common conceptions.  He
+represents, in an inartificial boldness and infantine security, the pure
+and first impression and ignorance of nature; for it is to be believed
+that we have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death, by reason of
+itself; 'tis a part of our being, and no less essential than living.
+
+To what end should nature have begotten in us a hatred to it and a horror
+of it, considering that it is of so great utility to her in maintaining
+the succession and vicissitude of her works? and that in this universal
+republic, it conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss or
+ruin?
+
+                  "Sic rerum summa novatur."
+
+               "Mille animas una necata dedit."
+
+"The failing of one life is the passage to a thousand other lives."
+
+Nature has imprinted in beasts the care of themselves and of their
+conservation; they proceed so far as hitting or hurting to be timorous of
+being worse, of themselves, of our haltering and beating them, accidents
+subject to their sense and experience; but that we should kill them, they
+cannot fear, nor have they the faculty to imagine and conclude such a
+thing as death; it is said, indeed, that we see them not only cheerfully
+undergo it, horses for the most part neighing and swans singing when they
+die, but, moreover, seek it at need, of which elephants have given many
+examples.
+
+Besides, the method of arguing, of which Socrates here makes use, is it
+not equally admirable both in simplicity and vehemence?  Truly it is much
+more easy to speak like Aristotle and to live like Caesar than to speak
+and live as Socrates did; there lies the extreme degree of perfection and
+difficulty; art cannot reach it.  Now, our faculties are not so trained
+up; we do not try, we do not know them; we invest ourselves with those of
+others, and let our own lie idle; as some one may say of me, that I have
+here only made a nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing of
+my own but the thread to tie them.
+
+Certainly I have so far yielded to public opinion, that those borrowed
+ornaments accompany me; but I do not mean that they shall cover me and
+hide me; that is quite contrary to my design, who desire to make a show
+of nothing but what is my own, and what is my own by nature; and had I
+taken my own advice, I had at all hazards spoken purely alone, I more and
+more load myself every day,
+
+     [In fact, the first edition of the Essays (Bordeaux, 1580) has very
+     few quotations.  These became more numerous in the edition of 1588;
+     but the multitude of classical texts which at times encumber
+     Montaigne's text, only dates from the posthumous edition of 1595, he
+     had made these collections in the four last years of his life, as an
+     amusement of his" idleness."--Le Clerc.  They grow, however, more
+     sparing in the Third Book.]
+
+beyond my purpose and first method, upon the account of idleness and the
+humour of the age.  If it misbecome me, as I believe it does, 'tis no
+matter; it may be of use to some others.  Such there are who quote Plato
+and Homer, who never saw either of them; and I also have taken things out
+of places far enough distant from their source.  Without pains and
+without learning, having a thousand volumes about me in the place where I
+write, I can presently borrow, if I please, from a dozen such scrap-
+gatherers, people about whom I do not much trouble myself, wherewith to
+trick up this treatise of Physiognomy; there needs no more but a
+preliminary epistle of a German to stuff me with quotations.  And so it
+is we go in quest of a tickling story to cheat the foolish world.  These
+lumber pies of commonplaces, wherewith so many furnish their studies, are
+of little use but to common subjects, and serve but to show us, and not
+to direct us: a ridiculous fruit of learning, that Socrates so pleasantly
+discusses against Euthydemus.  I have seen books made of things that were
+never either studied or understood; the author committing to several of
+his learned friends the examination of this and t'other matter to compile
+it, contenting himself, for his share, with having projected the design,
+and by his industry to have tied together this faggot of unknown
+provisions; the ink and paper, at least, are his.  This is to buy or
+borrow a book, and not to make one; 'tis to show men not that he can make
+a book, but that, whereof they may be in doubt, he cannot make one.
+A president, where I was, boasted that he had amassed together two
+hundred and odd commonplaces in one of his judgments; in telling which,
+he deprived himself of the glory he had got by it: in my opinion, a
+pusillanimous and absurd vanity for such a subject and such a person.
+I do the contrary; and amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can
+steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service; at the hazard
+of having it said that 'tis for want of understanding its natural use;
+I give it some particular touch of my own hand, to the end it may not be
+so absolutely foreign.  These set their thefts in show and value
+themselves upon them, and so have more credit with the laws than I have:
+we naturalists I think that there is a great and incomparable preference
+in the honour of invention over that of allegation.
+
+If I would have spoken by learning, I had spoken sooner; I had written of
+the time nearer to my studies, when I had more wit and better memory, and
+should sooner have trusted to the vigour of that age than of this, would
+I have made a business of writing.  And what if this gracious favour--
+[His acquaintance with Mademoiselle de Gournay.]--which Fortune has
+lately offered me upon the account of this work, had befallen me in that
+time of my life, instead of this, wherein 'tis equally desirable to
+possess, soon to be lost!  Two of my acquaintance, great men in this
+faculty, have, in my opinion, lost half, in refusing to publish at forty
+years old, that they might stay till threescore.  Maturity has its
+defects as well as green years, and worse; and old age is as unfit for
+this kind of business as any other.  He who commits his decrepitude to
+the press plays the fool if he think to squeeze anything out thence that
+does not relish of dreaming, dotage, and drivelling; the mind grows
+costive and thick in growing old.  I deliver my ignorance in pomp and
+state, and my learning meagrely and poorly; this accidentally and
+accessorily, that principally and expressly; and write specifically of
+nothing but nothing, nor of any science but of that inscience.  I have
+chosen a time when my life, which I am to give an account of, lies wholly
+before me; what remains has more to do with death; and of my death
+itself, should I find it a prating death, as others do, I would willingly
+give an account at my departure.
+
+Socrates was a perfect exemplar in all great qualities, and I am vexed
+that he had so deformed a face and body as is said, and so unsuitable to
+the beauty of his soul, himself being so amorous and such an admirer of
+beauty: Nature did him wrong.  There is nothing more probable than the
+conformity and relation of the body to the soul:
+
+     "Ipsi animi magni refert, quali in corpore locati sint: multo enim a
+     corpore existunt, qux acuant mentem: multa qua obtundant;"
+
+     ["It is of great consequence in what bodies minds are placed, for
+     many things spring from the body that may sharpen the mind, and many
+     that may blunt it."--Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., i. 33.]
+
+this refers to an unnatural ugliness and deformity of limbs; but we call
+ugliness also an unseemliness at first sight, which is principally lodged
+in the face, and disgusts us on very slight grounds: by the complexion, a
+spot, a rugged countenance, for some reasons often wholly inexplicable,
+in members nevertheless of good symmetry and perfect.  The deformity,
+that clothed a very beautiful soul in La Boetie, was of this predicament:
+that superficial ugliness, which nevertheless is always the most
+imperious, is of least prejudice to the state of the mind, and of little
+certainty in the opinion of men.  The other, which is never properly
+called deformity, being more substantial, strikes deeper in.  Not every
+shoe of smooth shining leather, but every shoe well-made, shews the shape
+of the foot within.  As Socrates said of his, it betrayed equal ugliness
+in his soul, had he not corrected it by education; but in saying so, I
+hold he was in jest, as his custom was; never so excellent a soul formed
+itself.
+
+I cannot often enough repeat how great an esteem I have for beauty, that
+potent and advantageous quality; he (La Boetie) called it "a short
+tyranny," and Plato, "the privilege of nature."  We have nothing that
+excels it in reputation; it has the first place in the commerce of men;
+it presents itself in the front; seduces and prepossesses our judgments
+with great authority and wonderful impression.  Phryne had lost her cause
+in the hands of an excellent advocate, if, opening her robe, she had not
+corrupted her judges by the lustre of her beauty.  And I find that Cyrus,
+Alexander, and Caesar, the three masters of the world, never neglected
+beauty in their greatest affairs; no more did the first Scipio.  The same
+word in Greek signifies both fair and good; and the Holy Word often says
+good when it means fair: I should willingly maintain the priority in good
+things, according to the song that Plato calls an idle thing, taken out
+of some ancient poet: "health, beauty, riches."  Aristotle says that the
+right of command appertains to the beautiful; and that, when there is a
+person whose beauty comes near the images of the gods, veneration is
+equally due to him.  To him who asked why people oftener and longer
+frequent the company of handsome persons: "That question," said he, "is
+only to be asked by the blind."  Most of the philosophers, and the
+greatest, paid for their schooling, and acquired wisdom by the favour and
+mediation of their beauty.  Not only in the men that serve me, but also
+in the beasts, I consider it within two fingers' breadth of goodness.
+
+And yet I fancy that those features and moulds of face, and those
+lineaments, by which men guess at our internal complexions and our
+fortunes to come, is a thing that does not very directly and simply lie
+under the chapter of beauty and deformity, no more than every good odour
+and serenity of air promises health, nor all fog and stink infection in a
+time of pestilence.  Such as accuse ladies of contradicting their beauty
+by their manners, do not always hit right; for, in a face which is none
+of the best, there may dwell some air of probity and trust; as, on the
+contrary, I have read, betwixt two beautiful eyes, menaces of a dangerous
+and malignant nature.  There are favourable physiognomies, so that in a
+crowd of victorious enemies, you shall presently choose, amongst men you
+never saw before, one rather than another to whom to surrender, and with
+whom to intrust your life; and yet not properly upon the consideration of
+beauty.
+
+A person's look is but a feeble warranty; and yet it is something
+considerable too; and if I had to lash them, I would most severely
+scourge the wicked ones who belie and betray the promises that nature has
+planted in their foreheads; I should with greater severity punish malice
+under a mild and gentle aspect.  It seems as if there were some lucky and
+some unlucky faces; and I believe there is some art in distinguishing
+affable from merely simple faces, severe from rugged, malicious from
+pensive, scornful from melancholic, and such other bordering qualities.
+There are beauties which are not only haughty, but sour, and others that
+are not only gentle, but more than that, insipid; to prognosticate from
+them future events is a matter that I shall leave undecided.
+
+I have, as I have said elsewhere as to my own concern, simply and
+implicitly embraced this ancient rule, "That we cannot fail in following
+Nature," and that the sovereign precept is to conform ourselves to her.
+I have not, as Socrates did, corrected my natural composition by the
+force of reason, and have not in the least disturbed my inclination by
+art; I have let myself go as I came: I contend not; my two principal
+parts live, of their own accord, in peace and good intelligence, but my
+nurse's milk, thank God, was tolerably wholesome and good.  Shall I say
+this by the way, that I see in greater esteem than 'tis worth, and in use
+solely among ourselves, a certain image of scholastic probity, a slave to
+precepts, and fettered with hope and fear?  I would have it such as that
+laws and religions should not make, but perfect and authorise it; that
+finds it has wherewithal to support itself without help, born and rooted
+in us from the seed of universal reason, imprinted in every man by
+nature.  That reason which strengthens Socrates from his vicious bend
+renders him obedient to the gods and men of authority in his city:
+courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal, but because he is
+mortal.  'Tis a doctrine ruinous to all government, and much more hurtful
+than ingenious and subtle, which persuades the people that a religious
+belief is alone sufficient, and without conduct, to satisfy the divine
+justice.  Use demonstrates to us a vast distinction betwixt devotion and
+conscience.
+
+I have a favourable aspect, both in form and in interpretation:
+
+               "Quid dixi, habere me? imo habui, Chreme."
+
+          ["What did I say?  that I have?  no, Chremes, I had."
+          --Terence, Heaut., act i., sec. 2, v. 42.]
+
+               "Heu!  tantum attriti corporis ossa vides;"
+
+          ["Alas! of a worn body thou seest only the bones"]
+
+and that makes a quite contrary show to that of Socrates.  It has often
+befallen me, that upon the mere credit of my presence and air, persons
+who had no manner of knowledge of me have put a very great confidence in
+me, whether in their own affairs or mine; and I have in foreign parts
+thence obtained singular and rare favours.  But the two following
+examples are, peradventure, worth particular relation.  A certain person
+planned to surprise my house and me in it; his scheme was to come to my
+gates alone, and to be importunate to be let in.  I knew him by name,
+and had fair reason to repose confidence in him, as being my neighbour
+and something related to me.  I caused the gates to be opened to him,
+as I do to every one.  There I found him, with every appearance of alarm,
+his horse panting and very tired.  He entertained me with this story:
+"That, about half a league off, he had met with a certain enemy of his,
+whom I also knew, and had heard of their quarrel; that his enemy had
+given him a very brisk chase, and that having been surprised in disorder,
+and his party being too weak, he had fled to my gates for refuge;
+and that he was in great trouble for his followers, whom (he said) he
+concluded to be all either dead or taken."  I innocently did my best to
+comfort, assure, and refresh him.  Shortly after came four or five of his
+soldiers, who presented themselves in the same countenance and affright,
+to get in too; and after them more, and still more, very well mounted and
+armed, to the number of five-and-twenty or thirty, pretending that they
+had the enemy at their heels.  This mystery began a little to awaken my
+suspicion; I was not ignorant what an age I lived in, how much my house
+might be envied, and I had several examples of others of my acquaintance
+to whom a mishap of this sort had happened.  But thinking there was
+nothing to be got by having begun to do a courtesy, unless I went through
+with it, and that I could not disengage myself from them without spoiling
+all, I let myself go the most natural and simple way, as I always do, and
+invited them all to come in. And in truth I am naturally very little
+inclined to suspicion and distrust; I willingly incline towards excuse
+and the gentlest interpretation; I take men according to the common
+order, and do not more believe in those perverse and unnatural
+inclinations, unless convinced by manifest evidence, than I do in
+monsters and miracles; and I am, moreover, a man who willingly commit
+myself to Fortune, and throw myself headlong into her arms; and I have
+hitherto found more reason to applaud than to blame myself for so doing,
+having ever found her more discreet about, and a greater friend to, my
+affairs than I am myself.  There are some actions in my life whereof the
+conduct may justly be called difficult, or, if you please, prudent; of
+these, supposing the third part to have been my own, doubtless the other
+two-thirds were absolutely hers.  We make, methinks, a mistake in that we
+do not enough trust Heaven with our affairs, and pretend to more from our
+own conduct than appertains to us; and therefore it is that our designs
+so often miscarry. Heaven is jealous of the extent that we attribute to
+the right of human prudence above its own, and cuts it all the shorter by
+how much the more we amplify it.  The last comers remained on horseback
+in my courtyard, whilst their leader, who was with me in the parlour,
+would not have his horse put up in the stable, saying he should
+immediately retire, so soon as he had news of his men.  He saw himself
+master of his enterprise, and nothing now remained but its execution.
+He has since several times said (for he was not ashamed to tell the story
+himself) that my countenance and frankness had snatched the treachery out
+of his hands.  He again mounted his horse; his followers, who had their
+eyes intent upon him, to see when he would give the signal, being very
+much astonished to find him come away and leave his prey behind him.
+
+Another time, relying upon some truce just published in the army, I took
+a journey through a very ticklish country.  I had not ridden far, but I
+was discovered, and two or three parties of horse, from various places,
+were sent out to seize me; one of them overtook me on the third day, and
+I was attacked by fifteen or twenty gentlemen in vizors, followed at a
+distance by a band of foot-soldiers.  I was taken, withdrawn into the
+thick of a neighbouring forest, dismounted, robbed, my trunks rifled, my
+money-box taken, and my horses and equipage divided amongst new masters.
+We had, in this copse, a very long contest about my ransom, which they
+set so high, that it was manifest that I was not known to them.  They
+were, moreover, in a very great debate about my life; and, in truth,
+there were various circumstances that clearly showed the danger I was in:
+
+          "Tunc animis opus, AEnea, tunc pectore firmo."
+
+     ["Then, AEneas, there is need of courage, of a firm heart."
+     --AEneid, vi. 261.]
+
+I still insisted upon the truce, too willing they should have the gain of
+what they had already taken from me, which was not to be despised,
+without promise of any other ransom.  After two or three hours that we
+had been in this place, and that they had mounted me upon a horse that
+was not likely to run from them, and committed me to the guard of fifteen
+or twenty harquebusiers, and dispersed my servants to others, having
+given order that they should carry us away prisoners several ways, and I
+being already got some two or three musket-shots from the place,
+
+          "Jam prece Pollucis, jam Castoris, implorata,"
+
+          ["By a prayer addressed now to Pollux, now to Castor."
+          --Catullus, lxvi. 65.]
+
+behold a sudden and unexpected alteration; I saw the chief return to me
+with gentler language, making search amongst the troopers for my
+scattered property, and causing as much as could be recovered to be
+restored to me, even to my money-box; but the best present they made was
+my liberty, for the rest did not much concern me at that time.  The true
+cause of so sudden a change, and of this reconsideration, without any
+apparent impulse, and of so miraculous a repentance, in such a time, in a
+planned and deliberate enterprise, and become just by usage (for, at the
+first dash, I plainly confessed to them of what party I was, and whither
+I was going), truly, I do not yet rightly understand.  The most prominent
+amongst them, who pulled off his vizor and told me his name, repeatedly
+told me at the time, over and over again, that I owed my deliverance to
+my countenance, and the liberty and boldness of my speech, that rendered
+me unworthy of such a misadventure, and should secure me from its
+repetition.  'Tis possible that the Divine goodness willed to make use of
+this vain instrument for my preservation; and it, moreover, defended me
+the next day from other and worse ambushes, of which these my assailants
+had given me warning.  The last of these two gentlemen is yet living
+himself to tell the story; the first was killed not long ago.
+
+If my face did not answer for me, if men did not read in my eyes and in
+my voice the innocence of intention, I had not lived so long without
+quarrels and without giving offence, seeing the indiscreet whatever comes
+into my head, and to judge so rashly of things.  This way may, with
+reason, appear uncivil, and ill adapted to our way of conversation; but
+I have never met with any who judged it outrageous or malicious, or that
+took offence at my liberty, if he had it from my own mouth; words
+repeated have another kind of sound and sense.  Nor do I hate any person;
+and I am so slow to offend, that I cannot do it, even upon the account of
+reason itself; and when occasion has required me to sentence criminals,
+I have rather chosen to fail in point of justice than to do it:
+
+               "Ut magis peccari nolim, quam satis animi
+               ad vindicanda peccata habeam."
+
+     ["So that I had rather men should not commit faults than that I
+     should have sufficient courage to condemn them."---Livy, xxxix. 21.]
+
+Aristotle, 'tis said, was reproached for having been too merciful to a
+wicked man: "I was indeed," said he, "merciful to the man, but not to his
+wickedness."  Ordinary judgments exasperate themselves to punishment by
+the horror of the fact: but it cools mine; the horror of the first murder
+makes me fear a second; and the deformity of the first cruelty makes me
+abhor all imitation of it.' That may be applied to me, who am but a
+Squire of Clubs, which was said of Charillus, king of Sparta: "He cannot
+be good, seeing he is not evil even to the wicked."  Or thus--for
+Plutarch delivers it both these ways, as he does a thousand other things,
+variously and contradictorily--"He must needs be good, because he is so
+even to the wicked."  Even as in lawful actions I dislike to employ
+myself when for such as are displeased at it; so, to say the truth, in
+unlawful things I do not make conscience enough of employing myself when
+it is for such as are willing.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may
+A person's look is but a feeble warranty
+Accept all things we are not able to refute
+Admiration is the foundation of all philosophy
+Advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right
+All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice
+Apt to promise something less than what I am able to do
+As if anything were so common as ignorance
+Authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses
+Best test of truth is the multitude of believers in a crowd
+Books have not so much served me for instruction as exercise
+Books of things that were never either studied or understood
+Condemn the opposite affirmation equally
+Courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal--Socrates
+Death conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss
+Decree that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter"
+Deformity of the first cruelty makes me abhor all imitation
+Enters lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it
+Establish this proposition by authority and huffing
+Extend their anger and hatred beyond the dispute in question
+Fabric goes forming and piling itself up from hand to hand
+Fortune heaped up five or six such-like incidents
+Hard to resolve a man's judgment against the common opinions
+Haste trips up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself
+He cannot be good, seeing he is not evil even to the wicked
+He who stops not the start will never be able to stop the course
+"How many things," said he, "I do not desire!"
+How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out
+I am a little tenderly distrustful of things that I wish
+I am no longer in condition for any great change
+I am not to be cuffed into belief
+I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable
+I do not judge opinions by years
+I ever justly feared to raise my head too high
+I would as willingly be lucky as wise
+If I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it
+If they hear no noise, they think men sleep
+Impose them upon me as infallible
+Inconveniences that moderation brings (in civil war)
+Lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself
+Let not us seek illusions from without and unknown
+"Little learning is needed to form a sound mind."--Seneca
+Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation
+Men are not always to rely upon the personal confessions
+Merciful to the man, but not to his wickedness--Aristotle
+Miracles and strange events have concealed themselves from me
+My humour is no friend to tumult
+Nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing of my own
+Not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred
+Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding
+Number of fools so much exceeds the wise
+Opinions we have are taken on authority and trust
+Others adore all of their own side
+Pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of the law
+Prepare ourselves against the preparations of death
+Profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit
+Quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams
+Reasons often anticipate the effect
+Refusin  to justify, excuse, or explain myself
+Remotest witness knows more about it than those who were nearest
+Restoring what has been lent us, wit  usury and accession
+Richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow
+Right of command appertains to the beautiful-Aristotle
+Rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny a stated fact
+Suffer my judgment to be made captive by prepossession
+Swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking
+Taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance
+The last informed is better persuaded than the first
+The mind grows costive and thick in growing old
+The particular error first makes the public error
+Their souls seek repose in agitation
+They gently name them, so they patiently endure them (diseases)
+Those oppressed with sorrow sometimes surprised by a smile
+Threats of the day of judgment
+Tis better to lean towards doubt than assurance--Augustine
+Tis no matter; it may be of use to some others
+To forbear doing is often as generous as to do
+To kill men, a clear and strong light is required
+Too contemptible to be punished
+True liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself
+Vast distinction betwixt devotion and conscience
+We have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death
+What did I say?  that I have?  no, Chremes, I had
+Who discern no riches but in pomp and show
+Whoever will be cured of ignorance must confess it
+Would have every one in his party blind or a blockhead
+Wrong the just side when they go about to assist it with fraud
+Yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Essays of Montaigne, V18
+By Michel de Montaigne
+
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