Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 048

or shame and poverty less troublesome to the first than to the last?

Scilicet et morbis et debilitate carebis,
Et luctum et curam effugies, et tempora vitæ
Longa tibi post hæc fato meliore dabuntur.
“Disease thy couch shall flee,
And sorrow and care; yes, thou, be sure, wilt see
Long years of happiness, till now unknown.”

I have known in my time a hundred artisans, a hundred labourers, wiser
and more happy than the rectors of the university, and whom I had much
rather have resembled. Learning, methinks, has its place amongst the
necessary, things of life, as glory, nobility, dignity, or at the most,
as beauty, riches, and such other qualities, which indeed are useful
to it, but remotely, and more by opinion than by nature. We stand
very little more in need of offices, rules, and laws of living in our
society, than cranes and ants do in theirs; and yet we see that these
carry themselves very regularly without erudition. If man was wise, he
would take the true value of every thing according as it was useful
and proper to his life. Whoever will number us by our actions and
deportments will find many more excellent men amongst the ignorant than
among the learned; aye, in all sorts of virtue. Old Rome seems to me
to have been of much greater value, both for peace and war, than that
learned Rome that ruined itself. And, though all the rest should be
equal, yet integrity and innocency would remain to the ancients, for
they cohabit singularly well with simplicity. But I will leave this
discourse, that would lead me farther than I am willing to follow; and
shall only say this further, ‘tis only humility and submission that can
make a complete good man. We are not to leave the knowledge of his duty
to every man’s own judgment; we are to prescribe it to him, and not
suffer him to choose it at his own discretion; otherwise, according to
the imbecility, and infinite variety of our reasons and opinions, we
should at large forge ourselves duties that would, as Epicurus says,
enjoin us to eat one another.
The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it
was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire
after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a
rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From
obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from
selfopinion. And, on the contrary, the first temptation that by the
devil was offered to human nature, its first poison insinuated itself
into us by the promise made us of knowledge and wisdom; _Eritis sicut
Dii, scientes bonum et malum._ “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil.” And the sirens, in Homer, to allure Ulysses, and draw him within
the danger of their snares, offered to give him knowledge. The plague of
man is the opinion of wisdom; and for this reason it is that ignorance
is so recommended to us, by our religion, as proper to faith and
obedience; _Cavete ne quis vos decipiat per philosophiam et inanes
seductiones, secundum elementa mundi._ “Take heed, lest any man deceive
you by philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and the
rudiments of the world.” There is in this a general consent amongst
all sorts of philosophers, that the sovereign good consists in the
tranquillity of the soul and body; but where shall we find it?

Ad summum, sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives,
Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex deniqne regum;
Præcipue sanus, nisi cum pituita molesta est:
“In short, the wise is only less than Jove,
Rich, free, and handsome; nay, a king above
All earthly kings; with health supremely blest,
Excepting when a cold disturbs his rest!”

It seems, in truth, that nature, for the consolation of our miserable
and wretched state, has only given us presumption for our inheritance.
‘Tis as Epictetus says, that man has nothing properly his own, but the
use of his opinion; we have nothing but wind and smoke for our portion.
The gods have health in essence, says philosophy, and sickness in
intelligence. Man, on the contrary, possesses his goods by fancy, his
ills in essence. We have reason to magnify the power of our imagination;
for all our goods are only in dream. Hear this poor calamitous animal
huff! “There is nothing,” says Cicero, “so charming as the employment of
letters; of letters, I say, by means whereof the infinity of things, the
immense grandeur of nature, the heavens even in this world, the earth,
and the seas are discovered to us; ‘tis they that have taught us
religion, moderation, and the grandeur of courage, and that have rescued
our souls from darkness, to make her see all things, high, low, first,
last, and middling; ‘tis they that furnish us wherewith to live happily
and well, and conduct us to pass over our lives without displeasure, and
without offence.” Does not this man seem to speak of the condition of
the ever-living and almighty God? But as to effects, a thousand little
countrywomen have lived lives more equal, more sweet, and constant than
his.

Deus ille fuit, deus, inclyte Memmi,
Qui princeps vitæ rationem invenit earn, quæ
Nunc appellatur sapientia; quique per artem
Fluctibus è tantis vitam, tantisque tenebris,
In tam tranquilla et tam clara luce locavit:
“That god, great Memmus, was a god no doubt
Who, prince of life, first found that reason out
Now wisdom called; and by his art, who did
That life in tempests tost, and darkness hid,
Place in so great a calm, and clear a light:”

here are brave ranting words; but a very slight accident put this man’s
understanding in a worse condition than that of the meanest shepherd,
notwithstanding this instructing god, this divine wisdom. Of the same
stamp and impudence is the promise of Democritus’s book: “I am going to
speak of all things;” and that foolish title that Aristotle prefixes
to one of his, order only afforded him a few lucid intervals which
he employed in composing his book, and at last made him kill
himself,--Eusebius’s Chronicon.
Of the Mortal Gods; and the judgment of Chrysippus, that “Dion was as
virtuous as God;” and my Seneca himself says, that “God had given him
life; but that to live well was his own;” conformably to this other: _In
virtute vere gloriamur; quod non contingeret, si id donum à Deo, non à
nobis haberemus:_ “We truly glory in our virtue; which would not be,
if it was given us of God, and not by ourselves;” this is also Seneca’s
saying; “that the wise man hath fortitude equal with God, but that his
is in spite of human frailty, wherein therefore he more than equals
God.” There is nothing so ordinary as to meet with sallies of the like
temerity; there is none of us, who take so much offence to see himself
equalled with God, as he does to see himself undervalued by being ranked
with other creatures; so much more are we jealous of our own interest
than that of our Creator.
But we must trample under foot this foolish vanity, and briskly and
boldly shake the ridiculous foundation upon which these false opinions
are founded. So long as man shall believe he has any means and power of
himself, he will never acknowledge what he owes to his Maker; his eggs
shall always be chickens, as the saying is; we must therefore strip him
to his shirt. Let us see some notable examples of the effects of his
philosophy: Posidonius being tormented with a disease so painful as made
him writhe his arms and gnash his teeth, thought he sufficiently scorned
the dolour, by crying out against it: “Thou mayst do thy worst, I will
not confess that thou art an evil.” He was as sensible of the pain as
my footman, but he made a bravado of bridling his tongue, at least,
and restraining it within the laws of his sect: _Re succumbere non
oportebat, verbis gloriantem._ “It did not become him, that spoke so
big, to confess his frailty when he came to the test.” Arcesilas being
ill of the gout, and Car-neades, who had come to see him, going away
troubled at his condition, he called him back, and showing him his feet
and breast: “There is nothing comes thence hither,” said he. This has
something a better grace, for he feels himself in pain, and would be
disengaged from it; but his heart, notwithstanding, is not conquered nor
subdued by it. The other stands more obstinately to his point, but, I
fear, rather verbally than really. And Dionysius Heracleotes, afflicted
with a vehement smarting in his eyes, was reduced to quit these stoical
resolutions. But even though knowledge should, in effect, do as they
say, and could blunt the point, and dull the edge, of the misfortunes
that attend us, what does she, more than what ignorance does more purely
and evidently?--The philosopher Pyrrho, being at sea in very great
danger, by reason of a mighty storm, presented nothing to the imitation
of those who were with him, in that extremity, but a hog they had on
board, that was fearless and unconcerned at the tempest. Philosophy,
when she has said all she can, refers us at last to the example of a
gladiator, wrestler, or muleteer, in which sort of people we commonly
observe much less apprehension of death, sense of pain, and other
inconveniences, and more of endurance, than ever knowledge furnished
any one withal, that was not bom and bred to hardship. What is the cause
that we make incisions, and cut the tender limbs of an infant, and those
of a horse, more easily than our own--but ignorance only? How many has
mere force of imagination made sick? We often see men cause themselves
to be let blood, purged, and physicked, to be cured of diseases they
only feel in opinion.--When real infirmities fail us, knowledge lends us
her’s; that colour, that complexion, portend some catarrhous defluxion;
this hot season threatens us with a fever; this breach in the
life-line of your left hand gives you notice of some near and dangerous
indisposition; and at last she roundly attacks health itself; saying,
this sprightliness and vigour of youth cannot continue in this posture;
there must be blood taken, and the heat abated, lest it turn against
yourself. Compare the life of a man subjected to such imaginations,
to that of a labourer that suffers himself to be led by his natural
appetite, measuring things only by the present sense, without knowledge,
and without prognostic, that feels no pain or sickness, but when he is
really ill. Whereas the other has the stone in his soul, before he has
it in his bladder; as if it were not time enough to suffer the evil when
it shall come, he must anticipate it by fancy, and run to meet it.
What I say of physic may generally serve in example for all other
sciences. Thence is derived that ancient opinion of the philosophers
that placed the sovereign good in the discovery of the weakness of our
judgment My ignorance affords me as much occasion of hope as of fear;
and having no other rule for my health than that of the examples of
others, and of events I see elsewhere upon the like occasion, I find of
all sorts, and rely upon those which by comparison are most favourable
to me. I receive health with open arms, free, full, and entire, and
by so much the more whet my appetite to enjoy it, by how much it is
at present less ordinary and more rare; so far am I from troubling its
repose and sweetness with the bitterness of a new and constrained manner
of living. Beasts sufficiently show us how much the agitation of our
minds brings infirmities and diseases upon us. That which is told us of
those of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to
the serenity and tranquillity of the air they live in; but I rather
attribute it to the serenity and tranquillity of their souls, free from
all passion, thought, or employment, extended or unpleasing, a people
that pass over their lives in a wonderful simplicity and ignorance,
without letters, without law, without king, or any manner of religion.
And whence comes that, which we find by experience, that the heaviest
and dullest men are most able; and the most to be desired in amorous
performances; and that the love of a muleteer often renders itself more
acceptable than that of a gentleman, if it be not that the agitation
of the soul in the latter disturbs his physical ability, dissolves and
tires it, as it also ordinarily troubles and tires itself. What puts the
soul beside itself, and more usually throws it into madness, but her own
promptness, vigour, and agility, and, finally, her own proper force? Of
what is the most subtle folly made, but of the most subtle wisdom? As
great friendships spring from great enmities, and vigorous health from
mortal diseases, so from the rare and vivid agitations of our souls
proceed the most wonderful and most distracted frenzies; ‘tis but half
a turn of the toe from the one to the other. In the actions of madmen we
see how infinitely madness resembles the most vigorous operations of
the soul. Who does not know how indiscernible the difference is betwixt
folly and the sprightly elevations of a free soul, and the effects of a
supreme and extraordinary virtue? Plato says that melancholy persons are
the most capable of discipline, and the most excellent; and accordingly
in none is there so great a propension to madness. Great wits are ruined
by their own proper force and pliability; into what a condition, through
his own agitation and promptness of fancy, is one of the most judicious,
ingenious, and nearest formed, of any other Italian poet, to the air of
the ancient and true poesy, lately fallen! Has he not vast obligation
to this vivacity that has destroyed him? to this light that has blinded
him? to this exact and subtle apprehension of reason that has put him
beside his own? to this curious and laborious search after sciences,
that has reduced him to imbecility? and to this rare aptitude to the
exercises of the soul, that has rendered him without exercise and
without soul? I was more angry, if possible, than compassionate, to see
him at Ferrara in so pitiful a condition surviving himself, forgetting
both himself and his works, which, without his knowledge, though before
his face, have been published unformed and incorrect.
Would you have a man healthy, would you have him regular, and in a
steady and secure posture? Muffle him up in the shades of stupidity and
sloth. We must be made beasts to be made wise, and hoodwinked before we
are fit to be led. And if one shall tell me that the advantage of having
a cold and dull sense of pain and other evils, brings this disadvantage
along with it, to render us consequently less sensible also in the
fruition of good and pleasure, this is true; but the misery of our
condition is such that we have not so much to enjoy as to avoid, and
that the extremest pleasure does not affect us to the degree that a
light grief does: _Segnius homines bona quam mala sentiunt._ We are not
so sensible of the most perfect health as we are of the least sickness.

Pungit
In cute vix sum ma violatum plagula corpus;
Quando valere nihil quemquam movet. Hoc juvat unum,
Quod me non torquet latus, aut pes;
Cætera quisquam Vix queat aut sanum sese, aut sentire valentem.
“The body with a little sting is griev’d,
When the most perfect health is not perceiv’d,
This only pleases me, that spleen nor gout
Neither offend my side nor wring my foot;
Excepting these, scarce any one can tell,
Or e’er observes, when he’s in health and well.”

Our well-being is nothing but the not being ill. Which is the reason why
that sect of philosophers, which sets the greatest value upon pleasure,
has yet fixed it chiefly in unconsciousness of pain. To be freed from
ill is the greatest good that man can hope for or desire; as Ennius
says,--

Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali;

for that every tickling and sting which are in certain pleasures, and
that seem to raise us above simple health and passiveness, that active,
moving, and, I know not how, itching, and biting pleasure; even that
very pleasure itself aims at nothing but insensibility as its mark. The
appetite that carries us headlong to women’s embraces has no other end
but only to cure the torment of our ardent and furious desires, and only
requires to be glutted and laid at rest, and delivered from the fever.
And so of the rest. I say, then, that if simplicity conducts us to a
state free from evil, she leads us to a very happy one according to our
condition. And yet we are not to imagine it so stupid an insensibility
as to be totally without sense; for Crantor had very good reason to
controvert the insensibility of Epicurus, if founded so deep that the
very first attack and birth of evils were not to be perceived: “I do not
approve such an insensibility as is neither possible nor to be desired.
I am very well content not to be sick; but if I am, I would know that
I am so; and if a caustic be applied, or incisions made in any part, I
would feel them.” In truth, whoever would take away the knowledge and
sense of evil, would at the same time eradicate the sense of pleasure,
and finally annihilate man himself: _Istud nihil dolere, non sine magnâ
mercede contingit, immanitatis in animo, stuporis in corpore._ “An
insensibility that is not to be purchased but at the price of inhumanity
in the soul, and of stupidity of the body.” Evil appertains to man
of course. Neither is pain always to be avoided, nor pleasure always
pursued.
‘Tis a great advantage to the honour of ignorance that knowledge itself
throws us into its arms, when she finds herself puzzled to fortify
us against the weight of evil; she is constrained to come to this
composition, to give us the reins, and permit us to fly into the lap
of the other, and to shelter ourselves under her protection from the
strokes and injuries of fortune. For what else is her meaning when she
instructs us to divert our thoughts from the ills that press upon us,
and entertain them with the meditation of pleasures past and gone; to
comfort ourselves in present afflictions with the remembrance of fled
delights, and to call to our succour a vanished satisfaction, to oppose
it to the discomfort that lies heavy upon us? _Levationes ægritudinum
in avocatione a cogitandâ molestiâ, et revocation ad contemplandas
voluptates, ponit_; “He directs us to alleviate our grief and pains by
rejecting unpleasant thoughts, and recalling agreeable ideas;” if it be
not that where her power fails she would supply it with policy, and make
use of sleight of hand where force of limbs will not serve her turn? For
not only to a philosopher, but to any man in his right wits, when he has
upon him the thirst of a burning fever, what satisfaction can it be to
him to remember the pleasure he took in drinking Greek wine a month ago?
It would rather only make matters worse to him:--

Che ricordarsi il ben doppia la noia.
“The thinking of pleasure doubles trouble.”

Of the same stamp is this other counsel that philosophy gives, only to
remember the happiness that is past, and to forget the misadventures we
have undergone; as if we had the science of oblivion in our own power,
and counsel, wherein we are yet no more to seek.

Suavis laborum est præteritorum ræmoria.
“Sweet is the memory of by-gone pain.”

How does philosophy, that should arm me to contend with fortune, and
steel my courage to trample all human adversities under foot, arrive to
this degree of cowardice to make me hide my head at this rate, and save
myself by these pitiful and ridiculous shifts? For the memory represents
to us not what we choose, but what she pleases; nay, there is nothing
that so much imprints any thing in our memory as a desire to forget it.
And ‘tis a good way to retain and keep any thing safe in the soul to
solicit her to lose it. And this is false: _Est situm in nobis, ut
et adversa quasi perpetua oblivione obruamus, et secunda jucunde et
suaviter meminerimus;_ “it is in our power to bury, as it were, in a
perpetual oblivion, all adverse accidents, and to retain a pleasant and
delightful memory of our successes;” and this is true: _Memini etiam quo
nolo; oblivisci non possum quo volo._ “I do also remember what I would
not; but I cannot forget what I would.” And whose counsel is this? His,
_qui se unies sapiervtem profiteri sit ausus;_ “who alone durst profess
himself a wise man.”

Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnes
Præstinxit stellas, exortus uti æthereus Sol.
“Who from mankind the prize of knowledge won,
And put the stars out like the rising sun.”

To empty and disfurnish the memory, is not this the true way to
ignorance?

Iners malorum remedium ignorantia est.
“Ignorance is but a dull remedy for evils.”

We find several other like precepts, whereby we are permitted to borrow
frivolous appearances from the vulgar, where we find the strongest
reason will not answer the purpose, provided they administer
satisfaction and comfort Where they cannot cure the wound, they are
content to palliate and benumb it I believe they will not deny this,
that if they could add order and constancy in a state of life that could
maintain itself in ease and pleasure by some debility of judgment, they
would accept it:--

Potare, et spargere flores
Incipiam, patiarque vel inconsultus haberi.
“Give me to drink, and, crown’d with flowers, despise
The grave disgrace of being thought unwise.”

There would be a great many philosophers of Lycas’s mind this man, being
otherwise of very regular manners, living quietly and contentedly in his
family, and not failing in any office of his duty, either towards his
own or strangers, and very carefully preserving himself from hurtful
things, became, nevertheless, by some distemper in his brain, possessed
with a conceit that he was perpetually in the theatre, a spectator of
the finest sights and the best comedies in the world; and being cured by
the physicians of his frenzy, was hardly prevented from endeavouring by
suit to compel them to restore him again to his pleasing imagination:--

Pol I me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error;
“By heaven! you’ve killed me, friends, outright,
And not preserved me; since my dear delight
And pleasing error, by my better sense
Unhappily return’d, is banished hence;”

with a madness like that of Thrasylaus the son of Pythodorus, who made
himself believe that all the ships that weighed anchor from the port of
Piræus, and that came into the haven, only made their voyages for
his profit; congratulating them upon their successful navigation, and
receiving them with the greatest joy; and when his brother Crito caused
him to be restored to his better understanding, he infinitely regretted
that sort of condition wherein he had lived with so much delight and
free from all anxiety of mind. ‘Tis according to the old Greek verse,
that “there is a great deal of convenience in not being over-wise.”
And Ecclesiastes, “In much wisdom there is much sorrow;” and “Who gets
wisdom gets labour and trouble.”
Even that to which philosophy consents in general, that last remedy
which she applies to all sorts of necessities, to put an end to the life
we are not able to endure. _Placet?--Pare. Non placet?--Quâcumque vis,
exi. Pungit dolor?--Vel fodiat sane. Si nudus es, da jugulum; sin tectus
armis Vulcaniis, id est fortitudine, résisté;_ “Does it please?--Obey
it. Not please?--Go where thou wilt. Does grief prick thee,--nay, stab
thee?--If thou art naked, present thy throat; if covered with the arms
of Vulcan, that is, fortitude, resist it.” And this word, so used in
the Greek festivals, _aut bibat, aut abeat,_ “either drink or go,” which
sounds better upon the tongue of a Gascon, who naturally changes the h
into v, than on that of Cicero:--

Vivere si recte nescis, decede peritis.
Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti;
Tempus abire tibi est, ne potum largius æquo
Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius ætas.
“If to live well and right thou dost not know,
Give way, and leave thy place to those that do.
Thou’st eaten, drunk, and play’d to thy content,
‘Tis time to make thy parting compliment,
Lest youth, more decent in their follies, scoff
The nauseous scene, and hiss thee reeling off;”

What is it other than a confession of his impotency, and a sending back
not only to ignorance, to be there in safety, but even to stupidity,
insensibility, and nonentity?

Democritum postquam matura vetustas
Admonuit memorem motus languescere mentis;
Sponte sua letho caput obvius obtulit ipse.
“Soon as, through age, Democritus did find
A manifest decadence in his mind,
He thought he now surviv’d to his own wrong,
And went to meet his death, that stay’d too long.”

‘Tis what Antisthenes said, “That a man should either make provision
of sense to understand, or of a halter to hang himself;” and what
Chrysippus alleged upon this saying of the poet Tyrtæus:--

“Or to arrive at virtue or at death;”

and Crates said, “That love would be cured by hunger, if not by time;
and whoever disliked these two remedies, by a rope.” That Sextius, of
whom both Seneca and Plutarch speak with so high an encomium, having
applied himself, all other things set aside, to the study of philosophy,
resolved to throw himself into the sea, seeing the progress of his
studies too tedious and slow. He ran to find death, since he could not
overtake knowledge. These are the words of the law upon the subject:
“If peradventure some great inconvenience happen, for which there is no
remedy, the haven is near, and a man may save himself by swimming out
of his body as out of a leaky skiff; for ‘tis the fear of dying, and not
the love of life, that ties the fool to his body.”
As life renders itself by simplicity more pleasant, so more innocent
and better, also it renders it as I was saying before: “The simple
and ignorant,” says St. Paul, “raise themselves up to heaven and take
possession of it; and we, with all our knowledge, plunge ourselves into
the infernal abyss.” I am neither swayed by Valentinian, a professed
enemy to all learning and letters, nor by Licinius, both Roman emperors,
who called them the poison and pest of all political government; nor by
Mahomet, who, as ‘tis said, interdicted all manner of learning to his
followers; but the example of the great Lycurgus, and his authority,
with the reverence of the divine Lacedemonian policy, so great, so
admirable, and so long flourishing in virtue and happiness, without any
institution or practice of letters, ought certainly to be of very great
weight. Such as return from the new world discovered by the Spaniards
in our fathers’ days, testify to us how much more honestly and regularly
those nations live, without magistrate and without law, than ours do,
where there are more officers and lawyers than there are of other sorts
of men and business:--

Di cittatorie piene, e di libelli,
D’esamine, e di carte di procure,
Hanno le mani e il seno, e gran fastelli
Di chioge, di consigli, et di letture:
Per cui le faculta de* poverelli
Non sono mai nelle città sicure;
Hanno dietro e dinanzi, e d’ambi i lati,
Notai, procuratori, ed avvocati.
“Their bags were full of writs, and of citations,
Of process, and of actions and arrests,
Of bills, of answers, and of replications,
In courts of delegates, and of requests,
To grieve the simple sort with great vexations;
They had resorting to them as their guests,
Attending on their circuit, and their journeys,
Scriv’ners, and clerks, and lawyers, and attorneys.”

It was what a Roman senator of the latter ages said, that their
predecessors’ breath stunk of garlic, but their stomachs were perfumed