Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 093

taken it ill when they have been told that they looked well, and that
their pulse was good; restrain their smiles, because they betrayed a
recovery, and be angry, at their health because it was not to be
lamented: and, which is a great deal more, these were not women.
I describe my infirmities, such as they really are, at most, and avoid
all expressions of evil prognostic and composed exclamations. If not
mirth, at least a temperate countenance in the standers-by, is proper in
the presence of a wise sick man: he does not quarrel with health, for,
seeing himself in a contrary condition, he is pleased to contemplate it
sound and entire in others, and at least to enjoy it for company: he does
not, for feeling himself melt away, abandon all living thoughts, nor
avoid ordinary discourse. I would study sickness whilst I am well; when
it has seized me, it will make its impression real enough, without the
help of my imagination. We prepare ourselves beforehand for the journeys
we undertake, and resolve upon them; we leave the appointment of the hour
when to take horse to the company, and in their favour defer it.
I find this unexpected advantage in the publication of my manners, that
it in some sort serves me for a rule. I have, at times, some
consideration of not betraying the history of my life: this public
declaration obliges me to keep my way, and not to give the lie to the
image I have drawn of my qualities, commonly less deformed and
contradictory than consists with the malignity and infirmity of the
judgments of this age. The uniformity and simplicity of my manners
produce a face of easy interpretation; but because the fashion is a
little new and not in use, it gives too great opportunity to slander.
Yet so it is, that whoever would fairly assail me, I think I so
sufficiently assist his purpose in my known and avowed imperfections,
that he may that way satisfy his ill-nature without fighting with the
wind. If I myself, to anticipate accusation and discovery, confess
enough to frustrate his malice, as he conceives, ‘tis but reason that he
make use of his right of amplification, and to wire-draw my vices as far
as he can; attack has its rights beyond justice; and let him make the
roots of those errors I have laid open to him shoot up into trees: let
him make his use, not only of those I am really affected with, but also
of those that only threaten me; injurious vices, both in quality and
number; let him cudgel me that way. I should willingly follow the
example of the philosopher Bion: Antigonus being about to reproach him
with the meanness of his birth, he presently cut him short with this
declaration: “I am,” said he, “the son of a slave, a butcher, and
branded, and of a strumpet my father married in the lowest of his
fortune; both of them were whipped for offences they had committed. An
orator bought me, when a child, and finding me a pretty and hopeful boy,
bred me up, and when he died left me all his estate, which I have
transported into this city of Athens, and here settled myself to the
study of philosophy. Let the historians never trouble themselves with
inquiring about me: I will tell them about it.” A free and generous
confession enervates reproach and disarms slander. So it is that, one
thing with another, I fancy men as often commend as undervalue me beyond
reason; as, methinks also, from my childhood, in rank and degree of
honour, they have given me a place rather above than below my right.
I should find myself more at ease in a country where these degrees were
either regulated or not regarded. Amongst men, when an altercation about
the precedence either of walking or sitting exceeds three replies, ‘tis
reputed uncivil. I never stick at giving or taking place out of rule, to
avoid the trouble of such ceremony; and never any man had a mind to go
before me, but I permitted him to do it.
Besides this profit I make of writing of myself, I have also hoped for
this other advantage, that if it should fall out that my humour should
please or jump with those of some honest man before I die, he would then
desire and seek to be acquainted with me. I have given him a great deal
of made-way; for all that he could have, in many years, acquired by close
familiarity, he has seen in three days in this memorial, and more surely
and exactly. A pleasant fancy: many things that I would not confess to
any one in particular, I deliver to the public, and send my best friends
to a bookseller’s shop, there to inform themselves concerning my most
secret thoughts;
“Excutienda damus praecordia.”
[“We give our hearts to be examined.”--Persius, V. 22.]
Did I, by good direction, know where to seek any one proper for my
conversation, I should certainly go a great way to find him out: for the
sweetness of suitable and agreeable company cannot; in my opinion, be
bought too dear. O what a thing is a true friend! how true is that old
saying, that the use of a friend is more pleasing and necessary than the
elements of water and fire!
To return to my subject: there is, then, no great harm in dying privately
and far from home; we conceive ourselves obliged to retire for natural
actions less unseemly and less terrible than this. But, moreover, such
as are reduced to spin out a long languishing life, ought not, perhaps,
to wish to trouble a great family with their continual miseries;
therefore the Indians, in a certain province, thought it just to knock a
man on the head when reduced to such a necessity; and in another of their
provinces, they all forsook him to shift for himself as well as he could.
To whom do they not, at last, become tedious and insupportable? the
ordinary offices of fife do not go that length. You teach your best
friends to be cruel perforce; hardening wife and children by long use
neither to regard nor to lament your sufferings. The groans of the stone
are grown so familiar to my people, that nobody takes any notice of them.
And though we should extract some pleasure from their conversation (which
does not always happen, by reason of the disparity of conditions, which
easily begets contempt or envy toward any one whatever), is it not too
much to make abuse of this half a lifetime? The more I should see them
constrain themselves out of affection to be serviceable to me, the more I
should be sorry for their pains. We have liberty to lean, but not to lay
our whole weight upon others, so as to prop ourselves by their ruin; like
him who caused little children’s throats to be cut to make use of their
blood for the cure of a disease he had, or that other, who was
continually supplied with tender young girls to keep his old limbs warm
in the night, and to mix the sweetness of their breath with his, sour and
stinking. I should readily advise Venice as a retreat in this decline of
life. Decrepitude is a solitary quality. I am sociable even to excess,
yet I think it reasonable that I should now withdraw my troubles from the
sight of the world and keep them to myself. Let me shrink and draw up
myself in my own shell, like a tortoise, and learn to see men without
hanging upon them. I should endanger them in so slippery a passage: ‘tis
time to turn my back to company.
“But, in these travels, you will be taken ill in some wretched place,
where nothing can be had to relieve you.” I always carry most things
necessary about me; and besides, we cannot evade Fortune if she once
resolves to attack us. I need nothing extraordinary when I am sick.
I will not be beholden to my bolus to do that for me which nature cannot.
At the very beginning of my fevers and sicknesses that cast me down,
whilst still entire, and but little, disordered in health, I reconcile
myself to Almighty God by the last Christian, offices, and find myself by
so doing less oppressed and more easy, and have got, methinks, so much
the better of my disease. And I have yet less need of a notary or
counsellor than of a physician. What I have not settled of my affairs
when I was in health, let no one expect I should do it when I am sick.
What I will do for the service of death is always done; I durst not so
much as one day defer it; and if nothing be done, ‘tis as much as to say
either that doubt hindered my choice (and sometimes ‘tis well chosen not
to choose), or that I was positively resolved not to do anything at all.
I write my book for few men and for few years. Had it been matter of
duration, I should have put it into firmer language. According to the
continual variation that ours has been subject to, up to this day, who
can expect that its present form should be in use fifty years hence?
It slips every day through our fingers, and since I was born, it is
altered above one-half. We say that it is now perfect; and every age
says the same of its own. I shall hardly trust to that, so long as it
varies and changes as it does. ‘Tis for good and useful writings to
rivet it to them, and its reputation will go according to the fortune of
our state. For which reason I am not afraid to insert in it several
private articles, which will spend their use amongst the men that are now
living, and that concern the particular knowledge of some who will see
further into them than every common reader. I will not, after all, as I
often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say of me: “He judged, he
lived so and so; he would have done this or that; could he have spoken
when he was dying, he would have said so or so, and have given this thing
or t’other; I knew him better than any.” Now, as much as decency
permits, I here discover my inclinations and affections; but I do more
willingly and freely by word of mouth to any one who desires to be
informed. So it is that in these memoirs, if any one observe, he will
find that I have either told or designed to tell all; what I cannot
express, I point out with my finger:
“Verum animo satis haec vestigia parva sagaci
Sunt, per quae possis cognoscere caetera tute”
[“By these footsteps a sagacious mind many easily find all other
matters (are sufficient to enable one to learn the rest well.)”
--Lucretius, i. 403.]
I leave nothing to be desired or to be guessed at concerning me. If
people must be talking of me, I would have it to be justly and truly; I
would come again, with all my heart, from the other world to give any one
the lie who should report me other than I was, though he did it to honour
me. I perceive that people represent, even living men, quite another
thing than what they really are; and had I not stoutly defended a friend
whom I have lost,--[De la Boetie.]--they would have torn him into a
thousand contrary pieces.
To conclude the account of my poor humours, I confess that in my travels
I seldom reach my inn but that it comes into my mind to consider whether
I could there be sick and dying at my ease. I desire to be lodged in
some private part of the house, remote from all noise, ill scents, and
smoke. I endeavour to flatter death by these frivolous circumstances;
or, to say better, to discharge myself from all other incumbrances, that
I may have nothing to do, nor be troubled with anything but that which
will lie heavy enough upon me without any other load. I would have my
death share in the ease and conveniences of my life; ‘tis a great part of
it, and of great importance, and I hope it will not in the future
contradict the past. Death has some forms that are more easy than
others, and receives divers qualities, according to every one’s fancy.
Amongst the natural deaths, that which proceeds from weakness and stupor
I think the most favourable; amongst those that are violent, I can worse
endure to think of a precipice than of the fall of a house that will
crush me in a moment, and of a wound with a sword than of a harquebus
shot; I should rather have chosen to poison myself with Socrates, than
stab myself with Cato. And, though it, be all one, yet my imagination
makes as great a difference as betwixt death and life, betwixt throwing
myself into a burning furnace and plunging into the channel of a river:
so idly does our fear more concern itself in the means than the effect.
It is but an instant, ‘tis true, but withal an instant of such weight,
that I would willingly give a great many days of my life to pass it over
after my own fashion. Since every one’s imagination renders it more or
less terrible, and since every one has some choice amongst the several
forms of dying, let us try a little further to find some one that is
wholly clear from all offence. Might not one render it even voluptuous,
like the Commoyientes of Antony and Cleopatra? I set aside the brave and
exemplary efforts produced by philosophy and religion; but, amongst men
of little mark there have been found some, such as Petronius and
Tigellinus at Rome, condemned to despatch themselves, who have, as it
were, rocked death asleep with the delicacy of their preparations; they
have made it slip and steal away in the height of their accustomed
diversions amongst girls and good fellows; not a word of consolation, no
mention of making a will, no ambitious affectation of constancy, no talk
of their future condition; amongst sports, feastings, wit, and mirth,
common and indifferent discourses, music, and amorous verses. Were it
not possible for us to imitate this resolution after a more decent
manner? Since there are deaths that are good for fools, deaths good for
the wise, let us find out such as are fit for those who are betwixt both.
My imagination suggests to me one that is easy, and, since we must die,
to be desired. The Roman tyrants thought they did, in a manner, give a
criminal life when they gave him the choice of his death. But was not
Theophrastus, that so delicate, so modest, and so wise a philosopher,
compelled by reason, when he durst say this verse, translated by Cicero:
“Vitam regit fortuna, non sapientia?”
[“Fortune, not wisdom, sways human life.”
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., V. 31.]
Fortune assists the facility of the bargain of my life, having placed it
in such a condition that for the future it can be neither advantage nor
hindrance to those who are concerned in me; ‘tis a condition that I would
have accepted at any time of my life; but in this occasion of trussing up
my baggage, I am particularly pleased that in dying I shall neither do
them good nor harm. She has so ordered it, by a cunning compensation,
that they who may pretend to any considerable advantage by my death will,
at the same time, sustain a material inconvenience. Death sometimes is
more grievous to us, in that it is grievous to others, and interests us
in their interest as much as in our own, and sometimes more.
In this conveniency of lodging that I desire, I mix nothing of pomp and
amplitude--I hate it rather; but a certain plain neatness, which is
oftenest found in places where there is less of art, and that Nature has
adorned with some grace that is all her own:
“Non ampliter, sea munditer convivium.”
[“To eat not largely, but cleanly.”--Nepos, Life of Atticus, c. 13]
“Plus salis quam sumptus.”
[“Rather enough than costly (More wit than cost)”--Nonius, xi. 19.]
And besides, ‘tis for those whose affairs compel them to travel in the
depth of winter through the Grisons country to be surprised upon the way
with great inconveniences. I, who, for the most part, travel for my
pleasure, do not order my affairs so ill. If the way be foul on my right
hand, I turn on my left; if I find myself unfit to ride, I stay where I
am; and, so doing, in earnest I see nothing that is not as pleasant and
commodious as my own house. ‘Tis true that I always find superfluity
superfluous, and observe a kind of trouble even in abundance itself.
Have I left anything behind me unseen, I go back to see it; ‘tis still on
my way; I trace no certain line, either straight or crooked.--[Rousseau
has translated this passage in his Emile, book v.]--Do I not find in the
place to which I go what was reported to me--as it often falls out that
the judgments of others do not jump with mine, and that I have found
their reports for the most part false--I never complain of losing my
labour: I have, at least, informed myself that what was told me was not
true.
I have a constitution of body as free, and a palate as indifferent, as
any man living: the diversity of manners of several nations only affects
me in the pleasure of variety: every usage has its reason. Let the plate
and dishes be pewter, wood, or earth; my meat be boiled or roasted; let
them give me butter or oil, of nuts or olives, hot or cold, ‘tis all one
to me; and so indifferent, that growing old, I accuse this generous
faculty, and would wish that delicacy and choice should correct the
indiscretion of my appetite, and sometimes soothe my stomach. When I
have been abroad out of France and that people, out of courtesy, have
asked me if I would be served after the French manner, I laughed at the
question, and always frequented tables the most filled with foreigners.
I am ashamed to see our countrymen besotted with this foolish humour of
quarrelling with forms contrary to their own; they seem to be out of
their element when out of their own village: wherever they go, they keep
to their own fashions and abominate those of strangers. Do they meet
with a compatriot in Hungary? O the happy chance! They are henceforward
inseparable; they cling together, and their whole discourse is to condemn
the barbarous manners they see about them. Why barbarous, because they
are not French? And those have made the best use of their travels who
have observed most to speak against. Most of them go for no other end
but to come back again; they proceed in their travel with vast gravity
and circumspection, with a silent and incommunicable prudence, preserving
themselves from the contagion of an unknown air. What I am saying of
them puts me in mind of something like it I have at times observed in
some of our young courtiers; they will not mix with any but men of their
own sort, and look upon us as men of another world, with disdain or pity.
Put them upon any discourse but the intrigues of the court, and they are
utterly at a loss; as very owls and novices to us as we are to them.
‘Tis truly said that a well-bred man is a compound man. I, on the
contrary, travel very much sated with our own fashions; I do not look for
Gascons in Sicily; I have left enough of them at home; I rather seek for
Greeks and Persians; they are the men I endeavour to be acquainted with
and the men I study; ‘tis there that I bestow and employ myself. And
which is more, I fancy that I have met but with few customs that are not
as good as our own; I have not, I confess, travelled very far; scarce out
of the sight of the vanes of my own house.
As to the rest, most of the accidental company a man falls into upon the
road beget him more trouble than pleasure; I waive them as much as I
civilly can, especially now that age seems in some sort to privilege and
sequester me from the common forms. You suffer for others or others
suffer for you; both of them inconveniences of importance enough, but the
latter appears to me the greater. ‘Tis a rare fortune, but of
inestimable solace; to have a worthy man, one of a sound judgment and of
manners conformable to your own, who takes a delight to bear you company.
I have been at an infinite loss for such upon my travels. But such a
companion should be chosen and acquired from your first setting out.
There can be no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so
much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind, that it does not grieve
me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to communicate it to:
“Si cum hac exceptione detur sapientia,
ut illam inclusam teneam, nec enuntiem, rejiciam.”
[“If wisdom be conferred with this reservation, that I must keep it
to myself, and not communicate it to others, I would none of it.”
--Seneca, Ep., 6.]
This other has strained it one note higher:
“Si contigerit ea vita sapienti, ut ommum rerum afliuentibus copiis,
quamvis omnia, quae cognitione digna sunt, summo otio secum ipse
consideret et contempletur, tamen, si solitudo tanta sit, ut hominem
videre non possit, excedat a vita.”
[“If such a condition of life should happen to a wise man, that in
the greatest plenty of all conveniences he might, at the most
undisturbed leisure, consider and contemplate all things worth the
knowing, yet if his solitude be such that he must not see a man, let
him depart from life.”--Cicero, De Offic., i. 43.]
Architas pleases me when he says, “that it would be unpleasant, even in
heaven itself, to wander in those great and divine celestial bodies
without a companion. But yet ‘tis much better to be alone than in
foolish and troublesome company. Aristippus loved to live as a stranger
in all places:
“Me si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam
Auspiciis,”
[“If the fates would let me live in my own way.”--AEneid, iv. 340.]
I should choose to pass away the greatest part of my life on horseback:
“Visere gestiens,
Qua pane debacchentur ignes,
Qua nebula, pluviique rores.”
[“Visit the regions where the sun burns, where are the thick
rain-clouds and the frosts.”--Horace, Od., iii. 3, 54.]
“Have you not more easy diversions at home? What do you there want? Is
not your house situated in a sweet and healthful air, sufficiently
furnished, and more than sufficiently large? Has not the royal majesty
been more than once there entertained with all its train? Are there not
more below your family in good ease than there are above it in eminence?
Is there any local, extraordinary, indigestible thought that afflicts
you?”
“Qua to nunc coquat, et vexet sub pectore fixa.”
[“That may now worry you, and vex, fixed in your breast.”
--Cicero, De Senect, c. 1, Ex Ennio.]
“Where do you think to live without disturbance?”
“Nunquam simpliciter Fortuna indulget.”
[“Fortune is never simply complaisant (unmixed).”
--Quintus Curtius, iv. 14]
You see, then, it is only you that trouble yourself; you will everywhere
follow yourself, and everywhere complain; for there is no satisfaction
here below, but either for brutish or for divine souls. He who, on so
just an occasion, has no contentment, where will he think to find it?
How many thousands of men terminate their wishes in such a condition as
yours? Do but reform yourself; for that is wholly in your own power!
whereas you have no other right but patience towards fortune:
“Nulla placida quies est, nisi quam ratio composuit.”
[“There is no tranquillity but that which reason has conferred.”
--Seneca, Ep., 56.]
I see the reason of this advice, and see it perfectly well; but he might
sooner have done, and more pertinently, in bidding me in one word be
wise; that resolution is beyond wisdom; ‘tis her precise work and
product. Thus the physician keeps preaching to a poor languishing
patient to “be cheerful”; but he would advise him a little more
discreetly in bidding him “be well.” For my part, I am but a man of the
common sort. ‘Tis a wholesome precept, certain and easy to be
understood, “Be content with what you have,” that is to say, with reason:
and yet to follow this advice is no more in the power of the wise men of
the world than in me. ‘Tis a common saying, but of a terrible extent:
what does it not comprehend? All things fall under discretion and
qualification. I know very well that, to take it by the letter, this
pleasure of travelling is a testimony of uneasiness and irresolution,
and, in sooth, these two are our governing and predominating qualities.
Yes, I confess, I see nothing, not so much as in a dream, in a wish,
whereon I could set up my rest: variety only, and the possession of
diversity, can satisfy me; that is, if anything can. In travelling, it
pleases me that I may stay where I like, without inconvenience, and that
I have a place wherein commodiously to divert myself. I love a private
life, because ‘tis my own choice that I love it, not by any dissenting
from or dislike of public life, which, peradventure, is as much according
to my complexion. I serve my prince more cheerfully because it is by the
free election of my own judgment and reason, without any particular
obligation; and that I am not reduced and constrained so to do for being
rejected or disliked by the other party; and so of all the rest. I hate
the morsels that necessity carves me; any commodity upon which I had only
to depend would have me by the throat;
“Alter remus aquas, alter mihi radat arenas;”
[“Let me have one oar in the water, and with the other rake the
shore.”--Propertius, iii. 3, 23.]
one cord will never hold me fast enough. You will say, there is vanity
in this way of living. But where is there not? All these fine precepts
are vanity, and all wisdom is vanity:
“Dominus novit cogitationes sapientum, quoniam vanae sunt.”
[“The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.”
--Ps. xciii. II; or I Cor. iii. 20.]
These exquisite subtleties are only fit for sermons; they are discourses
that will send us all saddled into the other world. Life is a material
and corporal motion, an action imperfect and irregular of its own proper
essence; I make it my business to serve it according to itself:
“Quisque suos patimur manes.”
[“We each of us suffer our own particular demon.”--AEneid, vi. 743.]
“Sic est faciendum, ut contra naturam universam nihil contendamus;
ea tamen conservata propriam sequamur.”
[“We must so order it as by no means to contend against universal
nature; but yet, that rule being observed, to follow our own.”
--Cicero, De Offcc., i. 31.]
To what end are these elevated points of philosophy, upon which no human
being can rely? and those rules that exceed both our use and force?
I see often that we have theories of life set before us which neither the
proposer nor those who hear him have any hope, nor, which is more, any
inclination to follow. Of the same sheet of paper whereon the judge has
but just written a sentence against an adulterer, he steals a piece
whereon to write a love-letter to his companion’s wife. She whom you
have but just now illicitly embraced will presently, even in your
hearing, more loudly inveigh against the same fault in her companion than
a Portia would do;--[The chaste daughter of Cato of Utica.]--and men
there are who will condemn others to death for crimes that they
themselves do not repute so much as faults. I have, in my youth, seen a
man of good rank with one hand present to the people verses that excelled
both in wit and debauchery, and with the other, at the same time, the
most ripe and pugnacious theological reformation that the world has been
treated withal these many years. And so men proceed; we let the laws and
precepts follow their way; ourselves keep another course, not only from
debauchery of manners, but ofttimes by judgment and contrary opinion. Do
but hear a philosophical lecture; the invention, eloquence, pertinency
immediately strike upon your mind and move you; there is nothing that
touches or stings your conscience; ‘tis not to this they address
themselves. Is not this true? It made Aristo say, that neither a bath
nor a lecture did aught unless it scoured and made men clean. One may
stop at the skin; but it is after the marrow is picked out as, after we
have swallowed good wine out of a fine cup, we examine the designs and
workmanship. In all the courts of ancient philosophy, this is to be
found, that the same teacher publishes rules of temperance and at the