ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE
BOOK THE SECOND
CHAPTER I
OF THE INCONSTANCY OF OUR ACTIONS
Such as make it their business to oversee human actions, do not find
themselves in anything so much perplexed as to reconcile them and bring
them into the world's eye with the same lustre and reputation; for they
commonly so strangely contradict one another that it seems impossible
they should proceed from one and the same person. We find the younger
Marius one while a son of Mars and another a son of Venus. Pope Boniface
VIII. entered, it is said, into his Papacy like a fox, behaved himself in
it like a lion, and died like a dog; and who could believe it to be the
same Nero, the perfect image of all cruelty, who, having the sentence of
a condemned man brought to him to sign, as was the custom, cried out,
"O that I had never been taught to write!" so much it went to his heart
to condemn a man to death. All story is full of such examples, and every
man is able to produce so many to himself, or out of his own practice or
observation, that I sometimes wonder to see men of understanding give
themselves the trouble of sorting these pieces, considering that
irresolution appears to me to be the most common and manifest vice of our
nature witness the famous verse of the player Publius:
"Malum consilium est, quod mutari non potest."
["'Tis evil counsel that will admit no change."
--Pub. Mim., ex Aul. Gell., xvii. 14.]
There seems some reason in forming a judgment of a man from the most
usual methods of his life; but, considering the natural instability of
our manners and opinions, I have often thought even the best authors a
little out in so obstinately endeavouring to make of us any constant and
solid contexture; they choose a general air of a man, and according to
that interpret all his actions, of which, if they cannot bend some to a
uniformity with the rest, they are presently imputed to dissimulation.
Augustus has escaped them, for there was in him so apparent, sudden, and
continual variety of actions all the whole course of his life, that he
has slipped away clear and undecided from the most daring critics. I can
more hardly believe a man's constancy than any other virtue, and believe
nothing sooner than the contrary. He that would judge of a man in detail
and distinctly, bit by bit, would oftener be able to speak the truth. It
is a hard matter, from all antiquity, to pick out a dozen men who have
formed their lives to one certain and constant course, which is the
principal design of wisdom; for to comprise it all in one word, says one
of the ancients, and to contract all the rules of human life into one,
"it is to will, and not to will, always one and the same thing: I will
not vouchsafe," says he, "to add, provided the will be just, for if it be
not just, it is impossible it should be always one." I have indeed
formerly learned that vice is nothing but irregularity, and want of
measure, and therefore 'tis impossible to fix constancy to it. 'Tis a
saying of. Demosthenes, "that the beginning oh all virtue is
consultation and deliberation; the end and perfection, constancy." If we
would resolve on any certain course by reason, we should pitch upon the
best, but nobody has thought on't:
"Quod petit, spernit; repetit, quod nuper omisit;
AEstuat, et vitae disconvenit ordine toto."
["That which he sought he despises; what he lately lost, he seeks
again. He fluctuates, and is inconsistent in the whole order of
life."--Horace, Ep., i. I, 98.]
Our ordinary practice is to follow the inclinations of our appetite, be
it to the left or right, upwards or downwards, according as we are wafted
by the breath of occasion. We never meditate what we would have till the
instant we have a mind to have it; and change like that little creature
which receives its colour from what it is laid upon. What we but just
now proposed to ourselves we immediately alter, and presently return
again to it; 'tis nothing but shifting and inconsistency:
"Ducimur, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum."
["We are turned about like the top with the thong of others."
--Idem, Sat., ii. 7, 82.]
We do not go, we are driven; like things that float, now leisurely, then
with violence, according to the gentleness or rapidity of the current:
"Nonne videmus,
Quid sibi quisque velit, nescire, et quaerere semper
Commutare locum, quasi onus deponere possit?"
["Do we not see them, uncertain what they want, and always asking
for something new, as if they could get rid of the burthen."
--Lucretius, iii. 1070.]
Every day a new whimsy, and our humours keep motion with the time.
"Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse
Juppiter auctificas lustravit lumine terras."
["Such are the minds of men, that they change as the light with
which father Jupiter himself has illumined the increasing earth."
--Cicero, Frag. Poet, lib. x.]
We fluctuate betwixt various inclinations; we will nothing freely,
nothing absolutely, nothing constantly. In any one who had prescribed
and established determinate laws and rules in his head for his own
conduct, we should perceive an equality of manners, an order and an
infallible relation of one thing or action to another, shine through his
whole life; Empedocles observed this discrepancy in the Agrigentines,
that they gave themselves up to delights, as if every day was their last,
and built as if they had been to live for ever. The judgment would not
be hard to make, as is very evident in the younger Cato; he who therein
has found one step, it will lead him to all the rest; 'tis a harmony of
very according sounds, that cannot jar. But with us 't is quite
contrary; every particular action requires a particular judgment. The
surest way to steer, in my opinion, would be to take our measures from
the nearest allied circumstances, without engaging in a longer
inquisition, or without concluding any other consequence. I was told,
during the civil disorders of our poor kingdom, that a maid, hard by the
place where I then was, had thrown herself out of a window to avoid being
forced by a common soldier who was quartered in the house; she was not
killed by the fall, and therefore, repeating her attempt would have cut
her own throat, had she not been prevented; but having, nevertheless,
wounded herself to some show of danger, she voluntarily confessed that
the soldier had not as yet importuned her otherwise; than by courtship,
earnest solicitation, and presents; but that she was afraid that in the
end he would have proceeded to violence, all which she delivered with
such a countenance and accent, and withal embrued in her own blood, the
highest testimony of her virtue, that she appeared another Lucretia; and
yet I have since been very well assured that both before and after she
was not so difficult a piece. And, according to my host's tale in
Ariosto, be as handsome a man and as worthy a gentleman as you will, do
not conclude too much upon your mistress's inviolable chastity for having
been repulsed; you do not know but she may have a better stomach to your
muleteer.
Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favour
and esteem for his valour, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him
of a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished,
and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than
before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: "Yourself, sir,"
replied the other, "by having eased me of the pains that made me weary of
my life." Lucullus's soldier having been rifled by the enemy, performed
upon them in revenge a brave exploit, by which having made himself a
gainer, Lucullus, who had conceived a good opinion of him from that
action, went about to engage him in some enterprise of very great danger,
with all the plausible persuasions and promises he could think of;
"Verbis, quae timido quoque possent addere mentem"
["Words which might add courage to any timid man."
--Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 1, 2.]
"Pray employ," answered he, "some miserable plundered soldier in that
affair":
"Quantumvis rusticus, ibit,
Ibit eo, quo vis, qui zonam perdidit, inquit;"
["Some poor fellow, who has lost his purse, will go whither you
wish, said he."--Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 39.]
and flatly refused to go. When we read that Mahomet having furiously
rated Chasan, Bassa of the Janissaries, because he had seen the
Hungarians break into his squadrons, and himself behave very ill in the
business, and that Chasan, instead of any other answer, rushed furiously
alone, scimitar in hand, into the first body of the enemy, where he was
presently cut to pieces, we are not to look upon that action,
peradventure, so much as vindication as a turn of mind, not so much
natural valour as a sudden despite. The man you saw yesterday so
adventurous and brave, you must not think it strange to see him as great
a poltroon the next: anger, necessity, company, wine, or the sound of the
trumpet had roused his spirits; this is no valour formed and established
by reason, but accidentally created by such circumstances, and therefore
it is no wonder if by contrary circumstances it appear quite another
thing.
These supple variations and contradictions so manifest in us, have given
occasion to some to believe that man has two souls; other two distinct
powers that always accompany and incline us, the one towards good and the
other towards ill, according to their own nature and propension; so
abrupt a variety not being imaginable to flow from one and the same
source.
For my part, the puff of every accident not only carries me along with it
according to its own proclivity, but moreover I discompose and trouble
myself by the instability of my own posture; and whoever will look
narrowly into his own bosom, will hardly find himself twice in the same
condition. I give to my soul sometimes one face and sometimes another,
according to the side I turn her to. If I speak variously of myself, it
is because I consider myself variously; all the contrarieties are there
to be found in one corner or another; after one fashion or another:
bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; prating, silent; laborious, delicate;
ingenious, heavy; melancholic, pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant;
liberal, covetous, and prodigal: I find all this in myself, more or less,
according as I turn myself about; and whoever will sift himself to the
bottom, will find in himself, and even in his own judgment, this
volubility and discordance. I have nothing to say of myself entirely,
simply, and solidly without mixture and confusion. 'Distinguo' is the
most universal member of my logic. Though I always intend to speak well
of good things, and rather to interpret such things as fall out in the
best sense than otherwise, yet such is the strangeness of our condition,
that we are often pushed on to do well even by vice itself, if well-doing
were not judged by the intention only. One gallant action, therefore,
ought not to conclude a man valiant; if a man were brave indeed, he would
be always so, and upon all occasions. If it were a habit of valour and
not a sally, it would render a man equally resolute in all accidents; the
same alone as in company; the same in lists as in a battle: for, let them
say what they will, there is not one valour for the pavement and another
for the field; he would bear a sickness in his bed as bravely as a wound
in the field, and no more fear death in his own house than at an assault.
We should not then see the same man charge into a breach with a brave
assurance, and afterwards torment himself like a woman for the loss of a
trial at law or the death of a child; when, being an infamous coward, he
is firm in the necessities of poverty; when he shrinks at the sight of a
barber's razor, and rushes fearless upon the swords of the enemy, the
action is commendable, not the man.
Many of the Greeks, says Cicero,--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 27.]--
cannot endure the sight of an enemy, and yet are courageous in sickness;
the Cimbrians and Celtiberians quite contrary;
"Nihil enim potest esse aequabile,
quod non a certa ratione proficiscatur."
["Nothing can be regular that does not proceed from a fixed ground
of reason."--Idem, ibid., c. 26.]
No valour can be more extreme in its kind than that of Alexander: but it
is of but one kind, nor full enough throughout, nor universal.
Incomparable as it is, it has yet some blemishes; of which his being so
often at his wits' end upon every light suspicion of his captains
conspiring against his life, and the carrying himself in that inquisition
with so much vehemence and indiscreet injustice, and with a fear that
subverted his natural reason, is one pregnant instance. The
superstition, also, with which he was so much tainted, carries along with
it some image of pusillanimity; and the excess of his penitence for the
murder of Clytus is also a testimony of the unevenness of his courage.
All we perform is no other than a cento, as a man may say, of several
pieces, and we would acquire honour by a false title. Virtue cannot be
followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some
other purpose, she presently pulls it away again. 'Tis a vivid and
strong tincture which, when the soul has once thoroughly imbibed it, will
not out but with the piece. And, therefore, to make a right judgment of
a man, we are long and very observingly to follow his trace: if constancy
does not there stand firm upon her own proper base,
"Cui vivendi via considerata atque provisa est,"
["If the way of his life is thoroughly considered and traced out."
--Cicero, Paradox, v. 1.]
if the variety of occurrences makes him alter his pace (his path, I mean,
for the pace may be faster or slower) let him go; such an one runs before
the wind, "Avau le dent," as the motto of our Talebot has it.
'Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a
dominion over us, since it is by chance we live. It is not possible for
any one who has not designed his life for some certain end, it is
impossible for any one to arrange the pieces, who has not the whole form
already contrived in his imagination. Of what use are colours to him
that knows not what he is to paint? No one lays down a certain design
for his life, and we only deliberate thereof by pieces. The archer ought
first to know at what he is to aim, and then accommodate his arm, bow,
string, shaft, and motion to it; our counsels deviate and wander, because
not levelled to any determinate end. No wind serves him who addresses
his voyage to no certain, port. I cannot acquiesce in the judgment given
by one in the behalf of Sophocles, who concluded him capable of the
management of domestic affairs, against the accusation of his son, from
having read one of his tragedies.
Neither do I allow of the conjecture of the Parians, sent to regulate the
Milesians sufficient for such a consequence as they from thence derived
coming to visit the island, they took notice of such grounds as were best
husbanded, and such country-houses as were best governed; and having
taken the names of the owners, when they had assembled the citizens, they
appointed these farmers for new governors and magistrates; concluding
that they, who had been so provident in their own private concerns, would
be so of the public too. We are all lumps, and of so various and inform
a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and
there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and
others:
"Magnam rem puta, unum hominem agere."
["Esteem it a great thing always to act as one and the same
man."--Seneca, Ep., 150.]
Since ambition can teach man valour, temperance, and liberality, and even
justice too; seeing that avarice can inspire the courage of a shop-boy,
bred and nursed up in obscurity and ease, with the assurance to expose
himself so far from the fireside to the mercy of the waves and angry
Neptune in a frail boat; that she further teaches discretion and
prudence; and that even Venus can inflate boys under the discipline of
the rod with boldness and resolution, and infuse masculine courage into
the heart of tender virgins in their mothers' arms:
"Hac duce, custodes furtim transgressa jacentes,
Ad juvenem tenebris sola puella venit:"
["She leading, the maiden, furtively passing by the recumbent
guards, goes alone in the darkness to the youth."
--Tibullus, ii. 2, 75.]
'tis not all the understanding has to do, simply to judge us by our
outward actions; it must penetrate the very soul, and there discover by
what springs the motion is guided. But that being a high and hazardous
undertaking, I could wish that fewer would attempt it.
CHAPTER II
OF DRUNKENNESS
The world is nothing but variety and disemblance, vices are all alike, as
they are vices, and peradventure the Stoics understand them so; but
although they are equally vices, yet they are not all equal vices; and he
who has transgressed the ordinary bounds a hundred paces:
"Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum,"
["Beyond or within which the right cannot exist."
--Horace, Sat., i, 1, 107.]
should not be in a worse condition than he that has advanced but ten, is
not to be believed; or that sacrilege is not worse than stealing a
cabbage:
"Nec vincet ratio hoc, tantumdem ut peccet, idemque,
Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti,
Et qui nocturnus divum sacra legerit."
There is in this as great diversity as in anything whatever. The
confounding of the order and measure of sins is dangerous: murderers,
traitors, and tyrants get too much by it, and it is not reasonable they
should flatter their consciences, because another man is idle,
lascivious, or not assiduous at his devotion. Every one overrates the
offence of his companions, but extenuates his own. Our very instructors
themselves rank them sometimes, in my opinion, very ill. As Socrates
said that the principal office of wisdom was to distinguish good from
evil, we, the best of whom are vicious, ought also to say the same of the
science of distinguishing betwixt vice and vice, without which, and that
very exactly performed, the virtuous and the wicked will remain
confounded and unrecognised.
Now, amongst the rest, drunkenness seems to me to be a gross and brutish
vice. The soul has greater part in the rest, and there are some vices
that have something, if a man may so say, of generous in them; there are
vices wherein there is a mixture of knowledge, diligence, valour,
prudence, dexterity, and address; this one is totally corporeal and
earthly. And the rudest nation this day in Europe is that alone where it
is in fashion. Other vices discompose the understanding: this totally
overthrows it and renders the body stupid:
"Cum vini vis penetravit . . .
Consequitur gravitas membrorum, praepediuntur
Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens,
Nant oculi; clamor, singultus, jurgia, gliscunt."
["When the power of wine has penetrated us, a heaviness of the limbs
follows, the legs of the tottering person are impeded; the tongue
grows torpid, the mind is dimmed, the eyes swim; noise, hiccup, and
quarrels arise.--"Lucretius, i. 3, 475.]
The worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge and
government of himself. And 'tis said amongst other things upon this
subject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top
whatever it has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyond
measure, vents the most inward secrets:
"Tu sapientum
Curas et arcanum jocoso
Consilium retegis Lyaeo."
["Thou disclosest to the merry Lyacus the cares and secret
counsel of the wise."--Horace, Od., xxi. 1, 114.]
[Lyacus, a name given to Bacchus.]
Josephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to him
his full dose of liquor, he wormed out his secrets. And yet, Augustus,
committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who
conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than
Tiberias did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though we
know they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain to
carry both the one and the other drunk out of the Senate:
"Hesterno inflatum venas ut semper, Lyaeo."
["Their veins full, as usual, of yesterday's wine."
--Virgil, Egl., vi. 15.]
And the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to Cimber,
though he would often be drunk, as to Cassius, who drank nothing but
water.
[As to which Cassius pleasantly said: "What, shall I bear
a tyrant, I who cannot bear wine?"]
We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post, remember
the word, and keep to their ranks:
"Nec facilis victoria de madidis, et
Blaesis, atque mero titubantibus."
["Nor is a victory easily obtained over men so drunk, they can
scarce speak or stand."--Juvenal, Sat., xv. 47.]
I could not have believed there had been so profound, senseless, and dead
a degree of drunkenness had I not read in history that Attalus having,
to put a notable affront upon him, invited to supper the same Pausanias,
who upon the very same occasion afterwards killed Philip of Macedon,
a king who by his excellent qualities gave sufficient testimony of his
education in the house and company of Epaminondas, made him drink to such
a pitch that he could after abandon his beauty, as of a hedge strumpet,
to the muleteers and servants of the basest office in the house. And I
have been further told by a lady whom I highly honour and esteem, that
near Bordeaux and about Castres where she lives, a country woman, a
widow of chaste repute, perceiving in herself the first symptoms of
breeding, innocently told her neighbours that if she had a husband she
should think herself with child; but the causes of suspicion every day
more and more increasing, and at last growing up to a manifest proof, the
poor woman was reduced to the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed in
her parish church, that whoever had done that deed and would frankly
confess it, she did not only promise to forgive, but moreover to marry
him, if he liked the motion; whereupon a young fellow that served her in
the quality of a labourer, encouraged by this proclamation, declared that
he had one holiday found her, having taken too much of the bottle, so
fast asleep by the chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he could
conveniently do his business without waking her; and they yet live
together man and wife.
It is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice; the writings
even of several philosophers speak very tenderly of it, and even amongst
the Stoics there are some who advise folks to give themselves sometimes
the liberty to drink, nay, to drunkenness, to refresh the soul:
"Hoc quoque virtutum quondam certamine, magnum
Socratem palmam promeruisse ferunt."
["In this trial of power formerly they relate that the great
Socrates deserved the palm."--Cornet. Gallus, Ep., i. 47.]
That censor and reprover of others, Cato, was reproached that he was a
hard drinker:
"Narratur et prisci Catonis
Saepe mero caluisse virtus."
["And of old Cato it is said, that his courage was often warmed with
wine."--Horace, Od., xxi. 3, 11.--Cato the Elder.]
Cyrus, that so renowned king, amongst the other qualities by which he
claimed to be preferred before his brother Artaxerxes, urged this
excellence, that he could drink a great deal more than he. And in the
best governed nations this trial of skill in drinking is very much in
use. I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that
lest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not
amiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest
they should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the
Persians used to consult about their most important affairs after being
well warmed with wine.
My taste and constitution are greater enemies to this vice than my
discourse; for besides that I easily submit my belief to the authority of
ancient opinions, I look upon it indeed as an unmanly and stupid vice,
but less malicious and hurtful than the others, which, almost all, more
directly jostle public society. And if we cannot please ourselves but it
must cost us something, as they hold, I find this vice costs a man's
conscience less than the others, besides that it is of no difficult
preparation, nor hard to be found, a consideration not altogether to be
despised. A man well advanced both in dignity and age, amongst three
principal commodities that he said remained to him of life, reckoned to
me this for one, and where would a man more justly find it than amongst
the natural conveniences? But he did not take it right, for delicacy and
the curious choice of wines is therein to be avoided. If you found your
pleasure upon drinking of the best, you condemn yourself to the penance
of drinking of the worst. Your taste must be more indifferent and free;
so delicate a palate is not required to make a good toper. The Germans
drink almost indifferently of all wines with delight; their business is
to pour down and not to taste; and it's so much the better for them:
their pleasure is so much the more plentiful and nearer at hand.
Secondly, to drink, after the French fashion, but at two meals, and then
very moderately, is to be too sparing of the favours of the god. There
is more time and constancy required than so. The ancients spent whole
nights in this exercise, and ofttimes added the day following to eke it
out, and therefore we are to take greater liberty and stick closer to our
work. I have seen a great lord of my time, a man of high enterprise and
famous success, that without setting himself to't, and after his ordinary
rate of drinking at meals, drank not much less than five quarts of wine,
and at his going away appeared but too wise and discreet, to the
detriment of our affairs. The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course
of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it;
we should, like shopboys and labourers, refuse no occasion nor omit any
opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds. Methinks we
every day abridge and curtail the use of wine, and that the after
breakfasts, dinner snatches, and collations I used to see in my father's
house, when I was a boy, were more usual and frequent then than now.
Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no: but it may be we are
more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises
that thwart and hinder one another in their vigour. Lechery weakens our
stomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce
and amorous for the exercise of love.
'Tis wonderful what strange stories I have heard my father tell of the
chastity of that age wherein he lived. It was for him to say it, being
both by art and nature cut out and finished for the service of ladies.
He spoke well and little: ever mixing his language with some illustration
out of authors most in use, especially in Spanish, and among the Spanish
he whom they called Marcus Aurelius--[ Guevara's Golden Book of Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus.]--was ordinarily in his mouth. His behaviour was
gently grave, humble, and very modest; he was very solicitous of neatness
and propriety both in his person and clothes, whether on horseback or
afoot, he was monstrously punctual in his word; and of a conscience and
religion generally tending rather towards superstition than otherwise.
For a man of little stature, very strong, well proportioned, and well
knit; of a pleasing countenance inclining to brown, and very adroit in
all noble exercises. I have yet in the house to be seen canes poured
full of lead, with which they say he exercised his arms for throwing the
bar or the stone, or in fencing; and shoes with leaden soles to make him
lighter for running or leaping. Of his vaulting he has left little
miracles behind him: I have seen him when past three score laugh at our
exercises, and throw himself in his furred gown into the saddle, make the
tour of a table upon his thumbs and scarce ever mount the stairs into his
chamber without taking three or four steps at a time. But as to what I
was speaking of before; he said there was scarce one woman of quality of
ill fame in the whole province: he would tell of strange confidences, and
some of them his own, with virtuous women, free from any manner of
suspicion of ill, and for his own part solemnly swore he was a virgin at
his marriage; and yet it was after a long practice of arms beyond the
mountains, of which wars he left us a journal under his own hand, wherein
he has given a precise account from point to point of all passages, both
relating to the public and to himself. And he was, moreover, married at
a well advanced maturity, in the year 1528, the three-and-thirtieth year
of his age, upon his way home from Italy. But let us return to our
bottles.
The incommodities of old age, that stand in need of some refreshment and
support, might with reason beget in me a desire of this faculty, it being
as it were the last pleasure the course of years deprives us of. The
natural heat, say the good-fellows, first seats itself in the feet: that
concerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middle region, where it makes
a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of
human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end,
like a vapour that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where
it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress. I do not,
nevertheless, understand how a man can extend the pleasure of drinking
beyond thirst, and forge in his imagination an appetite artificial and
against nature; my stomach would not proceed so far; it has enough to do
to deal with what it takes in for its necessity. My constitution is not
to care for drink but as following eating and washing down my meat, and
for that reason my last draught is always the greatest. And seeing that
in old age we have our palate furred with phlegms or depraved by some
other ill constitution, the wine tastes better to us as the pores are
cleaner washed and laid more open. At least, I seldom taste the first
glass well. Anacharsis wondered that the Greeks drank in greater glasses
towards the end of a meal than at the beginning; which was, I suppose,
for the same reason the Germans do the same, who then begin the battle of
drink.
Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk
till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and
to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that
good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their
youth; who mollifies the passions of the soul, as iron is softened by
fire; and in his Lazes allows such merry meetings, provided they have a
discreet chief to govern and keep them in order, as good and of great
utility; drunkenness being, he says, a true and certain trial of every
one's nature, and, withal, fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert
themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare
not attempt when sober. He, moreover, says that wine is able to supply
the soul with temperance and the body with health. Nevertheless, these
restrictions, in part borrowed from the Carthaginians, please him: that
men forbear excesses in the expeditions of war; that every judge and
magistrate abstain from it when about the administrations of his place or
the consultations of the public affairs; that the day is not to be
employed with it, that being a time due to other occupations, nor the
night on which a man intends to get children.
'Tis said that the philosopher Stilpo, when oppressed with age, purposely
hastened his end by drinking pure wine. The same thing, but not designed
by him, despatched also the philosopher Arcesilaus.
But 'tis an old and pleasant question, whether the soul of a wise man can
be overcome by the strength of wine?
"Si munitae adhibet vim sapientiae."
To what vanity does the good opinion we have of ourselves push us? The
most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to
keep itself upright, and from being overthrown by its own weakness.
There is not one of a thousand that is right and settled so much as one
minute in a whole life, and that may not very well doubt, whether
according to her natural condition she ever can be; but to join constancy
to it is her utmost perfection; I mean when nothing should jostle and
discompose her, which a thousand accidents may do. 'Tis to much purpose
that the great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy,
when, behold! he goes mad with a love philtre. Is it to be imagined
that an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as a porter? Some men
have forgotten their own names by the violence of a disease; and a slight
wound has turned the judgment of others topsy-turvy. Let him be as wise
as he will, after all he is but a man; and than that what is there more
frail, more miserable, or more nothing? Wisdom does not force our
natural dispositions,
"Sudores itaque, et pallorem exsistere toto
Corpore, et infringi linguam, vocemque aboriri,
Caligare oculos, sonere aures, succidere artus,
Demque concidere, ex animi terrore, videmus."
["Sweat and paleness come over the whole body, the tongue is
rendered powerless, the voice dies away, the eyes are darkened,
there is ringing in the ears, the limbs sink under us by the
influence of fear."--Lucretius, iii. 155.]
he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he must
tremble upon the margin of a precipice, like a child; nature having
reserved these light marks of her authority, not to be forced by our
reason and the stoic virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness;
he turns pale with fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, if
not with desperate outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice:
"Humani a se nihil alienum putet."
["Let him not think himself exempt from that which is incidental to
men in general."--Terence, Heauton, i. 1, 25.]
The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their
greatest heroes of tears:
"Sic fatur lacrymans, classique immittit habenas."
["Thus he speaks, weeping, and then sets sail with his fleet."
--Aeneid, vi. i.]
'Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for
totally to suppress them is not in him to do. Even our great Plutarch,
that excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when he sees Brutus
and Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could
proceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not rather been
stimulated by some other passion.--[Plutarch, Life of Publicola, c. 3.]
--All actions exceeding the ordinary bounds are liable to sinister
interpretation, for as much as our liking no more holds with what is
above than with what is below it.
Let us leave that other sect, that sets up an express profession of
scornful superiority--[The Stoics.]--: but when even in that sect,
reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades of
Metrodorus:
"Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos
interclusi ut ad me aspirare non posses;"
["Fortune, I have got the better of thee, and have made all the
avenues so sure thou canst not come at me."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 9.]
when Anaxarchus, by command of Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, was put
into a stone mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not to say,
"Strike, batter, break; 'tis not Anaxarchus, 'tis but his sheath that you
pound and bray so"; when we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant from
the middle of the flame, "This side is roasted enough, fall to and eat,
it is enough done; fall to work with the other;" when we hear the child
in Josephus' torn piece-meal with pincers, defying Antiochus, and crying
out with a constant and assured voice: "Tyrant, thou losest thy labour,
I am still at ease; where is the pain, where are the torments with which
thou didst so threaten me? Is this all thou canst do? My constancy
torments thee more than thy cruelty does me. O pitiful coward, thou
faintest, and I grow stronger; make me complain, make me bend, make me
yield if thou canst; encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners;
see, see they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spur
them up"; truly, a man must confess that there is some phrenzy, some
fury, how holy soever, that at that time possesses those souls. When we
come to these Stoical sallies: "I had rather be mad than voluptuous," a
saying of Antisthenes. When Sextius tells us, "he had rather be fettered
with affliction than pleasure": when Epicurus takes upon him to play with
his gout, and, refusing health and ease, defies all torments, and
despising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets
and calls out for others sharper, more violent, and more worthy of him;
"Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votis
Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem:"
["And instead of timid beasts, wishes the foaming boar or tawny lion
would come from the mountain."--AEneid, iv. 158.]
who but must conclude that these are wild sallies pushed on by a courage
that has broken loose from its place? Our soul cannot from her own seat
reach so high; 'tis necessary she must leave it, raise herself up, and,
taking the bridle in her teeth, transport her man so far that he shall
afterwards himself be astonished at what he has done; as, in war, the
heat of battle impels generous soldiers to perform things of so infinite
danger, as afterwards, recollecting them, they themselves are the first
to wonder at; as it also fares with the poets, who are often rapt with
admiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the
track through which they performed so fine a Career; which also is in
them called fury and rapture. And as Plato says, 'tis to no purpose for
a sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy: so Aristotle says, that
no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness; and he has reason
to call all transports, how commendable soever, that surpass our own
judgment and understanding, madness; forasmuch as wisdom is a regular
government of the soul, which is carried on with measure and proportion,
and for which she is to herself responsible. Plato argues thus, that the
faculty of prophesying is so far above us, that we must be out of
ourselves when we meddle with it, and our prudence must either be
obstructed by sleep or sickness, or lifted from her place by some
celestial rapture.
CHAPTER III
A CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA
[Cos. Cea is the form of the name given by Pliny]
If to philosophise be, as 'tis defined, to doubt, much more to write at
random and play the fool, as I do, ought to be reputed doubting, for it
is for novices and freshmen to inquire and to dispute, and for the
chairman to moderate and determine.
My moderator is the authority of the divine will, that governs us without
contradiction, and that is seated above these human and vain
contestations.
Philip having forcibly entered into Peloponnesus, and some one saying to
Damidas that the Lacedaemonians were likely very much to suffer if they
did not in time reconcile themselves to his favour: "Why, you pitiful
fellow," replied he, "what can they suffer who do not fear to die?" It
being also asked of Agis, which way a man might live free? "Why," said
he, "by despising death." These, and a thousand other sayings to the
same purpose, distinctly sound of something more than the patient
attending the stroke of death when it shall come; for there are several
accidents in life far worse to suffer than death itself. Witness the
Lacedaemonian boy taken by Antigonus, and sold for a slave, who being by
his master commanded to some base employment: "Thou shalt see," says the
boy, "whom thou hast bought; it would be a shame for me to serve, being
so near the reach of liberty," and having so said, threw himself from the
top of the house. Antipater severely threatening the Lacedaemonians,
that he might the better incline them to acquiesce in a certain demand of
his: "If thou threatenest us with more than death," replied they, "we
shall the more willingly die"; and to Philip, having written them word
that he would frustrate all their enterprises: "What, wilt thou also
hinder us from dying?" This is the meaning of the sentence, "That the
wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can; and that the
most obliging present Nature has made us, and which takes from us all
colour of complaint of our condition, is to have delivered into our own
custody the keys of life; she has only ordered, one door into life, but a
hundred thousand ways out. We may be straitened for earth to live upon,
but earth sufficient to die upon can never be wanting, as Boiocalus
answered the Romans."--[Tacitus, Annal., xiii. 56.]--Why dost thou
complain of this world? it detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the
cause, if thou livest in pain. There needs no more to die but to will to
die:
"Ubique mors est; optime hoc cavit deus.
Eripere vitam nemo non homini potest;
At nemo mortem; mille ad hanc aditus patent."
["Death is everywhere: heaven has well provided for that. Any one
may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death. To death
there are a thousand avenues."--Seneca, Theb:, i, I, 151.]
Neither is it a recipe for one disease only; death is the infallible cure
of all; 'tis a most assured port that is never to be feared, and very
often to be sought. It comes all to one, whether a man give himself his
end, or stays to receive it by some other means; whether he pays before
his day, or stay till his day of payment come; from whencesoever it
comes, it is still his; in what part soever the thread breaks, there's
the end of the clue. The most voluntary death is the finest. Life
depends upon the pleasure of others; death upon our own. We ought not to
accommodate ourselves to our own humour in anything so much as in this.
Reputation is not concerned in such an enterprise; 'tis folly to be
concerned by any such apprehension. Living is slavery if the liberty of
dying be wanting. The ordinary method of cure is carried on at the
expense of life; they torment us with caustics, incisions, and
amputations of limbs; they interdict aliment and exhaust our blood; one
step farther and we are cured indeed and effectually. Why is not the
jugular vein as much at our disposal as the median vein? For a desperate
disease a desperate cure. Servius the grammarian, being tormented with
the gout, could think of no better remedy than to apply poison to his
legs, to deprive them of their sense; let them be gouty at their will, so
they were insensible of pain. God gives us leave enough to go when He is
pleased to reduce us to such a condition that to live is far worse than
to die. 'Tis weakness to truckle under infirmities, but it's madness to
nourish them. The Stoics say, that it is living according to nature in a
wise man to, take his leave of life, even in the height of prosperity,
if he do it opportunely; and in a fool to prolong it, though he be
miserable, provided he be not indigent of those things which they repute
to be according to nature. As I do not offend the law against thieves
when I embezzle my own money and cut my own purse; nor that against
incendiaries when I burn my own wood; so am I not under the lash of those
made against murderers for having deprived myself of my own life.
Hegesias said, that as the condition of life did, so the condition of
death ought to depend upon our own choice. And Diogenes meeting the
philosopher Speusippus, so blown up with an inveterate dropsy that he was
fain to be carried in a litter, and by him saluted with the compliment,
"I wish you good health." "No health to thee," replied the other,
"who art content to live in such a condition."
And in fact, not long after, Speusippus, weary of so languishing a state
of life, found a means to die.
But this does not pass without admitting a dispute: for many are of
opinion that we cannot quit this garrison of the world without the
express command of Him who has placed us in it; and that it appertains to
God who has placed us here, not for ourselves only but for His Glory and
the service of others, to dismiss us when it shall best please Him, and
not for us to depart without His licence: that we are not born for
ourselves only, but for our country also, the laws of which require an
account from us upon the score of their own interest, and have an action
of manslaughter good against us; and if these fail to take cognisance of
the fact, we are punished in the other world as deserters of our duty:
"Proxima deinde tenent maesti loca, qui sibi letum
Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi
Proiecere animas."
["Thence the sad ones occupy the next abodes, who, though free
from guilt, were by their own hands slain, and, hating light,
sought death."--AEneid, vi. 434.]
There is more constancy in suffering the chain we are tied to than in
breaking it, and more pregnant evidence of fortitude in Regulus than in
Cato; 'tis indiscretion and impatience that push us on to these
precipices: no accidents can make true virtue turn her back; she seeks
and requires evils, pains, and grief, as the things by which she is
nourished and supported; the menaces of tyrants, racks, and tortures
serve only to animate and rouse her:
"Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus
Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido,
Per damma, percmdes, ab ipso
Ducit opes, animumque ferro."
["As in Mount Algidus, the sturdy oak even from the axe itself
derives new vigour and life."--Horace, Od., iv. 4, 57.]
And as another says:
"Non est, ut putas, virtus, pater,
Timere vitam; sed malis ingentibus
Obstare, nec se vertere, ac retro dare."
["Father, 'tis no virtue to fear life, but to withstand great
misfortunes, nor turn back from them."--Seneca, Theb., i. 190.]
Or as this:
"Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere mortem
Fortius ille facit, qui miser esse potest."
["It is easy in adversity to despise death; but he acts more
bravely, who can live wretched."--Martial, xi. 56, 15.]
'Tis cowardice, not virtue, to lie squat in a furrow, under a tomb, to
evade the blows of fortune; virtue never stops nor goes out of her path,
for the greatest storm that blows:
"Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinae."
["Should the world's axis crack, the ruins will but crush
a fearless head."--Horace, Od., iii. 3, 7.]
For the most part, the flying from other inconveniences brings us to
this; nay, endeavouring to evade death, we often run into its very mouth:
"Hic, rogo, non furor est, ne moriare, mori?"
["Tell me, is it not madness, that one should die for fear
of dying?"--Martial, ii. 80, 2.]
like those who, from fear of a precipice, throw themselves headlong into
it;
"Multos in summa pericula misfit
Venturi timor ipse mali: fortissimus ille est,
Qui promptus metuenda pati, si cominus instent,
Et differre potest."
["The fear of future ills often makes men run into extreme danger;
he is truly brave who boldly dares withstand the mischiefs he
apprehends, when they confront him and can be deferred."
--Lucan, vii. 104.]
"Usque adeo, mortis formidine, vitae
Percipit humanos odium, lucisque videndae,
Ut sibi consciscant moerenti pectore lethum
Obliti fontem curarum hunc esse timorem."
["Death to that degree so frightens some men, that causing them to
hate both life and light, they kill themselves, miserably forgetting
that this same fear is the fountain of their cares."
--Lucretius, iii. 79.]
Plato, in his Laws, assigns an ignominious sepulture to him who has
deprived his nearest and best friend, namely himself, of life and his
destined course, being neither compelled so to do by public judgment,
by any sad and inevitable accident of fortune, nor by any insupportable
disgrace, but merely pushed on by cowardice and the imbecility of a
timorous soul. And the opinion that makes so little of life, is
ridiculous; for it is our being, 'tis all we have. Things of a nobler
and more elevated being may, indeed, reproach ours; but it is against
nature for us to contemn and make little account of ourselves; 'tis a
disease particular to man, and not discerned in any other creatures, to
hate and despise itself. And it is a vanity of the same stamp to desire
to be something else than what we are; the effect of such a desire does
not at all touch us, forasmuch as it is contradicted and hindered in
itself. He that desires of a man to be made an angel, does nothing for
himself; he would be never the better for it; for, being no more, who
shall rejoice or be sensible of this benefit for him.
"Debet enim, misere cui forti, aegreque futurum est,
Ipse quoque esse in eo turn tempore, cum male possit
Accidere."
["For he to whom misery and pain are to be in the future, must
himself then exist, when these ills befall him."
--Idem, ibid., 874.]
Security, indolence, impassability, the privation of the evils of this
life, which we pretend to purchase at the price of dying, are of no
manner of advantage to us: that man evades war to very little purpose who
can have no fruition of peace; and as little to the purpose does he avoid
trouble who cannot enjoy repose.
Amongst those of the first of these two opinions, there has been great
debate, what occasions are sufficient to justify the meditation of
self-murder, which they call "A reasonable exit."--[ Diogenes Laertius,
Life of Zeno.]--For though they say that men must often die for trivial
causes, seeing those that detain us in life are of no very great weight,
yet there is to be some limit. There are fantastic and senseless humours
that have prompted not only individual men, but whole nations to destroy
themselves, of which I have elsewhere given some examples; and we further
read of the Milesian virgins, that by a frantic compact they hanged
themselves one after another till the magistrate took order in it,
enacting that the bodies of such as should be found so hanged should be
drawn by the same halter stark naked through the city. When Therykion
tried to persuade Cleomenes to despatch himself, by reason of the ill
posture of his affairs, and, having missed a death of more honour in the
battle he had lost, to accept of this the second in honour to it, and not
to give the conquerors leisure to make him undergo either an ignominious
death or an infamous life; Cleomenes, with a courage truly Stoic and
Lacedaemonian, rejected his counsel as unmanly and mean; "that," said he,
"is a remedy that can never be wanting, but which a man is never to make
use of, whilst there is an inch of hope remaining": telling him, "that
it was sometimes constancy and valour to live; that he would that even
his death should be of use to his country, and would make of it an act of
honour and virtue." Therykion, notwithstanding, thought himself in the
right, and did his own business; and Cleomenes afterwards did the same,
but not till he had first tried the utmost malevolence of fortune. All
the inconveniences in the world are not considerable enough that a man
should die to evade them; and, besides, there being so many, so sudden
and unexpected changes in human things, it is hard rightly to judge when
we are at the end of our hope:
"Sperat et in saeva victus gladiator arena,
Sit licet infesto pollice turba minax."
["The gladiator conquered in the lists hopes on, though the
menacing spectators, turning their thumb, order him to die."
--Pentadius, De Spe, ap. Virgilii Catadecta.]
All things, says an old adage, are to be hoped for by a man whilst he
lives; ay, but, replies Seneca, why should this rather be always running
in a man's head that fortune can do all things for the living man, than
this, that fortune has no power over him that knows how to die?
Josephus, when engaged in so near and apparent danger, a whole people
being violently bent against him, that there was no visible means of
escape, nevertheless, being, as he himself says, in this extremity
counselled by one of his friends to despatch himself, it was well for him
that he yet maintained himself in hope, for fortune diverted the accident
beyond all human expectation, so that he saw himself delivered without
any manner of inconvenience. Whereas Brutus and Cassius, on the
contrary, threw away the remains of the Roman liberty, of which they were
the sole protectors, by the precipitation and temerity wherewith they
killed themselves before the due time and a just occasion. Monsieur
d'Anguien, at the battle of Serisolles, twice attempted to run himself
through, despairing of the fortune of the day, which went indeed very
untowardly on that side of the field where he was engaged, and by that
precipitation was very near depriving himself of the enjoyment of so
brave a victory. I have seen a hundred hares escape out of the very
teeth of the greyhounds:
"Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit."
["Some have survived their executioners."--Seneca, Ep., 13.]
"Multa dies, variusque labor mutabilis nevi
Rettulit in melius; multos alterna revisens
Lusit, et in solido rursus fortuna locavit."
["Length of days, and the various labour of changeful time, have
brought things to a better state; fortune turning, shews a reverse
face, and again restores men to prosperity."--AEneid, xi. 425.]
Piny says there are but three sorts of diseases, to escape which a man
has good title to destroy himself; the worst of which is the stone in the
bladder, when the urine is suppressed.
["In the quarto edition of these essays, in 1588, Pliny is said to
mention two more, viz., a pain in the stomach and a headache, which,
he says (lib. xxv. c. 9.), were the only three distempers almost
for which men killed themselves."]
Seneca says those only which for a long time are discomposing the
functions of the soul. And some there have been who, to avoid a worse
death, have chosen one to their own liking. Democritus, general of the
AEtolians, being brought prisoner to Rome, found means to make his escape
by night: but close pursued by his keepers, rather than suffer himself to
be retaken, he fell upon his own sword and died. Antinous and Theodotus,
their city of Epirus being reduced by the Romans to the last extremity,
gave the people counsel universally to kill themselves; but, these
preferring to give themselves up to the enemy, the two chiefs went to
seek the death they desired, rushing furiously upon the enemy, with
intention to strike home but not to ward a blow. The Island of Gozzo
being taken some years ago by the Turks, a Sicilian, who had two
beautiful daughters marriageable, killed them both with his own hand, and
their mother, running in to save them, to boot, which having done,
sallying out of the house with a cross-bow and harquebus, with two shots
he killed two of the Turks nearest to his door, and drawing his sword,
charged furiously in amongst the rest, where he was suddenly enclosed and
cut to pieces, by that means delivering his family and himself from
slavery and dishonour. The Jewish women, after having circumcised their
children, threw them and themselves down a precipice to avoid the cruelty
of Antigonus. I have been told of a person of condition in one of our
prisons, that his friends, being informed that he would certainly be
condemned, to avoid the ignominy of such a death suborned a priest to
tell him that the only means of his deliverance was to recommend himself
to such a saint, under such and such vows, and to fast eight days
together without taking any manner of nourishment, what weakness or
faintness soever he might find in himself during the time; he followed
their advice, and by that means destroyed himself before he was aware,
not dreaming of death or any danger in the experiment. Scribonia
advising her nephew Libo to kill himself rather than await the stroke of
justice, told him that it was to do other people's business to preserve
his life to put it after into the hands of those who within three or four
days would fetch him to execution, and that it was to serve his enemies
to keep his blood to gratify their malice.
We read in the Bible that Nicanor, the persecutor of the law of God,
having sent his soldiers to seize upon the good old man Razis, surnamed
in honour of his virtue the father of the Jews: the good man, seeing no
other remedy, his gates burned down, and the enemies ready to seize him,
choosing rather to die nobly than to fall into the hands of his wicked
adversaries and suffer himself to be cruelly butchered by them, contrary
to the honour of his rank and quality, stabbed himself with his own
sword, but the blow, for haste, not having been given home, he ran and
threw himself from the top of a wall headlong among them, who separating
themselves and making room, he pitched directly upon his head;
notwithstanding which, feeling yet in himself some remains of life, he
renewed his courage, and starting up upon his feet all bloody and wounded
as he was, and making his way through the crowd to a precipitous rock,
there, through one of his wounds, drew out his bowels, which, tearing and
pulling to pieces with both his hands, he threw amongst his pursuers, all
the while attesting and invoking the Divine vengeance upon them for their
cruelty and injustice.
Of violences offered to the conscience, that against the chastity of
woman is, in my opinion, most to be avoided, forasmuch as there is a
certain pleasure naturally mixed with it, and for that reason the dissent
therein cannot be sufficiently perfect and entire, so that the violence
seems to be mixed with a little consent of the forced party. The
ecclesiastical history has several examples of devout persons who have
embraced death to secure them from the outrages prepared by tyrants
against their religion and honour. Pelagia and Sophronia, both
canonised, the first of these precipitated herself with her mother and
sisters into the river to avoid being forced by some soldiers, and the
last also killed herself to avoid being ravished by the Emperor
Maxentius.
It may, peradventure, be an honour to us in future ages, that a learned
author of this present time, and a Parisian, takes a great deal of pains
to persuade the ladies of our age rather to take any other course than to
enter into the horrid meditation of such a despair. I am sorry he had
never heard, that he might have inserted it amongst his other stories,
the saying of a woman, which was told me at Toulouse, who had passed
through the handling of some soldiers: "God be praised," said she, "that
once at least in my life I have had my fill without sin." In truth,
these cruelties are very unworthy the French good nature, and also, God
be thanked, our air is very well purged of them since this good advice:
'tis enough that they say "no" in doing it, according to the rule of the
good Marot.
"Un doulx nenny, avec un doulx sourire
Est tant honneste."--Marot.
History is everywhere full of those who by a thousand ways have exchanged
a painful and irksome life for death. Lucius Aruntius killed himself, to
fly, he said, both the future and the past. Granius Silvanus and Statius
Proximus, after having been pardoned by Nero, killed themselves; either
disdaining to live by the favour of so wicked a man, or that they might
not be troubled, at some other time, to obtain a second pardon,
considering the proclivity of his nature to suspect and credit
accusations against worthy men. Spargapises, son of Queen Tomyris, being
a prisoner of war to Cyrus, made use of the first favour Cyrus shewed
him, in commanding him to be unbound, to kill himself, having pretended
to no other benefit of liberty, but only to be revenged of himself for
the disgrace of being taken. Boges, governor in Eion for King Xerxes,
being besieged by the Athenian army under the conduct of Cimon, refused
the conditions offered, that he might safe return into Asia with all his
wealth, impatient to survive the loss of a place his master had given him
to keep; wherefore, having defended the city to the last extremity,
nothing being left to eat, he first threw all the gold and whatever else
the enemy could make booty of into the river Strymon, and then causing a
great pile to be set on fire, and the throats of all the women, children,
concubines, and servants to be cut, he threw their bodies into the fire,
and at last leaped into it himself.
Ninachetuen, an Indian lord, so soon as he heard the first whisper of the
Portuguese Viceroy's determination to dispossess him, without any
apparent cause, of his command in Malacca, to transfer it to the King of
Campar, he took this resolution with himself: he caused a scaffold, more
long than broad, to be erected, supported by columns royally adorned with
tapestry and strewed with flowers and abundance of perfumes; all which
being prepared, in a robe of cloth of gold, set full of jewels of great
value, he came out into the street, and mounted the steps to the
scaffold, at one corner of which he had a pile lighted of aromatic wood.
Everybody ran to see to what end these unusual preparations were made;
when Ninachetuen, with a manly but displeased countenance, set forth how
much he had obliged the Portuguese nation, and with how unspotted
fidelity he had carried himself in his charge; that having so often,
sword in hand, manifested in the behalf of others, that honour was much
more dear to him than life, he was not to abandon the concern of it for
himself: that fortune denying him all means of opposing the affront
designed to be put upon him, his courage at least enjoined him to free
himself from the sense of it, and not to serve for a fable to the people,
nor for a triumph to men less deserving than himself; which having said
he leaped into the fire.
Sextilia, wife of Scaurus, and Paxaea, wife of Labeo, to encourage their
husbands to avoid the dangers that pressed upon them, wherein they had no
other share than conjugal affection, voluntarily sacrificed their own
lives to serve them in this extreme necessity for company and example.
What they did for their husbands, Cocceius Nerva did for his country,
with less utility though with equal affection: this great lawyer,
flourishing in health, riches, reputation, and favour with the Emperor,
had no other cause to kill himself but the sole compassion of the
miserable state of the Roman Republic. Nothing can be added to the
beauty of the death of the wife of Fulvius, a familiar favourite of
Augustus: Augustus having discovered that he had vented an important
secret he had entrusted him withal, one morning that he came to make his
court, received him very coldly and looked frowningly upon him. He
returned home, full of, despair, where he sorrowfully told his wife that,
having fallen into this misfortune, he was resolved to kill himself: to
which she roundly replied, "'tis but reason you should, seeing that
having so often experienced the incontinence of my tongue, you could not
take warning: but let me kill myself first," and without any more saying
ran herself through the body with a sword. Vibius Virrius, despairing of
the safety of his city besieged by the Romans and of their mercy, in the
last deliberation of his city's senate, after many arguments conducing to
that end, concluded that the most noble means to escape fortune was by
their own hands: telling them that the enemy would have them in honour,
and Hannibal would be sensible how many faithful friends he had
abandoned; inviting those who approved of his advice to come to a good
supper he had ready at home, where after they had eaten well, they would
drink together of what he had prepared; a beverage, said he, that will
deliver our bodies from torments, our souls from insult, and our eyes and
ears from the sense of so many hateful mischiefs, as the conquered suffer
from cruel and implacable conquerors. I have, said he, taken order for
fit persons to throw our bodies into a funeral pile before my door so
soon as we are dead. Many enough approved this high resolution, but few
imitated it; seven-and-twenty senators followed him, who, after having
tried to drown the thought of this fatal determination in wine, ended the
feast with the mortal mess; and embracing one another, after they had
jointly deplored the misfortune of their country, some retired home to
their own houses, others stayed to be burned with Vibius in his funeral
pyre; and were all of them so long in dying, the vapour of the wine
having prepossessed the veins, and by that means deferred the effect of
poison, that some of them were within an hour of seeing the enemy inside
the walls of Capua, which was taken the next morning, and of undergoing
the miseries they had at so dear a rate endeavoured to avoid. Jubellius
Taurea, another citizen of the same country, the Consul Fulvius returning
from the shameful butchery he had made of two hundred and twenty-five
senators, called him back fiercely by name, and having made him stop:
"Give the word," said he, "that somebody may dispatch me after the
massacre of so many others, that thou mayest boast to have killed a much
more valiant man than thyself." Fulvius, disdaining him as a man out of
his wits, and also having received letters from Rome censuring the
inhumanity of his execution which tied his hands, Jubellius proceeded:
"Since my country has been taken, my friends dead, and having with my own
hands slain my wife and children to rescue them from the desolation of
this ruin, I am denied to die the death of my fellow-citizens, let me
borrow from virtue vengeance on this hated life," and therewithal drawing
a short sword he carried concealed about him, he ran it through his own
bosom, falling down backward, and expiring at the consul's feet.
Alexander, laying siege to a city of the Indies, those within, finding
themselves very hardly set, put on a vigorous resolution to deprive him
of the pleasure of his victory, and accordingly burned themselves in
general, together with their city, in despite of his humanity: a new kind
of war, where the enemies sought to save them, and they to destroy
themselves, doing to make themselves sure of death, all that men do to
secure life.
Astapa, a city of Spain, finding itself weak in walls and defence to
withstand the Romans, the inhabitants made a heap of all their riches and
furniture in the public place; and, having ranged upon this heap all the
women and children, and piled them round with wood and other combustible
matter to take sudden fire, and left fifty of their young men for the
execution of that whereon they had resolved, they made a desperate sally,
where for want of power to overcome, they caused themselves to be every
man slain. The fifty, after having massacred every living soul
throughout the whole city, and put fire to this pile, threw themselves
lastly into it, finishing their generous liberty, rather after an
insensible, than after a sorrowful and disgraceful manner, giving the
enemy to understand, that if fortune had been so pleased, they had as
well the courage to snatch from them victory as they had to frustrate and
render it dreadful, and even mortal to those who, allured by the
splendour of the gold melting in this flame, having approached it,
a great number were there suffocated and burned, being kept from retiring
by the crowd that followed after.
The Abydeans, being pressed by King Philip, put on the same resolution;
but, not having time, they could not put it 'in effect. The king, who
was struck with horror at the rash precipitation of this execution (the
treasure and movables that they had condemned to the flames being first
seized), drawing off his soldiers, granted them three days' time to kill
themselves in, that they might do it with more order and at greater ease:
which time they filled with blood and slaughter beyond the utmost excess
of all hostile cruelty, so that not so much as any one soul was left
alive that had power to destroy itself. There are infinite examples of
like popular resolutions which seem the more fierce and cruel in
proportion as the effect is more universal, and yet are really less so
than when singly executed; what arguments and persuasion cannot do with
individual men, they can do with all, the ardour of society ravishing
particular judgments.
The condemned who would live to be executed in the reign of Tiberius,
forfeited their goods and were denied the rites of sepulture; those who,
by killing themselves, anticipated it, were interred, and had liberty to
dispose of their estates by will.
But men sometimes covet death out of hope of a greater good. "I desire,"
says St. Paul, "to be with Christ," and "who shall rid me of these
bands?" Cleombrotus of Ambracia, having read Plato's Pheedo, entered
into so great a desire of the life to come that, without any other
occasion, he threw himself into the sea. By which it appears how
improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair, to which the
eagerness of hope often inclines us, and, often, a calm and temperate
desire proceeding from a mature and deliberate judgment. Jacques du
Chastel, bishop of Soissons, in St. Louis's foreign expedition, seeing
the king and whole army upon the point of returning into France, leaving
the affairs of religion imperfect, took a resolution rather to go into
Paradise; wherefore, having taken solemn leave of his friends, he charged
alone, in the sight of every one, into the enemy's army, where he was
presently cut to pieces. In a certain kingdom of the new discovered
world, upon a day of solemn procession, when the idol they adore is drawn
about in public upon a chariot of marvellous greatness; besides that many
are then seen cutting off pieces of their flesh to offer to him, there
are a number of others who prostrate themselves upon the place, causing
themselves to be crushed and broken to pieces under the weighty wheels,
to obtain the veneration of sanctity after death, which is accordingly
paid them. The death of the bishop, sword in hand, has more of
magnanimity in it, and less of sentiment, the ardour of combat taking
away part of the latter.
There are some governments who have taken upon them to regulate the
justice and opportunity of voluntary death. In former times there was
kept in our city of Marseilles a poison prepared out of hemlock, at the
public charge, for those who had a mind to hasten their end, having
first, before the six hundred, who were their senate, given account of
the reasons and motives of their design, and it was not otherwise lawful,
than by leave from the magistrate and upon just occasion to do violence
to themselves.--[Valerius Maximus, ii. 6, 7.]--The same law was also
in use in other places.
Sextus Pompeius, in his expedition into Asia, touched at the isle of Cea
in Negropont: it happened whilst he was there, as we have it from one
that was with him, that a woman of great quality, having given an account
to her citizens why she was resolved to put an end to her life, invited
Pompeius to her death, to render it the more honourable, an invitation
that he accepted; and having long tried in vain by the power of his
eloquence, which was very great, and persuasion, to divert her from that
design, he acquiesced in the end in her own will. She had passed the age
of four score and ten in a very happy state, both of body and mind; being
then laid upon her bed, better dressed than ordinary and leaning upon her
elbow, "The gods," said she, "O Sextus Pompeius, and rather those I leave
than those I go to seek, reward thee, for that thou hast not disdained to
be both the counsellor of my life and the witness of my death. For my
part, having always experienced the smiles of fortune, for fear lest the
desire of living too long may make me see a contrary face, I am going, by
a happy end, to dismiss the remains of my soul, leaving behind two
daughters of my body and a legion of nephews"; which having said, with
some exhortations to her family to live in peace, she divided amongst
them her goods, and recommending her domestic gods to her eldest
daughter, she boldly took the bowl that contained the poison, and having
made her vows and prayers to Mercury to conduct her to some happy abode
in the other world, she roundly swallowed the mortal poison. This being
done, she entertained the company with the progress of its operation, and
how the cold by degrees seized the several parts of her body one after
another, till having in the end told them it began to seize upon her
heart and bowels, she called her daughters to do the last office and
close her eyes.
Pliny tells us of a certain Hyperborean nation where, by reason of the
sweet temperature of the air, lives rarely ended but by the voluntary
surrender of the inhabitants, who, being weary of and satiated with
living, had the custom, at a very old age, after having made good cheer,
to precipitate themselves into the sea from the top of a certain rock,
assigned for that service. Pain and the fear of a worse death seem to me
the most excusable incitements.
CHAPTER IV
TO-MORROW'S A NEW DAY
I give, as it seems to me, with good reason the palm to Jacques Amyot of
all our French writers, not only for the simplicity and purity of his
language, wherein he excels all others, nor for his constancy in going
through so long a work, nor for the depth of his knowledge, having been
able so successfully to smooth and unravel so knotty and intricate an
author (for let people tell me what they will, I understand nothing of
Greek; but I meet with sense so well united and maintained throughout his
whole translation, that certainly he either knew the true fancy of the
author, or having, by being long conversant with him, imprinted a vivid
and general idea of that of Plutarch in his soul, he has delivered us
nothing that either derogates from or contradicts him), but above all, I
am the most taken with him for having made so discreet a choice of a book
so worthy and of so great utility wherewith to present his country. We
ignorant fellows had been lost, had not this book raised us out of the
dirt; by this favour of his we dare now speak and write; the ladies are
able to read to schoolmasters; 'tis our breviary. If this good man be
yet living, I would recommend to him Xenophon, to do as much by that;
'tis a much more easy task than the other, and consequently more proper
for his age. And, besides, though I know not how, methinks he does
briskly--and clearly enough trip over steps another would have stumbled
at, yet nevertheless his style seems to be more his own where he does not
encounter those difficulties, and rolls away at his own ease.
I was just now reading this passage where Plutarch says of himself, that
Rusticus being present at a declamation of his at Rome, there received a
packet from the emperor, and deferred to open it till all was done: for
which, says he, all the company highly applauded the gravity of this
person. 'Tis true, that being upon the subject of curiosity and of that
eager passion for news, which makes us with so much indiscretion and
impatience leave all to entertain a newcomer, and without any manner of
respect or outcry, tear open on a sudden, in what company soever, the
letters that are delivered to us, he had reason to applaud the gravity of
Rusticus upon this occasion; and might moreover have added to it the
commendation of his civility and courtesy, that would not interrupt the
current of his declamation. But I doubt whether any one can commend his
prudence; for receiving unexpected letters, and especially from an
emperor, it might have fallen out that the deferring to read them might
have been of great prejudice. The vice opposite to curiosity is
negligence, to which I naturally incline, and wherein I have seen some
men so extreme that one might have found letters sent them three or four
days before, still sealed up in their pockets.
I never open any letters directed to another; not only those intrusted
with me, but even such as fortune has guided to my hand; and am angry
with myself if my eyes unawares steal any contents of letters of
importance he is reading when I stand near a great man. Never was man
less inquisitive or less prying into other men's affairs than I.
In our fathers' days, Monsieur de Boutieres had like to have lost Turin
from having, while engaged in good company at supper, delayed to read
information that was sent him of the treason plotted against that city
where he commanded. And this very Plutarch has given me to understand,
that Julius Caesar had preserved himself, if, going to the Senate the day
he was assassinated by the conspirators, he had read a note which was
presented to him by, the way. He tells also the story of Archias, the
tyrant of Thebes, that the night before the execution of the design
Pelopidas had plotted to kill him to restore his country to liberty, he
had a full account sent him in writing by another Archias, an Athenian,
of the whole conspiracy, and that, this packet having been delivered to
him while he sat at supper, he deferred the opening of it, saying, which
afterwards turned to a proverb in Greece, "Business to-morrow."
A wise man may, I think, out of respect to another, as not to disturb the
company, as Rusticus did, or not to break off another affair of
importance in hand, defer to read or hear any new thing that is brought
him; but for his own interest or particular pleasure, especially if he be
a public minister, that he will not interrupt his dinner or break his
sleep is inexcusable. And there was anciently at Rome, the consular
place, as they called it, which was the most honourable at the table, as
being a place of most liberty, and of more convenient access to those who
came in to speak to the person seated there; by which it appears, that
being at meat, they did not totally abandon the concern of other affairs
and incidents. But when all is said, it is very hard in human actions to
give so exact a rule upon moral reasons, that fortune will not therein
maintain her own right.
CHAPTER V
OF CONSCIENCE
The Sieur de la Brousse, my brother, and I, travelling one day together
during the time of our civil wars, met a gentleman of good sort. He was
of the contrary party, though I did not know so much, for he pretended
otherwise: and the mischief on't is, that in this sort of war the cards
are so shuffled, your enemy not being distinguished from yourself by any
apparent mark either of language or habit, and being nourished under the
same law, air, and manners, it is very hard to avoid disorder and
confusion. This made me afraid myself of meeting any of our troops in a
place where I was not known, that I might not be in fear to tell my name,
and peradventure of something worse; as it had befallen me before, where,
by such a mistake, I lost both men and horses, and amongst others an
Italian gentleman my page, whom I bred with the greatest care and
affection, was miserably slain, in whom a youth of great promise and
expectation was extinguished. But the gentleman my brother and I met
had so desperate, half-dead a fear upon him at meeting with any horse,
or passing by any of the towns that held for the King, that I at last
discovered it to be alarms of conscience. It seemed to the poor man as
if through his visor and the crosses upon his cassock, one would have
penetrated into his bosom and read the most secret intentions of his
heart; so wonderful is the power of conscience. It makes us betray,
accuse, and fight against ourselves, and for want of other witnesses, to
give evidence against ourselves:
"Occultum quatiens animo tortore flagellum."
["The torturer of the soul brandishing a sharp scourge within."
--Juvenal, iii. 195.]
This story is in every child's mouth: Bessus the Paeonian, being
reproached for wantonly pulling down a nest of young sparrows and killing
them, replied, that he had reason to do so, seeing that those little
birds never ceased falsely to accuse him of the murder of his father.
This parricide had till then been concealed and unknown, but the
revenging fury of conscience caused it to be discovered by him himself,
who was to suffer for it. Hesiod corrects the saying of Plato, that
punishment closely follows sin, it being, as he says, born at the same
time with it. Whoever expects punishment already suffers it, and whoever
has deserved it expects it. Wickedness contrives torments against
itself:
"Malum consilium consultori pessimum."
["Ill designs are worst to the contriver."
--Apud Aul. Gellium, iv. 5.]
as the wasp stings and hurts another, but most of all itself, for it
there loses its sting and its use for ever,
"Vitasque in vulnere ponunt."
["And leave their own lives in the wound."
--Virgil, Geo., iv. 238.]
Cantharides have somewhere about them, by a contrariety of nature, a
counterpoison against their poison. In like manner, at the same time
that men take delight in vice, there springs in the conscience a
displeasure that afflicts us sleeping and waking with various tormenting
imaginations:
"Quippe ubi se multi, per somnia saepe loquentes,
Aut morbo delirantes, protraxe ferantur,
Et celata diu in medium peccata dedisse."
["Surely where many, often talking in their sleep, or raving in
disease, are said to have betrayed themselves, and to have given
publicity to offences long concealed."--Lucretius, v. 1157.]
Apollodorus dreamed that he saw himself flayed by the Scythians and
afterwards boiled in a cauldron, and that his heart muttered these words
"I am the cause of all these mischiefs that have befallen thee."
Epicurus said that no hiding-hole could conceal the wicked, since they
could never assure themselves of being hid whilst their conscience
discovered them to themselves.
"Prima est haec ultio, quod se
Judice nemo nocens absohitur."
["Tis the first punishment of sin that no man absolves himself." or:
"This is the highest revenge, that by its judgment no offender is
absolved."--Juvenal, xiii. 2.]
As an ill conscience fills us with fear, so a good one gives us greater
confidence and assurance; and I can truly say that I have gone through
several hazards with a more steady pace in consideration of the secret
knowledge I had of my own will and the innocence of my intentions:
"Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra
Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo."
["As a man's conscience is, so within hope or fear prevails, suiting
to his design."--Ovid, Fast., i. 485.]
Of this are a thousand examples; but it will be enough to instance three
of one and the same person. Scipio, being one day accused before the
people of Rome of some crimes of a very high nature, instead of excusing
himself or flattering his judges: "It will become you well," said he,
"to sit in judgment upon a head, by whose means you have the power to
judge all the world." Another time, all the answer he gave to several
impeachments brought against him by a tribune of the people, instead of
making his defence: "Let us go, citizens," said he, "let us go render
thanks to the gods for the victory they gave me over the Carthaginians as
this day," and advancing himself before towards the Temple, he had
presently all the assembly and his very accuser himself following at his
heels. And Petilius, having been set on by Cato to demand an account of
the money that had passed through his hands in the province of Antioch,
Scipio being come into the senate to that purpose, produced a book from
under his robe, wherein he told them was an exact account of his receipts
and disbursements; but being required to deliver it to the prothonotary
to be examined, he refused, saying, he would not do himself so great a
disgrace; and in the presence of the whole senate tore the book with his
own hands to pieces. I do not believe that the most seared conscience
could have counterfeited so great an assurance. He had naturally too
high a spirit and was accustomed to too high a fortune, says Titius
Livius, to know how to be criminal, and to lower himself to the meanness
of defending his innocence. The putting men to the rack is a dangerous
invention, and seems to be rather a trial of patience than of truth.
Both he who has the fortitude to endure it conceals the truth, and he who
has not: for why should pain sooner make me confess what really is, than
force me to say what is not? And, on the contrary, if he who is not
guilty of that whereof he is accused, has the courage to undergo those
torments, why should not he who is guilty have the same, so fair a reward
as life being in his prospect? I believe the ground of this invention
proceeds from the consideration of the force of conscience: for, to the
guilty, it seems to assist the rack to make him confess his fault and to
shake his resolution; and, on the other side, that it fortifies the
innocent against the torture. But when all is done, 'tis, in plain
truth, a trial full of uncertainty and danger what would not a man say,
what would not a man do, to avoid so intolerable torments?
"Etiam innocentes cogit mentiri dolor."
["Pain will make even the innocent lie."--Publius Syrus, De Dolore.]
Whence it comes to pass, that him whom the judge has racked that he may
not die innocent, he makes him die both innocent and racked. A thousand
and a thousand have charged their own heads by false confessions, amongst
whom I place Philotas, considering the circumstances of the trial
Alexander put upon him and the progress of his torture. But so it is
that some say it is the least evil human weakness could invent; very
inhumanly, notwithstanding, and to very little purpose, in my opinion.
Many nations less barbarous in this than the Greeks and Romans who call
them so, repute it horrible and cruel to torment and pull a man to pieces
for a fault of which they are yet in doubt. How can he help your
ignorance? Are not you unjust, that, not to kill him without cause, do
worse than kill him? And that this is so, do but observe how often men
prefer to die without reason than undergo this examination, more painful
than execution itself; and that oft-times by its extremity anticipates
execution, and perform it. I know not where I had this story, but it
exactly matches the conscience of our justice in this particular. A
country-woman, to a general of a very severe discipline, accused one of
his soldiers that he had taken from her children the little soup meat she
had left to nourish them withal, the army having consumed all the rest;
but of this proof there was none. The general, after having cautioned
the woman to take good heed to what she said, for that she would make
herself guilty of a false accusation if she told a lie, and she
persisting, he presently caused the soldier's belly to be ripped up to
clear the truth of the fact, and the woman was found to be right. An
instructive sentence.
CHAPTER VI
USE MAKES PERFECT
'Tis not to be expected that argument and instruction, though we never so
voluntarily surrender our belief to what is read to us, should be of
force to lead us on so far as to action, if we do not, over and above,
exercise and form the soul by experience to the course for which we
design it; it will, otherwise, doubtless find itself at a loss when it
comes to the pinch of the business. This is the reason why those amongst
the philosophers who were ambitious to attain to a greater excellence,
were not contented to await the severities of fortune in the retirement
and repose of their own habitations, lest he should have surprised them
raw and inexpert in the combat, but sallied out to meet her, and
purposely threw themselves into the proof of difficulties. Some of them
abandoned riches to exercise themselves in a voluntary poverty; others
sought out labour and an austerity of life, to inure them to hardships
and inconveniences; others have deprived themselves of their dearest
members, as of sight, and of the instruments of generation, lest their
too delightful and effeminate service should soften and debauch the
stability of their souls.
But in dying, which is the greatest work we have to do, practice can give
us no assistance at all. A man may by custom fortify himself against
pain, shame, necessity, and such-like accidents, but as to death, we can
experiment it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it.
There have, anciently, been men so excellent managers of their time that
they have tried even in death itself to relish and taste it, and who have
bent their utmost faculties of mind to discover what this passage is, but
they are none of them come back to tell us the news:
"Nemo expergitus exstat,
Frigida quern semel est vitai pausa sequuta."
["No one wakes who has once fallen into the cold sleep of death."
--Lucretius, iii. 942]
Julius Canus, a noble Roman, of singular constancy and virtue, having
been condemned to die by that worthless fellow Caligula, besides many
marvellous testimonies that he gave of his resolution, as he was just
going to receive the stroke of the executioner, was asked by a
philosopher, a friend of his: "Well, Canus, whereabout is your soul now?
what is she doing? What are you thinking of?"--"I was thinking," replied
the other, "to keep myself ready, and the faculties of my mind full
settled and fixed, to try if in this short and quick instant of death, I
could perceive the motion of the soul when she parts from the body, and
whether she has any sentiment at the separation, that I may after come
again if I can, to acquaint my friends with it." This man philosophises
not unto death only, but in death itself. What a strange assurance was
this, and what bravery of courage, to desire his death should be a lesson
to him, and to have leisure to think of other things in so great an
affair:
"Jus hoc animi morientis habebat."
["This mighty power of mind he had dying."-Lucan, viii. 636.]
And yet I fancy, there is a certain way of making it familiar to us, and
in some sort of making trial what it is. We may gain experience, if not
entire and perfect, yet such, at least, as shall not be totally useless
to us, and that may render us more confident and more assured. If we
cannot overtake it, we may approach it and view it, and if we do not
advance so far as the fort, we may at least discover and make ourselves
acquainted with the avenues. It is not without reason that we are taught
to consider sleep as a resemblance of death: with how great facility do
we pass from waking to sleeping, and with how little concern do we lose
the knowledge of light and of ourselves. Peradventure, the faculty of
sleeping would seem useless and contrary to nature, since it deprives us
of all action and sentiment, were it not that by it nature instructs us
that she has equally made us to die as to live; and in life presents to
us the eternal state she reserves for us after it, to accustom us to it
and to take from us the fear of it. But such as have by violent accident
fallen into a swoon, and in it have lost all sense, these, methinks, have
been very near seeing the true and natural face of death; for as to the
moment of the passage, it is not to be feared that it brings with it any
pain or displeasure, forasmuch as we can have no feeling without leisure;
our sufferings require time, which in death is so short, and so
precipitous, that it must necessarily be insensible. They are the
approaches that we are to fear, and these may fall within the limits of
experience.
Many things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect; I have
passed a good part of my life in a perfect and entire health; I say, not
only entire, but, moreover, sprightly and wanton. This state, so full of
verdure, jollity, and vigour, made the consideration of sickness so
formidable to me, that when I came to experience it, I found the attacks
faint and easy in comparison with what I had apprehended. Of this I have
daily experience; if I am under the shelter of a warm room, in a stormy
and tempestuous night, I wonder how people can live abroad, and am
afflicted for those who are out in the fields: if I am there myself, I do
not wish to be anywhere else. This one thing of being always shut up in
a chamber I fancied insupportable: but I was presently inured to be so
imprisoned a week, nay a month together, in a very weak, disordered, and
sad condition; and I have found that, in the time of my health, I much
more pitied the sick, than I think myself to be pitied when I am so, and
that the force of my imagination enhances near one-half of the essence
and reality of the thing. I hope that when I come to die I shall find it
the same, and that, after all, it is not worth the pains I take, so much
preparation and so much assistance as I call in, to undergo the stroke.
But, at all events, we cannot give ourselves too much advantage.
In the time of our third or second troubles (I do not well remember
which), going one day abroad to take the air, about a league from my own
house, which is seated in the very centre of all the bustle and mischief
of the late civil wars in France; thinking myself in all security and so
near to my retreat that I stood in need of no better equipage, I had
taken a horse that went very easy upon his pace, but was not very strong.
Being upon my return home, a sudden occasion falling out to make use of
this horse in a kind of service that he was not accustomed to, one of my
train, a lusty, tall fellow, mounted upon a strong German horse, that had
a very ill mouth, fresh and vigorous, to play the brave and set on ahead
of his fellows, comes thundering full speed in the very track where I
was, rushing like a Colossus upon the little man and the little horse,
with such a career of strength and weight, that he turned us both over
and over, topsy-turvy with our heels in the air: so that there lay the
horse overthrown and stunned with the fall, and I ten or twelve paces
from him stretched out at length, with my face all battered and broken,
my sword which I had had in my hand, above ten paces beyond that, and my
belt broken all to pieces, without motion or sense any more than a stock.
'Twas the only swoon I was ever in till that hour in my life. Those who
were with me, after having used all the means they could to bring me to
myself, concluding me dead, took me up in their arms, and carried me with
very much difficulty home to my house, which was about half a French
league from thence. On the way, having been for more than two hours
given over for a dead man, I began to move and to fetch my breath; for so
great abundance of blood was fallen into my stomach, that nature had need
to rouse her forces to discharge it. They then raised me upon my feet,
where I threw off a whole bucket of clots of blood, as this I did also
several times by the way. This gave me so much ease, that I began to
recover a little life, but so leisurely and by so small advances, that my
first sentiments were much nearer the approaches of death than life:
"Perche, dubbiosa ancor del suo ritorno,
Non s'assicura attonita la mente."
["For the soul, doubtful as to its return, could not compose itself"
--Tasso, Gierus. Lib., xii. 74.]
The remembrance of this accident, which is very well imprinted in my
memory, so naturally representing to me the image and idea of death, has
in some sort reconciled me to that untoward adventure. When I first
began to open my eyes, it was with so perplexed, so weak and dead a
sight, that I could yet distinguish nothing but only discern the light:
"Come quel ch'or apre, or'chiude
Gli occhi, mezzo tra'l sonno e l'esser desto."
["As a man that now opens, now shuts his eyes, between sleep
and waking."--Tasso, Gierus. Lib., viii., 26.]
As to the functions of the soul, they advanced with the same pace and
measure with those of the body. I saw myself all bloody, my doublet
being stained all over with the blood I had vomited. The first thought
that came into my mind was that I had a harquebuss shot in my head, and
indeed, at the time there were a great many fired round about us.
Methought my life but just hung upon my, lips: and I shut my eyes, to
help, methought, to thrust it out, and took a pleasure in languishing and
letting myself go. It was an imagination that only superficially floated
upon my soul, as tender and weak as all the rest, but really, not only
exempt from anything displeasing, but mixed with that sweetness that
people feel when they glide into a slumber.
I believe it is the very same condition those people are in, whom we see
swoon with weakness in the agony of death we pity them without cause,
supposing them agitated with grievous dolours, or that their souls suffer
under painful thoughts. It has ever been my belief, contrary to the
opinion of many, and particularly of La Boetie, that those whom we see so
subdued and stupefied at the approaches of their end, or oppressed with
the length of the disease, or by accident of an apoplexy or falling
sickness,
"Vi morbi saepe coactus
Ante oculos aliquis nostros, ut fulminis ictu,
Concidit, et spumas agit; ingemit, et tremit artus;
Desipit, extentat nervos, torquetur, anhelat,
Inconstanter, et in jactando membra fatigat;"
["Often, compelled by the force of disease, some one as
thunderstruck falls under our eyes, and foams, groans, and trembles,
stretches, twists, breathes irregularly, and in paroxysms wears out
his strength."--Lucretius, iii. 485.]
or hurt in the head, whom we hear to mutter, and by fits to utter
grievous groans; though we gather from these signs by which it seems as
if they had some remains of consciousness, and that there are movements
of the body; I have always believed, I say, both the body and the soul
benumbed and asleep,
"Vivit, et est vitae nescius ipse suae,"
["He lives, and does not know that he is alive."
--Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 12.]
and could not believe that in so great a stupefaction of the members and
so great a defection of the senses, the soul could maintain any force
within to take cognisance of herself, and that, therefore, they had no
tormenting reflections to make them consider and be sensible of the
misery of their condition, and consequently were not much to be pitied.
I can, for my part, think of no state so insupportable and dreadful, as
to have the soul vivid and afflicted, without means to declare itself; as
one should say of such as are sent to execution with their tongues first
cut out (were it not that in this kind of dying, the most silent seems to
me the most graceful, if accompanied with a grave and constant
countenance); or if those miserable prisoners, who fall into the hands of
the base hangman soldiers of this age, by whom they are tormented with
all sorts of inhuman usage to compel them to some excessive and
impossible ransom; kept, in the meantime, in such condition and place,
where they have no means of expressing or signifying their thoughts and
their misery. The poets have feigned some gods who favour the
deliverance of such as suffer under a languishing death:
"Hunc ego Diti
Sacrum jussa fero, teque isto corpore solvo."
["I bidden offer this sacred thing to Pluto, and from that body
dismiss thee."--AEneid, iv. 782.]
both the interrupted words, and the short and irregular answers one gets
from them sometimes, by bawling and keeping a clutter about them; or the
motions which seem to yield some consent to what we would have them do,
are no testimony, nevertheless, that they live, an entire life at least.
So it happens to us in the yawning of sleep, before it has fully
possessed us, to perceive, as in a dream, what is done about us, and to
follow the last things that are said with a perplexed and uncertain
hearing which seems but to touch upon the borders of the soul; and to
make answers to the last words that have been spoken to us, which have
more in them of chance than sense.
Now seeing I have in effect tried it, I have no doubt but I have hitherto
made a right judgment; for first, being in a swoon, I laboured to rip
open the buttons of my doublet with my nails, for my sword was gone; and
yet I felt nothing in my imagination that hurt me; for we have many
motions in us that do not proceed from our direction;
"Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque retractant;"
["Half-dead fingers grope about, and grasp again the sword."
--AEneid, x. 396.]
so falling people extend their arms before them by a natural impulse,
which prompts our limbs to offices and motions without any commission
from our reason.
"Falciferos memorant currus abscindere membra . . .
Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod
Decidit abscissum; cum mens tamen atque hominis vis
Mobilitate mali, non quit sentire dolorem."
["They relate that scythe-bearing chariots mow off limbs, so that
they quiver on the ground; and yet the mind of him from whom the
limb is taken by the swiftness of the blow feels no pain."
--Lucretius, iii. 642.]
My stomach was so oppressed with the coagulated blood, that my hands
moved to that part, of their own voluntary motion, as they frequently do
to the part that itches, without being directed by our will. There are
several animals, and even men, in whom one may perceive the muscles to
stir and tremble after they are dead. Every one experimentally knows
that there are some members which grow stiff and flag without his leave.
Now, those passions which only touch the outward bark of us, cannot be
said to be ours: to make them so, there must be a concurrence of the
whole man; and the pains which are felt by the hand or the foot while
we are sleeping, are none of ours.
As I drew near my own house, where the alarm of my fall was already got
before me, and my family were come out to meet me, with the hubbub usual
in such cases, not only did I make some little answer to some questions
which were asked me; but they moreover tell me, that I was sufficiently
collected to order them to bring a horse to my wife whom on the road,
I saw struggling and tiring herself which is hilly and rugged. This
should seem to proceed from a soul its functions; but it was nothing so
with me. I knew not what I said or did, and they were nothing but idle
thoughts in the clouds, that were stirred up by the senses of the eyes
and ears, and proceeded not from me. I knew not for all that, whence I
came or whither I went, neither was I capable to weigh and consider what
was said to me: these were light effects, that the senses produced of
themselves as of custom; what the soul contributed was in a dream,
lightly touched, licked and bedewed by the soft impression of the senses.
Notwithstanding, my condition was, in truth, very easy and quiet; I had
no affliction upon me, either for others or myself; it was an extreme
languor and weakness, without any manner of pain. I saw my own house,
but knew it not. When they had put me to bed I found an inexpressible
sweetness in that repose; for I had been desperately tugged and lugged by
those poor people who had taken the pains to carry me upon their arms a
very great and a very rough way, and had in so doing all quite tired out
themselves, twice or thrice one after another. They offered me several
remedies, but I would take none, certainly believing that I was mortally
wounded in the head. And, in earnest, it had been a very happy death,
for the weakness of my understanding deprived me of the faculty of
discerning, and that of my body of the sense of feeling; I was suffering
myself to glide away so sweetly and after so soft and easy a manner, that
I scarce find any other action less troublesome than that was. But when
I came again to myself and to resume my faculties:
"Ut tandem sensus convaluere mei,"
["When at length my lost senses again returned."
--Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 14.]
which was two or three hours after, I felt myself on a sudden involved in
terrible pain, having my limbs battered and ground with my fall, and was.
so ill for two or three nights after, that I thought I was once more
dying again, but a more painful death, having concluded myself as good as
dead before, and to this hour am sensible of the bruises of that terrible
shock. I will not here omit, that the last thing I could make them beat
into my head, was the memory of this accident, and I had it over and over
again repeated to me, whither I was going, from whence I came, and at
what time of the day this mischance befell me, before I could comprehend
it. As to the manner of my fall, that was concealed from me in favour to
him who had been the occasion, and other flim-flams were invented. But a
long time after, and the very next day that my memory began to return and
to represent to me the state wherein I was, at the instant that I
perceived this horse coming full drive upon me (for I had seen him at my
heels, and gave myself for gone, but this thought had been so sudden,
that fear had had no leisure to introduce itself) it seemed to me like a
flash of lightning that had pierced my soul, and that I came from the
other world.
This long story of so light an accident would appear vain enough, were it
not for the knowledge I have gained by it for my own use; for I do really
find, that to get acquainted with death, needs no more but nearly to
approach it. Every one, as Pliny says, is a good doctrine to himself,
provided he be capable of discovering himself near at hand. Here, this
is not my doctrine, 'tis my study; and is not the lesson of another, but
my own; and if I communicate it, it ought not to be ill taken, for that
which is of use to me, may also, peradventure, be useful to another. As
to the rest, I spoil nothing, I make use of nothing but my own; and if I
play the fool, 'tis at my own expense, and nobody else is concerned in't;
for 'tis a folly that will die with me, and that no one is to inherit.
We hear but of two or three of the ancients, who have beaten this path,
and yet I cannot say if it was after this manner, knowing no more of them
but their names. No one since has followed the track: 'tis a rugged
road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain,
as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate
internal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble
motions; 'tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us
from the common and most recommended employments of the world. 'Tis now
many years since that my thoughts have had no other aim and level than
myself, and that I have only pried into and studied myself: or, if I
study any other thing, 'tis to apply it to or rather in myself. And yet
I do not think it a fault, if, as others do by other much less profitable
sciences, I communicate what I have learned in this, though I am not very
well pleased with my own progress. There is no description so difficult,
nor doubtless of so great utility, as that of a man's self: and withal, a
man must curl his hair and set out and adjust himself, to appear in
public: now I am perpetually tricking myself out, for I am eternally upon
my own description. Custom has made all speaking of a man's self
vicious, and positively interdicts it, in hatred to the boasting that
seems inseparable from the testimony men give of themselves:
"In vitium ducit culpae fuga."
["The avoiding a mere fault often leads us into a greater."
Or: "The escape from a fault leads into a vice"
--Horace, De Arte Poetics, verse 31.]
Instead of blowing the child's nose, this is to take his nose off
altogether. I think the remedy worse than the disease. But, allowing it
to be true that it must of necessity be presumption to entertain people
with discourses of one's self, I ought not, pursuing my general design,
to forbear an action that publishes this infirmity of mine, nor conceal
the fault which I not only practise but profess. Notwithstanding, to
speak my thought freely, I think that the custom of condemning wine,
because some people will be drunk, is itself to be condemned; a man
cannot abuse anything but what is good in itself; and I believe that this
rule has only regard to the popular vice. They are bits for calves, with
which neither the saints whom we hear speak so highly of themselves, nor
the philosophers, nor the divines will be curbed; neither will I, who am
as little the one as the other, If they do not write of it expressly, at
all events, when the occasions arise, they don't hesitate to put
themselves on the public highway. Of what does Socrates treat more
largely than of himself? To what does he more direct and address the
discourses of his disciples, than to speak of themselves, not of the
lesson in their book, but of the essence and motion of their souls? We
confess ourselves religiously to God and our confessor; as our
neighbours, do to all the people. But some will answer that we there
speak nothing but accusation against ourselves; why then, we say all; for
our very virtue itself is faulty and penetrable. My trade and art is to
live; he that forbids me to speak according to my own sense, experience,
and practice, may as well enjoin an architect not to speak of building
according to his own knowledge, but according to that of his neighbour;
according to the knowledge of another, and not according to his own. If
it be vainglory for a man to publish his own virtues, why does not Cicero
prefer the eloquence of Hortensius, and Hortensius that of Cicero?
Peradventure they mean that I should give testimony of myself by works
and effects, not barely by words. I chiefly paint my thoughts, a subject
void of form and incapable of operative production; 'tis all that I can
do to couch it in this airy body of the voice; the wisest and devoutest
men have lived in the greatest care to avoid all apparent effects.
Effects would more speak of fortune than of me; they manifest their own
office and not mine, but uncertainly and by conjecture; patterns of some
one particular virtue. I expose myself entire; 'tis a body where, at one
view, the veins, muscles, and tendons are apparent, every of them in its
proper place; here the effects of a cold; there of the heart beating,
very dubiously. I do not write my own acts, but myself and my essence.
I am of opinion that a man must be very cautious how he values himself,
and equally conscientious to give a true report, be it better or worse,
impartially. If I thought myself perfectly good and wise, I would rattle
it out to some purpose. To speak less of one's self than what one really
is is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under
a man's value is pusillanimity and cowardice, according to, Aristotle.
No virtue assists itself with falsehood; truth is never matter of error.
To speak more of one's self than is really true is not always mere
presumption; 'tis, moreover, very often folly; to, be immeasurably
pleased with what one is, and to fall into an indiscreet self-love, is in
my opinion the substance of this vice. The most sovereign remedy to cure
it, is to do quite contrary to what these people direct who, in
forbidding men to speak of themselves, consequently, at the same time,
interdict thinking of themselves too. Pride dwells in the thought; the
tongue can have but a very little share in it.
They fancy that to think of one's self is to be delighted with one's
self; to frequent and converse with one's self, to be overindulgent; but
this excess springs only in those who take but a superficial view of
themselves, and dedicate their main inspection to their affairs; who call
it mere reverie and idleness to occupy one's self with one's self, and
the building one's self up a mere building of castles in the air; who
look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger. If any one be
in rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, let
him but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be
abated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him
under foot. If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personal
valour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so many
armies, so many nations, that leave him so far behind them. No
particular quality can make any man proud, that will at the same time put
the many other weak and imperfect ones he has in the other scale, and the
nothingness of human condition to make up the weight. Because Socrates
had alone digested to purpose the precept of his god, "to know himself,"
and by that study arrived at the perfection of setting himself at nought,
he only was reputed worthy the title of a sage. Whosoever shall so know
himself, let him boldly speak it out.
CHAPTER VII
OF RECOMPENSES OF HONOUR
They who write the life of Augustus Caesar,--[Suetonius, Life of
Augustus, c. 25.]--observe this in his military discipline, that he was
wonderfully liberal of gifts to men of merit, but that as to the true
recompenses of honour he was as sparing; yet he himself had been
gratified by his uncle with all the military recompenses before he had
ever been in the field. It was a pretty invention, and received into
most governments of the world, to institute certain vain and in
themselves valueless distinctions to honour and recompense virtue, such
as the crowns of laurel, oak, and myrtle, the particular fashion of some
garment, the privilege to ride in a coach in the city, or at night with a
torch, some peculiar place assigned in public assemblies, the prerogative
of certain additional names and titles, certain distinctions in the
bearing of coats of arms, and the like, the use of which, according to
the several humours of nations, has been variously received, and yet
continues.
We in France, as also several of our neighbours, have orders of
knighthood that are instituted only for this end. And 'tis, in earnest,
a very good and profitable custom to find out an acknowledgment for the
worth of rare and excellent men, and to satisfy them with rewards that
are not at all chargeable either to prince or people. And that which has
always been found by ancient experience, and which we have heretofore
observed among ourselves, that men of quality have ever been more jealous
of such recompenses than of those wherein there was gain and profit, is
not without very good ground and reason. If with the reward, which ought
to be simply a recompense of honour, they should mix other commodities
and add riches, this mixture, instead of procuring an increase of
estimation, would debase and abate it. The Order of St. Michael, which
has been so long in repute amongst us, had no greater commodity than that
it had no communication with any other commodity, which produced this
effect, that formerly there was no office or title whatever to which the
gentry pretended with so great desire and affection as they did to that;
no quality that carried with it more respect and grandeur, valour and
worth more willingly embracing and with greater ambition aspiring to a
recompense purely its own, and rather glorious than profitable. For, in
truth, other gifts have not so great a dignity of usage, by reason they
are laid out upon all sorts of occasions; with money a man pays the wages
of a servant, the diligence of a courier, dancing, vaulting, speaking,
and the meanest offices we receive; nay, and reward vice with it too, as
flattery, treachery, and pimping; and therefore 'tis no wonder if virtue
less desires and less willingly receives this common sort of payment,
than that which is proper and peculiar to her, throughout generous and
noble. Augustus had reason to be more sparing of this than the other,
insomuch that honour is a privilege which derives its principal essence
from rarity; and so virtue itself:
"Cui malus est nemo, quis bonus esse potest?"
["To whom no one is ill who can be good?"-Martial, xii. 82.]
We do not intend it for a commendation when we say that such a one is
careful in the education of his children, by reason it is a common act,
how just and well done soever; no more than we commend a great tree,
where the whole forest is the same. I do not think that any citizen of
Sparta glorified himself much upon his valour, it being the universal
virtue of the whole nation; and as little upon his fidelity and contempt
of riches. There is no recompense becomes virtue, how great soever, that
is once passed into a custom; and I know not withal whether we can ever
call it great, being common.
Seeing, then, that these remunerations of honour have no other value and
estimation but only this, that few people enjoy them, 'tis but to be
liberal of them to bring them down to nothing. And though there should
be now more men found than in former times worthy of our order, the
estimation of it nevertheless should not be abated, nor the honour made
cheap; and it may easily happen that more may merit it; for there is no
virtue that so easily spreads as that of military valour. There is
another virtue, true, perfect, and philosophical, of which I do not
speak, and only make use of the word in our common acceptation, much
greater than this and more full, which is a force and assurance of the
soul, equally despising all sorts of adverse accidents, equable, uniform,
and constant, of which ours is no more than one little ray. Use,
education, example, and custom can do all in all to the establishment of
that whereof I am speaking, and with great facility render it common, as
by the experience of our civil wars is manifest enough; and whoever could
at this time unite us all, Catholic and Huguenot, into one body, and set
us upon some brave common enterprise, we should again make our ancient
military reputation flourish. It is most certain that in times past the
recompense of this order had not only a regard to valour, but had a
further prospect; it never was the reward of a valiant soldier but of a
great captain; the science of obeying was not reputed worthy of so
honourable a guerdon. There was therein a more universal military
expertness required, and that comprehended the most and the greatest
qualities of a military man:
"Neque enim eaedem militares et imperatorix artes sunt,"
["For the arts of soldiery and generalship are not the same."
--Livy, xxv. 19.]
as also, besides, a condition suitable to such a dignity. But, I say,
though more men were worthy than formerly, yet ought it not to be more
liberally distributed, and it were better to fall short in not giving it
at all to whom it should be due, than for ever to lose, as we have lately
done, the fruit of so profitable an invention. No man of spirit will
deign to advantage himself with what is in common with many; and such of
the present time as have least merited this recompense themselves make
the greater show of disdaining it, in order thereby to be ranked with
those to whom so much wrong has been done by the unworthy conferring and
debasing the distinction which was their particular right.
Now, to expect that in obliterating and abolishing this, suddenly to
create and bring into credit a like institution, is not a proper attempt
for so licentious and so sick a time as this wherein we now are; and it
will fall out that the last will from its birth incur the same
inconveniences that have ruined the other.--[Montaigne refers to the
Order of the Saint-Esprit, instituted by Henry III. in 1578.]--The
rules for dispensing this new order had need to be extremely clipt and
bound under great restrictions, to give it authority; and this tumultuous
season is incapable of such a curb: besides that, before this can be
brought into repute, 'tis necessary that the memory of the first, and of
the contempt into which it is fallen, be buried in oblivion.
This place might naturally enough admit of some discourse upon the
consideration of valour, and the difference of this virtue from others;
but, Plutarch having so often handled this subject, I should give myself
an unnecessary trouble to repeat what he has said. But this is worth
considering: that our nation places valour, vaillance, in the highest
degree of virtue, as its very word evidences, being derived from valeur,
and that, according to our use, when we say a man of high worth a good
man, in our court style--'tis to say a valiant man, after the Roman way;
for the general appellation of virtue with them takes etymology from vis,
force. The proper, sole, and essential profession of, the French
noblesse is that of arms: and 'tis likely that the first virtue that
discovered itself amongst men and has given to some advantage over
others, was that by which the strongest and most valiant have mastered
the weaker, and acquired a particular authority and reputation, whence
came to it that dignified appellation; or else, that these nations, being
very warlike, gave the pre-eminence to that of the virtues which was most
familiar to them; just as our passion and the feverish solicitude we have
of the chastity of women occasions that to say, a good woman, a woman of
worth, a woman of honour and virtue, signifies merely a chaste woman as
if, to oblige them to that one duty, we were indifferent as to all the
rest, and gave them the reins in all other faults whatever to compound
for that one of incontinence.
CHAPTER VIII
OF THE AFFECTION OF FATHERS TO THEIR CHILDREN
To Madame D'Estissac.
MADAM, if the strangeness and novelty of my subject, which are wont to
give value to things, do not save me, I shall never come off with honour
from this foolish attempt: but 'tis so fantastic, and carries a face so
unlike the common use, that this, peradventure, may make it pass. 'Tis a
melancholic humour, and consequently a humour very much an enemy to my
natural complexion, engendered by the pensiveness of the solitude into
which for some years past I have retired myself, that first put into
my head this idle fancy of writing. Wherein, finding myself totally
unprovided and empty of other matter, I presented myself to myself for
argument and subject. 'Tis the only book in the world of its kind, and
of a wild and extravagant design. There is nothing worth remark in this
affair but that extravagancy: for in a subject so vain and frivolous, the
best workman in the world could not have given it a form fit to recommend
it to any manner of esteem.
Now, madam, having to draw my own picture to the life, I had omitted one
important feature, had I not therein represented the honour I have ever
had for you and your merits; which I have purposely chosen to say in the
beginning of this chapter, by reason that amongst the many other
excellent qualities you are mistress of, that of the tender love you have
manifested to your children, is seated in one of the highest places.
Whoever knows at what age Monsieur D'Estissac, your husband, left you a
widow, the great and honourable matches that have since been offered to
you, as many as to any lady of your condition in France, the constancy
and steadiness wherewith, for so many years, you have sustained so many
sharp difficulties, the burden and conduct of affairs, which have
persecuted you in every corner of the kingdom, and are not yet weary of
tormenting you, and the happy direction you have given to all these, by
your sole prudence or good fortune, will easily conclude with me that we
have not so vivid an example as yours of maternal affection in our times.
I praise God, madam, that it has been so well employed; for the great
hopes Monsieur D'Estissac, your son, gives of himself, render sufficient
assurance that when he comes of age you will reap from him all the
obedience and gratitude of a very good man. But, forasmuch as by reason
of his tender years, he has not been capable of taking notice of those
offices of extremest value he has in so great number received from you,
I will, if these papers shall one day happen to fall into his hands, when
I shall neither have mouth nor speech left to deliver it to him, that he
shall receive from me a true account of those things, which shall be more
effectually manifested to him by their own effects, by which he will
understand that there is not a gentleman in France who stands more
indebted to a mother's care; and that he cannot, in the future, give a
better nor more certain testimony of his own worth and virtue than by
acknowledging you for that excellent mother you are.
If there be any law truly natural, that is to say, any instinct that is
seen universally and perpetually imprinted in both beasts and men (which
is not without controversy), I can say, that in my opinion, next to the
care every animal has of its own preservation, and to avoid that which
may hurt him, the affection that the begetter bears to his offspring
holds the second place in this rank. And seeing that nature appears to
have recommended it to us, having regard to the extension and progression
of the successive pieces of this machine of hers, 'tis no wonder if, on
the contrary, that of children towards their parents is not so great.
To which we may add this other Aristotelian consideration, that he who
confers a benefit on any one, loves him better than he is beloved by him
again: that he to whom is owing, loves better than he who owes; and that
every artificer is fonder of his work, than, if that work had sense, it
would be of him; by reason that it is dear to us to be, and to be
consists in movement and action; therefore every one has in some sort a
being in his work. He who confers a benefit exercises a fine and honest
action; he who receives it exercises the useful only. Now the useful is
much less lovable than the honest; the honest is stable and permanent,
supplying him who has done it with a continual gratification. The useful
loses itself, easily slides away, and the memory of it is neither so
fresh nor so pleasing. Those things are dearest to us that have cost us
most, and giving is more chargeable than receiving.
Since it has pleased God to endue us with some capacity of reason, to the
end we may not, like brutes, be servilely subject and enslaved to the
laws common to both, but that we should by judgment and a voluntary
liberty apply ourselves to them, we ought, indeed, something to yield to
the simple authority of nature, but not suffer ourselves to be
tyrannically hurried away and transported by her; reason alone should
have the conduct of our inclinations. I, for my part, have a strange
disgust for those propensions that are started in us without the
mediation and direction of the judgment, as, upon the subject I am
speaking of, I cannot entertain that passion of dandling and caressing
infants scarcely born, having as yet neither motion of soul nor shape of
body distinguishable, by which they can render themselves amiable, and
have not willingly suffered them to be nursed near me. A true and
regular affection ought to spring and increase with the knowledge they
give us of themselves, and then, if they are worthy of it, the natural
propension walking hand in hand with reason, to cherish them with a truly
paternal love; and so to judge, also, if they be otherwise, still
rendering ourselves to reason, notwithstanding the inclination of nature.
'Tis oft-times quite otherwise; and, most commonly, we find ourselves
more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile
simplicities of our children, than we do, afterwards, with their most
complete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys,
and not as men; and some there are, who are very liberal in buying them
balls to play withal, who are very close-handed for the least necessary
expense when they come to age. Nay, it looks as if the jealousy of
seeing them appear in and enjoy the world when we are about to leave it,
rendered us more niggardly and stingy towards them; it vexes us that they
tread upon our heels, as if to solicit us to go out; if this were to be
feared, since the order of things will have it so that they cannot, to
speak the truth, be nor live, but at the expense of our being and life,
we should never meddle with being fathers at all.
For my part, I think it cruelty and injustice not to receive them into
the share and society of our goods, and not to make them partakers in the
intelligence of our domestic affairs when they are capable, and not to
lessen and contract our own expenses to make the more room for theirs,
seeing we beget them to that effect. 'Tis unjust that an old fellow,
broken and half dead, should alone, in a corner of the chimney, enjoy the
money that would suffice for the maintenance and advancement of many
children, and suffer them, in the meantime, to lose their' best years for
want of means to advance themselves in the public service and the
knowledge of men. A man by this course drives them to despair, and to
seek out by any means, how unjust or dishonourable soever, to provide for
their own support: as I have, in my time, seen several young men of good
extraction so addicted to stealing, that no correction could cure them of
it. I know one of a very good family, to whom, at the request of a
brother of his, a very honest and brave gentleman, I once spoke on this
account, who made answer, and confessed to me roundly, that he had been
put upon this paltry practice by the severity and avarice of his father;
but that he was now so accustomed to it he could not leave it off. And,
at that very time, he was trapped stealing a lady's rings, having come
into her chamber, as she was dressing with several others. He put me in
mind of a story I had heard of another gentleman, so perfect and
accomplished in this fine trade in his youth, that, after he came to his
estate and resolved to give it over, he could not hold his hands,
nevertheless, if he passed by a shop where he saw anything he liked, from
catching it up, though it put him to the shame of sending afterwards to
pay for it. And I have myself seen several so habituated to this quality
that even amongst their comrades they could not forbear filching, though
with intent to restore what they had taken. I am a Gascon, and yet there
is no vice I so little understand as that; I hate it something more by
disposition than I condemn it by reason; I do not so much as desire
anything of another man's. This province of ours is, in plain truth, a
little more decried than the other parts of the kingdom; and yet we have
several times seen, in our times, men of good families of other
provinces, in the hands of justice, convicted of abominable thefts. I
fear this vice is, in some sort, to be attributed to the fore-mentioned
vice of the fathers.
And if a man should tell me, as a lord of very good understanding once
did, that "he hoarded up wealth, not to extract any other fruit and use
from his parsimony, but to make himself honoured and sought after by his
relations; and that age having deprived him of all other power, it was
the only remaining remedy to maintain his authority in his family, and to
keep him from being neglected and despised by all around," in truth, not
only old age, but all other imbecility, according to Aristotle, is the
promoter of avarice; that is something, but it is physic for a disease
that a man should prevent the birth of. A father is very miserable who
has no other hold on his children's affection than the need they have of
his assistance, if that can be called affection; he must render himself
worthy to be respected by his virtue and wisdom, and beloved by his
kindness and the sweetness of his manners; even the very ashes of a rich
matter have their value; and we are wont to have the bones and relics of
worthy men in regard and reverence. No old age can be so decrepid in a
man who has passed his life in honour, but it must be venerable,
especially to his children, whose soul he must have trained up to their
duty by reason, not by necessity and the need they have of him, nor by
harshness and compulsion:
"Et errat longe mea quidem sententia
Qui imperium credat esse gravius, aut stabilius,
Vi quod fit, quam illud, quod amicitia adjungitur."
["He wanders far from the truth, in my opinion, who thinks that
government more absolute and durable which is acquired by force than
that which is attached to friendship."--Terence, Adelph., i. I, 40.]
I condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul that is designed
for honour and liberty. There is I know not what of servile in rigour
and constraint; and I am of opinion that what is not to be done by
reason, prudence, and address, is never to be affected by force. I
myself was brought up after that manner; and they tell me that in all my
first age I never felt the rod but twice, and then very slightly. I
practised the same method with my children, who all of them died at
nurse, except Leonora, my only daughter, and who arrived to the age of
five years and upward without other correction for her childish faults
(her mother's indulgence easily concurring) than words only, and those
very gentle; in which kind of proceeding, though my end and expectation
should be both frustrated, there are other causes enough to lay the fault
on without blaming my discipline, which I know to be natural and just,
and I should, in this, have yet been more religious towards the males, as
less born to subjection and more free; and I should have made it my
business to fill their hearts with ingenuousness and freedom. I have
never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more
cowardly, or more wilfully obstinate.
Do we desire to be beloved of our children? Will we remove from them all
occasion of wishing our death though no occasion of so horrid a wish can
either be just or excusable?
"Nullum scelus rationem habet."
["No wickedness has reason."--Livy, xxviii. 28]
Let us reasonably accommodate their lives with what is in our power. In
order to this, we should not marry so young that our age shall in a
manner be confounded with theirs; for this inconvenience plunges us into
many very great difficulties, and especially the gentry of the nation,
who are of a condition wherein they have little to do, and who live upon
their rents only: for elsewhere, with people who live by their labour,
the plurality and company of children is an increase to the common stock;
they are so many new tools and instruments wherewith to grow rich.
I married at three-and-thirty years of age, and concur in the opinion of
thirty-five, which is said to be that of Aristotle. Plato will have
nobody marry before thirty; but he has reason to laugh at those who
undertook the work of marriage after five-and-fifty, and condemns their
offspring as unworthy of aliment and life. Thales gave the truest
limits, who, young and being importuned by his mother to marry, answered,
"That it was too soon," and, being grown into years and urged again,
"That it was too late." A man must deny opportunity to every inopportune
action. The ancient Gauls' looked upon it as a very horrid thing for a
man to have society with a woman before he was twenty years of age, and
strictly recommended to the men who designed themselves for war the
keeping their virginity till well grown in years, forasmuch as courage is
abated and diverted by intercourse with women:
"Ma, or congiunto a giovinetta sposa,
E lieto omai de' figli, era invilito
Negli affetti di padre et di marito."
["Now, married to a young wife and happy in children, he was
demoralised by his love as father and husband."
--Tasso, Gierus., x. 39.]
Muley Hassam, king of Tunis, he whom the Emperor Charles V. restored to
his kingdom, reproached the memory of his father Mahomet with the
frequentation of women, styling him loose, effeminate, and a getter of
children.--[Of whom he had thirty-four.]--The Greek history observes of
Iccus the Tarentine, of Chryso, Astyllus, Diopompos, and others, that to
keep their bodies in order for the Olympic games and such like exercises,
they denied themselves during that preparation all commerce with Venus.
In a certain country of the Spanish Indies men were not permitted to
marry till after forty age, and yet the girls were allowed at ten.
'Tis not time for a gentleman of thirty years old to give place to his
son who is twenty; he is himself in a condition to serve both in the
expeditions of war and in the court of his prince; has need of all his
appurtenances; and yet, doubtless, he ought to surrender a share, but not
so great an one as to forget himself for others; and for such an one the
answer that fathers have ordinarily in their mouths, "I will not put off
my clothes, before I go to bed," serves well.
But a father worn out with age and infirmities, and deprived by weakness
and want of health of the common society of men, wrongs himself and his
to amass a great heap of treasure. He has lived long enough, if he be
wise, to have a mind to strip himself to go to bed, not to his very
shirt, I confess, but to that and a good, warm dressing-gown; the
remaining pomps, of which he has no further use, he ought voluntarily to
surrender to those, to whom by the order of nature they belong. 'Tis
reason he should refer the use of those things to them, seeing that
nature has reduced him to such a state that he cannot enjoy them himself;
otherwise there is doubtless malice and envy in the case. The greatest
act of the Emperor Charles V. was that when, in imitation of some of the
ancients of his own quality, confessing it but reason to strip ourselves
when our clothes encumber and grow too heavy for us, and to lie down when
our legs begin to fail us, he resigned his possessions, grandeur, and
power to his son, when he found himself failing in vigour, and steadiness
for the conduct of his affairs suitable with the glory he had therein
acquired:
"Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat."
["Dismiss the old horse in good time, lest, failing in the lists,
the spectators laugh."--Horace, Epist., i., I, 8.]
This fault of not perceiving betimes and of not being sensible of the
feebleness and extreme alteration that age naturally brings both upon
body and mind, which, in my opinion, is equal, if indeed the soul has not
more than half, has lost the reputation of most of the great men in the
world. I have known in my time, and been intimately acquainted with
persons of great authority, whom one might easily discern marvellously
lapsed from the sufficiency I knew they were once endued with, by the
reputation they had acquired in their former years, whom I could
heartily, for their own sakes, have wished at home at their ease,
discharged of their public or military employments, which were now grown
too heavy for their shoulders. I have formerly been very familiar in a
gentleman's house, a widower and very old, though healthy and cheerful
enough: this gentleman had several daughters to marry and a son already
of ripe age, which brought upon him many visitors, and a great expense,
neither of which well pleased him, not only out of consideration of
frugality, but yet more for having, by reason of his age, entered into a
course of life far differing from ours. I told him one day a little
boldly, as I used to do, that he would do better to give us younger folk
room, and to leave his principal house (for he had but that well placed
and furnished) to his son, and himself retire to an estate he had hard
by, where nobody would trouble his repose, seeing he could not otherwise
avoid being importuned by us, the condition of his children considered.
He took my advice afterwards, and found an advantage in so doing.
I do not mean that a man should so instal them as not to reserve to
himself a liberty to retract; I, who am now arrived to the age wherein
such things are fit to be done, would resign to them the enjoyment of my
house and goods, but with a power of revocation if they should give me
cause to alter my mind; I would leave to them the use, that being no
longer convenient for me; and, of the general authority and power over
all, would reserve as much as--I thought good to myself; having always
held that it must needs be a great satisfaction to an aged father himself
to put his children into the way of governing his affairs, and to have
power during his own life to control their behaviour, supplying them with
instruction and advice from his own experience, and himself to transfer
the ancient honour and order of his house into the hands of those who are
to succeed him, and by that means to satisfy himself as to the hopes he
may conceive of their future conduct. And in order to this I would not
avoid their company; I would observe them near at hand, and partake,
according to the condition of my age, of their feasts and jollities.
If I did not live absolutely amongst them, which I could not do without
annoying them and their friends, by reason of the morosity of my age and
the restlessness of my infirmities, and without violating also the rules
and order of living I should then have set down to myself, I would, at
least, live near them in some retired part of my house, not the best in
show, but the most commodious. Nor as I saw some years ago, a dean of
St. Hilary of Poitiers given up to such a solitude, that at the time I
came into his chamber it had been two and twenty years that he had not
stepped one foot out of it, and yet had all his motions free and easy,
and was in good health, saving a cold that fell upon his lungs; he would,
hardly once in a week, suffer any one to come in to see him; he always
kept himself shut up in his chamber alone, except that a servant brought
him, once a day, something to eat, and did then but just come in and go
out again. His employment was to walk up and down, and read some book,
for he was a bit of a scholar; but, as to the rest, obstinately bent to
die in this retirement, as he soon after did. I would endeavour by
pleasant conversation to create in my children a warm and unfeigned
friendship and good-will towards me, which in well-descended natures is
not hard to do; for if they be furious brutes, of which this age of ours
produces thousands, we are then to hate and avoid them as such.
I am angry at the custom of forbidding children to call their father by
the name of father, and to enjoin them another, as more full of respect
and reverence, as if nature had not sufficiently provided for our
authority. We call Almighty God Father, and disdain to have our children
call us so; I have reformed this error in my family.--[As did Henry IV.
of France]--And 'tis also folly and injustice to deprive children, when
grown up, of familiarity with their father, and to carry a scornful and
austere countenance toward them, thinking by that to keep them in awe and
obedience; for it is a very idle farce that, instead of producing the
effect designed, renders fathers distasteful, and, which is worse,
ridiculous to their own children. They have youth and vigour in
possession, and consequently the breath and favour of the world; and
therefore receive these fierce and tyrannical looks--mere scarecrows--
of a man without blood, either in his heart or veins, with mockery and
contempt. Though I could make myself feared, I had yet much rather make
myself beloved: there are so many sorts of defects in old age, so much
imbecility, and it is so liable to contempt, that the best acquisition a
man can make is the kindness and affection of his own family; command and
fear are no longer his weapons. Such an one I have known who, having
been very imperious in his youth, when he came to be old, though he might
have lived at his full ease, would ever strike, rant, swear, and curse:
the most violent householder in France: fretting himself with unnecessary
suspicion and vigilance. And all this rumble and clutter but to make his
family cheat him the more; of his barn, his kitchen, cellar, nay, and his
very purse too, others had the greatest use and share, whilst he keeps
his keys in his pocket much more carefully than his eyes. Whilst he hugs
himself with the pitiful frugality of a niggard table, everything goes to
rack and ruin in every corner of his house, in play, drink, all sorts of
profusion, making sport in their junkets with his vain anger and
fruitless parsimony. Every one is a sentinel against him, and if, by
accident, any wretched fellow that serves him is of another humour, and
will not join with the rest, he is presently rendered suspected to him,
a bait that old age very easily bites at of itself. How often has this
gentleman boasted to me in how great awe he kept his family, and how
exact an obedience and reverence they paid him! How clearly he saw into
his own affairs!
"Ille solos nescit omnia."
["He alone is ignorant of all that is passing."
--Terence, Adelph., iv. 2, 9.]
I do not know any one that can muster more parts, both natural and
acquired, proper to maintain dominion, than he; yet he is fallen from it
like a child. For this reason it is that I have picked out him, amongst
several others that I know of the same humour, for the greatest example.
It were matter for a question in the schools, whether he is better thus
or otherwise. In his presence, all submit to and bow to him, and give so
much way to his vanity that nobody ever resists him; he has his fill of
assents, of seeming fear, submission, and respect. Does he turn away a
servant? he packs up his bundle, and is gone; but 'tis no further than
just out of his sight: the steps of old age are so slow, the senses so
troubled, that he will live and do his old office in the same house a
year together without being perceived.
And after a fit interval of time, letters are pretended to come from a
great way off; very humble, suppliant; and full of promises of amendment,
by virtue of which he is again received into favour. Does Monsieur make
any bargain, or prepare any despatch that does not please? 'tis
suppressed, and causes afterwards forged to excuse the want of execution
in the one or answer in the other. No letters being first brought to
him, he never sees any but those that shall seem fit for his knowledge.
If by accident they fall first into his own hand, being used to trust
somebody to read them to him; he reads extempore what he thinks fit, and
often makes such a one ask him pardon who abuses and rails at him in his
letter. In short, he sees nothing, but by an image prepared and designed
beforehand and the most satisfactory they can invent, not to rouse and
awaken his ill humour and choler. I have seen, under various aspects,
enough of these modes of domestic government, long-enduring, constant, to
the like effect.
Women are evermore addicted to cross their husbands: they lay hold with
both hands on all occasions to contradict and oppose them; the first
excuse serves for a plenary justification. I have seen one who robbed
her husband wholesale, that, as she told her confessor, she might
distribute the more liberal alms. Let who will trust to that religious
dispensation. No management of affairs seems to them of sufficient
dignity, if proceeding from the husband's assent; they must usurp it
either by insolence or cunning, and always injuriously, or else it has
not the grace and authority they desire. When, as in the case I am
speaking of, 'tis against a poor old man and for the children, then they
make use of this title to serve their passion with glory; and, as for a
common service, easily cabal, and combine against his government and
dominion. If they be males grown up in full and flourishing health, they
presently corrupt, either by force or favour, steward, receivers, and all
the rout. Such as have neither wife nor son do not so easily fall into
this misfortune; but withal more cruelly and unworthily. Cato the elder
in his time said: So many servants, so many enemies; consider, then,
whether according to the vast difference between the purity of the age he
lived in and the corruption of this of ours, he does not seem to shew us
that wife, son, and servant, are so many enemies to us? 'Tis well for
old age that it is always accompanied by want of observation, ignorance,
and a proneness to being deceived. For should we see how we are used and
would not acquiesce, what would become of us? especially in such an age
as this, where the very judges who are to determine our controversies are
usually partisans to the young, and interested in the cause. In case the
discovery of this cheating escape me, I cannot at least fail to discern
that I am very fit to be cheated. And can a man ever enough exalt the
value of a friend, in comparison with these civil ties? The very image
of it which I see in beasts, so pure and uncorrupted, how religiously do
I respect it! If others deceive me, yet do I not, at least, deceive
myself in thinking I am able to defend myself from them, or in cudgelling
my brains to make myself so. I protect myself from such treasons in my
own bosom, not by an unquiet and tumultuous curiosity, but rather by
diversion and resolution. When I hear talk of any one's condition, I
never trouble myself to think of him; I presently turn my eyes upon
myself to see in what condition I am; whatever concerns another relates
to me; the accident that has befallen him gives me caution, and rouses me
to turn my defence that way. We every day and every hour say things of
another that we might properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our
observation to our own concerns, as well as extend it to others. And
several authors have in this manner prejudiced their own cause by running
headlong upon those they attack, and darting those shafts against their
enemies, that are more properly, and with greater advantage, to be turned
upon themselves.
The late Mareschal de Montluc having lost his son, who died in the island
of Madeira, in truth a very worthy gentleman and of great expectation,
did to me, amongst his other regrets, very much insist upon what a sorrow
and heart-breaking it was that he had never made himself familiar with
him; and by that humour of paternal gravity and grimace to have lost the
opportunity of having an insight into and of well knowing, his son, as
also of letting him know the extreme affection he had for him, and the
worthy opinion he had of his virtue. "That poor boy," said he, "never
saw in me other than a stern and disdainful countenance, and is gone in a
belief that I neither knew how to love him nor esteem him according to
his desert. For whom did I reserve the discovery of that singular
affection I had for him in my soul? Was it not he himself, who ought to
have had all the pleasure of it, and all the obligation? I constrained
and racked myself to put on, and maintain this vain disguise, and have by
that means deprived myself of the pleasure of his conversation, and, I
doubt, in some measure, his affection, which could not but be very cold
to me, having never other from me than austerity, nor felt other than a
tyrannical manner of proceeding."
[Madame de Sevigne tells us that she never read this passage without
tears in her eyes. "My God!" she exclaims, "how full is this book
of good sense!" Ed.]
I find this complaint to be rational and rightly apprehended: for, as I
myself know by too certain experience, there is no so sweet consolation
in the loss of friends as the conscience of having had no reserve or
secret for them, and to have had with them a perfect and entire
communication. Oh my friend,--[La Boetie.] am I the better for being
sensible of this; or am I the worse? I am, doubtless, much the better.
I am consoled and honoured, in the sorrow for his death. Is it not a
pious and a pleasing office of my life to be always upon my friend's
obsequies? Can there be any joy equal to this privation?
I open myself to my family, as much as I can, and very willingly let them
know the state of my opinion and good will towards them, as I do to
everybody else: I make haste to bring out and present myself to them; for
I will not have them mistaken in me, in anything. Amongst other
particular customs of our ancient Gauls, this, as Caesar reports,--[De
Bello Gall., vi. r8.]--was one, that the sons never presented
themselves before their fathers, nor durst ever appear in their company
in public, till they began to bear arms; as if they would intimate by
this, that it was also time for their fathers to receive them into their
familiarity and acquaintance.
I have observed yet another sort of indiscretion in fathers of my time,
that, not contented with having deprived their children, during their own
long lives, of the share they naturally ought to have had in their
fortunes, they afterwards leave to their wives the same authority over
their estates, and liberty to dispose of them according to their own
fancy. And I have known a certain lord, one of the principal officers of
the crown, who, having in reversion above fifty thousand crowns yearly
revenue, died necessitous and overwhelmed with debt at above fifty years
of age; his mother in her extremest decrepitude being yet in possession
of all his property by the will of his father, who had, for his part,
lived till near fourscore years old. This appears to me by no means
reasonable. And therefore I think it of very little advantage to a man,
whose affairs are well enough, to seek a wife who encumbers his estate
with a very great fortune; there is no sort of foreign debt that brings
more ruin to families than this: my predecessors have ever been aware of
that danger and provided against it, and so have I. But those who
dissuade us from rich wives, for fear they should be less tractable and
kind, are out in their advice to make a man lose a real commodity for so
frivolous a conjecture. It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass
over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are
most wrong. Injustice allures them, as the honour of their virtuous
actions does the good; and the more riches they bring with them, they are
so much the more good-natured, as women, who are handsome, are all the
more inclined and proud to be chaste.
'Tis reasonable to leave the administration of affairs to the mothers,
till the children are old enough, according to law, to manage them; but
the father has brought them, up very ill, if he cannot hope that, when
they come to maturity, they will have more wisdom and ability in the
management of affairs than his wife, considering the ordinary weakness of
the sex. It were, notwithstanding, to say the truth, more against nature
to make the mothers depend upon the discretion of their children; they
ought to be plentifully provided for, to maintain themselves according to
their quality and age, by reason that necessity and indigence are much
more unbecoming and insupportable to them than to men; the son should
rather be cut short than the mother.
In general, the most judicious distribution of our goods, when we come to
die, is, in my opinion, to let them be distributed according to the
custom of the country; the laws have considered the matter better than we
know how to do, and 'tis wiser to let them fail in their appointment,
than rashly to run the hazard of miscarrying in ours. Nor are the goods
properly ours, since, by civil prescription and without us, they are all
destined to certain successors. And although we have some liberty beyond
that, yet I think we ought not, without great and manifest cause, to take
away that from one which his fortune has allotted him, and to which the
public equity gives him title; and that it is against reason to abuse
this liberty, in making it serve our own frivolous and private fancies.
My destiny has been kind to me in not presenting me with occasions to
tempt me and divert my affection from the common and legitimate
institution. I see many with whom 'tis time lost to employ a long
exercise of good offices: a word ill taken obliterates ten years' merit;
he is happy who is in a position to oil their goodwill at this last
passage. The last action carries it, not the best and most frequent
offices, but the most recent and present do the work. These are people
that play with their wills as with apples or rods, to gratify or chastise
every action of those who pretend to an interest in their care. 'Tis a
thing of too great weight and consequence to be so tumbled and tossed and
altered every moment, and wherein the wise determine once for all, having
above all things regard to reason and the public observance. We lay
these masculine substitutions too much to heart, proposing a ridiculous
eternity to our names. We are, moreover, too superstitious in vain
conjectures as to the future, that we derive from the words and actions
of children. Peradventure they might have done me an injustice, in
dispossessing me of my right, for having been the most dull and heavy,
the most slow and unwilling at my book, not of all my brothers only, but
of all the boys in the whole province: whether about learning my lesson,
or about any bodily exercise. 'Tis a folly to make an election out of
the ordinary course upon the credit of these divinations wherein we are
so often deceived. If the ordinary rule of descent were to be violated,
and the destinies corrected in the choice they have made of our heirs,
one might more plausibly do it upon the account of some remarkable and
enormous personal deformity, a permanent and incorrigible defect, and in
the opinion of us French, who are great admirers of beauty, an important
prejudice.
The pleasant dialogue betwixt Plato's legislator and his citizens will be
an ornament to this place, "What," said they, feeling themselves about to
die, "may we not dispose of our own to whom we please? God! what
cruelty that it shall not be lawful for us, according as we have been
served and attended in our sickness, in our old age, in our affairs, to
give more or less to those whom we have found most diligent about us, at
our own fancy and discretion!" To which the legislator answers thus:
"My friends, who are now, without question, very soon to die, it is hard
for you in the condition you are, either to know yourselves, or what is
yours, according to the delphic inscription. I, who make the laws, am of
opinion, that you neither are yourselves your own, nor is that yours of
which you are possessed. Both your goods and you belong to your
families, as well those past as those to come; but, further, both your
family and goods much more appertain to the public. Wherefore, lest any
flatterer in your old age or in your sickness, or any passion of your
own, should unseasonably prevail with you to make an unjust will, I shall
take care to prevent that inconvenience; but, having respect both to the
universal interests of the city and that of your particular family, I
shall establish laws, and make it by good reasons appear, that private
convenience ought to give place to the common benefit. Go then
cheerfully where human necessity calls you. It is for me, who regard no
more the one thing than the other, and who, as much as in me lies, am
provident of the public interest, to have a care as to what you leave
behind you."
To return to my subject: it appears to me that women are very rarely
born, to whom the prerogative over men, the maternal and natural
excepted, is in any sort due, unless it be for the punishment of such,
as in some amorous fever have voluntarily submitted themselves to them:
but that in no way concerns the old ones, of whom we are now speaking.
This consideration it is which has made us so willingly to enact and give
force to that law, which was never yet seen by any one, by which women
are excluded the succession to our crown: and there is hardly a
government in the world where it is not pleaded, as it is here, by the
probability of reason that authorises it, though fortune has given it
more credit in some places than in others. 'Tis dangerous to leave the
disposal of our succession to their judgment, according to the choice
they shall make of children, which is often fantastic and unjust; for the
irregular appetites and depraved tastes they have during the time of
their being with child, they have at all other times in the mind. We
commonly see them fond of the most weak, ricketty, and deformed children;
or of those, if they have such, as are still hanging at the breast. For,
not having sufficient force of reason to choose and embrace that which is
most worthy, they the more willingly suffer themselves to be carried
away, where the impressions of nature are most alone; like animals that
know their young no longer than they give them suck. As to the rest, it
is easy by experience to be discerned that this natural affection to
which we give so great authority has but very weak roots. For a very
little profit, we every day tear their own children out of the mothers'
arms, and make them take ours in their room: we make them abandon their
own to some pitiful nurse, to whom we disdain to commit ours, or to some
she-goat, forbidding them, not only to give them suck, what danger soever
they run thereby, but, moreover, to take any manner of care of them, that
they may wholly be occupied with the care of and attendance upon ours;
and we see in most of them an adulterate affection, more vehement than
the natural, begotten by custom toward the foster children, and a greater
solicitude for the preservation of those they have taken charge of, than
of their own. And that which I was saying of goats was upon this
account; that it is ordinary all about where I live, to see the
countrywomen, when they want milk of their own for their children, to
call goats to their assistance; and I have at this hour two men-servants
that never sucked women's milk more than eight days after they were born.
These goats are immediately taught to come to suckle the little children,
know their voices when they cry, and come running to them. If any other
than this foster-child be presented to them, they refuse to let it suck;
and the child in like manner will refuse to suck another goat. I saw one
the other day from whom they had taken away the goat that used to nourish
it, by reason the father had only borrowed it of a neighbour; the child
would not touch any other they could bring, and died, doubtless of
hunger. Beasts as easily alter and corrupt their natural affection as
we: I believe that in what Herodotus relates of a certain district of
Lybia, there are many mistakes; he says that the women are there in
common; but that the child, so soon as it can go, finds him out in the
crowd for his father, to whom he is first led by his natural inclination.
Now, to consider this simple reason for loving our children, that we have
begot them, therefore calling them our second selves, it appears,
methinks, that there is another kind of production proceeding from us,
that is of no less recommendation: for that which we engender by the
soul, the issue of our understanding, courage, and abilities, springs
from nobler parts than those of the body, and that are much more our own:
we are both father and mother in this generation. These cost us a great
deal more and bring us more honour, if they have anything of good in
them. For the value of our other children is much more theirs than ours;
the share we have in them is very little; but of these all the beauty,
all the grace and value, are ours; and also they more vividly represent
us than the others. Plato adds, that these are immortal children that
immortalise and deify their fathers, as Lycurgus, Solon, Minos. Now,
histories being full of examples of the common affection of fathers to
their children, it seems not altogether improper to introduce some few of
this other kind. Heliodorus, that good bishop of Trikka, rather chose to
lose the dignity, profit, and devotion of so venerable a prelacy, than to
lose his daughter; a daughter that continues to this day very graceful
and comely; but, peradventure, a little too curiously and wantonly
tricked, and too amorous for an ecclesiastical and sacerdotal daughter.
There was one Labienus at Rome, a man of great worth and authority, and
amongst other qualities excellent in all sorts of literature, who was, as
I take it, the son of that great Labienus, the chief of Caesar's captains
in the wars of Gaul; and who, afterwards, siding with Pompey the great,
so valiantly maintained his cause, till he was by Caesar defeated in
Spain. This Labienus, of whom I am now speaking, had several enemies,
envious of his good qualities, and, tis likely, the courtiers and minions
of the emperors of his time who were very angry at his freedom and the
paternal humour which he yet retained against tyranny, with which it is
to be supposed he had tinctured his books and writings. His adversaries
prosecuted several pieces he had published before the magistrates at
Rome, and prevailed so far against him, as to have them condemned to the
fire. It was in him that this new example of punishment was begun, which
was afterwards continued against others at Rome, to punish even writing
and studies with death. There would not be means and matter enough of
cruelty, did we not mix with them things that nature has exempted from
all sense and suffering, as reputation and the products of the mind, and
did we not communicate corporal punishments to the teachings and
monuments of the Muses. Now, Labienus could not suffer this loss, nor
survive these his so dear issue, and therefore caused himself to be
conveyed and shut up alive in the monument of his ancestors, where he
made shift to kill and bury himself at once. 'Tis hard to shew a more
vehement paternal affection than this. Cassius Severus, a man of great
eloquence and his very intimate friend, seeing his books burned, cried
out that by the same sentence they should as well condemn him to the fire
too, seeing that he carried in his memory all that they contained. The
like accident befel Cremutius Cordus, who being accused of having in his
books commended Brutus and Cassius, that dirty, servile, and corrupt
Senate, worthy a worse master than Tiberius, condemned his writings to
the flame. He was willing to bear them company, and killed himself with
fasting. The good Lucan, being condemned by that rascal Nero, at the
last gasp of his life, when the greater part of his blood was already
spent through the veins of his arms, which he had caused his physician to
open to make him die, and when the cold had seized upon all his
extremities, and began to approach his vital parts, the last thing he had
in his memory was some of the verses of his Battle of Phaysalia, which he
recited, dying with them in his mouth. What was this, but taking a
tender and paternal leave of his children, in imitation of the
valedictions and embraces, wherewith we part from ours, when we come to
die, and an effect of that natural inclination, that suggests to our
remembrance in this extremity those things which were dearest to us
during the time of our life?
Can we believe that Epicurus who, as he says himself, dying of the
intolerable pain of the stone, had all his consolation in the beauty of
the doctrine he left behind him, could have received the same
satisfaction from many children, though never so well-conditioned and
brought up, had he had them, as he did from the production of so many
rich writings? Or that, had it been in his choice to have left behind
him a deformed and untoward child or a foolish and ridiculous book, he,
or any other man of his understanding, would not rather have chosen to
have run the first misfortune than the other? It had been, for example,
peradventure, an impiety in St. Augustin, if, on the one hand, it had
been proposed to him to bury his writings, from which religion has
received so great fruit, or on the other to bury his children, had he had
them, had he not rather chosen to bury his children. And I know not
whether I had not much rather have begot a very beautiful one, through
society with the Muses, than by lying with my wife. To this, such as it
is, what I give it I give absolutely and irrevocably, as men do to their
bodily children. That little I have done for it, is no more at my own
disposal; it may know many things that are gone from me, and from me hold
that which I have not retained; and which, as well as a stranger, I
should borrow thence, should I stand in need. If I am wiser than my
book, it is richer than I. There are few men addicted to poetry, who
would not be much prouder to be the father to the AEneid than to the
handsomest youth of Rome; and who would not much better bear the loss of
the one than of the other. For according to Aristotle, the poet, of all
artificers, is the fondest of his work. 'Tis hard to believe that
Epaminondas, who boasted that in lieu of all posterity he left two
daughters behind him that would one day do their father honour (meaning
the two victories he obtained over the Lacedaemonians), would willingly
have consented to exchange these for the most beautiful creatures of all
Greece; or that Alexander or Caesar ever wished to be deprived of the
grandeur of their glorious exploits in war, for the convenience of
children and heirs, how perfect and accomplished soever. Nay, I make a
great question, whether Phidias or any other excellent sculptor would be
so solicitous of the preservation and continuance of his natural
children, as he would be of a rare statue, which with long labour and
study he had perfected according to art. And to those furious and
irregular passions that have sometimes inflamed fathers towards their own
daughters, and mothers towards their own sons, the like is also found in
this other sort of parentage: witness what is related of Pygmalion who,
having made the statue of a woman of singular beauty, fell so
passionately in love with this work of his, that the gods in favour of
his passion inspired it with life.
"Tentatum mollescit ebur, positoque rigore,
Subsidit digitis."
["The ivory grows soft under his touch and yields to his fingers."
--Ovid, Metam., x. 283.]
CHAPTER IX
OF THE ARMS OF THE PARTHIANS
'Tis an ill custom and unmanly that the gentlemen of our time have got,
not to put on arms but just upon the point of the most extreme necessity,
and to lay them by again, so soon as ever there is any show of the danger
being over; hence many disorders arise; for every one bustling and
running to his arms just when he should go to charge, has his cuirass to
buckle on when his companions are already put to rout. Our ancestors
were wont to give their head-piece, lance and gauntlets to be carried,
but never put off the other pieces so long as there was any work to be
done. Our troops are now cumbered and rendered unsightly with the
clutter of baggage and servants who cannot be from their masters, by
reason they carry their arms. Titus Livius speaking of our nation:
"Intolerantissima laboris corpora vix arma humeris gerebant."
["Bodies most impatient of labour could scarce endure to wear
their arms on their shoulders."--Livy, x. 28.]
Many nations do yet, and did anciently, go to war without defensive arms,
or with such, at least, as were of very little proof:
"Tegmina queis capitum, raptus de subere cortex."
["To whom the coverings of the heads were the bark of the
cork-tree."--AEneid, vii. 742.]
Alexander, the most adventurous captain that ever was, very seldom wore
armour, and such amongst us as slight it, do not by that much harm to the
main concern; for if we see some killed for want of it, there are few
less whom the lumber of arms helps to destroy, either by being
overburthened, crushed, and cramped with their weight, by a rude shock,
or otherwise. For, in plain truth, to observe the weight and thickness
of the armour we have now in use, it seems as if we only sought to defend
ourselves, and are rather loaded than secured by it. We have enough to
do to support its weight, being so manacled and immured, as if we were
only to contend with our own arms, and as if we had not the same
obligation to defend them, that they have to defend us. Tacitus gives a
pleasant description of the men-at-arms among our ancient Gauls, who were
so armed as only to be able to stand, without power to harm or to be
harmed, or to rise again if once struck down. Lucullus, seeing certain
soldiers of the Medes, who formed the van of Tigranes' army, heavily
armed and very uneasy, as if in prisons of iron, thence conceived hopes
with great ease to defeat them, and by them began his charge and victory.
And now that our musketeers are in credit, I believe some invention will
be found out to immure us for our safety, and to draw us to the war in
castles, such as those the ancients loaded their elephants withal.
This humour is far differing from that of the younger Scipio, who sharply
reprehended his soldiers for having planted caltrops under water, in a
ditch by which those of the town he held besieged might sally out upon
him; saying, that those who assaulted should think of attacking, and not
to fear; suspecting, with good reason, that this stop they had put to the
enemies, would make themselves less vigilant upon their guard. He said
also to a young man, who showed him a fine buckler he had, that he was
very proud of, "It is a very fine buckler indeed, but a Roman soldier
ought to repose greater confidence in his right hand than in his left."
Now 'tis nothing but the not being used to wear it that makes the weight
of our armour so intolerable:
"L'usbergo in dosso haveano, et l'elmo in testa,
Due di questi guerrier, de' quali io canto;
Ne notte o di, d' appoi ch' entraro in questa
Stanza, gl'haveano mai messi da canto;
Che facile a portar come la vesta
Era lor, perche in uso l'havean tanto:"
["Two of the warriors, of whom I sing, had on their backs their
cuirass and on their heads their casque, and never had night or day
once laid them by, whilst here they were; those arms, by long
practice, were grown as light to bear as a garment"
--Ariosto, Cant., MI. 30.]
the Emperor Caracalla was wont to march on foot, completely armed, at the
head of his army. The Roman infantry always carried not only a morion, a
sword, and a shield (for as to arms, says Cicero, they were so accustomed
to have them always on, that they were no more trouble to them than their
own limbs):
"Arma enim membra militis esse dicunt."
but, moreover, fifteen days' provision, together with a certain number of
stakes, wherewith to fortify their camp, sixty pounds in weight. And
Marius' soldiers, laden at the same rate, were inured to march in order
of battle five leagues in five hours, and sometimes, upon any urgent
occasion, six.
Their military discipline was much ruder than ours, and accordingly
produced much greater effects. The younger Scipio, reforming his army in
Spain, ordered his soldiers to eat standing, and nothing that was drest.
The jeer that was given a Lacedaemonian soldier is marvellously pat to
this purpose, who, in an expedition of war, was reproached for having
been seen under the roof of a house: they were so inured to hardship
that, let the weather be what it would, it was a shame to be seen under
any other cover than the roof of heaven. We should not march our people
very far at that rate.
As to what remains, Marcellinus, a man bred up in the Roman wars,
curiously observes the manner of the Parthians arming themselves, and the
rather, for being so different from that of the Romans. "They had," says
he, "armour so woven as to have all the scales fall over one another like
so many little feathers; which did nothing hinder the motion of the body,
and yet were of such resistance, that our darts hitting upon them, would
rebound" (these were the coats of mail our forefathers were so constantly
wont to use). And in another place: "they had," says he, "strong and
able horses, covered with thick tanned hides of leather, and were
themselves armed 'cap-a-pie' with great plates of iron, so artificially
ordered, that in all parts of the limbs, which required bending, they
lent themselves to the motion. One would have said, that they had been
men of iron; having armour for the head so neatly fitted, and so
naturally representing the form of a face, that they were nowhere
vulnerable, save at two little round holes, that gave them a little
light, corresponding with their eyes, and certain small chinks about
their nostrils, through which they, with great difficulty, breathed,"
"Flexilis inductis animatur lamina membris,
Horribilis visu; credas simulacra moveri
Ferrea, cognatoque viros spirare metallo.
Par vestitus equis: ferrata fronte minantur,
Ferratosque movent, securi vulneris, armos."
["Plates of steel are placed over the body, so flexible that,
dreadful to be seen, you would think these not living men, but
moving images. The horses are similarly armed, and, secured from
wounds, move their iron shoulders."--Claud, In Ruf., ii. 358.]
'Tis a description drawing very near resembling the equipage of the
men-at-arms in France, with their barded horses. Plutarch says, that
Demetrius caused two complete suits of armour to be made for himself and
for Alcimus, a captain of the greatest note and authority about him, of
six score pounds weight each, whereas the ordinary suits weighed but half
as much.
CHAPTER X
OF BOOKS
I make no doubt but that I often happen to speak of things that are much
better and more truly handled by those who are masters of the trade. You
have here purely an essay of my natural parts, and not of those acquired:
and whoever shall catch me tripping in ignorance, will not in any sort
get the better of me; for I should be very unwilling to become
responsible to another for my writings, who am not so to myself, nor
satisfied with them. Whoever goes in quest of knowledge, let him fish
for it where it is to be found; there is nothing I so little profess.
These are fancies of my own, by which I do not pretend to discover things
but to lay open myself; they may, peradventure, one day be known to me,
or have formerly been, according as fortune has been able to bring me in
place where they have been explained; but I have utterly forgotten it;
and if I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retention; so that I
can promise no certainty, more than to make known to what point the
knowledge I now have has risen. Therefore, let none lay stress upon the
matter I write, but upon my method in writing it. Let them observe, in
what I borrow, if I have known how to choose what is proper to raise or
help the invention, which is always my own. For I make others say for
me, not before but after me, what, either for want of language or want of
sense, I cannot myself so well express. I do not number my borrowings,
I weigh them; and had I designed to raise their value by number, I had
made them twice as many; they are all, or within a very few, so famed and
ancient authors, that they seem, methinks, themselves sufficiently to
tell who they are, without giving me the trouble. In reasons,
comparisons, and arguments, if I transplant any into my own soil, and
confound them amongst my own, I purposely conceal the author, to awe the
temerity of those precipitate censors who fall upon all sorts of
writings, particularly the late ones, of men yet living; and in the
vulgar tongue which puts every one into a capacity of criticising and
which seem to convict the conception and design as vulgar also. I will
have them give Plutarch a fillip on my nose, and rail against Seneca when
they think they rail at me. I must shelter my own weakness under these
great reputations. I shall love any one that can unplume me, that is,
by clearness of understanding and judgment, and by the sole distinction
of the force and beauty of the discourse. For I who, for want of memory,
am at every turn at a loss to, pick them out of their national livery, am
yet wise enough to know, by the measure of my own abilities, that my soil
is incapable of producing any of those rich flowers that I there find
growing; and that all the fruits of my own growth are not worth any one
of them. For this, indeed, I hold myself responsible; if I get in my own
way; if there be any vanity and defect in my writings which I do not of
myself perceive nor can discern, when pointed out to me by another; for
many faults escape our eye, but the infirmity of judgment consists in not
being able to discern them, when by another laid open to us. Knowledge
and truth may be in us without judgment, and judgment also without them;
but the confession of ignorance is one of the finest and surest
testimonies of judgment that I know. I have no other officer to put my
writings in rank and file, but only fortune. As things come into my
head, I heap them one upon another; sometimes they advance in whole
bodies, sometimes in single file. I would that every one should see my
natural and ordinary pace, irregular as it is; I suffer myself to jog on
at my own rate. Neither are these subjects which a man is not permitted
to be ignorant in, or casually and at a venture, to discourse of. I
could wish to have a more perfect knowledge of things, but I will not buy
it so dear as it costs. My design is to pass over easily, and not
laboriously, the remainder of my life; there is nothing that I will
cudgel my brains about; no, not even knowledge, of what value soever.
I seek, in the reading of books, only to please myself by an honest
diversion; or, if I study, 'tis for no other science than what treats of
the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die and how to live
well.
"Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus."
["My horse must work according to my step."
--Propertius, iv.]
I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I meet with in my reading;
after a charge or two, I give them over. Should I insist upon them, I
should both lose myself and time; for I have an impatient understanding,
that must be satisfied at first: what I do not discern at once is by
persistence rendered more obscure. I do nothing without gaiety;
continuation and a too obstinate endeavour, darkens, stupefies, and tires
my judgment. My sight is confounded and dissipated with poring; I must
withdraw it, and refer my discovery to new attempts; just as, to judge
rightly of the lustre of scarlet, we are taught to pass the eye lightly
over it, and again to run it over at several sudden and reiterated
glances. If one book do not please me, I take another; and I never
meddle with any, but at such times as I am weary of doing nothing.
I care not much for new ones, because the old seem fuller and stronger;
neither do I converse much with Greek authors, because my judgment cannot
do its work with imperfect intelligence of the material.
Amongst books that are simply pleasant, of the moderns, Boccaccio's
Decameron, Rabelais, and the Basia of Johannes Secundus (if those may be
ranged under the title) are worth reading for amusement. As to the
Amadis, and such kind of stuff, they had not the credit of arresting even
my childhood. And I will, moreover, say, whether boldly or rashly, that
this old, heavy soul of mine is now no longer tickled with Ariosto, no,
nor with the worthy Ovid; his facility and inventions, with which I was
formerly so ravished, are now of no more relish, and I can hardly have
the patience to read them. I speak my opinion freely of all things, even
of those that, perhaps, exceed my capacity, and that I do not conceive to
be, in any wise, under my jurisdiction. And, accordingly, the judgment I
deliver, is to show the measure of my own sight, and not of the things I
make so bold to criticise. When I find myself disgusted with Plato's
'Axiochus', as with a work, with due respect to such an author be it
spoken, without force, my judgment does not believe itself: it is not so
arrogant as to oppose the authority of so many other famous judgments of
antiquity, which it considers as its tutors and masters, and with whom it
is rather content to err; in such a case, it condemns itself either to
stop at the outward bark, not being able to penetrate to the heart, or to
consider it by sortie false light. It is content with only securing
itself from trouble and disorder; as to its own weakness, it frankly
acknowledges and confesses it. It thinks it gives a just interpretation
to the appearances by its conceptions presented to it; but they are weak
and imperfect. Most of the fables of AEsop have diverse senses and
meanings, of which the mythologists chose some one that quadrates well to
the fable; but, for the most part, 'tis but the first face that presents
itself and is superficial only; there yet remain others more vivid,
essential, and profound, into which they have not been able to penetrate;
and just so 'tis with me.
But, to pursue the business of this essay, I have always thought that, in
poesy, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace by many degrees excel the
rest; and signally, Virgil in his Georgics, which I look upon as the most
accomplished piece in poetry; and in comparison of which a man may easily
discern that there are some places in his AEneids, to which the author
would have given a little more of the file, had he had leisure: and the
fifth book of his AEneids seems to me the most perfect. I also love
Lucan, and willingly read him, not so much for his style, as for his own
worth, and the truth and solidity of his opinions and judgments. As for
good Terence, the refined elegance and grace of the Latin tongue, I find
him admirable in his vivid representation of our manners and the
movements of the soul; our actions throw me at every turn upon him; and
I cannot read him so often that I do not still discover some new grace
and beauty. Such as lived near Virgil's time complained that some should
compare Lucretius to him. I am of opinion that the comparison is, in
truth, very unequal: a belief that, nevertheless, I have much ado to
assure myself in, when I come upon some excellent passage in Lucretius.
But if they were so angry at this comparison, what would they say to the
brutish and barbarous stupidity of those who, nowadays, compare him with
Ariosto? Would not Ariosto himself say?
"O seclum insipiens et inficetum!"
["O stupid and tasteless age."--Catullus, xliii. 8.]
I think the ancients had more reason to be angry with those who compared
Plautus with Terence, though much nearer the mark, than Lucretius with
Virgil. It makes much for the estimation and preference of Terence, that
the father of Roman eloquence has him so often, and alone of his class,
in his mouth; and the opinion that the best judge of Roman poets
--[Horace, De Art. Poetica, 279.]--has passed upon his companion. I
have often observed that those of our times, who take upon them to write
comedies (in imitation of the Italians, who are happy enough in that way
of writing), take three or four plots of those of Plautus or Terence to
make one of their own, and , crowd five or six of Boccaccio's novels into
one single comedy. That which makes them so load themselves with matter
is the diffidence they have of being able to support themselves with
their own strength. They must find out something to lean to; and not
having of their own stuff wherewith to entertain us, they bring in the
story to supply the defect of language. It is quite otherwise with my
author; the elegance and perfection of his way of speaking makes us lose
the appetite of his plot; his refined grace and elegance of diction
everywhere occupy us: he is so pleasant throughout,
"Liquidus, puroque simillimus amni,"
["Liquid, and likest the pure river."
--Horace, Ep., ii. s, 120.]
and so possesses the soul with his graces that we forget those of his
fable. This same consideration carries me further: I observe that the
best of the ancient poets have avoided affectation and the hunting after,
not only fantastic Spanish and Petrarchic elevations, but even the softer
and more gentle touches, which are the ornament of all succeeding poesy.
And yet there is no good judgment that will condemn this in the ancients,
and that does not incomparably more admire the equal polish, and that
perpetual sweetness and flourishing beauty of Catullus's epigrams, than
all the stings with which Martial arms the tails of his. This is by the
same reason that I gave before, and as Martial says of himself:
"Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit,
in cujus locum materia successerat:"
["He had the less for his wit to do that the subject itself
supplied what was necessary."--Martial, praef. ad lib. viii.]
The first, without being moved, or without getting angry, make themselves
sufficiently felt; they have matter enough of laughter throughout, they
need not tickle themselves; the others have need of foreign assistance;
as they have the less wit they must have the more body; they mount on
horseback, because they are not able to stand on their own legs. As in
our balls, those mean fellows who teach to dance, not being able to
represent the presence and dignity of our noblesse, are fain to put
themselves forward with dangerous jumping, and other strange motions and
tumblers tricks; and the ladies are less put to it in dance; where there
are various coupees, changes, and quick motions of body, than in some
other of a more sedate kind, where they are only to move a natural pace,
and to represent their ordinary grace and presence. And so I have seen
good drolls, when in their own everyday clothes, and with the same face
they always wear, give us all the pleasure of their art, when their
apprentices, not yet arrived at such a pitch of perfection, are fain to
meal their faces, put themselves into ridiculous disguises, and make a
hundred grotesque faces to give us whereat to laugh. This conception of
mine is nowhere more demonstrable than in comparing the AEneid with
Orlando Furioso; of which we see the first, by dint of wing, flying in a
brave and lofty place, and always following his point: the latter,
fluttering and hopping from tale to tale, as from branch to branch, not
daring to trust his wings but in very short flights, and perching at
every turn, lest his breath and strength should fail.
"Excursusque breves tentat."
["And he attempts short excursions."
--Virgil, Georgics, iv. 194.]
These, then, as to this sort of subjects, are the authors that best
please me.
As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more profit
with the pleasure, and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions and
conditions, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch, since
he has been translated into French, and Seneca. Both of these have this
notable convenience suited to my humour, that the knowledge I there seek
is discoursed in loose pieces, that do not require from me any trouble of
reading long, of which I am incapable. Such are the minor works of the
first and the epistles of the latter, which are the best and most
profiting of all their writings. 'Tis no great attempt to take one of
them in hand, and I give over at pleasure; for they have no sequence or
dependence upon one another. These authors, for the most part, concur in
useful and true opinions; and there is this parallel betwixt them, that
fortune brought them into the world about the same century: they were
both tutors to two Roman emperors: both sought out from foreign
countries: both rich and both great men. Their instruction is the cream
of philosophy, and delivered after a plain and pertinent manner.
Plutarch is more uniform and constant; Seneca more various and waving:
the last toiled and bent his whole strength to fortify virtue against
weakness, fear, and vicious appetites; the other seems more to slight
their power, and to disdain to alter his pace and to stand upon his
guard. Plutarch's opinions are Platonic, gentle, and accommodated to
civil society; those of the other are Stoical and Epicurean, more remote
from the common use, but, in my opinion, more individually commodious and
more firm. Seneca seems to lean a little to the tyranny of the emperors
of his time, and only seems; for I take it for certain that he speaks
against his judgment when he condemns the action of the generous
murderers of Caesar. Plutarch is frank throughout: Seneca abounds with
brisk touches and sallies; Plutarch with things that warm and move you
more; this contents and pays you better: he guides us, the other pushes
us on.
As to Cicero, his works that are most useful to my design are they that
treat of manners and rules of our life. But boldly to confess the truth
(for since one has passed the barriers of impudence, there is no bridle),
his way of writing appears to me negligent and uninviting: for his
prefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymologies take up the greatest
part of his work: whatever there is of life and marrow is smothered and
lost in the long preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him,
which is a great deal for me, and try to recollect what I have thence
extracted of juice and substance, for the most part I find nothing but
wind; for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve to his purpose,
and to the reasons that properly help to form the knot I seek. For me,
who only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent, these
logical and Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use. I would
have a man begin with the main proposition. I know well enough what
death and pleasure are; let no man give himself the trouble to anatomise
them to me. I look for good and solid reasons, at the first dash, to
instruct me how to stand their shock, for which purpose neither
grammatical subtleties nor the quaint contexture of words and
argumentations are of any use at all. I am for discourses that give the
first charge into the heart of the redoubt; his languish about the
subject; they are proper for the schools, for the bar, and for the
pulpit, where we have leisure to nod, and may awake, a quarter of an hour
after, time enough to find again the thread of the discourse. It is
necessary to speak after this manner to judges, whom a man has a design
to gain over, right or wrong, to children and common people, to whom a
man must say all, and see what will come of it. I would not have an
author make it his business to render me attentive: or that he should cry
out fifty times Oyez! as the heralds do. The Romans, in their religious
exercises, began with 'Hoc age' as we in ours do with 'Sursum corda';
these are so many words lost to me: I come already fully prepared from my
chamber. I need no allurement, no invitation, no sauce; I eat the meat
raw, so that, instead of whetting my appetite by these preparatives, they
tire and pall it. Will the licence of the time excuse my sacrilegious
boldness if I censure the dialogism of Plato himself as also dull and
heavy, too much stifling the matter, and lament so much time lost by a
man, who had so many better things to say, in so many long and needless
preliminary interlocutions? My ignorance will better excuse me in that
I understand not Greek so well as to discern the beauty of his language.
I generally choose books that use sciences, not such as only lead to
them. The two first, and Pliny, and their like, have nothing of this Hoc
age; they will have to do with men already instructed; or if they have,
'tis a substantial Hoc age; and that has a body by itself. I also
delight in reading the Epistles to Atticus, not only because they contain
a great deal of the history and affairs of his time, but much more
because I therein discover much of his own private humours; for I have a
singular curiosity, as I have said elsewhere, to pry into the souls and
the natural and true opinions of the authors, with whom I converse. A
man may indeed judge of their parts, but not of their manners nor of
themselves, by the writings they exhibit upon the theatre of the world.
I have a thousand times lamented the loss of the treatise Brutus wrote
upon Virtue, for it is well to learn the theory from those who best know
the practice.
But seeing the matter preached and the preacher are different things,
I would as willingly see Brutus in Plutarch, as in a book of his own.
I would rather choose to be certainly informed of the conference he had
in his tent with some particular friends of his the night before a
battle, than of the harangue he made the next day to his army; and of
what he did in his closet and his chamber, than what he did in the public
square and in the senate. As to Cicero, I am of the common opinion that,
learning excepted, he had no great natural excellence. He was a good
citizen, of an affable nature, as all fat, heavy men, such as he was,
usually are; but given to ease, and had, in truth, a mighty share of
vanity and ambition. Neither do I know how to excuse him for thinking
his poetry fit to be published; 'tis no great imperfection to make ill
verses, but it is an imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthy
his verses were of the glory of his name. For what concerns his
eloquence, that is totally out of all comparison, and I believe it will
never be equalled. The younger Cicero, who resembled his father in
nothing but in name, whilst commanding in Asia, had several strangers one
day at his table, and, amongst the rest, Cestius seated at the lower end,
as men often intrude to the open tables of the great. Cicero asked one
of his people who that man was, who presently told him his name; but he,
as one who had his thoughts taken up with something else, and who had
forgotten the answer made him, asking three or four times, over and over
again; the same question, the fellow, to deliver himself from so many
answers and to make him know him by some particular circumstance; "'tis
that Cestius," said he, "of whom it was told you, that he makes no great
account of your father's eloquence in comparison of his own." At which
Cicero, being suddenly nettled, commanded poor Cestius presently to be
seized, and caused him to be very well whipped in his own presence; a
very discourteous entertainer! Yet even amongst those, who, all things
considered, have reputed his, eloquence incomparable, there have been
some, who have not stuck to observe some faults in it: as that great
Brutus his friend, for example, who said 'twas a broken and feeble
eloquence, 'fyactam et elumbem'. The orators also, nearest to the age
wherein he lived, reprehended in him the care he had of a certain long
cadence in his periods, and particularly took notice of these words,
'esse videatur', which he there so often makes use of. For my part, I
more approve of a shorter style, and that comes more roundly off. He
does, though, sometimes shuffle his parts more briskly together, but 'tis
very seldom. I have myself taken notice of this one passage:
"Ego vero me minus diu senem mallem,
quam esse senem, antequam essem."
["I had rather be old a brief time, than be old before old age.
--"Cicero, De Senect., c. 10.]
The historians are my right ball, for they are pleasant and easy, and
where man, in general, the knowledge of whom I hunt after, appears more
vividly and entire than anywhere else:
[The easiest of my amusements, the right ball at tennis being that
which coming to the player from the right hand, is much easier
played with.--Coste.]
the variety and truth of his internal qualities, in gross and piecemeal,
the diversity of means by which he is united and knit, and the accidents
that threaten him. Now those that write lives, by reason they insist
more upon counsels than events, more upon what sallies from within, than
upon what happens without, are the most proper for my reading; and,
therefore, above all others, Plutarch is the man for me. I am very sorry
we have not a dozen Laertii,--[Diogenes Laertius, who wrote the Lives of
the Philosophers]--or that he was not further extended; for I am equally
curious to know the lives and fortunes of these great instructors of the
world, as to know the diversities of their doctrines and opinions. In
this kind of study of histories, a man must tumble over, without
distinction, all sorts of authors, old and new, French or foreign, there
to know the things of which they variously treat. But Caesar, in my
opinion, particularly deserves to be studied, not for the knowledge of
the history only, but for himself, so great an excellence and perfection
he has above all the rest, though Sallust be one of the number. In
earnest, I read this author with more reverence and respect than is
usually allowed to human writings; one while considering him in his
person, by his actions and miraculous greatness, and another in the
purity and inimitable polish of his language, wherein he not only excels
all other historians, as Cicero confesses, but, peradventure, even
Cicero himself; speaking of his enemies with so much sincerity in his
judgment, that, the false colours with which he strives to palliate his
evil cause, and the ordure of his pestilent ambition excepted, I think
there is no fault to be objected against him, saving this, that he speaks
too sparingly of himself, seeing so many great things could not have been
performed under his conduct, but that his own personal acts must
necessarily have had a greater share in them than he attributes to them.
I love historians, whether of the simple sort, or of the higher order.
The simple, who have nothing of their own to mix with it, and who only
make it their business to collect all that comes to their knowledge, and
faithfully to record all things, without choice or discrimination, leave
to us the entire judgment of discerning the truth. Such, for example,
amongst others, is honest Froissart, who has proceeded in his undertaking
with so frank a plainness that, having committed an error, he is not
ashamed to confess and correct it in the place where the finger has been
laid, and who represents to us even the variety of rumours that were then
spread abroad, and the different reports that were made to him; 'tis the
naked and inform matter of history, and of which every one may make his
profit, according to his understanding. The more excellent sort of
historians have judgment to pick out what is most worthy to be known;
and, of two reports, to examine which is the most likely to be true: from
the condition of princes and their humours, they conclude their counsels,
and attribute to them words proper for the occasion; such have title to
assume the authority of regulating our belief to what they themselves
believe; but certainly, this privilege belongs to very few. For the
middle sort of historians, of which the most part are, they spoil all;
they will chew our meat for us; they take upon them to judge of, and
consequently, to incline the history to their own fancy; for if the
judgment lean to one side, a man cannot avoid wresting and writhing his
narrative to that bias; they undertake to select things worthy to be
known, and yet often conceal from us such a word, such a private action,
as would much better instruct us; omit, as incredible, such things as
they do not understand, and peradventure some, because they cannot
express good French or Latin. Let them display their eloquence and
intelligence, and judge according to their own fancy: but let them,
withal, leave us something to judge of after them, and neither alter nor
disguise, by their abridgments and at their own choice, anything of the
substance of the matter, but deliver it to us pure and entire in all its
dimensions.
For the most part, and especially in these latter ages, persons are
culled out for this work from amongst the common people, upon the sole
consideration of well-speaking, as if we were to learn grammar from them;
and the men so chosen have fair reason, being hired for no other end and
pretending to nothing but babble, not to be very solicitous of any part
but that, and so, with a fine jingle of words, prepare us a pretty
contexture of reports they pick up in the streets. The only good
histories are those that have been written themselves who held command in
the affairs whereof they write, or who participated in the conduct of
them, or, at least, who have had the conduct of others of the same
nature. Such are almost all the Greek and Roman histories: for, several
eye-witnesses having written of the same subject, in the time when
grandeur and learning commonly met in the same person, if there happen to
be an error, it must of necessity be a very slight one, and upon a very
doubtful incident. What can a man expect from a physician who writes of
war, or from a mere scholar, treating of the designs of princes? If we
could take notice how scrupulous the Romans were in this, there would
need but this example: Asinius Pollio found in the histories of Caesar
himself something misreported, a mistake occasioned; either by reason he
could not have his eye in all parts of his army at once and had given
credit to some individual persons who had not delivered him a very true
account; or else, for not having had too perfect notice given him by his
lieutenants of what they had done in his absence.--[Suetonius, Life of
Caesar, c. 56.]--By which we may see, whether the inquisition after
truth be not very delicate, when a man cannot believe the report of a
battle from the knowledge of him who there commanded, nor from the
soldiers who were engaged in it, unless, after the method of a judicial
inquiry, the witnesses be confronted and objections considered upon the
proof of the least detail of every incident. In good earnest the
knowledge we have of our own affairs, is much more obscure: but that has
been sufficiently handled by Bodin, and according to my own sentiment
--[In the work by jean Bodin, entitled "Methodus ad facilem historiarum
cognitionem." 1566.]--A little to aid the weakness of my memory (so
extreme that it has happened to me more than once, to take books again
into my hand as new and unseen, that I had carefully read over a few
years before, and scribbled with my notes) I have adopted a custom of
late, to note at the end of every book (that is, of those I never intend
to read again) the time when I made an end on't, and the judgment I had
made of it, to the end that this might, at least, represent to me the
character and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it;
and I will here transcribe some of those annotations.
I wrote this, some ten years ago, in my Guicciardini (of what language
soever my books speak to me in, I always speak to them in my own): "He is
a diligent historiographer, from whom, in my opinion, a man may learn the
truth of the affairs of his time, as exactly as from any other; in the
most of which he was himself also a personal actor, and in honourable
command. There is no appearance that he disguised anything, either upon
the account of hatred, favour, or vanity; of which the free censures he
passes upon the great ones, and particularly those by whom he was
advanced and employed in commands of great trust and honour, as Pope
Clement VII., give ample testimony. As to that part which he thinks
himself the best at, namely, his digressions and discourses, he has
indeed some very good, and enriched with fine features; but he is too
fond of them: for, to leave nothing unsaid, having a subject so full,
ample, almost infinite, he degenerates into pedantry and smacks a little
of scholastic prattle. I have also observed this in him, that of so many
souls and so many effects, so many motives and so many counsels as he
judges, he never attributes any one to virtue, religion, or conscience,
as if all these were utterly extinct in the world: and of all the
actions, how brave soever in outward show they appear in themselves, he
always refers the cause and motive to some vicious occasion or some
prospect of profit. It is impossible to imagine but that, amongst such
an infinite number of actions as he makes mention of, there must be some
one produced by the way of honest reason. No corruption could so
universally have infected men that some one would not escape the
contagion which makes me suspect that his own taste was vicious, whence
it might happen that he judged other men by himself."
In my Philip de Commines there is this written: "You will here find the
language sweet and delightful, of a natural simplicity, the narration
pure, with the good faith of the author conspicuous therein; free from
vanity, when speaking of himself, and from affection or envy, when
speaking of others: his discourses and exhortations rather accompanied
with zeal and truth, than with any exquisite sufficiency; and,
throughout, authority and gravity, which bespeak him a man of good
extraction, and brought up in great affairs."
Upon the Memoirs of Monsieur du Bellay I find this: "'Tis always pleasant
to read things written by those that have experienced how they ought to
be carried on; but withal, it cannot be denied but there is a manifest
decadence in these two lords--[Martin du Bellay and Guillaume de Langey,
brothers, who jointly wrote the Memoirs.]--from the freedom and liberty
of writing that shine in the elder historians, such as the Sire de
Joinville, the familiar companion of St. Louis; Eginhard, chancellor to
Charlemagne; and of later date, Philip de Commines. What we have here is
rather an apology for King Francis, against the Emperor Charles V., than
history. I will not believe that they have falsified anything, as to
matter of fact; but they make a common practice of twisting the judgment
of events, very often contrary to reason, to our advantage, and of
omitting whatsoever is ticklish to be handled in the life of their
master; witness the proceedings of Messieurs de Montmorency and de Biron,
which are here omitted: nay, so much as the very name of Madame
d'Estampes is not here to be found. Secret actions an historian may
conceal; but to pass over in silence what all the world knows and things
that have drawn after them public and such high consequences, is an
inexcusable defect. In fine, whoever has a mind to have a perfect
knowledge of King Francis and the events of his reign, let him seek it
elsewhere, if my advice may prevail. The only profit a man can reap from
these Memoirs is in the special narrative of battles and other exploits
of war wherein these gentlemen were personally engaged; in some words and
private actions of the princes of their time, and in the treaties and
negotiations carried on by the Seigneur de Langey, where there are
everywhere things worthy to be known, and discourses above the vulgar
strain."
CHAPTER XI
OF CRUELTY
I fancy virtue to be something else, and something more noble, than good
nature, and the mere propension to goodness, that we are born into the
world withal. Well-disposed and well-descended souls pursue, indeed, the
same methods, and represent in their actions the same face that virtue
itself does: but the word virtue imports, I know not what, more great and
active than merely for a man to suffer himself, by a happy disposition,
to be gently and quietly drawn to the rule of reason. He who, by a
natural sweetness and facility, should despise injuries received, would
doubtless do a very fine and laudable thing; but he who, provoked and
nettled to the quick by an offence, should fortify himself with the arms
of reason against the furious appetite of revenge, and after a great
conflict, master his own passion, would certainly do a great deal more.
The first would do well; the latter virtuously: one action might be
called goodness, and the other virtue; for methinks, the very name of
virtue presupposes difficulty and contention, and cannot be exercised
without an opponent. 'Tis for this reason, perhaps, that we call God
good, mighty, liberal and just; but we do not call Him virtuous, being
that all His operations are natural and without endeavour.--[Rousseau,
in his Emile, book v., adopts this passage almost in the same words.]--
It has been the opinion of many philosophers, not only Stoics, but
Epicureans--and this addition--
["Montaigne stops here to make his excuse for thus naming the
Epicureans with the Stoics, in conformity to the general opinion
that the Epicureans were not so rigid in their morals as the Stoics,
which is not true in the main, as he demonstrates at one view. This
involved Montaigne in a tedious parenthesis, during which it is
proper that the reader be attentive, that he may not entirely lose
the thread of the argument. In some later editions of this author,
it has been attempted to remedy this inconvenience, but without
observing that Montaigne's argument is rendered more feeble and
obscure by such vain repetitions: it is a licence that ought not to
be taken, because he who publishes the work of another, ought to
give it as the other composed ft. But, in Mr Cotton's translation,
he was so puzzled with this enormous parenthesis that he has quite
left it out"--Coste.]
I borrow from the vulgar opinion, which is false, notwithstanding the
witty conceit of Arcesilaus in answer to one, who, being reproached that
many scholars went from his school to the Epicurean, but never any from
thence to his school, said in answer, "I believe it indeed; numbers of
capons being made out of cocks, but never any cocks out of capons."
--[Diogenes Laertius, Life of Archesilaus, lib. iv., 43.]--For, in truth,
the Epicurean sect is not at all inferior to the Stoic in steadiness, and
the rigour of opinions and precepts. And a certain Stoic, showing more
honesty than those disputants, who, in order to quarrel with Epicurus,
and to throw the game into their hands, make him say what he never
thought, putting a wrong construction upon his words, clothing his
sentences, by the strict rules of grammar, with another meaning, and a
different opinion from that which they knew he entertained in his mind
and in his morals, the Stoic, I say, declared that he abandoned the
Epicurean sect, upon this among other considerations, that he thought
their road too lofty and inaccessible;
["And those are called lovers of pleasure, being in effect
lovers of honour and justice, who cultivate and observe all
the virtues."--Cicero, Ep. Fam., xv. i, 19.]
These philosophers say that it is not enough to have the soul seated in
a good place, of a good temper, and well disposed to virtue; it is not
enough to have our resolutions and our reasoning fixed above all the
power of fortune, but that we are, moreover, to seek occasions wherein to
put them to the proof: they would seek pain, necessity, and contempt to
contend with them and to keep the soul in breath:
"Multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita."
["Virtue is much strengthened by combats."
or: "Virtue attacked adds to its own force."
--Seneca, Ep., 13.]
'Tis one of the reasons why Epaminondas, who was yet of a third sect,
--[The Pythagorean.]--refused the riches fortune presented to him by
very lawful means; because, said he, I am to contend with poverty, in
which extreme he maintained himself to the last. Socrates put himself,
methinks, upon a ruder trial, keeping for his exercise a confounded
scolding wife, which was fighting at sharps. Metellus having, of all the
Roman senators, alone attempted, by the power of virtue, to withstand the
violence of Saturninus, tribune of the people at Rome, who would, by all
means, cause an unjust law to pass in favour of the commons, and, by so
doing, having incurred the capital penalties that Saturninus had
established against the dissentient, entertained those who, in this
extremity, led him to execution with words to this effect: That it was a
thing too easy and too base to do ill; and that to do well where there
was no danger was a common thing; but that to do well where there was
danger was the proper office of a man of virtue. These words of Metellus
very clearly represent to us what I would make out, viz., that virtue
refuses facility for a companion; and that the easy, smooth, and
descending way by which the regular steps of a sweet disposition of
nature are conducted is not that of a true virtue; she requires a rough
and stormy passage; she will have either exotic difficulties to wrestle
with, like that of Metellus, by means whereof fortune delights to
interrupt the speed of her career, or internal difficulties, that the
inordinate appetites and imperfections of our condition introduce to
disturb her.
I am come thus far at my ease; but here it comes into my head that the
soul of Socrates, the most perfect that ever came to my knowledge, should
by this rule be of very little recommendation; for I cannot conceive in
that person any the least motion of a vicious inclination: I cannot
imagine there could be any difficulty or constraint in the course of his
virtue: I know his reason to be so powerful and sovereign over him that
she would never have suffered a vicious appetite so much as to spring in
him. To a virtue so elevated as his, I have nothing to oppose. Methinks
I see him march, with a victorious and triumphant pace, in pomp and at
his ease, without opposition or disturbance. If virtue cannot shine
bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that
she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from
her that she derives her reputation and honour? What then, also, would
become of that brave and generous Epicurean pleasure, which makes account
that it nourishes virtue tenderly in her lap, and there makes it play and
wanton, giving it for toys to play withal, shame, fevers, poverty, death,
and torments? If I presuppose that a perfect virtue manifests itself in
contending, in patient enduring of pain, and undergoing the uttermost
extremity of the gout; without being moved in her seat; if I give her
troubles and difficulty for her necessary objects: what will become of a
virtue elevated to such a degree, as not only to despise pain, but,
moreover, to rejoice in it, and to be tickled with the throes of a sharp
colic, such as the Epicureans have established, and of which many of
them, by their actions, have given most manifest proofs? As have several
others, who I find to have surpassed in effects even the very rules of
their discipline. Witness the younger Cato: When I see him die, and
tearing out his own bowels, I am not satisfied simply to believe that he
had then his soul totally exempt from all trouble and horror: I cannot
think that he only maintained himself in the steadiness that the Stoical
rules prescribed him; temperate, without emotion, and imperturbed. There
was, methinks, something in the virtue of this man too sprightly and
fresh to stop there; I believe that, without doubt, he felt a pleasure
and delight in so noble an action, and was more pleased in it than in any
other of his life:
"Sic abiit a vita, ut causam moriendi nactum se esse gauderet."
["He quitted life rejoicing that a reason for dying had arisen."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 30.]
I believe it so thoroughly that I question whether he would have been
content to have been deprived of the occasion of so brave an exploit; and
if the goodness that made him embrace the public concern more than his
own, withheld me not, I should easily fall into an opinion that he
thought himself obliged to fortune for having put his virtue upon so
brave a trial, and for having favoured that theif--[Caesar]--in treading
underfoot the ancient liberty of his country. Methinks I read in this
action I know not what exaltation in his soul, and an extraordinary and
manly emotion of pleasure, when he looked upon the generosity and height
of his enterprise:
"Deliberate morte ferocior,"
["The more courageous from the deliberation to die."
--Horace, Od., i. 37, 29.]
not stimulated with any hope of glory, as the popular and effeminate
judgments of some have concluded (for that consideration was too mean and
low to possess so generous, so haughty, and so determined a heart as
his), but for the very beauty of the thing in itself, which he who had
the handling of the springs discerned more clearly and in its perfection
than we are able to do. Philosophy has obliged me in determining that so
brave an action had been indecently placed in any other life than that of
Cato; and that it only appertained to his to end so; notwithstanding, and
according to reason, he commanded his son and the senators who
accompanied him to take another course in their affairs:
"Catoni, quum incredibilem natura tribuisset gravitatem,
eamque ipse perpetue constantia roboravisset, semperque
in proposito consilio permansisset, moriendum potius,
quam tyranni vultus aspiciendus, erat."
["Cato, whom nature had given incredible dignity, which he had
fortified by perpetual constancy, ever remaining of his
predetermined opinion, preferred to die rather than to look
on the countenance of a tyrant."--Cicero, De Ofc., i. 31.]
Every death ought to hold proportion with the life before it; we do not
become others for dying. I always interpret the death by the life
preceding; and if any one tell me of a death strong and constant in
appearance, annexed to a feeble life, I conclude it produced by some
feeble cause, and suitable to the life before. The easiness then of his
death and the facility of dying he had acquired by the vigour of his
soul; shall we say that it ought to abate anything of the lustre of his
virtue? And who, that has his brain never so little tinctured with the
true philosophy, can be content to imagine Socrates only free from fear
and passion in the accident of his prison, fetters, and condemnation?
and that will not discover in him not only firmness and constancy (which
was his ordinary condition), but, moreover, I know not what new
satisfaction, and a frolic cheerfulness in his last words and actions?
In the start he gave with the pleasure of scratching his leg when his
irons were taken off, does he not discover an equal serenity and joy in
his soul for being freed from past inconveniences, and at the same time
to enter into the knowledge of the things to come? Cato shall pardon me,
if he please; his death indeed is more tragical and more lingering; but
yet this is, I know not how, methinks, finer. Aristippus, to one that
was lamenting this death: "The gods grant me such an one," said he.
A man discerns in the soul of these two great men and their imitators
(for I very much doubt whether there were ever their equals) so perfect a
habitude to virtue, that it was turned to a complexion. It is no longer
a laborious virtue, nor the precepts of reason, to maintain which the
soul is so racked, but the very essence of their soul, its natural and
ordinary habit; they have rendered it such by a long practice of
philosophical precepts having lit upon a rich and fine nature; the
vicious passions that spring in us can find no entrance into them; the
force and vigour of their soul stifle and extinguish irregular desires,
so soon as they begin to move.
Now, that it is not more noble, by a high and divine resolution, to
hinder the birth of temptations, and to be so formed to virtue, that the
very seeds of vice are rooted out, than to hinder by main force their
progress; and, having suffered ourselves to be surprised with the first
motions of the passions, to arm ourselves and to stand firm to oppose
their progress, and overcome them; and that this second effect is not
also much more generous than to be simply endowed with a facile and
affable nature, of itself disaffected to debauchery and vice, I do not
think can be doubted; for this third and last sort of virtue seems to
render a man innocent, but not virtuous; free from doing ill, but not apt
enough to do well: considering also, that this condition is so near
neighbour to imperfection and cowardice, that I know not very well how to
separate the confines and distinguish them: the very names of goodness
and innocence are, for this reason, in some sort grown into contempt.
I very well know that several virtues, as chastity, sobriety, and
temperance, may come to a man through personal defects. Constancy in
danger, if it must be so called, the contempt of death, and patience in
misfortunes, may ofttimes be found in men for want of well judging of
such accidents, and not apprehending them for such as they are. Want of
apprehension and stupidity sometimes counterfeit virtuous effects as I
have often seen it happen, that men have been commended for what really
merited blame. An Italian lord once said this, in my presence, to the
disadvantage of his own nation: that the subtlety of the Italians, and
the vivacity of their conceptions were so great, and they foresaw the
dangers and accidents that might befall them so far off, that it was not
to be thought strange, if they were often, in war, observed to provide
for their safety, even before they had discovered the peril; that we
French and the Spaniards, who were not so cunning, went on further, and
that we must be made to see and feel the danger before we would take the
alarm; but that even then we could not stick to it. But the Germans and
Swiss, more gross and heavy, had not the sense to look about them, even
when the blows were falling about their ears. Peradventure, he only
talked so for mirth's sake; and yet it is most certain that in war raw
soldiers rush into dangers with more precipitancy than after they have
been cudgelled*--(The original has eschauldex--scalded)
"Haud ignarus . . . . quantum nova gloria in armis,
Et praedulce decus, primo certamine possit."
["Not ignorant how much power the fresh glory of arms and sweetest
honour possess in the first contest."--AEneid, xi. 154]
For this reason it is that, when we judge of a particular action, we are
to consider the circumstances, and the whole man by whom it is performed,
before we give it a name.
To instance in myself: I have sometimes known my friends call that
prudence in me, which was merely fortune; and repute that courage and
patience, which was judgment and opinion; and attribute to me one title
for another, sometimes to my advantage and sometimes otherwise. As to
the rest, I am so far from being arrived at the first and most perfect
degree of excellence, where virtue is turned into habit, that even of the
second I have made no great proofs. I have not been very solicitous to
curb the desires by which I have been importuned. My virtue is a virtue,
or rather an innocence, casual and accidental. If I had been born of a
more irregular complexion, I am afraid I should have made scurvy work;
for I never observed any great stability in my soul to resist passions,
if they were never so little vehement: I know not how to nourish quarrels
and debates in my own bosom, and, consequently, owe myself no great
thanks that I am free from several vices:
"Si vitiis mediocribus et mea paucis
Mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si
Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos:"
["If my nature be disfigured only with slight and few vices, and is
otherwise just, it is as if you should blame moles on a fair body."
--Horatius, Sat., i. 6, 65.]
I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason. She has caused me to be
descended of a race famous for integrity and of a very good father; I
know not whether or no he has infused into me part of his humours, or
whether domestic examples and the good education of my infancy have
insensibly assisted in the work, or, if I was otherwise born so:
"Seu Libra, seu me Scorpius adspicit
Formidolosus, pars violentior
Natalis hors, seu tyrannus
Hesperive Capricornus undae:"
["Whether the Balance or dread Scorpio, more potent over my natal
hour, aspects me, or Capricorn, supreme over the Hesperian sea."
--Horace, Od., ii. 117.]
but so it is, that I have naturally a horror for most vices. The answer
of Antisthenes to him who asked him, which was the best apprenticeship
"to unlearn evil," seems to point at this. I have them in horror, I say,
with a detestation so natural, and so much my own, that the same instinct
and impression I brought of them with me from my nurse, I yet retain, and
no temptation whatever has had the power to make me alter it. Not so
much as my own discourses, which in some things lashing out of the common
road might seem easily to license me to actions that my natural
inclination makes me hate. I will say a prodigious thing, but I will say
it, however: I find myself in many things more under reputation by my
manners than by my opinion, and my concupiscence less debauched than my
reason. Aristippus instituted opinions so bold in favour of pleasure and
riches as set all the philosophers against him: but as to his manners,
Dionysius the tyrant, having presented three beautiful women before him,
to take his choice; he made answer, that he would choose them all, and
that Paris got himself into trouble for having preferred one before the
other two: but, having taken them home to his house, he sent them back
untouched. His servant finding himself overladen upon the way, with the
money he carried after him, he ordered him to pour out and throw away
that which troubled him. And Epicurus, whose doctrines were so
irreligious and effeminate, was in his life very laborious and devout;
he wrote to a friend of his that he lived only upon biscuit and water,
entreating him to send him a little cheese, to lie by him against he had
a mind to make a feast. Must it be true, that to be a perfect good man,
we must be so by an occult, natural, and universal propriety, without
law, reason, or example? The debauches wherein I have been engaged, have
not been, I thank God, of the worst sort, and I have condemned them in
myself, for my judgment was never infected by them; on the contrary,
I accuse them more severely in myself than in any other; but that is all,
for, as to the rest. I oppose too little resistance and suffer myself to
incline too much to the other side of the balance, excepting that I
moderate them, and prevent them from mixing with other vices, which for
the most part will cling together, if a man have not a care. I have
contracted and curtailed mine, to make them as single and as simple as I
can:
"Nec ultra
Errorem foveo."
["Nor do I cherish error further."
or: "Nor carry wrong further."
--Juvenal, viii. 164.]
For as to the opinion of the Stoics, who say, "That the wise man when he
works, works by all the virtues together, though one be most apparent,
according to the nature of the action"; and herein the similitude of a
human body might serve them somewhat, for the action of anger cannot
work, unless all the humours assist it, though choler predominate;
--if they will thence draw a like consequence, that when the wicked man
does wickedly, he does it by all the vices together, I do not believe it
to be so, or else I understand them not, for I by effect find the
contrary. These are sharp, unsubstantial subleties, with which
philosophy sometimes amuses itself. I follow some vices, but I fly
others as much as a saint would do. The Peripatetics also disown this
indissoluble connection; and Aristotle is of opinion that a prudent and
just man may be intemperate and inconsistent. Socrates confessed to some
who had discovered a certain inclination to vice in his physiognomy, that
it was, in truth, his natural propension, but that he had by discipline
corrected it. And such as were familiar with the philosopher Stilpo
said, that being born with addiction to wine and women, he had by study
rendered himself very abstinent both from the one and the other.
What I have in me of good, I have, quite contrary, by the chance of my
birth; and hold it not either by law, precept, or any other instruction;
the innocence that is in me is a simple one; little vigour and no art.
Amongst other vices, I mortally hate cruelty, both by nature and
judgment, as the very extreme of all vices: nay, with so much tenderness
that I cannot see a chicken's neck pulled off without trouble, and cannot
without impatience endure the cry of a hare in my dog's teeth, though the
chase be a violent pleasure. Such as have sensuality to encounter,
freely make use of this argument, to shew that it is altogether "vicious
and unreasonable; that when it is at the height, it masters us to that
degree that a man's reason can have no access," and instance our own
experience in the act of love,
"Quum jam praesagit gaudia corpus,
Atque in eo est Venus,
ut muliebria conserat arva."
[None of the translators of the old editions used for this etext
have been willing to translate this passage from Lucretius, iv.
1099; they take a cop out by bashfully saying: "The sense is in the
preceding passage of the text." D.W.]
wherein they conceive that the pleasure so transports us, that our reason
cannot perform its office, whilst we are in such ecstasy and rapture. I
know very well it may be otherwise, and that a man may sometimes, if he
will, gain this point over himself to sway his soul, even in the critical
moment, to think of something else; but then he must ply it to that bent.
I know that a man may triumph over the utmost effort of this pleasure: I
have experienced it in myself, and have not found Venus so imperious a
goddess, as many, and much more virtuous men than I, declare. I do not
consider it a miracle, as the Queen of Navarre does in one of the Tales
of her Heptameron--["Vu gentil liure pour son estoffe."]--(which is a
very pretty book of its kind), nor for a thing of extreme difficulty, to
pass whole nights, where a man has all the convenience and liberty he can
desire, with a long-coveted mistress, and yet be true to the pledge first
given to satisfy himself with kisses and suchlike endearments, without
pressing any further. I conceive that the example of the pleasure of the
chase would be more proper; wherein though the pleasure be less, there is
the higher excitement of unexpected joy, giving no time for the reason,
taken by surprise, to prepare itself for the encounter, when after a long
quest the beast starts up on a sudden in a place where, peradventure, we
least expected it; the shock and the ardour of the shouts and cries of
the hunters so strike us, that it would be hard for those who love this
lesser chase, to turn their thoughts upon the instant another way; and
the poets make Diana triumph over the torch and shafts of Cupid:
"Quis non malarum, quas amor curas habet,
Haec inter obliviscitur?"
["Who, amongst such delights would not remove out of his thoughts
the anxious cares of love."--Horace, Epod., ii. 37.]
To return to what I was saying before, I am tenderly compassionate of
others' afflictions, and should readily cry for company, if, upon any
occasion whatever, I could cry at all. Nothing tempts my tears but
tears, and not only those that are real and true, but whatever they are,
feigned or painted. I do not much lament the dead, and should envy them
rather; but I very much lament the dying. The savages do not so much
offend me, in roasting and eating the bodies of the dead, as they do who
torment and persecute the living. Nay, I cannot look so much as upon the
ordinary executions of justice, how reasonable soever, with a steady eye.
Some one having to give testimony of Julius Caesar's clemency; "he was,"
says he, "mild in his revenges. Having compelled the pirates to yield by
whom he had before been taken prisoner and put to ransom; forasmuch as he
had threatened them with the cross, he indeed condemned them to it, but
it was after they had been first strangled. He punished his secretary
Philemon, who had attempted to poison him, with no greater severity than
mere death." Without naming that Latin author,--[Suetonius, Life of
Casay, c. 74.]--who thus dares to allege as a testimony of mercy the
killing only of those by whom we have been offended; it is easy to guess
that he was struck with the horrid and inhuman examples of cruelty
practised by the Roman tyrants.
For my part, even in justice itself, all that exceeds a simple death
appears to me pure cruelty; especially in us who ought, having regard to
their souls, to dismiss them in a good and calm condition; which cannot
be, when we have agitated them by insufferable torments. Not long since,
a soldier who was a prisoner, perceiving from a tower where he was shut
up, that the people began to assemble to the place of execution, and that
the carpenters were busy erecting a scaffold, he presently concluded
that the preparation was for him, and therefore entered into a resolution
to kill himself, but could find no instrument to assist him in his design
except an old rusty cart-nail that fortune presented to him; with this he
first gave himself two great wounds about his throat, but finding these
would not do, he presently afterwards gave himself a third in the belly,
where he left the nail sticking up to the head. The first of his keepers
who came in found him in this condition: yet alive, but sunk down and
exhausted by his wounds. To make use of time, therefore, before he
should die, they made haste to read his sentence; which having done, and
he hearing that he was only condemned to be beheaded, he seemed to take
new courage, accepted wine which he had before refused, and thanked his
judges for the unhoped-for mildness of their sentence; saying, that he
had taken a resolution to despatch himself for fear of a more severe and
insupportable death, having entertained an opinion, by the preparations
he had seen in the place, that they were resolved to torment him with
some horrible execution, and seemed to be delivered from death in having
it changed from what he apprehended.
I should advise that those examples of severity by which 'tis designed to
retain the people in their duty, might be exercised upon the dead bodies
of criminals; for to see them deprived of sepulture, to see them boiled
and divided into quarters, would almost work as much upon the vulgar, as
the pain they make the living endure; though that in effect be little or
nothing, as God himself says, "Who kill the body, and after that have no
more that they can do;"--[Luke, xii. 4.]--and the poets singularly
dwell upon the horrors of this picture, as something worse than death:
"Heu! reliquias semiustas regis, denudatis ossibus,
Per terram sanie delibutas foede divexarier."
["Alas! that the half-burnt remains of the king, exposing his bones,
should be foully dragged along the ground besmeared with gore."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 44.]
I happened to come by one day accidentally at Rome, just as they were
upon executing Catena, a notorious robber: he was strangled without any
emotion of the spectators, but when they came to cut him in quarters, the
hangman gave not a blow that the people did not follow with a doleful cry
and exclamation, as if every one had lent his sense of feeling to the
miserable carcase. Those inhuman excesses ought to be exercised upon the
bark, and not upon the quick. Artaxerxes, in almost a like case,
moderated the severity of the ancient laws of Persia, ordaining that the
nobility who had committed a fault, instead of being whipped, as they
were used to be, should be stripped only and their clothes whipped for
them; and that whereas they were wont to tear off their hair, they should
only take off their high-crowned tiara.'--[Plutarch, Notable Sayings of
the Ancient King.]--The so devout Egyptians thought they sufficiently
satisfied the divine justice by sacrificing hogs in effigy and
representation; a bold invention to pay God so essential a substance in
picture only and in show.
I live in a time wherein we abound in incredible examples of this vice,
through the licence of our civil wars; and we see nothing in ancient
histories more extreme than what we have proof of every day, but I
cannot, any the more, get used to it. I could hardly persuade myself,
before I saw it with my eyes, that there could be found souls so cruel
and fell, who, for the sole pleasure of murder, would commit it; would
hack and lop off the limbs of others; sharpen their wits to invent
unusual torments and new kinds of death, without hatred, without profit,
and for no other end but only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of the
gestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries of a man dying in
anguish. For this is the utmost point to which cruelty can arrive:
"Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens,
tantum spectaturus, occidat."
["That a man should kill a man, not being angry, not in fear, only
for the sake of the spectacle."--Seneca, Ep., 90.]
For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast
pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received
no offence at all; and that which frequently happens, that the stag we
hunt, finding himself weak and out of breath, and seeing no other remedy,
surrenders himself to us who pursue him, imploring mercy by his tears:
"Questuque cruentus,
Atque imploranti similis,"
["Who, bleeding, by his tears seems to crave mercy."
--AEnead, vii. 501.]
has ever been to me a very unpleasing sight; and I hardly ever take a
beast alive that I do not presently turn out again. Pythagoras bought
them of fishermen and fowlers to do the same:
"Primoque a caede ferarum,
Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum."
["I think 'twas slaughter of wild beasts that first stained the
steel of man with blood."--Ovid, Met., xv. 106.]
Those natures that are sanguinary towards beasts discover a natural
proneness to cruelty. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to
spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the
slaughter of men, of gladiators. Nature has herself, I fear, imprinted
in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity; nobody takes pleasure in seeing
beasts play with and caress one another, but every one is delighted with
seeing them dismember, and tear one another to pieces. And that I may
not be laughed at for the sympathy I have with them, theology itself
enjoins us some favour in their behalf; and considering that one and the
same master has lodged us together in this palace for his service, and
that they, as well as we, are of his family, it has reason to enjoin us
some affection and regard to them. Pythagoras borrowed the
metempsychosis from the Egyptians; but it has since been received by
several nations, and particularly by our Druids:
"Morte carent animae; semperque, priore relicts
Sede, novis domibus vivunt, habitantque receptae."
["Souls never die, but, having left their former seat, live
and are received into new homes."--Ovid, Met., xv. 158.]
The religion of our ancient Gauls maintained that souls, being eternal,
never ceased to remove and shift their places from one body to another;
mixing moreover with this fancy some consideration of divine justice; for
according to the deportments of the soul, whilst it had been in
Alexander, they said that God assigned it another body to inhabit, more
or less painful, and proper for its condition:
"Muta ferarum
Cogit vincla pati; truculentos ingerit ursis,
Praedonesque lupis; fallaces vulpibus addit:
Atque ubi per varios annos, per mille figuras
Egit, Lethaeo purgatos flumine, tandem
Rursus ad humanae revocat primordia formae:"
["He makes them wear the silent chains of brutes, the bloodthirsty
souls he encloses in bears, the thieves in wolves, the deceivers in
foxes; where, after successive years and a thousand forms, man had
spent his life, and after purgation in Lethe's flood, at last he
restores them to the primordial human shapes."
--Claudian, In Ruf., ii. 482.]
If it had been valiant, he lodged it in the body of a lion; if
voluptuous, in that of a hog; if timorous, in that of a hart or hare; if
malicious, in that of a fox, and so of the rest, till having purified it
by this chastisement, it again entered into the body of some other man:
"Ipse ego nam memini, Trojani, tempore belli
Panthoides Euphorbus eram."
["For I myself remember that, in the days of the Trojan war, I was
Euphorbus, son of Pantheus."--Ovid, Met., xv. 160; and see Diogenes
Laertius, Life of Pythagoras.]
As to the relationship betwixt us and beasts, I do not much admit of it;
nor of that which several nations, and those among the most ancient and
most noble, have practised, who have not only received brutes into their
society and companionship, but have given them a rank infinitely above
themselves, esteeming them one while familiars and favourites of the
gods, and having them in more than human reverence and respect; others
acknowledged no other god or divinity than they:
"Bellux a barbaris propter beneficium consecratae."
["Beasts, out of opinion of some benefit received by them, were
consecrated by barbarians"--Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 36.]
"Crocodilon adorat
Pars haec; illa pavet saturam serpentibus ibin:
Effigies sacri hic nitet aurea cercopitheci;
Hic piscem flumints, illic
Oppida tota canem venerantur."
["This place adores the crocodile; another dreads the ibis, feeder
on serpents; here shines the golden image of the sacred ape; here
men venerate the fish of the river; there whole towns worship a
dog."--Juvenal, xv. 2.]
And the very interpretation that Plutarch, gives to this error, which is
very well conceived, is advantageous to them: for he says that it was not
the cat or the ox, for example, that the Egyptians adored: but that they,
in those beasts, adored some image of the divine faculties; in this,
patience and utility: in that, vivacity, or, as with our neighbours the
Burgundians and all the Germans, impatience to see themselves shut up; by
which they represented liberty, which they loved and adored above all
other godlike attributes, and so of the rest. But when, amongst the more
moderate opinions, I meet with arguments that endeavour to demonstrate
the near resemblance betwixt us and animals, how large a share they have
in our greatest privileges, and with how much probability they compare us
together, truly I abate a great deal of our presumption, and willingly
resign that imaginary sovereignty that is attributed to us over other
creatures.
But supposing all this were not true, there is nevertheless a certain
respect, a general duty of humanity, not only to beasts that have life
and sense, but even to trees, and plants. We owe justice to men, and
graciousness and benignity to other creatures that are capable of it;
there is a certain commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and us.
Nor shall I be afraid to confess the tenderness of my nature so childish,
that I cannot well refuse to play with my dog, when he the most
unseasonably importunes me to do so. The Turks have alms and hospitals
for beasts. The Romans had public care to the nourishment of geese, by
whose vigilance their Capitol had been preserved. The Athenians made a
decree that the mules and moyls which had served at the building of the
temple called Hecatompedon should be free and suffered to pasture at
their own choice, without hindrance. The Agrigentines had a common use
solemnly to inter the beasts they had a kindness for, as horses of some
rare quality, dogs, and useful birds, and even those that had only been
kept to divert their children; and the magnificence that was ordinary
with them in all other things, also particularly appeared in the
sumptuosity and numbers of monuments erected to this end, and which
remained in their beauty several ages after. The Egyptians buried
wolves, bears, crocodiles, dogs, and cats in sacred places, embalmed
their bodies, and put on mourning at their death. Cimon gave an
honourable sepulture to the mares with which he had three times gained
the prize of the course at the Olympic Games. The ancient Xantippus
caused his dog to be interred on an eminence near the sea, which has ever
since retained the name, and Plutarch says, that he had a scruple about
selling for a small profit to the slaughterer an ox that had been long in
his service.
Chapter XII. Apology For Raimond Sebond.
Learning is, indeed, a very great and a very material accomplishment;
and those who despise it sufficiently discover their own want of
understanding; but learning yet I do not prize it at the excessive rate
that some others do, as Herillus, the philosopher, for one, who therein
places the sovereign good, and maintained "That it was only in her to
render us wise and contented," which I do not believe; no more than I
do what others have said, that learning is the mother of all virtue, and
that all vice proceeds from ignorance, which, if it be true, required
a very long interpretation. My house has long-been open to men of
knowledge, and is very well known to them; for my father, who governed
it fifty years and upwards, inflamed with the new ardour with which
Francis the First embraced letters, and brought them into esteem, with
great diligence and expense hunted after the acquaintance of learned
men, receiving them into his house as persons sacred, and that had some
particular inspiration of divine wisdom; collecting their sayings and
sentences as so many oracles, and with so much the greater reverence
and religion as he was the less able to judge of them; for he had no
knowledge of letters any more than his predecessors. For my part I love
them well, but I do not adore them. Amongst others, Peter Bunel, a man
of great reputation for knowledge in his time, having, with some others
of his sort, staid some days at Montaigne in my father's company,
he presented him at his departure with a book, entitled _Theologia
naturalis; sive Liber Creaturarum, magistri Raimondi de Sebonde._ And as
the Italian and Spanish tongues were familiar to my father, and as this
book was written in a sort of jargon of Spanish with Latin terminations,
he hoped that, with a little help, he might be able to understand it,
and therefore recommended it to him for a very useful book, and proper
tor the time wherein he gave it to him; which was when the novel
doctrines of Luther began to be in vogue, and in many places to stagger
our ancient belief: wherein he was very well advised, wisely, in his own
reason, foreseeing that the beginning of this distemper would easily
run into an execrable atheism, for the vulgar, not having the faculty of
judging of things, suffering themselves to be carried away by chance and
appearance, after having once been inspired with the boldness to
despise and control those opinions which they had before had in extreme
reverence, such as those wherein their salvation is concerned, and
that some of the articles of their religion are brought into doubt and
dispute, they afterwards throw all other parts of their belief into the
same uncertainty, they having with them no other authority or foundation
than the others they had already discomposed; and shake off all the
impressions they had received from the authority of the laws, or the
reverence of the ancient customs, as a tyrannical yoke:
Nam cupide eonculcatur nimis ante metutum;
"For with most eagerness they spurn the law,
By which they were before most kept in awe;"
resolving to admit nothing for the future to which they had not first
interposed their own decrees, and given their particular consent.
It happened that my father, a little before his death, having
accidentally found this book under a heap of other neglected papers,
commanded me to translate it for him into French. It is good too
translate such authors as this, where there is little but the matter
itself to express; but such wherein grace of language and elegance of
style are aimed at, are dangerous to attempt, especially when a man is
to turn them into a weaker idiom. It was a strange and a new undertaking
for me; but having by chance at that time nothing else to do, and not
being able to resist the command of the best father that ever was, I did
it as well as I could; and he was so well pleased with it as to order it
to be printed, which after his death was done.
I found the ideas of this author exceeding fine the contexture of his
work well followed, and his design full of piety; and because many
people take a delight to read it, and particularly the ladies, to whom
we owe the most service, I have often thought to assist them to clear
the book of two principal objections made to it. His design is bold and
daring, for he undertakes, by human and natural reasons, to establish
and make good, against the atheists, all the articles of the Christian
religion: wherein, to speak the truth, he is so firm and so successful
that I do not think it possible to do better upon that subject; nay, I
believe he has been equalled by none. This work seeming to me to be too
beautiful and too rich for an author whose name is so little known, and
of whom all that we know is that he was a Spaniard, practising physic at
Toulouse about two hundred years ago; I enquired of Adrian Turnebus, who
knew all things, what he thought of that book; who made answer, "That he
thought it was some abstract drawn from St. Thomas d'Aquin; for that, in
truth, his mind, so full of infinite erudition and admirable subtlety,
was alone capable of such thoughts." Be this as it may, whoever was the
author and inventor (and 'tis not reasonable, without greater certainty,
to deprive Sebond of that title), he was a man of great judgment and
most admirable parts.
The first thing they reprehend in his work is "That Christians are to
blame to repose their belief upon human reason, which is only conceived
by faith and the particular inspiration of divine grace." In which
objection there appears to be something of zeal to piety, and therefore
we are to endeavour to satisfy those who put it forth with the greater
mildness and respect. This were a task more proper for a man well
read in divinity than for me, who know nothing of it; nevertheless, I
conceive that in a thing so divine, so high, and so far transcending
all human intelligence, as is that truth, with which it has pleased
the bounty of God to enlighten us, it is very necessary that he should
moreover lend us his assistance, as a very extraordinary favour and
privilege, to conceive and imprint it in our understanding. And I do
not believe that means purely human are in any sort capable of doing it:
for, if they were, so many rare and excellent souls, and so abundantly
furnished with natural force, in former ages, could not have failed,
by their reason, to arrive at this knowledge. 'Tis faith alone that
livelily mind certainly comprehends the deep mysteries of our religion;
but, withal, I do not say that it is not a worthy and very laudable
attempt to accommodate those natural and human utensils with which God
has endowed us to the service of our faith: it is not to be doubted but
that it is the most noble use we can put them to; and that there is not
a design in a Christian man more noble than to make it the aim and end
of all his studies to extend and amplify the truth of his belief. We do
not satisfy ourselves with serving God with our souls and understandings
only, we moreover owe and render him a corporal reverence, and apply our
limbs and motions, and external things to do him honour; we must here
do the same, and accompany our faith with all the reason we have, but
always with this reservation, not to fancy that it is upon us that
it depends, nor that our arguments and endeavours can arrive at so
supernatural and divine a knowledge. If it enters not into us by an
extraordinary infusion; if it enters not only by reason, but, moreover,
by human ways, it is not in us in its true dignity and splendour: and
yet, I am afraid, we only have it by this way.
If we hold upon God by the mediation of a lively faith; if we hold upon
God by him, and not by us; if we had a divine basis and foundation,
human occasions would not have the power to shake us as they do; our
fortress would not surrender to so weak a battery; the love of novelty,
the constraint of princes, the success of one party, and the rash and
fortuitous change of our opinions, would not have the power to stagger
and alter our belief: we should not then leave it to the mercy of every
new argument, nor abandon it to all the rhetoric in the world; we should
withstand the fury of these waves with an immovable and unyielding
constancy:
As a great rock repels the rolling tides,
That foam and bark about her marble sides,
From its strong bulk
If we were but touched with this ray of divinity, it would appear
throughout; not only our words, but our works also, would carry
its brightness and lustre; whatever proceeded from us would be seen
illuminated with this noble light. We ought to be ashamed that, in all
the human sects, there never was any of the faction, that did not, in
some measure, conform his life and behaviour to it, whereas so divine
and heavenly an institution does only distinguish Christians by the
name! Will you see the proof of this? Compare our manners to those of a
Mahometan or Pagan, you will still find that we fall very
short; there, where, out of regard to the reputation and advantage of
our religion, we ought to shine in excellency at a vast distance beyond
all others: and that it should be said of us, "Are they so just, so
charitable, so good: Then they are Christians." All other signs are
common to all religions; hope, trust, events, ceremonies, penance,
martyrs. The peculiar mark of our truth ought to be our virtue, as it
is also the most heavenly and difficult, and the most worthy product
of truth. For this our good St. Louis was in the right, who, when the
Tartar king, who was become Christian, designed to come to Lyons to kiss
the Pope's feet, and there to be an eye-witness of the sanctity he hoped
to find in our manner, immediately diverted him from his purpose; for
fear lest our disorderly way of living should, on the contrary, put
him out of conceit with so holy a belief! And yet it happened quite
otherwise since to that other, who, going to Rome, to the same end, and
there seeing the dissoluteness of the prelates and people of that time,
settled himself so much the more firmly in our religion, considering
how great the force and divinity of it must necessarily be that could
maintain its dignity and splendour among so much corruption, and in so
vicious hands. If we had but one single grain of faith, we should remove
mountains from their places, saith the sacred Word; our actions, that
would then be directed and accompanied by the divinity, would not be
merely human, they would have in them something of miraculous, as well
as our belief: _Brevis est institutio vitæ honestæ beauæque, si
credos._ "Believe, and the way to happiness and virtue is a short one."
Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not;
others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not
being able to penetrate into what it is to believe. We think it strange
if, in the civil war which, at this time, disorders our state, we see
events float and vary aller a common and ordinary manner; which is
because we bring nothing to it but our own. Justice, which is in one
party, is only there for ornament and palliation; it, is, indeed,
pretended, but 'tis not there received, settled and espoused: it is
there, as in the mouth of an advocate, not as in the heart and affection
of the party. God owes his extraordinary assistance to faith and
religion; not to our passions. Men there are the conductors, and therein
serve themselves with religion, whereas it ought to be quite contrary.
Observe, if it be not by our own hands that we guide and train it, and
draw it like wax into so many contrary figures, from a rule in itself so
direct and firm. When and where was this more manifest than in France in
our days? They who have taken it on the left hand, they who have taken
it on the right; they who call it black, they who call it white, alike
employ it to their violent and ambitious designs, conduct it with
a progress, so conform in riot and injustice that they render the
diversity they pretended in their opinions, in a thing whereon the
conduct and rule of our life depends, doubtful and hard to believe. Did
one ever see, come from the same school and discipline, manners more
united, and more the same? Do but observe with what horrid impudence
we toss divine arguments to and fro, and how irreligiously we have both
rejected and retaken them, accord--as fortune has shifted our places in
these intestine storms.
This so solemn proposition, "Whether it be lawful for a subject to rebel
and take up arms against his prince for the defence of his religion," do
you remember in whose mouths, the last year, the affirmative of it
was the prop of one party, and the negative the pillar of another? And
hearken now from what quarter comes the voice and instruction of the
one and the other, and if arms make less noise and rattle for this cause
than for that. We condemn those to the fire who say that truth must be
made to bear the yoke of our necessity; and how much worse does France
than say it? Let us confess the truth; whoever should draw out from the
army, even that raised by the king, those who take up arms out of pure
zeal to religion, and also those who only do it to protect the laws of
their country, or for the service of their prince, could hardly, out
of both these put together, make one complete company of gens-d'armes.
Whence does this proceed, that there are so few to be found who have
maintained the same will and the same progress in our civil commotions,
and that we see them one while move but a foot-pace, and another run
full speed? and the same men one while damage our affairs by their
violent heat and fierceness, and another by their coldness, gentleness,
and slowness; but that they are pushed on by particular and casual
considerations, according to the variety wherein they move?
I evidently perceive that we do not willingly afford devotion any other
offices but those that least suit with our own passions.
There hostility so admirable as the Christian. Our zeal performs
wonders, when it seconds our inclinations to hatred, cruelty, ambition,
avarice, detraction, and rebellion: but when it moves, against the hair,
towards bounty, benignity, and temperance, unless, by miracle, some
rare and virtuous disposition prompts us to it, we stir neither hand nor
toot. Our religion is intended to extirpate vices, whereas it screens,
nourishes, and incites them. We must not mock God. If we believed in
him, I do not say by faith, but with a simple belief, that is to say
(and I speak it to our great shame) if we believed in him and recognised
him as we do any other history, or as we would do one of our companions,
we should love him above all other things for the infinite bounty and
beauty that shines in him;--at least, he would go equal in our affection
with riches, pleasure, glory, and our friends. The best of us is not so
much afraid to outrage him as he is afraid to injure his neighbour, his
kinsman, or his master. Is there any understanding so weak that, having
on one side the object of one of our vicious pleasures, and on the other
(in equal knowledge and persuasion) the state of an immortal glory,
would change the first for the other? and yet we often renounce this out
of mere contempt: for what lust tempts us to blaspheme, if not, perhaps,
the very desire to offend. The philosopher Antisthenes, as he was being
initiated in the mysteries of Orpheus, the priest telling him, "That
those who professed themselves of that religion were certain to receive
perfect and eternal felicity after death,"--"If thou believest that,"
answered he, "why dost thou not die thyself?" Diogenes, more rudely,
according to his manner, and more remote from our purpose, to the priest
that in like manner preached to him, "To become of his religion, that he
might obtain the happiness of the other world;--"What!" said he, "thou
wouldest have me to believe that Agesilaus and Epaminondas, who were so
great men, shall be miserable, and that thou, who art but a calf, and
canst do nothing to purpose, shalt be happy, because thou art a priest?"
Did we receive these great promises of eternal beatitude with the same
reverence and respect that we do a philosophical discourse, we should
not have death in so great horror:
Non jam se moriens dissolvi conqurreretur;
Sed magis ire foras, stemque relinquere ut angais,
Gauderet, prealonga senex aut cornua cervus.
"We should not on a death bed grieve to be
Dissolved, but rather launch out cheerfully
From our old hut, and with the snake, be glad
To cast off the corrupted slough we had;
Or with th' old stag rejoice to be now clear
From the large horns, too ponderous grown to bear."
"I desire to be dissolved," we should say, "and to be with Jesus Christ"
The force of Plato's arguments concerning the immortality of the soul
set some of his disciples to seek a premature grave, that they might the
sooner enjoy the things he had made them hope for.
All this is a most evident sign that we only receive our religion
after our own fashion, by our own hands, and no otherwise than as other
religions are received. Either we are happened in the country where it
is in practice, or we reverence the antiquity of it, or the authority
of the men who have maintained it, or fear the menaces it fulminates
against misbelievers, or are allured by its promises. These
considerations ought, 'tis true, to be applied to our belief but as
subsidiaries only, for they are human obligations. Another religion,
other witnesses, the like promises and threats, might, by the same way,
imprint a quite contrary belief. We are Christians by the same title
that we are Perigordians or Germans. And what Plato says, "That there
are few men so obstinate in their atheism whom a pressing danger will
not reduce to an acknowledgment of the divine power," does not concern
a true Christian: 'tis for mortal and human religions to be received by
human recommendation. What kind of faith can that be that cowardice and
want of courage establish in us? A pleasant faith, that does not believe
what it believes but for want of courage to disbelieve it! Can a vicious
passion, such as inconstancy and astonishment, cause any regular product
in our souls? "They are confident in their judgment," says he, "that
what is said of hell and future torments is all feigned: but an occasion
of making the expedient presenting itself, when old age or diseases
bring them to the brink of the grave, the terror of death, by the horror
of that future condition, inspires them with a new belief!" And by
reason that such impressions render them timorous, he forbids in his
_Laws_ all such threatening doctrines, and all persuasion that anything
of ill can befall a man from the gods, excepting for his great good when
they happen to him, and for a medicinal effect. They say of Bion that,
infected with the atheism of Theodoras, he had long had religious men in
great scorn and contempt, but that death surprising him, he gave
himself up to the most extreme superstition; as if the gods withdrew and
returned according to the necessities of Bion. Plato and these examples
would conclude that we are brought to a belief of God either by reason
or by force. Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous,
difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how
arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to
be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly
to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have,
nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience. Yet
will they not fail to lift up their hands towards heaven if you give
them a good thrust with a sword in the breast, and when fear or sickness
has abated and dulled the licentious fury of this giddy humour they will
easily re-unite, and very discreetly suffer themselves to be reconciled
to the public faith and examples. A doctrine seriously digested is one
thing, and those superficial impressions another; which springing from
the disorder of an unhinged understanding, float at random and great
uncertainty in the fancy. Miserable and senseless men, who strive to be
worse than they can!
The error of paganism and the ignorance of our sacred truth, let this
great soul of Plato, but great only in human greatness, fall also into
this other mistake, "That children and old men were most susceptible of
religion," as if it sprung and derived its credit from our weakness.
The knot that ought to bind the judgment and the will, that ought to
restrain the soul and join it to our creator, should be a knot that
derives its foldings and strength not from our considerations, from our
reasons and passions, but from a divine and supernatural constraint,
having but one form, one face, and one lustre, which is the authority
of God and his divine grace. Now the heart and soul being governed and
commanded by faith, 'tis but reason that they should muster all our
other faculties, according as they are able to perform to the service
and assistance of their design. Neither is it to be imagined that all
this machine has not some marks imprinted upon it by the hand of the
mighty architect, and that there is not in the things of this world
some image that in some measure resembles the workman who has built and
formed them. He has, in his stupendous works, left the character of his
divinity, and 'tis our own weakness only that hinders us from discerning
it. 'Tis what he himself is pleased to tell us, "That he manifests his
invisible operations to us by those that are visible." Sebond applied
himself to this laudable and noble study, and demonstrates to us that
there is not any part or member of the world that disclaims or derogates
from its maker. It were to do wrong to the divine goodness, did not the
universe consent to our belief. The heavens, the earth, the elements,
our bodies and our souls,--all things concur to this; we have but to
find out the way to use them; they instruct us, if we are capable
of instruction. For this world is a sacred temple, into which man is
introduced, there to contemplate statues, not the works of a mortal
hand, but such as the divine purpose has made the objects of sense; the
sun, the stars, the water, and the earth, to represent those that are
intelligible to us. "The invisible tilings of God," says St. Paul,
"appear by the creation of the world, his eternal wisdom and divinity
being considered by his works."
And God himself envies not men the grace
Of seeing and admiring heaven's face;
But, rolling it about, he still anew
Presents its varied splendour to our view,
And on oar minds himself inculcates, so
That we th' Almighty mover well may know:
Instructing us by seeing him the cause
Of ill, to revcreoce and obey his laws."
Now our prayers and human discourses are but as sterile and undigested
matter. The grace of God is the form; 'tis that which gives fashion and
value to it. As the virtuous actions of Socrates and Cato remain vain
and fruitless, for not having had the love and obedience to the true
creator of all things, so is it with our imaginations and discourses;
they have a kind of body, but it is an inform mass, without fashion and
without light, if faith and grace be not added thereto. Faith coming to
tinct and illustrate Sehond's arguments renders them firm and stolid;
and to that degree that they are capable of serving for directions, and
of being the first guides to an elementary Christian to put him into the
way of this knowledge. They in some measure form him to, and render him
capable of, the grace of God, by which means he afterwards completes and
perfects himself in the true belief. I know a man of authority, bred up
to letters, who has confessed to me to have been brought back from the
errors of unbelief by Sebond's arguments. And should they be stripped of
this ornament, and of the assistance and approbation of the faith,
and be looked upon as mere fancies only, to contend with those who are
precipitated into the dreadful and horrible darkness of irréligion, they
will even there find them as solid and firm as any others of the same
quality that can be opposed against them; so that we shall be ready to
say to our opponents:
Si melius quid habes, arcesse; vel imperium fer:
"If you have arguments more fit.
Produce them, or to these submit."
let them admit the force of our reasons, or let them show us others,
and upon some other subject, better woven and of finer thread. I am,
unawares, half engaged in the second objection, to which I proposed to
make answer in the behalf of Sebond. Some say that his arguments are
weak, and unable to make good what he intends, and undertake with great
ease to confute them. These are to be a little more roughly handled, for
they are more dangerous and malicious than the first Men willingly wrest
the sayings of others to favour their own prejudicate opinions. To an
atheist all writings tend to atheisïm: he corrupts the most innocent
matter with his own venom. These have their judgments so prepossessed
that they cannot relish Sebond's reasons. As to the rest, they think we
give them very fair play in putting them into the liberty of combatting
our religion with weapons merely human, whom, in her majesty, full of
authority and command, they durst not attack. The means that I shall
use, and that I think most proper to subdue this frenzy, is to crush and
spurn under foot pride and human arrogance; to make them sensible of
the inanity, vanity, and vileness of man; to wrest the wretched arms
of their reason out of their hands; to make them bow down and bite the
ground under the authority and reverence of the Divine Majesty. 'Tis to
that alone that knowledge and wisdom appertain; that alone that can make
a true estimate of itself, and from which we purloin whatever we value
ourselves upon: [--Greek--] "God permits not any being but himself to be
truly wise." Let us subdue this presumption, the first foundation of the
tyranny of the evil spirit _Deus superbis re-sistit, humilibus autem
dal gratiam._ "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
"Understanding is in the gods," says Plato, "and not at all, or very
little, in men." Now it is in the mean time a great consolation to a
Christian man to see our frail and mortal parts so fitly suited to our
holy and divine faith that, when we employ them to the subjects of their
own mortal and frail nature they are not even there more unitedly or
more firmly adjusted. Let us see, then, if man has in his power other
more forcible and convincing reasons than those of Sebond; that is to
say, if it be in him to arrive at any certainty by argument and reason.
For St. Augustin, disputing against these people, has good cause to
reproach them with injustice, "In that they maintain the part of our
belief to be false that our reason cannot establish." And to show that
a great many things may be, and have been, of which our nature could
not sound the reason and causes, he proposes to them certain known and
undoubted experiments, wherein men confess they see nothing; and this he
does, as all other things, with a curious and ingenious inquisition.
We must do more than this, and make them know that, to convince the
weakness of their reason, there is no necessity of culling out uncommon
examples: and that it is so defective and so blind that there is no
faculty clear enough for it; that to it the easy and the hard are all
one; that all subjects equally, and nature in general, disclaim its
authority and reject its mediation.
What does truth mean when she preaches to us to fly worldly philosophy,
when she so often inculcates to us, "That our wisdom is but folly in the
sight of God: that the vainest of all vanities is man: that the man who
presumes upon his wisdom does not yet know what wisdom is; and that man,
who is nothing, if he thinks himself to be anything, does seduce and
deceive himself." These sentences of the Holy Spirit do so clearly and
vividly express that which I would maintain that I should need no other
proof against men who would with all humility and obedience submit to
his authority: but these will be whipped at their own expense, and will
not suffer a man to oppose their reason but by itself.
Let us then, for once, consider a man alone, without foreign assistance,
armed only with his own proper arms, and unfurnished of the divine grace
and wisdom, which is all his honour, strength, and the foundation of his
being. Let us see how he stands in this fine equipage. Let him make me
understand, by the force of his reason, upon what foundations he has
built those great advantages he thinks he has over other creatures. Who
has made him believe that this admirable motion of the celestial arch,
the eternal light of those luminaries that roll so high over his head,
the wondrous and fearful motions of that infinite ocean, should be
established and continue so many ages for his service and convenience?
Can any thing be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and
wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject
to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of
the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less
to command the whole? And the privilege which he attributes to himself
of being the only creature in this vast fabric who has the understanding
to discover the beauty and the paris of it; the only one who can
return thanks to the architect, and keep account of the revenues and
disbursements of the world; who, I wonder, sealed him this patent? Let
us see his commission for this great employment Was it granted in favour
of the wise only? Few people will be concerned in it. Are fools and
wicked persons worthy so extraordinary a favour, and, being the worst
part of the world, to be preferred before the rest? Shall we believe
this man?--"For whose sake shall we, therefore, conclude that the world
was made? For theirs who have the use of reason: these are gods and men,
than whom certainly nothing can be better:" we can never sufficiently
decry the impudence of this conjunction. But, wretched creature,
what has he in himself worthy of such an advantage? Considering the
incorruptible existence of the celestial bodies; beauty; magnitude, and
continual revolution by so exact a rule;
Cum suspicimus mæni cælestia mundi
Templa super, stellisque micantibus arthera fiium,
El venit in mcntem lunæ solisque viarurn.
"When we the heavenly arch above behold.
And the vast sky adorned with stars of gold.
And mark the r'eglar course? that the sun
And moon in their alternate progress run."
considering the dominion and influence those bodies have, not only over
our lives and fortunes;
Facta etenim et vitas hominum suspendit ab aatris;
"Men's lives and actions on the stars depend."
but even over our inclinations, our thoughts and wills, which they
govern, incite and agitate at the mercy of their influences, as our
reason teaches us;
"Contemplating the stars he finds that they
Rule by a secret and a silent sway;
And that the enamell'd spheres which roll above
Do ever by alternate causes move.
And, studying these, he can also foresee,
By certain signs, the turns of destiny;"
seeing that not only a man, not only kings, but that monarchies,
empires, and all this lower world follow the influence of the celestial
motions,
"How great a change a little motion brings!
So great this kingdom is that governs kings:"
if our virtue, our vices, our knowledge, and this very discourse we are
upon of the power of the stars, and the comparison we are making betwixt
them and us, proceed, as our reason supposes, from their favour;
"One mad in love may cross the raging main,
To level lofty Ilium with the plain;
Another's fate inclines him more by far
To study laws and statutes for the bar.
Sons kill their father, fathers kill their sons,
And one arm'd brother 'gainst another runs..
This war's not their's, but fate's, that spurs them on
To shed the blood which, shed, they must bemoan;
And I ascribe it to the will of fate
That on this theme I now expatiate:"
if we derive this little portion of reason we have from the bounty of
heaven, how is it possible that reason should ever make us equal to it?
How subject its essence and condition to our knowledge? Whatever we see
in those bodies astonishes us: _Quæ molitio, qua ferramenta, qui vectes,
quæ machina, qui ministri tanti operis fuerunt?_ "What contrivance, what
tools, what materials, what engines, were employed about so stupendous
a work?" Why do we deprive them of soul, of life, and discourse? Have we
discovered in them any immoveable or insensible stupidity, we who
have no commerce with them but by obedience? Shall we say that we have
discovered in no other creature but man the use of a reasonable soul?
What! have we seen any thing like the sun? Does he cease to be, because
we have seen nothing like him? And do his motions cease, because there
are no other like them? If what we have not seen is not, our knowledge
is marvellously contracted: _Quæ sunt tantæ animi angustiæ!_ "How narrow
are our understandings!" Are they not dreams of human vanity, to make
the moon a celestial earth? there to fancy mountains and vales, as
Anaxagoras did? there to fix habitations and human abodes, and plant
colonies for our convenience, as Plato and Plutarch have done? And of
our earth to make a luminous and resplendent star? "Amongst the
other inconveniences of mortality this is one, that darkness of the
understanding which leads men astray, not so much from a necessity of
erring, but from a love of error. The corruptible body stupifies
the soul, and the earthly habitation dulls the faculties of the
imagination."
Presumption is our natural and original disease. The most wretched and
frail of all creatures is man, and withal the proudest. He feels and
sees himself lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and
rivetted to the worst and deadest part of the universe, in the lowest
story of the house, the most remote from the heavenly arch, with animals
of the worst condition of the three; and yet in his imagination will be
placing himself above the circle of the moon, and bringing the heavens
under his feet. 'Tis by the same vanity of imagination that he equals
himself to God, attributes to himself divine qualities, withdraws and
separates himself from the the crowd of other creatures, cuts out the
shares of the animals, his fellows and companions, and distributes to
them portions of faculties and force, as himself thinks fit How does
he know, by the strength of his understanding, the secret and internal
motions of animals?--from what comparison betwixt them and us does he
conclude the stupidity he attributes to them? When I play with my cat
who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We
mutually divert one another with our play. If I have my hour to begin
or to refusç, she also has hers. Plato, in his picture of the golden age
under Saturn, reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had,
his communication with beasts, of whom, inquiring and informing himself,
he knew the true qualities and differences of them all, by which he
acquired a very perfect intelligence and prudence, and led his life
more happily than we could do. Need we a better proof to condemn human
impudence in the concern of beasts? This great author was of opinion
that nature, for the most part in the corporal form she gave them, had
only regard to the use of prognostics that were derived thence in his
time. The defect that hinders communication betwixt them and us, why may
it not be in our part as well as theirs? 'Tis yet to determine where the
fault lies that we understand not one another,--for we understand them
no more than they do us; and by the same reason they may think us to be
beasts as we think them. 'Tis no great wonder if we understand not them,
when we do not understand a Basque or a Troglodyte. And yet some have
boasted that they understood them, as Apollonius Tyanaus, Melampus,
Tiresias, Thales, and others. And seeing, as cusmographers report, that
there are nations that have a dog for their king, they must of necessity
be able to interpret his voice and motions. We must observe the parity
betwixt us, have some tolerable apprehension of their meaning, and so
have beasts of ours,--much about the same. They caress us, threaten us,
and beg of us, and we do the same to them.
As to the rest, we manifestly discover that they have a full and
absolute communication amongst themselves, and that they perfectly
understand one another, not only those of the same, but of divers kinds:
"The tamer herds, and wilder sort of brutes.
Though we of higher race conclude them mutes.
Yet utter dissonant and various notes,
From gentler lungs or more distended throats,
As fear, or grief, or anger, do them move,
Or as they do approach the joys of love."
In one kind of barking of a dog the horse knows there is anger, of
another sort of bark he is not afraid. Even in the very beasts that
have no voice at all, we easily conclude, from the society of offices
we observe amongst them, some other sort of communication: their very
motions discover it:
"As infants who, for want of words, devise
Expressive motions with their hands and eyes."
And why not, as well as our dumb people, dispute, argue, and tell
stories by signs? Of whom I have seen some, by practice, so clever and
active that way that, in fact, they wanted nothing of the perfection
of making themselves understood. Lovers are angry, reconciled, intreat,
thank, appoint, and, in short, speak all things by their eyes:
"Even silence in a lover
Love and passion can discover."
What with the hands? We require, promise, call, dismiss, threaten, pray,
supplicate, deny, refuse, interrogate, admire, number, confess, repent,
fear, express confusion, doubt, instruct, command, incite, encourage,
swear, testify, accuse, condemn, absolve, abuse, despise, defy, provoke,
flatter, applaud, bless, submit, mock, reconcile, recommend, exalt,
entertain, congratulate, complain, grieve, despair, wonder, exclaim, and
what not! And all this with a variety and multiplication, even emulating
speech. With the head we invite, remand, confess, deny, give the lie,
welcome, honour, reverence, disdain, demand, rejoice, lament, reject,
caress, rebuke, submit, huff, encourage, threaten, assure, and inquire.
What with the eyebrows?--what with the shoulders! There is not a motion
that does not speak, and in an intelligible language without discipline,
and a public language that every one understands: whence it should
follow, the variety and use distinguished from others considered, that
these should rather be judged the property of human nature. I omit
what necessity particularly does suddenly suggest to those who are in
need;--the alphabets upon the fingers, grammars in gesture, and the
sciences which are only by them exercised and expressed; and the nations
that Pliny reports have no other language. An ambassador of the city of
Abdera, after a long conference with Agis, King of Sparta, demanded of
him, "Well, sir, what answer must I return to my fellow-citizens?" "That
I have given thee leave," said he, "to say what thou wouldest, and as
much as thou wouldest, without ever speaking a word." is not this a
silent speaking, and very easy to be understood?
As to the rest, what is there in us that we do not see in the operations
of animals? Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better
distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that
of bees? Can we imagine that such, and so regular, a distribution of
employments can be carried on without reasoning and deliberation?
"Hence to the bee some sages have assign'd
Some portion of the god and heavenly wind."
The swallows that we see at the return of the spring, searching all the
corners of our houses for the most commodious places wherein to build
their nest; do they seek without judgment, and amongst a thousand choose
out the most proper for their purpose, without discretion? And in that
elegant and admirable contexture of their buildings, can birds rather
make choice of a square figure than a round, of an obtuse than of a
right angle, without knowing their properties and effects? Do they bring
water, and then clay, without knowing that the hardness of the latter
grows softer by being wetted? Do they mat their palace with moss or down
without foreseeing that their tender young will lie more safe and easy?
Do they secure themselves from the wet and rainy winds, and place their
lodgings against the east, without knowing the different qualities of
the winds, and considering that one is more wholesome than another?
Why does the spider make her web tighter in one place, and slacker in
another; why now make one sort of knot, and then another, if she has not
deliberation, thought, and conclusion? We sufficiently discover in most
of their works how much animals excel us, and how unable our art is to
imitate them. We see, nevertheless, in our rougher performances, that we
employ all our faculties, and apply the utmost power of our souls; why
do we not conclude the same of them?
Why should we attribute to I know not what natural and servile
inclination the works that excel all we can do by nature and art?
wherein, without being aware, we give them a mighty advantage over us
in making nature, with maternal gentleness and love, accompany and learn
them, as it were, by the hand to all the actions and commodities of
their life, whilst she leaves us to chance and fortune, and to seek out
by art the things that are necessary to our conservation, at the same
time denying us the means of being able, by any instruction or effort of
understanding, to arrive at the natural sufficiency of beasts; so that
their brutish stupidity surpasses, in all conveniences, all that our
divine intelligence can do. Really, at this rate, we might with great
reason call her an unjust stepmother: but it is nothing so, our polity
is not so irregular and unformed.
Nature has universally cared for all her creatures, and there is not
one she has not amply furnished with all means necessary for the
conservation of its being. For the common complaints I hear men make (as
the license of their opinions one while lifts them up above the clouds,
and then again depresses them to the antipodes), that we are the only
animal abandoned naked upon the bare earth, tied and bound, not having
wherewithal to arm and clothe us but by the spoil of others; whereas
nature has covered all other creatures either with shells, husks,
bark, hair, wool, prickles, leather, down, feathers, scales, or silk,
according to the necessities of their being; has armed them with talons,
teeth, or horns, wherewith to assault and defend, and has herself taught
them that which is most proper for them, to swim, to run, to fly, and
sing, whereas man neither knows how to walk, speak, eat, or do any thing
but weep, without teaching;
"Like to the wretched mariner, when toss'd
By raging seas upon the desert coast,
The tender babe lies naked on the earth,
Of all supports of life stript by his birth;
When nature first presents him to the day,
Freed from the cell wherein before he lay,
He fills the ambient air with doleful cries.
Foretelling thus life's future miseries;
But beasts, both wild and tame, greater and less,
Do of themselves in strength and bulk increase;
They need no rattle, nor the broken chat,
Ay which the nurse first teaches boys to prate
They look not out for different robes to wear,
According to the seasons of the year;
And need no arms nor walls their goods to save,
Since earth and liberal nature ever have,
And will, in all abundance, still produce
All things whereof they can have need or use:"
these complaints are false; there is in the polity of the world a
greater equality and more uniform relation. Our skins are as sufficient
to defend us from the injuries of the weather as theirs are; witness
several nations that yet know not the use of clothes. Our ancient Gauls
were but slenderly clad, any more than the Irish, our neighbours, though
in so cold a climate; but we may better judge of this by ourselves: for
all those parts that we are pleased to expose to the air are found very
able to endure it: the face, the feet, the hands, the arms, the head,
according to the various habit; if there be a tender part about us,
and that would seem to be in danger from cold, it should be the stomach
where the digestion is; and yet our forefathers were there always
open, and our ladies, as tender and delicate as they are, go sometimes
half-bare as low as the navel. Neither is the binding or swathing of
infants any more necessary; and the Lacedæmoman mothers brought theirs
in all liberty of motion of members, without any ligature at all. Our
crying is common with the greatest part of other animals, and there are
but few creatures that are not observed to groan, and bemoan themselves
a long time after they come into the world; forasmuch as it is a
behaviour suitable to the weakness wherein they find themselves. As
to the custom of eating, it is in us, as in them, natural, and without
instruction;
"For every one soon finds his natural force.
Which he, or better may employ, or worse."
Who doubts but an infant, arrived to the strength of feeding himself,
may make shift to find something to eat And the earth produces and
offers him wherewithal to supply his necessity, without other culture
and artifice; and if not at all times, no more does she do it to beasts,
witness the provision we see ants and other creatures hoard up against
the dead seasons of the year. The late discovered nations, so abundantly
furnished with natural meat and drink, without care, or without cookery,
may give us to understand that bread is not our only food, and that,
without tillage, our mother nature has provided us sufficiently of all
we stand in need of: nay, it appears more fully and plentifully than she
does at present, now that we have added our own industry:
"The earth did first spontaneously afford
Choice fruits and wines to furnish out the board;
With herbs and flow'rs unsown in verdant fields.
But scarce by art so good a harvest yields;
Though men and oxen mutually have strove,
With all their utmost force the soil t' improve,"
the debauchery and irregularity of our appetites outstrips all the
inventions we can contrive to satisfy it.
As to arms, we have more natural ones than than most other animals more
various motions of limbs, and naturally and without lesson extract more
service from them. Those that are trained to fight naked are seen
to throw themselves into the like hazards that we do. If some beasts
surpass us in this advantage, we surpass many others. And the industry
of fortifying the body, and covering it by acquired means, we have by
instinct and natural precept? That it is so, the elephant shows
who sharpen, and whets the teeth he makes use of in war (for he has
particular ones for that service, which he spares, and never employs
them at all to any other use); when bulls go to fight, they toss and
throw the dust about them; boars whet their tusks; and the ichneumon,
when he is about to engage with the crocodile, fortifies his body,
and covers and crusts it all over with close-wrought and well-tempered
slime, as with a cuirass. Why shall we not say that it is also natural
for us to arm ourselves with wood and iron?
As to speech, it is certain that if it be not natural it is not
necessary. Nevertheless I believe that a child which had been brought up
in an absolute solitude, remote from all society of men (which would
be an experiment very hard to make), would have some kind of speech to
express his meaning by. And 'tis not to be supposed that nature should
have denied that to us which she has given to several other animals:
for what is this faculty we observe in them, of complaining, rejoicing,
calling to one another for succour, and inviting each other to love,
which they do with the voice, other than speech? And why should they
not speak to one another? They speak to us, and we to them. In how many
several sorts of ways do we speak to our dogs, and they answer us?
We converse with them in another sort of language, and use other
appellations, than we do with birds, hogs, oxen, horses, and alter the
idiom according to the kind.
"Thus from one swarm of ants some sally out.
To spy another's stock or mark its rout."
Lactantius seems to attribute to beasts not only speech, but laughter
also. And the difference of language which is seen amongst us, according
to the difference of countries, is also observed in animals of the
same kind. Aristotle, in proof of this, instances the Various calls of
partridges, according to the situation of places:
"And various birds do from their warbling throats
At various times, utter quite different notes,
And some their hoarse songs with the seasons change."
But it is yet to be known what language this child would speak; and of
that what is said by guess has no great appearance. If a man will allege
to me, in opposition to this opinion, that those who are naturally deaf
speak not, I answer that this is not only because they could not receive
the instruction of speaking by ear, but rather because the sense of
hearing, of which they are deprived, relates to that of speaking, and
that these hold together by a natural and inseparable tie, in such
manner that what we speak we must first speak to ourselves within, and
make it sound in our own ears, before we can utter it to others.
All this I have said to prove the resemblance there is in human things,
and to bring us back and join us to the crowd. We are neither above nor
below the rest All that is under heaven, says the sage, runs one law and
one fortune:
"All things remain
Bound and entangled in one fatal chain."
There is, indeed, some difference,--there are several orders and
degrees; but it is under the aspect of one and the same nature:
"All things by their own rites proceed, and draw
Towards their ends, by nature's certain law."
Man must be compelled and restrained within the bounds of this polity.
Miserable creature! he is not in a condition really to step over the
rail. He is fettered and circumscribed, he is subjected to the same
necessity that the other creatures of his rank and order are, and of
a very mean condition, without any prerogative of true and real
pre-eminence. That which he attributes to himself, by vain fancy and
opinion, has neither body nor taste. And if it be so, that he only, of
all the animals, has this liberty of imagination and irregularity of
thoughts, representing to him that which is, that which is not, and that
he would have, the false and the true, 'tis an advantage dearly bought,
and of which he has very little reason to be proud; for thence springs
the principal and original fountain of all the evils that befal
him,--sin, sickness, irresolution, affliction, despair. I say, then,
to return to my subject, that there is no appearance to induce a man to
believe that beasts should, by a natural and forced inclination, do the
same things that we do by our choice and industry. We ought from like
effects to conclude like faculties, and from greater effects greater
faculties; and consequently confess that the same reasoning, and the
same ways by which we operate, are common with them, or that they have
others that are better. Why should we imagine this natural constraint in
them, who experience no such effect in ourselves? added that it is more
honourable to be guided and obliged to act regularly by a natural and
inevitable condition, and nearer allied to the divinity, than to act
regularly by a temerarious and fortuitous liberty, and more safe to
entrust the reins of our conduct in the hands of nature than our
own. The vanity of our presumption makes us prefer rather to owe our
sufficiency to our own exertions than to her bounty, and to enrich the
other animals with natural goods, and abjure them in their favour,
in order to honour and ennoble ourselves with goods acquired, very
foolishly in my opinion; for I should as much value parts and virtues
naturally and purely my own as those I had begged and obtained from
education. It is not in our power to obtain a nobler reputation than to
be favoured of God and nature.
For instance, take the fox, the people of Thrace make use of when they
wish to pass over the ice of some frozen river, and turn him out before
them to that purpose; when we see him lay his ear upon the bank of
the river, down to the ice, to listen if from a more remote or nearer
distance he can hear the noise of the waters' current, and, according as
he finds by that the ice to be of a less or greater thickness, to retire
or advance,--have we not reason to believe thence that the same rational
thoughts passed through his head that we should have upon the like
occasions; and that it is a ratiocination and consequence, drawn from
natural sense, that that which makes a noise runs, that which runs
is not frozen, what is not frozen is liquid, and that which is liquid
yields to impression! For to attribute this to a mere quickness of the
sense of hearing, without reason and consequence, is a chimæra that
cannot enter into the imagination. We are to suppose the same of
the many sorts of subtleties and inventions with which beasts secure
themselves from, and frustrate, the enterprizes we plot against them.
And if we will make an advantage even of this, that it is in our power
to seize them, to employ them in our service, and to use them at our
pleasure, 'tis still but the same advantage we have over one another. We
have our slaves upon these terms: the Climacidæ, were they not women
in Syria who, squat on all fours, served for a ladder or footstool, by
which the ladies mounted their coaches? And the greatest part of free
persons surrender, for very trivial conveniences, their life and being
into the power of another. The wives and concubines of the Thracians
contended who should be chosen to be slain upon their husband's tomb.
Have tyrants ever failed of finding men enough vowed to their devotion?
some of them moreover adding this necessity, of accompanying them in
death as well as life? Whole armies have bound themselves after this
manner to their captains. The form of the oath in the rude school of
gladiators was in these words: "We swear to suffer ourselves to be
chained, burnt, wounded, and killed with the sword, and to endure all
that true gladiators suffer from their master, religiously engaging both
body and soul in his service."
Uire meum, si vis, flamma caput, et pete ferro
Corpus, et iutorto verbere terga seca.
"Wound me with steel, or burn my head with fire.
Or scourge my shoulders with well-twisted wire."
This was an obligation indeed, and yet there, in one year, ten thousand
entered into it, to their destruction. When the Scythians interred their
king they strangled upon his body the most beloved of his concubines,
his cup-bearer, the master of his horse, his chamberlain, the usher of
his chamber, and his cook. And upon the anniversary thereof they killed
fifty horses, mounted by fifty pages, that they had impaled all up the
spine of the back to the throat, and there left them fixed in triumph
about his tomb. The men that serve us do it cheaper, and for a less
careful and favourable usage than what we treat our hawks, horses and
dogs withal. To what solicitude do we not submit for the conveniences of
these? I do not think that servants of the most abject condition would
willingly do that for their masters that princes think it an honour to
do for their beasts. Diogenes seeing his relations solicitous to redeem,
him from servitude: "They are fools," said he; "'tis he that keeps and
nourishes me that in reality serves me." And they who entertain beasts
ought rather to be said to serve them, than to be served by them. And
withal in this these have something more generous in that one lion
never submitted to another lion, nor one horse to another, for want of
courage. As we go to the chase of beasts, so do tigers and lions to
the chase of men, and do the same execution upon one another; dogs upon
hares, pikes upon tench, swallows upon grass-hoppers, and sparrow-hawks
upon blackbirds and larks:
"The stork with snakes and lizards from the wood
And pathless wilds supports her callow brood,
While Jove's own eagle, bird of noble blood,
Scours the wide country for undaunted food;
Sweeps the swift hare or swifter fawn away,
And feeds her nestlings with the generous prey."
We divide the quarry, as well as the pains and labour of the chase, with
our hawks and hounds. And about Amphipolis, in Thrace, the hawkers and
wild falcons equally divide the prey in the half. As also along the lake
Mæotis, if the fisherman does not honestly leave the wolves an equal
share of what he has caught, they presently go and tear his nets in
pieces. And as we have a way of sporting that is carried on more by
subtlety than force, as springing hares, and angling with line and hook,
there is also the like amongst other animals. Aristotle says that the
cuttle-fish casts a gut out of her throat as long as a line, which she
extends and draws back at pleasure; and as she perceives some little
fish approach her she lets it nibble upon the end of this gut, lying
herself concealed in the sand or mud, and by little and little draws it
in, till the little fish is so near her that at one spring she may catch
it.
As to strength, there is no creature in the world exposed to so many
injuries as man. We need not a whale, elephant, or a crocodile, nor any
such-like animals, of which one alone is sufficient to dispatch a great
number of men, to do our business; lice are sufficient to vacate Sylla's
dictatorship; and the heart and life of a great and triumphant emperor
is the breakfast of a little contemptible worm!
Why should we say that it is only for man, or knowledge built up by
art and meditation, to distinguish the things useful for his being, and
proper for the cure of his diseases, and those which are not; to know
the virtues of rhubarb and polypody. When we see the goats of Candia,
when wounded with an arrow, among a million of plants choose out
dittany for their cure; and the tortoise, when she has eaten a viper,
immediately go out to look for origanum to purge her; the dragon to rub
and clear his eyes with fennel; the storks to give themselves clysters
of sea-water; the elephants to draw not only out of their own bodies,
and those of their companions, but out of the bodies of their masters
too (witness the elephant of King Porus whom Alexander defeated), the
darts and javelins thrown at them in battle, and that so dexterously
that we ourselves could not do it with so little pain to the
patient;--why do we not say here also that this is knowledge and reason?
For to allege, to their disparagement, that 'tis by the sole instruction
and dictate of nature that they know all this, is not to take from them
the dignity of knowledge and reason, but with greater force to attribute
it to them than to us, for the honour of so infallible a mistress.
Chrysippus, though in other things as scornful a judge of the condition
of animals as any other philosopher whatever, considering the motions of
a dog, who coming to a place where three ways met, either to hunt after
his master he has lost, or in pursuit of some game that flies before
him, goes snuffing first in one of the ways, and then in another, and,
after having made himself sure of two, without finding the trace of
what he seeks, dashes into the third without examination, is forced to
confess that this reasoning is in the dog: "I have traced my master to
this place; he must of necessity be gone one of these three ways; he is
not gone this way nor that, he must then infallibly be gone this other;"
and that assuring himself by this conclusion, he makes no use of his
nose in the third way, nor ever lays it to the ground, but suffers
himself to be carried on there bv the force of reason. This sally,
purely logical, and this use of propositions divided and conjoined, and
the right enumeration of parts, is it not every whit as good that the
dog knows all this of himself as well as from Trapezuntius?
Animals are not incapable, however, of being instructed after our
method. We teach blackbirds, ravens, pies, and parrots, to speak: and
the facility wherewith we see they lend us their voices, and render both
them and their breath so supple and pliant, to be formed and confined
within a certain number of letters and syllables, does evince that they
have a reason within, which renders them so docile and willing to learn.
Everybody, I believe, is glutted with the several sorts of tricks that
tumblers teach their dogs; the dances, where they do not miss any one
cadence of the sound they hear; the several various motions and leaps
they make them perform by the command of a word. But I observe this
effect with the greatest admiration, which nevertheless is very common,
in the dogs that lead the blind, both in the country and in cities: I
have taken notice how they stop at certain doors, where they are wont
to receive alms; how they avoid the encounter of coaches and carts, even
there where they have sufficient room to pass; I have seen them, by the
trench of a town, forsake a plain and even path and take a worse, only
to keep their masters further from the ditch;--how could a man have
made this dog understand that it was his office to look to his master's
safely only, and to despise his own conveniency to serve him? And how
had he the knowledge that a way was wide enough for him that was not so
for a blind man? Can all this be apprehended without ratiocination!
I must not omit what Plutarch says he saw of a dog at Rome with the
Emperor Vespasian, the father, at the theatre of Marcellus. This dog
served a player, that played a farce of several parts and personages,
and had therein his part. He had, amongst other things, to counterfeit
himself for some time dead, by reason of a certain drug he was supposed
to eat After he had swallowed a piece of bread, which passed for the
drug, he began after awhile to tremble and stagger, as if he was taken
giddy: at last, stretching himself out stiff, as if dead, he suffered
himself to be drawn and dragged from place to place, as it was his part
to do; and afterward, when he knew it to be time, he began first gently
to stir, as if awaking out of a profound sleep, and lifting up his head
looked about him after such a manner as astonished all the spectators.
The oxen that served in the royal gardens of Susa, to water them, and
turn certain great wheels to draw water for that purpose, to which
buckets were fastened (such as there are many in Languedoc), being
ordered every one to draw a hundred turns a day, they were so accustomed
to this number that it was impossible by any force to make them draw one
turn more; but, their task being performed, they would suddenly stop and
stand still. We are almost men before we can count a hundred, and have
lately discovered nations that have no knowledge of numbers at all.
There is more understanding required in the teaching of' others than in
being taught. Now, setting aside what Democritus held and proved, "That
most of the arts we have were taught us by other animals," as by the
spider to weave and sew; by the swallow to build; by the swan and
nightingale music; and by several animals to make medicines:--Aristotle
is of opinion "That the nightingales teach their young ones to sing, and
spend a great deal of time and care in it;" whence it happens that those
we bring up in cages, and which have not had the time to learn of their
parents, want much of the grace of their singing: we may judge by this
that they improve by discipline and study; and, even amongst the wild,
it is not all and every one alike--every one has learnt to do better
or worse, according to their capacity. And so jealous are they one of
another, whilst learning, that they contention with emulation, and by
so vigorous a contention that sometimes the vanquished fall dead upon the
place, the breath rather failing than the voice. The younger ruminate
pensively and begin to mutter some broken notes; the disciple listens
to the master's lesson, and gives the best account he is able; they
are silent oy turns; one may hear faults corrected and observe some
reprehensions of the teacher. "Ï have formerly seen," says Arrian, "an
elephant having a cymbal hung at each leg, and another fastened to his
trunk, at the sound of which all the others danced round about him,
rising and bending at certain cadences, as they were guided by
the instrument; and 'twas delightful to hear this harmony." In the
spectacles of Rome there were ordinarily seen elephants taught to move
and dance to the sound of the voice, dances wherein were several changes
and cadences very hard to learn. And some have been known so intent upon
their lesson as privately to practice it by themselves, that they might
not be chidden nor beaten by their masters.
But this other story of the pie, of which we have Plutarch himself for a
warrant, is very strange. She lived in a barber's shop at Rome, and did
wonders in imitating with her voice whatever she heard. It happened one
day that certain trumpeters stood a good while sounding before the
shop. After that, and all the next day, the pie was pensive, dumb, and
melancholic; which every body wondered at, and thought the noise of the
trumpets had so stupified and astonished her that her voice was
gone with her hearing. But they found at last that it was a profound
meditation and a retiring into herself, her thoughts exercising and
preparing her voice to imitate the sound of those trumpets, so that the
first voice she uttered was perfectly to imitate their strains, stops,
and changes; having by this new lesson quitted and taken in disdain all
she had learned before.
I will not omit this other example of a dog, also, which the same
Plutarch (I am sadly confounding all order, but I do not propose
arrangement here any more than elsewhere throughout my book) which
Plutarch says he saw on board a ship. This dog being puzzled how to get
the oil that was in the bottom of a jar, which he could not reach with
his tongue by reason of the narrow mouth of the vessel, went and fetched
stones and let them fall into the jar till he made the oil rise so high
that he could reach it. What is this but an effect of a very subtle
capacity! 'Tis said that the ravens of Barbary do the same, when the
water they would drink is too low. This action is somewhat akin to what
Juba, a king of their nation relates of the elephants: "That when, by
the craft of the hunter, one of them is trapped in certain deep pits
prepared for them, and covered over with brush to deceive them, all the
rest, in great diligence, bring a great many stones and logs of wood to
raise the bottom so that he may get out." But this animal, in
several other effects, comes so near to human capacity that, should I
particularly relate all that experience hath delivered to us, I should
easily have what I usually maintain granted: namely, that there is more
difference betwixt such and such a man than betwixt such a beast and
such a man. The keeper of an elephant in a private house of Syria robbed
him every meal of the half of his allowance. One day his master would
himself feed him, and poured the full measure of barley he had ordered
for his allowance into his manger which the elephant, casting an angry
look at the keeper, with his trunk separated the one-half from the
other, and thrust it aside, by that declaring the wrong was done him.
And another, having a keeper that mixed stones with his corn to make
up the measure, came to the pot where he was boiling meat for his own
dinner, and filled it with ashes. These are particular effects: but that
which all the world has seen, and all the world knows, that in all the
armies of the Levant one of the greatest force consisted in elephants,
with whom they did, without comparison, much greater execution than we
now do with our artillery; which takes, pretty nearly, their place in
a day of battle (as may easily be supposed by such as are well read in
ancient history);
"The sires of these huge animals were wont
The Carthaginian Hannibal to mount;
Our leaders also did these beasts bestride,
And mounted thus Pyrrhus his foes defied;
Nay, more, upon their backs they used to bear
Castles with armed cohorts to the war."
They must necessarily have very confidently relied upon the fidelity and
understanding of these beasts when they entrusted them with the vanguard
of a battle, where the least stop they should have made, by reason of
the bulk and heaviness of their bodies, and the least fright that should
have made them face about upon their own people, had been enough to
spoil all: and there are but few examples where it has happened that
they have fallen foul upon their own troops, whereas we ourselves break
into our own battalions and rout one another. They had the charge not of
one simple movement only, but of many several things to be performed in
the battle: as the Spaniards did to their dogs in their new conquest of
the Indies, to whom they gave pay and allowed them a share in the spoil;
and those animals showed as much dexterity and judgment in pursuing the
victory and stopping the pursuit; in charging and retiring, as occasion
required; and in distinguishing their friends from their enemies, as
they did ardour and fierceness.
We more admire and value things that are unusual and strange than those
of ordinary observation. I had not else so long insisted upon these
examples: for I believe whoever shall strictly observe what we
ordinarily see in those animals we have amongst us may there find as
wonderful effects as those we seek in remote countries and ages. 'Tis
one and the same nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has
sufficiently considered the present state of things, might certainly
conclude as to both the future ana the past. I have formerly seen men,
brought hither by sea from very distant countries, whose language not
being understood by us, and moreover their mien, countenance, and habit,
being quite differing from ours; which of us did not repute them savages
and brutes! Who did not attribute it to stupidity and want of common
sense to see them mute, ignorant of the French tongue, ignorant of our
salutations and cringes, our port and behaviour, from which all human
nature must by all means take its pattern and example. All that seems
strange to us, and that we do not understand, we condemn. The same
thing happens also in the judgments we make of beasts. They have several
conditions like to ours; from those we may, by comparison, draw some
conjecture: but by those qualities that are particular to themselves,
what know we what to make of them! The horses, dogs, oxen, sheep, birds,
and most of the animals that live amongst us, know our voices, and
suffer themselves to be governed by them: so did Crassus's lamprey, and
came when he called it; as also do the eels that are found in the Lake
Arethusa; and I have seen several ponds where the fishes come to eat at
a certain call of those who use to feed them.
"They every one have names, and one and all
Straightway appear at their own master's call:"
We may judge of that. We may also say that the elephants have some
participation of religion forasmuch as after several washings and
purifications they are observed to lift up their trunk like arms,
and, fixing their eyes towards the rising of the sun, continue long in
meditation and contemplation, at certain hours of the days, of their
own motion; without instruction or precept But because we do not see any
such signs in other animals, we cannot for that conclude that they are
without religion, nor make any judgment of what is concealed from us. As
we discern something in this action which the philosopher Cleanthes
took notice of, because it something resembles our own. He saw, he says,
"Ants go from their ant-hill, carrying the dead body of an ant towards
another ant-hill, whence several other ants came out to meet them, as if
to speak with them; where, after having been a while together, the last
returned to consult, you may suppose, with their fellow-citizens, and so
made two or three journeys, by reason of the difficulty of capitulation.
In the conclusion, the last comers brought the first a worm out of their
burrow, as it were for the ransom of the defunct, which the first laid
upon their backs and carried home, leaving the dead body to the others."
This was the interpretation that Cleanthes gave of this transaction,
giving us by that to understand that those creatures that have no voice
are not, nevertheless, without intercourse and mutual communication,
whereof 'tis through our own defect that we do not participate; and for
that reason foolishly take upon us to pass our censure. But they yet
produce either effects far beyond our capacity, to which we are so far
from being able to arrive by imitation that we cannot so much as by
imitation conceive it. Many are of opinion that in the great and last
naval engagement that Antony lost to Augustus, his admiral galley was
stayed in the middle of her course by the little fish the Latins call
_remora_, by reason of the property she has of staying all sorts of
vessels to which she fastens herself. And the Emperor Caligula, sailing
with a great navy upon the coast of Romania, his galley only was
suddenly stayed by the same fish, which, he caused to be taken, fastened
as it was to the keel of his ship, very angry that such a little animal
could resist both the sea, the wind, and the force of all his oars, by
being only fastened by the beak to his galley (for it is a shell-fish);
and was moreover, not without great reason, astonished that, being
brought to him in the vessel, it had no longer the strength it had
without. A citizen of Cyzicus formerly acquired the reputation of a good
mathematician for having learnt the quality of the hedge-hog: he has his
burrow open in divers places, and to several winds, and, foreseeing the
wind that is to come, stops the hole on that side, which that citizen
observing, gave the city certain predictions of the wind which was
presently to blow. The caméléon takes her colour from the place upon
which she is laid; but the polypus gives himself what colour he pleases,
according to occasion, either to conceal himself from what he fears, or
from what he has a design to seize: in the caméléon 'tis a passive, but
in the polypus 'tis an active, change. We have some changes of
colour, as in fear, anger, shame, and other passions, that alter our
complexions; but it is by the effect of suffering, as with the caméléon.
It is in the power of the jaundice, indeed, to make us turn yellow,
but 'tis not in the power of our own will. Now these effects that we
discover in other animals, much greater than ours, seem to imply some
more excellent faculty in them unknown to us; as 'tis to be presumed
there are several other qualities and abilities of theirs, of which no
appearances have arrived at us.
Amongst all the predictions of elder times, the most ancient and the
most certain were those taken from the flight of birds; we have nothing
certain like it, nor any thing to be so much admired. That rule and
order of the moving of the wing, whence they derived the consequences of
future things, must of necessity be guided by some excellent means to
so noble an operation: for to attribute this great effect to any natural
disposition, without the intelligence, consent, and meditation of him by
whom it is produced, is an opinion evidently false. That it is so, the
cramp-fish has this quality, not only to benumb all the members that
touch her, but even through the nets transmit a heavy dulness into the
hands of those that move and handle them; nay, it is further said that
if one pour water upon her, he will feel this numbness mount up the
water to the hand, and stupefy the feeling through the water. This is a
miraculous force; but 'tis not useless to the cramp-fish; she knows it,
and makes use on't; for, to catch the prey she desires, she will bury
herself in the mud, that other fishes swimming over her, struck and
benumbed with this coldness of hers, may fall into her power. Cranes,
swallows, and other birds of passage, by shifting their abode according
to the seasons, sufficiently manifest the knowledge they have of their
divining faculty, and put it in use. Huntsmen assure us that to cull out
from amongst a great many puppies that which ought to be preserved as
the best, the best way is to refer the choice to the mother; as thus,
take them and carry them out of the kennel, and the first she brings
back will certainly be the best; or if you make a show as if you would
environ the kennel with fire, that one she first catches up to save. By
which it appears they have a sort of prognostic which we have not; or
that they have some virtue in judging of their whelps other and more
certain than we have.
The manner of coming into the world, of engendering, nourishing, acting,
moving, living and dying of beasts, is so near to ours that whatever we
retrench from their moving causes, and add to our own condition above
theirs, can by no means proceed from any meditation of our own reason.
For the regimen of our health, physicians propose to us the example of
the beasts' manners and way of living; for this saying (out of Plutarch)
has in all times been in the mouth of these people: "Keep warm thy feet
and head, as to the rest, live like a beast."
The chief of all natural actions is generation; we have a certain
disposition of members which is the most proper for us to that end;
nevertheless, we are ordered by Lucretius to conform to the gesture and
posture of the brutes as the most effectual:--
More ferarum,
Quadrupedumque magis ritu, plerumque putantur
Concipere uxores:
Quia sic loca sumere possunt,
Pectoribus positis, sublatis semina lumbis;
and the same authority condemns, as hurtful, those indiscreet and
impudent motions which the women have added of their own invention, to
whom it proposes the more temperate and modest pattern and practice of
the beasts of their own sex:--
Nam mulier prohibet se concipere atque répugnât,
Clunibus ipsa viri Venerem si læta retractet,
Atque exossato ciet omni pectore fluctua.
Ejicit enim sulci recta regione viaque
Vomerem, atque locis avertit seminis ictum.
If it be justice to render to every one their due, the beasts that
serve, love, and defend their benefactors, and that pursue and fall upon
strangers and those who offend them, do in this represent a certain air
of our justice; as also in observing a very equitable equality in the
distribution of what they have to their young. And as to friendship,
they have it without comparison more lively and constant than men have.
King Lysimachus's dog, Hyrcanus, master being dead, lay on his bed,
obstinately refusing either to eat or drink; and, the day that his
body was burnt, he took a run and leaped into the fire, where he was
consumed, As also did the dog of one Pyrrhus, for he would not stir from
off his master's bed from the time he died; and when they carried him
away let himself be carried with him, and at last leaped into the pile
where they burnt his master's body. There are inclinations of affection
which sometimes spring in us, without the consultation of reason; and by
a fortuitous temerity, which others call sympathy; of which beasts
are as capable as we. We see horses take such an acquaintance with
one another that we have much ado to make them eat or travel, when
separated; we observe them to fancy a particular colour in those of
their own kind, and, where they meet it, run to it with great joy and
demonstrations of good will, and have a dislike and hatred for some
other colour. Animals have choice, as well as we, in their amours, and
cull out their mistresses; neither are they exempt from our jealousies
and implacable malice.
Desires are either natural and necessary, as to eat and drink; or
natural and not necessary, as the coupling with females; or neither
natural nor necessary; of which last sort are almost all the desires of
men; they are all superfluous and artificial. For 'tis marvellous how
little will satisfy nature, how little she has left us to desire; our
ragouts and kickshaws are not of her ordering. The Stoics say that a man
may live on an olive a day. The delicacy of our wines is no part of her
instruction, nor the refinements we introduce into the indulgence of our
amorous appetites:--
Neque ilia
Magno prognatum deposcit consule cunnum.
"Nature, in her pursuit of love, disclaims
The pride of titles, and the pomp of names."
These irregular desires, that the ignorance of good and a false opinion
have infused into us, are so many that they almost exclude all the
natural; just as if there were so great a number of strangers in the
city as to thrust out the natural inhabitants, or, usurping upon their
ancient rights and privileges, should extinguish their authority and
introduce new laws and customs of their own. Animals are much more
regular than we, and keep themselves with greater moderation within the
limits nature has prescribed; but yet not so exactly that they have not
sometimes an analogy with our debauches. And as there have been furious
desires that have impelled men to the love of beasts, so there have been
examples of beasts that have fallen in love with us, and been seized
with monstrous affection betwixt kinds; witness the elephant who was
rival to Aristophanes the grammarian in the love of a young herb-wench
in the city of Alexandria, who was nothing behind him in all the offices
of a very passionate suitor; for going through the market where they
sold fruit, he would take some in his trunk and carry them to her.
He would as much as possible keep her always in his sight, and would
sometimes put his trunk under her handkerchief into her bosom, to feel
her breasts. They tell also of a dragon in love with a girl, and of a
goose enamoured of a child; of a ram that was suitor to the minstrelless
Glaucia, in the town of Asopus; and we see not unfrequently baboons
furiously in love with women. We see also certain male animals that
are fond of the males of their own kind. Oppian and others give us some
examples of the reverence that beasts have to their kindred in their
copulations; but experience often shows us the contrary:--
Nec habetur turpe juvencæ
Ferre patrem tergo; fit equo sua filia conjux;
Quasque creavit, init pecudes caper; ipsaque cujus
Semine concepta est, ex illo concipit ales.
"The heifer thinks it not a shame to take
Her lusty sire upon her willing back:
The horse his daughter leaps, goats scruple not
T' increase the herd by those they have begot;
And birds of all sorts do in common live,
And by the seed they have conceived conceive."
And for subtle cunning, can there be a more pregnant example than in the
philosopher Thales's mule? who, fording a river, laden with salt, and
by accident stumbling there, so that the sacks he carried were all wet,
perceiving that by the melting of the salt his burden was something
lighter, he never failed, so oft as he came to any river, to lie down
with his load; till his master, discovering the knavery, ordered that he
should be laden with wood? wherein, finding himself mistaken, he ceased
to practise that device. There are several that very vividly represent
the true image of our avarice; for we see them infinitely solicitus to
get all they can, and hide it with that exceeding great care, though
they never make any use of it at all. As to thrift, they surpass us not
only in the foresight and laying up, and saving for the time to come,
but they have, moreover, a great deal of the science necessary thereto.
The ants bring abroad into the sun their grain and seed to air, refresh
and dry them when they perceive them to mould and grow musty, lest they
should decay and rot. But the caution and prevention they use in gnawing
their grains of wheat surpass all imagination of human prudence; for by
reason that the wheat does not always continue sound and dry, but grows
soft, thaws and dissolves as if it were steeped in milk, whilst hasting
to germination; for fear lest it should shoot and lose the nature and
property of a magazine for their subsistence, they nibble off the end by
which it should shoot and sprout.
As to what concerns war, which is the greatest and most magnificent of
human actions, I would very fain know whether we would use it for an
argument of some prerogative or, on contrary, for a testimony of our
weakness and imperfection; as, in truth, the science of undoing and
killing one another, and of ruining and destroying our own kind, has
nothing in it so tempting as to make it be coveted by beasts who have it
not.
Quando leoni Fortior eripuit vitam leo? quo nemore unquam
Expiravit aper majoris dentibus apri?
"No lion drinks a weaker lion's gore,
No boar expires beneath a stronger boar."
Yet are they not universally exempt; witness the furious encounters of
bees, and the enterprises of the princes of the contrary armies:--
Sæpe duobus Regibus incessit magno discordia motu;
Continuoque animos vulgi et trepidantia bello
Gorda licet longé præsciscere.
"But if contending factions arm the hive,
When rival kings in doubtful battle strive,
Tumultuous crowds the dread event prepare,
And palpitating hearts that beat to war."
I never read this divine description but that, methinks, I there see
human folly and vanity represented in their true and lively colours. For
these warlike movements, that so ravish us with their astounding noise
and horror, this rattle of guns, drums, and cries,
Fulgur ibi ad coelum se tollit, totaque circum
Ære renidescit tellus, subterque virûm vi
Excitur pedibus sonitus, clamoreque montes
Icti rejectant voces ad sidera mundi;
"When burnish'd arms to heaven dart their rays,
And many a steely beam i' th' sunlight plays,
When trampled is the earth by horse and man,
Until the very centre groans again,
And that the rocks, struck by the various cries,
Reverberate the sound unto the skies;"
in the dreadful embattling of so many thousands of armed men, and so
great fury, ardour, and courage, 'tis pleasant to consider by what idle
occasions they are excited, and by how light ones appeased:--
Paridis propter narratur amorem
Greciæ Barbariæ diro collisa duello:
"Of wanton Paris the illicit love
Did Greece and Troy to ten years' warfare move:"
all Asia was ruined and destroyed for the lust of Paris; the envy of
one single man, a despite, a pleasure, a domestic jealousy, causes that
ought not to set two oyster-wenches by the ears, is the mover of all
this mighty bustle. Shall we believe those very men who are themselves
the principal authors of these mischiefs? Let us then hear the greatest,
the most powerful, the most victorious emperor that ever was, turning
into a jest, very pleasantly and ingeniously, several battles fought
both by sea and land, the blood and lives of five hundred thousand men
that followed his fortune, and the strength and riches of two parts of
the world drained for the expense of his expeditions:--
Quod futuit Glaphyran Antonius, hanc mihi poenam
Fulvia constituit, se quoqne uti futuam.
Fulviam ego ut futuam! quid, si me Manius oret
Podicem, faciam? Non puto, si sapiam.
Aut futue, aut pugnemus, ait
Quid, si mihi vitii
Charior est ipsâ mentula? Signa canant.
Qui? moi, que je serve Fulvie!
Sufflt-il quelle en ait envie?
A ce compte, on verrait se retirer von moi
Mille épouses mal satisfaites.
Aime-moi, me dit elle, ou combattons. Mais quoi?
Elle est bien laide! Allons, sonnes trompettes.
'Cause Anthony is fired with Glaphire's charms
Fain would his Fulvia tempt me to her arms.
If Anthony be false, what then? must I
Be slave to Fulvia's lustful tyranny?
Then would a thousand wanton, waspish wives,
(I use my Latin with the liberty of conscience you are pleased to allow
me.) Now this great body, with so many fronts, and so many motions,
which seems to threaten heaven and earth:--
Quam multi Lybico volvuntur marmore fluctus,
Sævus ubi Orion hibemis conditur undis,
Vel quam solo novo densæ torrentur Aristæ,
Aut Hermi campo, aut Lyciæ flaventibus arvis;
Scuta sonant, pulsuque pedum tremit excita tellus:
"Not thicker billows beat the Lybian main,
When pale Orion sits in wintry rain;
Nor thicker harvests on rich Hermus rise,
Or Lycian fields, when Phobus burns the skies,
Than stand these troops: their bucklers ring around;
Their trampling turns the turf and shakes the solid ground:"
this furious monster, with so many heads and arms, is yet man--feeble,
calamitous, and miserable man! 'Tis but an ant-hill disturbed and
provoked:--
It nigrum campis agmen:
"The black troop marches to the field:"
a contrary blast, the croaking of a flight of ravens, the stumble of
a horse, the casual passage of an eagle, a dream, a voice, a sign, a
morning mist, are any one of them sufficient to beat down and overturn
him. Dart but a sunbeam in his face, he is melted and vanished. Blow
but a little dust in his eyes, as our poet says of the bees, and all our
ensigns and legions, with the great Pompey himself at the head of them,
are routed and crushed to pieces; for it was he, as I take it, that
Sertorious beat in Spain with those fine arms, which also served Eumenes
against Antigonus, and Surena against Crassus:--
"Swarm to my bed like bees into their hives.
Declare for love, or war, she said; and frown'd:
No love I'll grant: to arms bid trumpets sound."
Hi motus animorum, atque hoc certamina tanta,
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent.
"Yet at thy will these dreadful conflicts cease,
Throw but a little dust and all is peace."
Let us but slip our flies after them, and they will have the force and
courage to defeat them. Of fresh memory, the Portuguese having besieged
the city of Tamly, in the territory of Xiatine, the inhabitants of the
place brought a great many hives, of which are great plenty in that
place, upon the wall; and with fire drove the bees so furiously upon the
enemy that they gave over the enterprise, not being able to stand their
attacks and endure their stings; and so the citizens, by this new sort
of relief, gained liberty and the victory with so wonderful a fortune,
that at the return of their defenders from the battle they found they
had not lost so much as one. The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast
in the same mould; the weight and importance of the actions of princes
considered, we persuade ourselves that they must be produced by some as
weighty and important causes; but we are deceived; for they are pushed
on, and pulled back in their motions, by the same springs that we are
in our little undertakings. The same reason that makes us wrangle with
a neighbour causes a war betwixt princes; the same reason that makes us
whip a lackey, falling into the hands of a king makes him ruin a whole
province. They are as lightly moved as we, but they are able to do more.
In a gnat and an elephant the passion is the same.
As to fidelity, there is no animal in the world so treacherous as man.
Our histories have recorded the violent pursuits that dogs have made
after the murderers of their masters. King Pyrrhus observing a dog that
watched a dead man's body, and understanding that he had for three
days together performed that office, commanded that the body should be
buried, and took the dog along with him. One day, as he was at a general
muster of his army, this dog, seeing his master's murderers, with great
barking and extreme signs of anger flew upon them, and by this first
accusation awakened the revenge of this murder, which was soon after
perfected by form of justice. As much was done by the dog of the wise
Hesiod, who convicted the sons of Ganictor of Naupactus of the murder
committed on the person of his master. Another dog being to guard a
temple at Athens, having spied a sacrilegious thief carrying away
the finest jewels, fell to barking at him with all his force, but the
warders not awaking at the noise, he followed him, and day being broke,
kept off at a little distance, without losing sight of him; if he
offered him any thing to eat he would not take it, but would wag his
tail at all the passengers he met, and took whatever they gave him; and
if the thief laid down to sleep, he likewise stayed upon the same place.
The news of this dog being come to the warders of the temple they put
themselves upon the pursuit, inquiring of the colour of the dog, and
at last found him in the city of Cromyon, and the thief also, whom they
brought back to Athens, where he got his reward; and the judges, in
consideration of this good office, ordered a certain measure of corn
for the dog's daily sustenance, at the public charge, and the priests to
take care of it. Plutarch delivers this story for a certain truth, and
that it happened in the age wherein he lived.
As to gratitude (for I think we need bring this word into a little
repute), this one example, which Apion reports himself to have been an
eye-witness of, shall suffice.
"One day," says he, "at Rome, they entertained the people with the sight
of the fighting of several strange beasts, and principally of lions
of an unusual size; there was one amongst the rest who, by his furious
deportment, by the strength and largeness of his limbs, and by his loud
and dreadful roaring, attracted the eyes of all the spectators. Amongst
other slaves that were presented to the people in this combat of beasts
there was one Androdus, of Dacia, belonging to a Roman lord of consular
dignity. This lion having seen him at a distance first made a sudden
stop, as it were in a wondering posture, and then softly approached
nearer in a gentle and peaceable manner, as if it were to enter into
acquaintance with him. This being done, and being now assured of what he
sought for, he began to wag his tail, as dogs do when they flatter their
masters, and to kiss and lick the hands and thighs of the poor wretch,
who was beside himself, and almost dead with fear. Androdus being by
this kindness of the lion a little come to himself, and having taken so
much heart as to consider and know him, it was a singular pleasure to
see the joy and caresses that passed betwixt them. At which the people
breaking into loud acclamations of joy, the emperor caused the slave
to be called, to know from him the cause of so strange an event; who
thereupon told him a new and a very strange story: "My master," said
he, "being pro-consul in Africa, I was constrained, by his severity and
cruel usage, being daily beaten, to steal from him and run away; and,
to hide myself secretly from a person of so great authority in the
province, I thought it my best way to fly to the solitudes, sands, and
uninhabitable parts of that country, resolving that in case the means of
supporting life should chance to fail me, to make some shift or other
to kill myself. The sun being excessively hot at noon, and the heat
intolerable, I lit upon a private and almost inaccessible cave, and went
into it Soon after there came in to me this lion, with one foot wounded
and bloody, complaining and groaning with the pain he endured. At his
coming I was exceeding afraid; but he having spied me hid in the comer
of his den, came gently to me, holding out and showing me his wounded
foot, as if he demanded my assistance in his distress. I then drew out
a great splinter he had got there, and, growing a little more familiar
with him, squeezing the wound thrust out the matter, dirt, and gravel
which was got into it, and wiped and cleansed it the best I could. He,
finding himself something better, and much eased of his pain, laid him
down to rest, and presently fell asleep with his foot in my hand. From
that time forward he and I lived together in this cave three whole years
upon one and the same diet; for of the beasts that he killed in hunting
he always brought me the best pieces, which I roasted in the sun for
want of fire, and so ate it. At last, growing weary of this wild
and brutish life, the lion being one day gone abroad to hunt for our
ordinary provision, I departed thence, and the third day after was taken
by the soldiers, who brought me from Africa to this city to my master,
who presently condemned me to die, and to be thus exposed to the wild
beasts. Now, by what I see, this lion was also taken soon after, who has
now sought to recompense me for the benefit and cure that he received
at my hands." This is the story that Androdus told the emperor, which he
also conveyed from hand to hand to the people; wherefore, at the general
request, he was absolved from his sentence and set at liberty, and the
lion was, by order of the people, presented to him. "We afterwards saw,"
says Apion, "Androdus leading this lion, in nothing but a small leash,
from tavern to tavern at Rome, and receiving what money every body would
give him, the lion being so gentle as to suffer himself to be covered
with the flowers that the people threw upon him, every one that met him
saying, 'There goes the lion that entertained the man; there goes the
man that cured the lion.'"
We often lament the loss of beasts we love, and so do they the loss of
us:--
Post, bellator equus, positis insignibus, Æthon
It lacrymans, guttisque humectât grandibus ora.
"To close the pomp, Æthon, the steed of state.
Is led, the fun'ral of his lord to wait.
Stripped of his trappings, with a sullen pace
He walks, and the big tears run rolling down his face."
As some nations have their wives in common, and some others have every
one his own, is not the same seen among beasts, and marriages better
kept than ours? As to the society and confederation they make
amongst themselves, to league together and to give one another mutual
assistance, is it not known that oxen, hogs, and other animals, at the
cry of any of their kind that we offend, all the herd run to his aid
and embody for his defence? The fish Scarus, when he has swallowed the
angler's hook, his fellows all crowd about him and gnaw the line in
pieces; and if, by chance, one be got into the bow net, the others
present him their tails on the outside, which he holding fast with his
teeth, they after that manner disengage and draw him out.
Mullets, when one of their companions is engaged, cross the line over
their back, and, with a fin they have there, indented like a saw, cut
and saw it asunder. As to the particular offices that we receive from
one another for the service of life, there are several like examples
amongst them. 'Tis said that the whale never moves that she has not
always before her a little fish like the sea-gudgeon, for this reason
called the guide-fish, whom the whale follows, suffering himself to be
led and turned with as great facility as the rudder guides the ship; in
recompense of which service also, whereas all the other things, whether
beast or vessel, that enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's
mouth, are immediately lost and swallowed up, this little fish retires
into it in great security, and there sleeps, during which time the whale
never stirs; but so soon as ever it goes out he immediately follows
it; and if by accident he loses the sight of his little guide, he goes
wandering here and there, and strikes his sides against the rocks like a
ship that has lost her helm; which Plutarch affirms to have seen in
the island of Anticyra. There is a like society betwixt the little bird
called the wren and the crocodile. The wren serves for a sentinel over
this great animal; and if the ichneumon, his mortal enemy, approach
to fight him, this little bird, for fear lest he should surprise him
asleep, both with his voice and bill rouses him and gives him notice
of his danger. He feeds of this monster's leavings, who receives him
familiarly into his mouth, suffering him to peck in his jaws and betwixt
his teeth, and thence to pick out the bits of flesh that remain; and
when he has a mind to shut his mouth, he first gives the bird warning to
go out by closing it by little and little, and without bruising or doing
it any harm at all. The shell-fish called the naker, lives in the same
intelligence with the shrimp, a little sort of animal of the lobster
kind, which serves him in the nature of a porter, sitting at the opening
of the shell, which the naker keeps always gaping and open till the
shrimp sees some little fish, proper for their prey, within the hollow
of the shell, where she enters too, and pinches the naker so to the
quick that she is forced to close her shell, where they two together
devour the prey they have trapped in their fort. In the manner of living
of the tunnies we observe a singular knowledge of the three parts of
mathematics. As to astrology, they teach it men, for they stay in the
place where they are surprised by the brumal solstice, and never
stir thence till the next equinox; for which reason Aristotle himself
attributes to them this science. As to geometry and arithmetic, they
always form their numbers in the figure of a cube, every way square, and
make up the body of a battalion, solid, close, and environed round
with six equal sides, and swim in this square order, as large behind
as before; so that whoever in seeing them can count one rank may
easily number the whole troop, by reason that the depth is equal to the
breadth, and the breadth to the length.
As to magnanimity, it will be hard to exhibit a better instance of it
than in the example of the great dog sent to Alexander the Great from
the Indies. They first brought him a stag to encounter, next a boar, and
after that a bear, all which he slighted, and disdained to stir from
his place; but when he saw a lion he then immediately roused himself,
evidently manifesting that he declared that alone worthy to enter the
lists with him. Touching repentance and the acknowledgment of faults,
'tis reported of an elephant that, having in the impetuosity of his rage
killed his keeper, he fell into so extreme a sorrow that he would never
after eat, but starved himself to death. And as to clemency, 'tis said
of a tiger, the most cruel of all beasts, that a kid having been put
in to him, he suffered a two days' hunger rather than hurt it, and the
third broke the grate he was shut up in, to seek elsewhere for prey; so
unwilling he was to fall upon the kid, his familiar and his guest, And
as to the laws of familiarity and agreement, formed by conversation,
it ordinarily happens that we bring up cats, dogs, and hares, tame
together.
But that which seamen by experience know, and particularly in the
Sicilian Sea, of the quality of the halcyons, surpasses all human
thought of what kind of animal has nature even so much honoured the
birth? The poets indeed say that one only island, Delos, which was
before a floating island, was fixed for the service of Latona's
lying-in; but God has ordered that the whole ocean should be stayed,
made stable and smooth, without waves, without winds or rain, whilst
the halcyon produces her young, which is just about the solstice, the
shortest day of the year; so that by her privilege we have seven days
and seven nights in the very heart of winter wherein we may sail without
danger. Their females never have to do with any other male but their
own, whom they serve and assist all their lives, without ever forsaking
him. If he becomes weak and broken with age, they take him upon their
shoulders and carry him from place to place, and serve him till death.
But the most inquisitive into the secrets of nature could never yet
arrive at the knowledge of the wonderful fabric wherewith the halcyon
builds her nest for her little ones, nor guess at the materials.
Plutarch, who has seen and handled many of them, thinks it is the bones
of some fish which she joins and binds together, interlacing them, some
lengthwise and others across, and adding ribs and hoops in such manner
that she forms at last a round vessel fit to launch; which being done,
and the building finished, she carries it to the beach, where the sea
beating gently against it shows where she is to mend what is not well
jointed and knit, and where better to fortify the seams that are leaky,
that open at the beating of the waves; and, on the contrary, what is
well built and has had the due finishing, the beating of the waves does
so close and bind together that it is not to be broken or cracked by
blows either of stone or iron without very much ado. And that which is
more to be admired is the proportion and figure of the cavity within,
which is composed and proportioned after such a manner as not to receive
or admit any other thing than the bird that built it; for to any thing
else it is so impenetrable, close, and shut, nothing can enter, not so
much as the water of the sea. This is a very dear description of this
building, and borrowed from a very good hand; and yet me-thinks it does
not give us sufficient light into the difficulty of this architecture.
Now from what vanity can it proceed to despise and look down upon,
and disdainfully to interpret, effects that we can neither imitate nor
comprehend?
To pursue a little further this equality and correspondence betwixt us
and beasts, the privilege our soul so much glorifies herself upon, of
things she conceives to her own law, of striping all things that come
to her of their mortal and corporeal qualities, of ordering and
placing things she conceives worthy her taking notice of, stripping and
divesting them of their corruptible qualities, and making them to
lay aside length, breadth, depth, weight, colour, smell, roughness,
smoothness, hardness, softness, and all sensible accidents, as mean
and superfluous vestments, to accommodate them to her own immortal and
spiritual condition; as Rome and Paris, for example, that I have in
my fancy, Paris that I imagine, I imagine and comprehend it without
greatness and without place, without stone, without plaster, and without
wood; this very same privilege, I say, seems evidently to be in beasts;
for a courser accustomed to trumpets, to musket-shots, and battles, whom
we see start and tremble in his sleep and stretched upon his litter,
as if he were in a fight; it is almost certain that he conceives in
his soul the beat of a drum without noise, and an army without arms and
without body:--
Quippe videbis equos fortes, cum membra jacebunt
In somnis, sudare tamen, spirareque sæpe,
Et quasi de palmâ summas contendere vires:
"You shall see maneg'd horses in their sleep
Sweat, snort, start, tremble, and a clutter keep,
As if with all their force they striving were
The victor's palm proudly away to bear:"
the hare, that a greyhound imagines in his sleep, after which we see
him pant so whilst he sleeps, stretch out his tail, shake his legs, and
perfectly represents all the motions of a course, is a hare without fur
and without bones:--
Venantumque canes in molli sæpe quiete
Jactant crura tamen subito, vocesque repente
Mittunt, et crebras reducunt naribus auras,
Ut vestigia si teneant inventa ferarum:
Expergefætique sequuntur inania sæpe
Cervorum simulacra, fagæ quasi dedita cernant;
Donee discussis redeant erroribus ad se:
"And hounds stir often in their quiet rest,
Spending their mouths, as if upon a quest,
Snuff, and breathe quick and short, as if they went
In a full chase upon a burning scent:
Nay, being wak'd, imagin'd stags pursue,
As if they had them in their real view,
Till, having shook themselves more broad awake,
They do at last discover the mistake:"
the watch-dogs, that we often observe to snarl in their dreams, and
afterwards bark out, and start up as if they perceived some stranger
at hand; the stranger that their soul discerns is a man spiritual and
imperceptible, without dimension, without colour, and without being:--
Consueta domi catulorum blanda propago
Degere, sæpe levem ex oculis volucremque soporem
Discutere, et corpus de terra corripere instant,
Proinde quasi ignotas facies atque ora tuantur.
"The fawning whelps of household curs will rise,
And, shaking the soft slumber from their eyes,
Oft bark and stare at ev'ry one within,
As upon faces they had never seen."
to the beauty of the body, before I proceed any further I should know
whether or no we are agreed about the description. 'Tis likely we do
not well know what beauty is in nature and in general, since to our
own human beauty we give so many divers forms, of which, were there any
natural rule and prescription, we should know it in common, as the heat
of the fire. But we fancy the forms according to our own appetite and
liking:--
Turpis Romano Belgicus ore color:
"A German hue ill suits, a Roman face."
The Indians paint it black and tawny, with great swelled lips, wide flat
noses and load the cartilage betwixt the nostrils with great rings of
gold, to make it hang down to the mouth; as also the under lip with
great hoops, enriched with precious stones, that weigh them down to fall
upon the chin, it being with them a singular grace to show their teeth,
even below the roots. In Peru the greatest ears are the most beautiful,
which they stretch out as far as they can by art. And a man now living
says that he has seen in an eastern nation this care of enlarging them
in so great repute, and the ear loaded with so ponderous jewels, that he
did with great ease put his arm, sleeve and all, through the hole of
an ear. There are elsewhere nations that take great care to black their
teeth, and hate to see them white, whilst others paint them red. The
women are reputed more beautiful, not only in Biscay, but elsewhere,
for having their heads shaved; and, which is more, in certain frozen
countries, as Pliny reports. The Mexicans esteem a low forehead a great
beauty, and though they shave all other parts, they nourish hair on
the forehead and increase it by art, and have great breasts in so great
reputation that they affect to give their children suck over their
shoulders. We should paint deformity so. The Italians fashion it gross
and massy; the Spaniards gaunt and slender; and amongst us one has
it white, another brown; one soft and delicate, another strong and
vigorous; one will have his mistress soft and gentle, others haughty and
majestic. Just as the preference in beauty that Plato attributes to the
spherical figure the Epicureans gave rather to the pyramidal or square,
and cannot swallow a god in the form of a bowl. But, be it how it will,
nature has no more privileged us in this from her common laws than in
the rest And if we will judge ourselves aright, we shall find that, if
there be some animals less favoured in this than we, there are others,
and in greater number, that are more; _a multis animalibus decore
vincimur_ "Many animals surpass us in beauty," even among the
terrestrial, our compatriots; for as to those of sea, setting the figure
aside, which cannot fall into any manner of proportion, being so much
another thing in colour, clearness, smoothness, and arrangement, we
sufficiently give place to them; and no less, in all qualities, to the
aerial. And this prerogative that the poets make such a mighty matter
of, our erect stature, looking towards heaven our original,
Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terrain,
Os homini sublime dédit, columque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus,
"Whilst all the brutal creatures downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
He set man's face aloft, that, with his eyes
Uplifted, he might view the starry skies,"
is truly poetical; for there are several little beasts who have their
sight absolutely turned towards heaven; and I find the gesture of camels
and ostriches much higher raised and more erect than ours. What animals
have not their faces above and not before, and do not look opposite,
as we do; and that do not in their natural posture discover as much of
heaven and earth as man? And what qualities of our bodily constitution,
in Plato and Cicero, may not indifferently serve a thousand sorts of
beasts? Those that most resemble us are the most despicable and deformed
of all the herd; for those, as to outward appearance and form of visage,
are baboons:--
Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis?
"How like to man, in visage and in shape,
Is, of all beasts the most uncouth, the ape?"
as to the internal and vital parts, the hog. In earnest, when I consider
man stark naked, even in that sex which seems to have greatest share of
beauty, his defects, natural subjection, and imperfections, I find that
we have more reason than any other animal, to cover ourselves; and are
to be excused from borrowing of those to whom nature has in this been
kinder than to us, to trick ourselves out with their beauties, and hide
ourselves under their spoils, their wool, feathers, hair, and silk. Let
us observe, as to the rest, that man is the sole animal whose nudities
offend his own companions, and the only one who in his natural actions
withdraws and hides himself from his own kind. And really 'tis also
an effect worth consideration, that they who are masters in the trade
prescribe, as a remedy for amorous passions, the full and free view of
the body a man desires; for that to cool the ardour there needs no more
but freely and fully to see what he loves:--
Ille quod obscænas in aperto corpore partes
Viderat, in cursu qui fuit, hæsit amor.
"The love that's tilting when those parts appear
Open to view, flags in the hot career,"
And, although this receipt may peradventure proceed from a nice and cold
humour, it is notwithstanding a very great sign of our deficiencies
that use and acquaintance should make us disgust one another. It is
not modesty, so much as cunning and prudence, that makes our ladies so
circumspect to refuse us admittance into their cabinets before they are
painted and tricked up for the public view:--
Nec Veneres nostras hoc fallit; quo magis ipsæ
Omnia summopere hos vitæ postscenia celant,
Quos retinere volunt, adstrictoque esse in amore:
"Of this our ladies are full well aware,
Which make them, with such privacy and care,
Behind the scene all those defects remove,
Likely to check the flame of those they love,"
whereas, in several animals there is nothing that we do not love, and
that does not please our senses; so that from their very excrements
we do not only extract wherewith to heighten our sauces, but also our
richest ornaments and perfumes. This discourse reflects upon none but
the ordinary sort of women, and is not so sacrilegious as to comprehend
those divine, supernatural, and extraordinary beauties, which we see
shine occasionally among us like stars under a corporeal and terrestrial
veil.
As to the rest, the very share that we allow to beasts of the bounty
of nature, by our own confession, is very much to their advantage. We
attribute to ourselves imaginary and fantastic good, future and absent
good, for which human capacity cannot of herself be responsible; or
good, that we falsely attribute to ourselves by the license of opinion,
as reason, knowledge, and honour, and leave to them for their dividend,
essential, durable, and palpable good, as peace, repose, security,
innocence, and health; health, I say, the fairest and richest present
that nature can make us. Insomuch that philosophy, even the Stoic, is so
bold as to say, "That Heraclitus and Pherecides, could they have trucked
their wisdom for health, and have delivered themselves, the one of his
dropsy, and the other of the lousy disease that tormented him, they had
done well." By which they set a greater value upon wisdom, comparing and
putting it into the balance with health, than they do with this other
proposition, which is also theirs; they say that if Circe had presented
Ulysses with the two potions, the one to make a fool become a wise
man, and the other to make a wise man become a fool, that Ulysses ought
rather to have chosen the last, than consent to that by which Circe
changed his human figure into that of a beast; and say that wisdom
itself would have spoke to him after this manner: "Forsake me, let me
alone, rather than lodge me under the body and figure of an ass." How!
the philosophers, then will abandon this great and divine wisdom for
this corporeal and terrestrial covering? It is then no more by reason,
by discourse, and by the soul, that we excel beasts; 'tis by our beauty,
our fair complexion, and our fine symmetry of parts, for which we must
quit our intelligence, our prudence, and all the rest. Well, I accept
this open and free confession; certainly they knew that those parts,
upon which we so much value ourselves, are no other than vain fancy.
If beasts then had all the virtue, knowledge, wisdom, and stoical
perfection, they would still be beasts, and would not be comparable to
man, miserable, wicked, mad, man. For, in short, whatever is not as we
are is nothing worth; and God, to procure himself an esteem among us,
must put himself into that shape, as we shall show anon. By which it
appears that it is not upon any true ground of reason, but by a foolish
pride and vain opinion, that we prefer ourselves before other animals,
and separate ourselves from their society and condition.
But to return to what I was upon before; we have for our part
inconstancy, irresolution, incertitude, sorrow, superstition, solicitude
of things to come, even after we shall be no more, ambition, avarice,
jealousy, envy, irregular, frantic, and untamed appetites, war, lying,
disloyalty, detraction, and curiosity. Doubtless, we have strangely
overpaid this fine reason, upon which we so much glorify ourselves, and
this capacity of judging and knowing, if we have bought it at the price
of this infinite number of passions to which we are eternally subject.
Unless we shall also think fit, as even Socrates does, to add to the
counterpoise that notable prerogative above beasts, That whereas nature
has prescribed them certain seasons and limits for the delights of
Venus, she has given us the reins at all hours and all seasons." _Ut
vinum ogrotis, quia prodest rarô, nocet sopissime, melius est non
adhibere omnino, quam, spe dubio salutis, in apertam per-niciem
incurrere; sic, haud scio an melius fuerit humano generi motum istum
celerem cogitationis, acumen, solertiam, quam rationem vocamus, quoniam
pestifera sint multis, ad-modum paucis saluiaria, non dari omnino,
quam tam muniice et tam large dari?_ As it falls out that wine often
hurting the sick, and very rarely doing them good, it is better not to
give them any at all than to run into an apparent danger out of hope of
an uncertain benefit, so I know not whether it had not been better for
mankind that this quick motion, this penetration, this subtlety that we
call reason, had not been given to man at all; considering how pestiferous
it is to many, and useful but to few, than to have been conferred in so
abundant manner, and with so liberal a hand." Of what advantage can we
conceive the knowledge of so many things was to Yarro and Aristotle? Did
it exempt them from human inconveniences? Were they by it freed from
the accidents that lay heavy upon the shoulders of a porter? Did they
extract from their logic any consolation for the gout? Or, for knowing
how this humour is lodged in the joints, did they feel it the less?
Did they enter into composition with death by knowing that some nations
rejoice at his approach; or with cuckoldry, by knowing that in some
parts of the world wives are in common? On the contrary, having been
reputed the greatest men for knowledge, the one amongst the Romans
and the other amongst the Greeks, and in a time when learning did most
flourish, we have not heard, nevertheless, that they had any particular
excellence in their lives; nay, the Greek had enough to do to clear
himself from some notable blemishes in his. Have we observed that
pleasure and health have a better relish with him that understands
astrology and grammar than with others?
Illiterati num minus nervi rigent?
"Th' illiterate ploughman is as fit
For Venus' service as the wit:"
or shame and poverty less troublesome to the first than to the last?
Scilicet et morbis et debilitate carebis,
Et luctum et curam effugies, et tempora vitæ
Longa tibi post hæc fato meliore dabuntur.
"Disease thy couch shall flee,
And sorrow and care; yes, thou, be sure, wilt see
Long years of happiness, till now unknown."
I have known in my time a hundred artisans, a hundred labourers, wiser
and more happy than the rectors of the university, and whom I had much
rather have resembled. Learning, methinks, has its place amongst the
necessary, things of life, as glory, nobility, dignity, or at the most,
as beauty, riches, and such other qualities, which indeed are useful
to it, but remotely, and more by opinion than by nature. We stand
very little more in need of offices, rules, and laws of living in our
society, than cranes and ants do 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
with a good conscience; and that, on the contrary, those of his time
were all sweet odour without, but stunk within of all sorts of vices;
that is to say, as I interpret it, that they abounded with learning
and eloquence, but were very defective in moral honesty. Incivility,
ignorance, simplicity, roughness, are the natural companions of
innocence; curiosity, subtlety, knowledge, bring malice in their train;
humility, fear, obedience, and affability, which are the principal
things that support and maintain human society, require an empty and
docile soul, and little presuming upon itself.
Christians have a particular knowledge, how natural and original an evil
curiosity is in man; the thirst of knowledge, and the desire to
become more wise, was the first ruin of man, and the way by which he
precipitated himself into eternal damnation. Pride was his ruin and
corruption. 'Tis pride that diverts him from the common path, and makes
him embrace novelties, and rather choose to be head of a troop, lost and
wandering in the path of error; to be a master and a teacher of lies,
than to be a disciple in the school of truth, suffering himself to be
led and guided by the hand of another, in the right and beaten
road. 'Tis, peradventure, the meaning of this old Greek saying, that
superstition follows pride, and obeys it as if it were a father:
[--Greek--] Ah, presumption, how much dost thou hinder us?
After that Socrates was told that the god of wisdom had assigned to him
the title of sage, he was astonished at it, and, searching and examining
himself throughout, could find no foundation for this divine judgment.
He knew others as just, temperate, valiant, and learned, as himself; and
more eloquent, more handsome, and more profitable to their country than
he. At last he concluded that he was not distinguished from others, nor
wise, but only because he did not think himself so; and that his God
considered the opinion of knowledge and wisdom as a singular absurdity
in man; and that his best doctrine was the doctrine of ignorance, and
simplicity his best wisdom. The sacred word declares those miserable
among us who have an opinion of themselves: "Dust and ashes," says it
to such, "what hast thou wherein to glorify thyself?" And, in another
place, "God has made man like unto a shadow," of whom who can judge,
when by removing the light it shall be vanished! Man is a thing of
nothing.
Our force is so far from being able to comprehend the divine height,
that, of the works of our Creator, those best bear his mark, and are
with better title his, which we the least understand. To meet with an
incredible thing is an occasion to Christians to believe; and it is
so much the more according to reason, by how much it is against human
reason. If it were according to reason, it would be no more a miracle;
and if it were according to example, it would be no longer a singular
thing. _Melius scitur Deus nesdendo_: "God is better known by not
knowing him," says St. Austin: and Tacitus, _Sanctius est ac reverentius
de actis Deorum credere, quam scire_; "it is more holy and reverent to
believe the works of God than to know them;" and Plato thinks there is
something of impiety in inquiring too curiously into God, the world,
and the first causes of things: _Atque illum quidem parentem hujus
universitaiis invenire, difficile; et, quum jam inveneris, indicare in
vulgtis, nefas_: "to find out the parent of the world is very difficult;
and when found out, to reveal him to the vulgar is sin," says Cicero. We
talk indeed of power, truth, justice; which are words that signify some
great thing; but that thing we neither see nor conceive at all. We say
that God fears, that God is angry, that God loves,
Immortalia mortali sermone notantes:
"Giving to things immortal mortal names."
These are all agitations and emotions that cannot be in God, according
to our form, nor can we imagine them, according to his. It only belongs
to God to know himself, and to interpret his own works; and he does it
in our language, going out of himself, to stoop to us who grovel upon
the earth. How can prudence, which is the choice between good and evil,
be properly attributed to him whom no evil can touch? How can reason
and intelligence, which we make use of, to arrive by obscure at apparent
things; seeing that nothing is obscure to him? How justice, which
distributes to every one what appertains to him, a thing begot by the
society and community of men, how is that in God? How temperance, which
is the moderation of corporal pleasures, that have no place in the
Divinity? Fortitude to support pain, labour, and dangers, as little
appertains to him as the rest; these three things have no access to
him. For which reason Aristotle holds him equally exempt from virtue
and vice: _Neque gratia, neque ira teneri potest; quod quo talia essent,
imbecilla essent omnia?_ "He can neither be affected with favour nor
indignation, because both these are the effects of frailty."
The participation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is,
is not acquired by our own force: God has sufficiently given us to
understand that, by the witnesses he has chosen out of the common
people, simple and ignorant men, that he has been pleased to employ
to instruct us in his admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our
own acquiring; 'tis purely the gift of another's bounty: 'tis not by
meditation, or by virtue of our own understanding, that we have
acquired our religion, but by foreign authority and command wherein the
imbecility of our own judgment does more assist us than any force of it;
and our blindness more than our clearness of sight: 'tis more by__ the
mediation of our ignorance than of our knowledge that we know any thing
of the divine wisdom. 'Tis no wonder if our natural and earthly parts
cannot conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge: let us bring
nothing of our own, but obedience and subjection; for, as it is written,
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the
understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe?
Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the
wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world
knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save
them that believe."
Finally, should I examine whether it be in the power of man to find out
that which he seeks and if that quest, wherein he has busied himself so
many ages, has enriched him with any new force, or any solid truth; I
believe he will confess, if he speaks from his conscience, that all
he has got by so long inquiry is only to have learned to know his
own weakness. We have only by a long study confirmed and verified the
natural ignorance we were in before. The same has fallen out to men
truly wise, which befalls the ears of corn; they shoot and raise their
heads high and pert, whilst empty; but when full and swelled with grain
in maturity, begin to flag and droop. So men, having tried and sounded
all things, and having found in that mass of knowledge, and provision of
so many various things, nothing solid and firm, and nothing but
vanity, have quitted their presumption, and acknowledged their natural
condition. 'Tis what Velleius reproaches Cotta withal and Cicero, "that
they had learned of Philo, that they had learned nothing." Pherecydes,
one of the seven sages, writing to Thales upon his death-bed; "I have,"
said he, "given order to my people, after my interment, to carry my
writings to thee. If they please thee and the other sages, publish; if
not, suppress them. They contain no certainty with which I myself am
satisfied. Neither do I pretend to know the truth, or to attain to it.
I rather open than discover things." The wisest man that ever was, being
asked what he knew, made answer, "He knew this, that he knew nothing."
By which he verified what has been said, that the greatest part of what
we know is the least of what we do not; that is to say, that even
what we think we know is but a piece, and a very little one, of our
ignorance. We know things in dreams, says Plato, and are ignorant of
them in truth. _Ormes pene veteres nihil cognosci, nihil percipi,
nihil sciri posse dixerunt; angustos sensus, imbecilles animos, brevia
curricula vito._ "Almost all the ancients have declared that there is
nothing to be known, nothing to be perceived or understood; the senses
are too limited, men's minds too weak, and the course of life too short."
And of Cicero himself, who stood indebted to his learning for all he
was worth, Valerius says, "That he began to disrelish letters in his old
age; and when at his studies, it was with great independency upon any
one party; following what he thought probable, now in one sect, and
then in another, evermore wavering under the doubts of the academy."
_Dicendum est, sed ita ut nihil affirment, quceram omnia, dubitans
plerumque, et mihi diffidens._ "Something I must say, but so as to
affirm nothing; I inquire into all things, but for the most part in
doubt and distrust of myself."
I should have too fair a game should I consider man in his common way of
living and in gross; yet I might do it by his own rule, who judges truth
not by weight, but by the number of votes. Let us set the people aside,
Qui vigilans stertit,....
Mortua cui vita est prope jam vivo atque videnti;
"Half of his life by lazy sleep's possess'd,
And when awake his soul but nods at best;"
who neither feel nor judge, and let most of their natural faculties lie
idle; I will take man in his highest ground. Let us consider him in
that little number of men, excellent and culled out from the rest, who,
having been endowed with a remarkable and particular natural force, have
moreover hardened and whetted it by care, study, and art, and raised
it to the highest pitch of wisdom to which it can possibly arrive. They
have adjusted their souls to all ways and all biases; have propped and
supported them with all foreign helps proper for them, and enriched and
adorned them with all they could borrow for their advantage, both within
and without the world; 'tis in these is placed the utmost and most
supreme height to which human nature can attain. They have regulated
the world with policies and laws. They have instructed it with arts and
sciences, and by the example of their admirable manners. I shall make
account of none but such men as these, their testimony and experience.
Let us examine how far they have proceeded, and where they stopped. The
errors and defects that we shall find amongst these men the world may
boldly avow as their own.
Whoever goes in search of any thing must come to this, either to say
that he has found it, or that it is not to be found, or that he is yet
upon the search. All philosophy is divided into these three kinds; her
design is to seek out truth, knowledge, and certainty. The Peripatetics,
Epicureans, Stoics, and others, have thought they have found it. These
established the sciences we have, and have treated of them as of certain
knowledge. Clitomachus, Carneades, and the Academics, have despaired
in their search, and concluded that truth could not be conceived by our
understandings. The result of these is weakness and human ignorance.
This sect has had the most and the most noble followers. Pyrrho, and
other skeptics or epechists, whose dogmas are held by many of the
ancients to be taken from Homer, the seven sages, and from Archilochus
and Euripides, and to whose number these are added, Zeno, Democritus,
and Xenophanes, say that they are yet upon the inquiry after truth.
These conclude that the others, who think they have found it out, are
infinitely deceived; and that it is too daring a vanity in the second
sort to determine that human reason is not able to attain unto it;
for this establishing a standard of our power, to know and judge the
difficulty of things, is a great and extreme knowledge, of which they
doubt whether man is capable:--
Nil sciri quisquis putat, id quoque nescit,
An sciri possit; quam se nil scire fatetur.
"He that says nothing can be known, o'erthrows
His own opinion, for he nothing knows,
So knows not that."
The ignorance that knows itself, judges and condemns itself, is not an
absolute ignorance; to be such, it must be ignorant of itself; so that
the profession of the Pyrrhonians is to waver, doubt, and inquire, not
to make themselves sure of, or responsible to themselves for any
thing. Of the three actions of the soul, imaginative, appetitive, and
consentive, they receive the two first; the last they kept ambiguous,
without inclination or approbation, either of one thing or another,
so light as it is. Zeno represented the motion of his imagination upon
these divisions of the faculties of the soul thus: "An open and expanded
hand signified appearance; a hand half shut, and the fingers a little
bending, consent; a clenched fist, comprehension; when with the left
he yet thrust the right fist closer, knowledge." Now this situation of
their judgment upright and inflexible, receiving all objects without
application or consent, leads them to their ataraxy, which is a
peaceable condition of life, temperate, and exempt from the agitations
we receive by the impression of opinion and knowledge that we think we
have of things; whence spring fear, avarice, envy, immoderate desires,
ambition, pride, superstition, love of novelty, rebellion, disobedience,
obstinacy, and the greatest part of bodily ills; nay, and by that they
are exempt from the jealousy of their discipline; for they debate after
a very gentle manner; they fear no requital in their disputes; when they
affirm that heavy things descend they would be sorry to be believed,
and love tobe contradicted, to engender doubt and suspense of judgment,
which is their end. They only put forward their propositions to
contend with those they think we have in our belief. If you take their
arguments, they will as readily maintain the contrary; 'tis all one to
them, they have no choice. If you maintain that snow is black, they will
argue on the contrary that it is white; if you say it is neither the
one nor the other, they will maintain that it is both. If you hold, of
certain judgment, that you know nothing, they will maintain that you do.
Yea, and if by an affirmative axiom you assure them that you doubt, they
will argue against you that you doubt not; or that you cannot judge and
determine that you doubt. And by this extremity of doubt, which jostles
itself, they separate and divide themselves from many opinions, even
of those they have several ways maintained, both concerning doubt and
ignorance. "Why shall not they be allowed to doubt," say they, "as well
as the dogmatists, one of whom says green, another yellow? Can any thing
be proposed to us to grant, or deny, which it shall not be permitted to
consider as ambiguous?" And where others are carried away, either by
the custom of their country, or by the instruction of parents, or by
accident, as by a tempest, without judgment and without choice, nay,
and for the most part before the age of discretion, to such and such
an opinion, to the sect whether Stoic or Epicurean, with which they
are prepossessed, enslaved, and fast bound, as to a thing they cannot
forsake: _Ad quamcumque disciplinant, velut tempestate, delati, ad earn,
tanquam ad saxum, adhorescunt;_ "every one cleaves to the doctrine he
has happened upon, as to a rock against which he has been thrown by
tempest;" why shall not these likewise be permitted to maintain their
liberty, and consider things without obligation or slavery? _hoc
liberiores et solutiores, quod integra illis est judicandi potestas_:
"in this more unconstrained and free, because they have the greater
power of judging." Is it not of some advantage to be disengaged from the
necessity that curbs others? Is it not better to remain in suspense than
to entangle one's self in the innumerable errors that human fancy has
produced? Is it not much better to suspend one's persuasion than to
intermeddle with these wrangling and seditious divisions: "What shall
I choose?" "What you please, provided you will choose." A very foolish
answer; but such a one, nevertheless, as all dogmatism seems to point
at, and by which we are not permitted to be ignorant of what we are
ignorant of.
Take the most eminent side, that of the greatest reputation; it will
never be so sure that you shall not be forced to attack and contend with
a hundred and a hundred adversaries to defend it. Is it not better to
keep out of this hurly-burly? You are permitted to embrace Aristotle's
opinions of the immortality of the soul with as much zeal as your honour
and life, and to give the lie to Plato thereupon, and shall they be
interdicted to doubt him? If it be lawful for Panætius to maintain
his opinion about augury, dreams, oracles, vaticinations, of which the
Stoics made no doubt at all; why may not a wise man dare to do the
same in all things that he dared to do in those he had learned of his
masters, established by the common consent of the school, whereof he
is a professor and a member? If it be a child that judges, he knows not
what it is; if a wise man, he is prepossessed. They have reserved for
themselves a marvellous advantage in battle, having eased themselves of
the care of defence. If you strike them, they care not, provided
they strike too, and they turn every thing to their own use. If they
overcome, your argument is lame; if you, theirs; if they fall short,
they verify ignorance; if you fall short, you do it; if they prove that
nothing is known, 'tis well; if they cannot prove it, 'tis also well:
_Ut quurn in eadem re paria contrariis in partibus momenta inveniuntur,
facilius ab utraque parte assertio sustineatur:_ "That when like
sentiments happen _pro_ and _con_ in the same thing, the assent may on
both sides be more easily suspended." And they make account to find out,
with much greater facility, why a thing is false, than why 'tis true;
that which is not, than that which is; and what they do not believe,
than what they do. Their way of speaking is: "I assert nothing; it is no
more so than so, or than neither one nor t'other; I understand it not.
Appearances are everywhere equal; the law of speaking, _pro_ or _con_,
is the same. Nothing seems true, that may not seem false." Their
sacramental word is that is to say, "I hold, I stir not." This is the
burden of their song, and others of like stuff. The effect of which is
a pure, entire, perfect, and absolute suspension of judgment. They make
use of their reason to inquire and debate, but not to fix and determine.
Whoever shall imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment
without bias, propension, or inclination, upon any occasion whatever,
conceives a true idea of Pyrrhonism. I express this fancy as well as
I can, by reason that many find it hard to conceive, and the authors
themselves represent it a little variously and obscurely.
As to what concerns the actions of life, they are in this of the
common fashion. They yield and give up themselves to their natural
inclinations, to the power and impulse of passions, to the constitution
of laws and customs, and to the tradition of arts; _Non enim nos Deus
ista scire, sed tantummodo uti, voluit._ "For God would not have us
know, but only use those things." They suffer their ordinary actions to
be guided by those things, without any dispute or judgment. For
which reason I cannot consent to what is said of Pyrrho, by those
who represent him heavy and immovable, leading a kind of savage and
unsociable life, standing the jostle of carts, going upon the edge of
precipices, and refusing to accommodate himself to the laws. This is to
enhance upon his discipline; he would never make himself a stock or
a stone, he would show himself a living man, discoursing, reasoning,
enjoying all reasonable conveniences and pleasures, employing and making
use of all his corporal and spiritual faculties in rule and reason.
The fantastic, imaginary, and false privileges that man had usurped
of lording it, ordaining, and establishing, he has utterly quitted and
renounced. Yet there is no sect but is constrained to permit her sage to
follow several things not comprehended, perceived, or consented to, if
he means to live. And if he goes to sea, he follows that design, not
knowing whether his voyage shall be successful or no; and only insists
upon the tightness of the vessel, the experience of the pilot, and the
convenience of the season, and such probable circumstances; after which
he is bound to go, and suffer himself to be governed by appearances,
provided there be no express and manifest contrariety in them. He has a
body, he has a soul; the senses push them, the mind spurs them on. And
although he does not find in himself this proper and singular sign of
judging, and that he perceives that he ought not to engage his
consent, considering that there may be some false, equal to these true
appearances, yet does he not, for all that, fail of carrying on the
offices of his life with great liberty and convenience. How many arts
are there that profess to consist more in conjecture than knowledge;
that decide not on true and false, and only follow that which seems so!
There are, say they, true and false, and we have in us wherewith to seek
it; but not to make it stay when we touch it. We are much more prudent,
in letting ourselves be regulated by the order of the world, without
inquiry. A soul clear from prejudice has a marvellous advance towards
tranquillity and repose. Men that judge and control their judges, do
never duly submit to them.
How much more docile and easy to be governed, both by the laws of
religion and civil polity, are simple and incurious minds, than those
over-vigilant wits, that will still be prating of divine and human
causes! There is nothing in human invention that carries so great a show
of likelihood and utility as this; this presents man, naked and empty,
confessing his natural weakness, fit to receive some foreign force from
above, unfurnished of human, and therefore more apt to receive into him
the divine knowledge, making nought of his own judgment, to give more
room to faith; neither disbelieving nor establishing any dogma against
common observances; humble, obedient, disciplinable, and studious; a
sworn enemy of heresy; and consequently freeing himself from vain and
irreligious opinions, introduced by false sects. 'Tis a blank paper
prepared to receive such forms from the finger of God as he shall please
to write upon it. The more we resign and commit ourselves to God, and
the more we renounce ourselves, of the greater value we are. "Take in
good part," says Ecclesiastes, "the things that present themselves to
thee, as they seem and taste from hand to mouth; the rest is out of thy
knowledge." _Dominus novit cogitationes hominum, quoniam vanæ sunt_:
"The Lord knoweth the hearts of men, that they are but vanity."
Thus we see that of the three general sects of philosophy, two make open
profession of doubt and ignorance; and in that of the Dogmatists, which
is the third, it is easy to discover that the greatest part of them only
assume this face of confidence and assurance that
they may produce the better effect; they have not so much thought
to establish any certainty for us, as to show us how far they have
proceeded in their search of truth: _Quam docti jingunt magis quam
nôrunt_: "Which the learned rather feign than know." Timæus, being
to instruct Socrates in what he knew of the gods, the world, and men,
proposes to speak to him as a man to a man; and that it is sufficient,
if his reasons are probable as those of another; for that exact
reasons were neither in his nor any other mortal hand; which one of
his followers has thus imitated: _Ut potero, explicabo: nec tamen, ut
Pythius Apollo, certa ut sint et fixa quæ dixero; sed, ut homunculus,
probabilia conjecturâ sequens:_ "I will, as well as I am able, explain;
affirming, yet not as the Pythian oracle, that what I say is fixed and
certain, but like a mere man, that follows probabilities by conjecture."
And this, upon the natural and common subject of the contempt of death;
he has elsewhere translated from the very words of Plato: _Si forte, de
Deorum naturâ ortuque mundi disserentes, minus id quod habemiis in animo
consequi-mur, haud erit mirum; oquum est enim meminisse, et me, qui
disseram, hominem esse, et vos, qui judicetis, ut, si probabilia
dicentur, nihil ultra requiratis?_ "If perchance, when we discourse
of the nature of God, and the world's original, we cannot do it as we
desire, it will be no great wonder. For it is just you should remember
that both I who speak and you who are to judge, are men; so that if
probable things are delivered, you shall require and expect no more."
Aristotle ordinarily heaps up a great number of other men's opinions and
beliefs, to compare them with his own, and to let us see how much he has
gone beyond them, and how much nearer he approaches to the likelihood of
truth; for truth is not to be judged by the authority and testimony
of others; which made Epicurus religiously avoid quoting them in his
writings. This is the prince of all dogmatists, and yet we are told by
him that the more we know the more we have room for doubt. In earnest,
we sometimes see him shroud and muffle up himself in so thick and so
inextricable an obscurity that we know not what to make of his advice;
it is, in effect, a Pyrrhonism under a resolutive form. Hear Cicero's
protestation, who expounds to us another's fancy by his own: _Qui
requirunt quid de quâque re ipsi sentiamus, curiosius id faciunt quam
necesse est,... Hoc in philosophiâ ratio, contra omnia disserendi,
nuttamque rem aperte judicandi, profecta a Socrate, repetita
ab Arcesila, conjirmata a Gameade, usquê ad nostram viget
cetatem..........Hi sumus, qui omnibus veris falsa quodam adjuncta esse
dicamus, tanta similitudine, ut in iis nulla insit certe judicandi et
assentiendi nota._ "They who desire to know what we think of every
thing are therein more inquisitive than is necessary. This practice
in philosophy of disputing against every thing, and of absolutely
concluding nothing, begun by Socrates, repeated by Arcesilaus, and
confirmed by Cameades, has continued in use even to our own times. We
are they who declare that there is so great a mixture of things false
amongst all that are true, and they so resemble one another, that there
can be in them no certain mark to direct us either to judge or assent."
Why hath not Aristotle only, but most of the philosophers, affected
difficulty, if not to set a greater value upon the vanity of the
subject, and amuse the curiosity of our minds by giving them this hollow
and fleshless bone to pick? Clitomachus affirmed "That he could never
discover by Carneades's writings what opinion he was of." This was it
that made Epicurus affect to be abstruse, and that procured Heraclitus
the epithet of [--Greek--] Difficulty is a coin the learned make use
of, like jugglers, to conceal the vanity of their art, and which human
sottishness easily takes for current pay.
Claras, ob obscuram linguam, magis inter manes...
Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque
Inversis quæ sub verbis latitantia cemunt.
"Bombast and riddle best do puppies please,
For fools admire and love such things as these;
And a dull quibble, wrapt in dubious phrase,
Up to the height doth their wise wonder raise."
Cicero reprehends some of his friends for giving more of their time
to the study of astrology, logic, and geometry, than they were really
worth; saying that they were by these diverted from the duties of life,
and more profitable and proper studies. The Cyrenaick philosophers, in
like manner, despised physics and logic. Zeno, in the very beginning of
the books of the commonwealth, declared all the liberal arts of no use.
Chrysippus said "That what Plato and Aristotle had writ, concerning
logic, they had only done in sport, and by way of exercise;" and could
not believe that they spoke in earnest of so vain a thing. Plutarch
says the same of metaphysics. And Epicurus would have said as much
of rhetoric, grammar, poetry, mathematics, and, natural philosophy
excepted, of all the sciences; and Socrates of them all, excepting that
which treats of manners and of life. Whatever any one required to be
instructed in, by him, he would ever, in the first place, demand
an account of the conditions of his life present and past, which he
examined and judged, esteeming all other learning subsequent to that
and supernumerary: _Parum mihi placeant eæ littero quo ad virtutem
doctoribus nihil pro-fuerunt._ "That learning is in small repute with me
which nothing profited the teachers themselves to virtue." Most of the
arts have been in like manner decried by the same knowledge; but they
did not consider that it was from the purpose to exercise their wits in
those very matters wherein there was no solid advantage.
As to the rest, some have looked upon Plato as a dogmatist, others as a
doubter, others in some things the one, and in other things the other.
Socrates, the conductor of his dialogues, is eternally upon questions
and stirring up disputes, never determining, never satisfying, and
professes to have no other science but that of opposing himself. Homer,
their author, has equally laid the foundations of all the sects of
philosophy, to show how indifferent it was which way we should choose.
'Tis said that ten several sects sprung from Plato; yet, in my opinion,
never did any instruction halt and stumble, if his does not.
Socrates said that midwives, in taking upon them the trade of helping
others to bring forth, left the trade of bringing forth themselves; and
that by the title of a wise man or sage, which the gods had conferred
upon him, he was disabled, in his virile and mental love, of the faculty
of bringing forth, contenting himself to help and assist those that
could; to open their nature, anoint the passes, and facilitate their
birth; to judge of the infant, baptize, nourish, fortify, swath, and
circumcise it, exercising and employing his understanding in the perils
and fortunes of others.
It is so with the most part of this third sort of authors, as the
ancients have observed in the writings of Anaxagoras, Democritus,
Parmenides, Xenophanes, and others. They have a way of writing, doubtful
in substance and design, rather inquiring than teaching, though they mix
their style with some dogmatical periods. Is not the same thing seen in
Seneca and Plutarch? How many contradictions are there to be found if a
man pry narrowly into them! So many that the reconciling lawyers ought
first to reconcile them every one to themselves. Plato seems to have
affected this method of philosophizing in dialogues; to the end that he
might with greater decency, from several mouths, deliver the diversity
and variety of his own fancies. It is as well to treat variously of
things as to treat of them conformably, and better, that is to say, more
copiously and with greater profit. Let us take example from ourselves:
judgments are the utmost point of all dogmatical and determinative
speaking; and yet those _arrets_ that our parliaments give the people,
the most exemplary of them, and those most proper to nourish in them the
reverence due to that dignity, principally through the sufficiency of
the persons acting, derive their beauty not so much from the conclusion,
which with them is quotidian and common to every judge, as from the
dispute and heat of divers and contrary arguments that the matter of law
and equity will permit And the largest field for reprehension that
some philosophers have against others is drawn from the diversities and
contradictions wherein every one of them finds himself perplexed, either
on purpose to show the vacillation of the human mind concerning every
thing, or ignorantly compelled by the volubility and incomprehensibility
of all matter; which is the meaning of the maxim--"In a slippery and
sliding place let us suspend our belief;" for, as Euripides says,--
"God's various works perplex the thoughts of men."
Like that which Empedocles, as if transported with a divine fury, and
compelled by truth, often strewed here and there in his writings: "No,
no, we feel nothing, we see nothing; all things are concealed from
us; there is not one thing of which we can positively say what it is;"
according to the divine saying: _Cogitationes mortalium timidæ, et
incertæ adinventiones nostro et providentice._ "For the thoughts of
mortal men are doubtful; and our devices are but uncertain." It is not
to be thought strange if men, despairing to overtake what they hunt
after, have not however lost the pleasure of the chase; study being
of itself so pleasant an employment; and so pleasant that amongst the
pleasures, the Stoics forbid that also which proceeds from the exercise
of the mind, will have it curbed, and find a kind of intemperance in too
much knowledge.
Democritus having eaten figs at his table that tasted of honey, fell
presently to considering with himself whence they should derive this
unusual sweetness; and to be satisfied in it, was about to rise from the
table to see the place whence the figs had been gathered; which his maid
observing, and having understood the cause, smilingly told him that "he
need not trouble himself about that, for she had put them into a vessel
in which there had been honey." He was vexed at this discovery, and that
she had deprived him of the occasion of this inquiry, and robbed his
curiosity of matter to work upon: "Go thy way," said he, "thou hast done
me an injury; but, for all that, I will seek out the cause as if it
were natural;" and would willingly have found out some true reason for a
false and imaginary effect. This story of a famous and great philosopher
very clearly represents to us that studious passion that puts us upon
the pursuit of things, of the acquisition of which we despair. Plutarch
gives a like example of some one who would not be satisfied in that
whereof he was in doubt, that he might not lose the pleasure of
inquiring into it; like the other who would not that his physician
should allay the thirst of his fever, that he might not lose the
pleasure of quenching it by drinking. _Satius est supervacua discere,
quam nihil._ "'Tis better to learn more than necessary than nothing at
all." As in all sorts of feeding, the pleasure of eating is very often
single and alone, and that what we take, which is acceptable to the
palate, is not always nourishing or wholesome; so that which our minds
extract from science does not cease to be pleasant, though there
be nothing in it either nutritive or healthful. Thus they say: "The
consideration of nature is a diet proper for our minds, it raises and
elevates us, makes us disdain low and terrestrial things, by comparing
them with those that are celestial and high. The mere inquisition into
great and occult things is very pleasant, even to those who acquire no
other benefit than the reverence and fear of judging it." This is
what they profess. The vain image of this sickly curiosity is yet more
manifest in this other example which they so often urge. "Eudoxus wished
and begged of the gods that he might once see the sun near at hand, to
comprehend the form, greatness, and beauty of it; even though he should
thereby be immediately burned." He would at the price of his life
purchase a knowledge, of which the use and possession should at the same
time be taken from him; and for this sudden and vanishing knowledge
lose all the other knowledge he had in present, or might afterwards have
acquired.
I cannot easily persuade myself that Epicurus, Plato, and Pytagoras,
have given us their atom, idea and numbers, for current pay. They were
too wise to establish their articles of faith upon things so disputable
and uncertain. But in that obscurity and ignorance in which the world
then was, every one of these great men endeavoured to present some kind
of image or reflection of light, and worked their brains for inventions
that might have a pleasant and subtle appearance; provided that, though
false, they might make good their ground against those that would oppose
them. _Unicuique ista pro ingenio finguntur, non ex scientiæ vi._ "These
things every one fancies according to his wit, and not by any power of
knowledge."
One of the ancients, who was reproached, "That he professed philosophy,
of which he nevertheless in his own judgment made no great account,"
made answer, "That this was truly to philosophize."
They wished to consider all, to balance every thing, and found that an
employment well suited to our natural curiosity. Some things they wrote
for the benefit of public society, as their religions; and for that
consideration it was but reasonable that they should not examine public
opinions to the quick, that they might not disturb the common obedience
to the laws and customs of their country.
Plato treats of this mystery with a raillery manifest enough; for where
he writes according to his own method he gives no certain rule. When he
plays the legislator he borrows a magisterial and positive style, and
boldly there foists in his most fantastic inventions, as fit to persuade
the vulgar, as impossible to be believed by himself; knowing very well
how fit we are to receive all sorts of impressions, especially the most
immoderate and preposterous; and yet, in his _Laws_, he takes singular
care that nothing be sung in public but poetry, of which the fiction and
fabulous relations tend to some advantageous end; it being so easy to
imprint all sorts of phantasms in human minds, that it were injustice
not to feed them rather with profitable untruths than with untruths that
are unprofitable and hurtful. He says very roundly, in his _Republic,_
"That it is often necessary, for the benefit of men, to deceive them."
It is very easy to distinguish that some of the sects have more followed
truth, and the others utility, by which the last have gained their
reputation. 'Tis the misery of our condition that often that which
presents itself to our imagination for the truest does not appear the
most useful to life. The boldest sects, as the Epicurean, Pyrrhonian,
and the new Academic, are yet constrained to submit to the civil law at
the end of the account.
There are other subjects that they have tumbled and tossed about, some
to the right and others to the left, every one endeavouring, right or
wrong, to give them some kind of colour; for, having found nothing so
abstruse that they would not venture to speak of, they are very
often forced to forge weak and ridiculous conjectures; not that they
themselves looked upon them as any foundation, or establishing any
certain truth, but merely for exercise. _Non tam id sensisse quod
dicerent, quam exercere ingénia materio difficultate videntur voluisse._
"They seem not so much themselves to have believed what they said, as to
have had a mind to exercise their wits in the difficulty of the
matter." And if we did not take it thus, how should we palliate so
great inconstancy, variety, and vanity of opinions, as we see have been
produced by those excellent and admirable men? As, for example, what
can be more vain than to imagine, to guess at God, by our analogies and
conjectures? To direct and govern him and the world by our capacities
and our laws? And to serve ourselves, at the expense of the divinity,
with what small portion of capacity he has been pleased to impart to
our natural condition; and because we cannot extend our sight to his
glorious throne, to have brought him down to our corruption and our
miseries?
Of all human and ancient opinions concerning religion, that seems to
me the most likely and most excusable, that acknowledged God as an
incomprehensible power, the original and preserver of all things, all
goodness, all perfection, receiving and taking in good part the honour
and reverence that man paid him, under what method, name, or ceremonies
soever--
Jupiter omnipotens, rerum, regumque, deûmque,
Progenitor, genitrixque.
"Jove, the almighty, author of all things,
The father, mother, of both gods and kings."
This zeal has universally been looked upon from heaven with a gracious
eye. All governments have reaped fruit from their devotion; impious
men and actions have everywhere had suitable events. Pagan histories
acknowledge dignity, order, justice, prodigies, and oracles, employed
for their profit and instruction in their fabulous religions; God,
through his mercy, vouchsafing, by these temporal benefits, to cherish
the tender principles of a kind of brutish knowledge that natural reason
gave them of him, through the deceiving images of their dreams. Not only
deceiving and false, but impious also and injurious, are those that man
has forged from his own invention: and of all the religions that St.
Paul found in repute at Athens, that which they had dedicated "to the
unknown God" seemed to him the most to be excused.
Pythagoras shadowed the truth a little more closely, judging that
the knowledge of this first cause and being of beings ought to be
indefinite, without limitation, without declaration; that it was nothing
else than the extreme effort of our imagination towards perfection,
every one amplifying the idea according to the talent of his capacity.
But if Numa attempted to conform the devotion of his people to this
project; to attach them to a religion purely mental, without any
prefixed object and material mixture, he undertook a thing of no use;
the human mind could never support itself floating in such an infinity
of inform thoughts; there is required some certain image to be presented
according to its own model. The divine majesty has thus, in some sort,
suffered himself to be circumscribed in corporal limits for our
advantage. His supernatural and celestial sacraments have signs of our
earthly condition; his adoration is by sensible offices and words; for
'tis man that believes and prays. I shall omit the other arguments upon
this subject; but a man would have much ado to make me believe that the
sight of our crucifixes, that the picture of our Saviour's passion, that
the ornaments and ceremonious motions of our churches, that the voices
accommodated to the devotion of our thoughts, and that emotion of the
senses, do not warm the souls of the people with a religious passion of
very advantageous effect.
Of those to whom they have given a body, as necessity required in that
universal blindness, I should, I fancy, most incline to those who adored
the sun:--
La Lumière commune,
L'oil du monde; et si Dieu au chef porte des yeux,
Les rayons du soleil sont ses yeulx radieux,
Qui donnent vie à touts, nous maintiennent et gardent,
Et les faictsdes humains en ce monde regardent:
Ce beau, ce grand soleil qui nous faict les saisons,
Selon qu'il entre ou sort de ses douze maisons;
Qui remplit l'univers de ses vertus cognues;
Qui d'un traict de ses yeulx nous dissipe les nues;
L'esprit, l'ame du monde, ardent et flamboyant,
En la course d'un jour tout le Ciel tournoyant;
Plein d'immense grandeur, rond, vagabond, et ferme;
Lequel tient dessoubs luy tout le monde pour terme:
En repos, sans repos; oysif, et sans séjour;
Fils aisné de nature, et le père du jour:
"The common light that equal shines on all,
Diffused around the whole terrestrial ball;
And, if the almighty Ruler of the skies
Has eyes, the sunbeams are his radiant eyes,
That life and safety give to young and old,
And all men's actions upon earth behold.
This great, this beautiful, the glorious sun,
Who makes their course the varied seasons run;
That with his virtues fills the universe,
And with one glance can sullen clouds disperse;
Earth's life and soul, that, flaming in his sphere,
Surrounds the heavens in one day's career;
Immensely great, moving yet firm and round,
Who the whole world below has made his bound;
At rest, without rest, idle without stay,
Nature's first son, and father of the day:"
forasmuch as, beside this grandeur and beauty of his, 'tis the only
piece of this machine that we discover at the remotest distance from us;
and by that means so little known that they were pardonable for entering
into so great admiration and reverence of it.
Thales, who first inquired into this sort of matter, believed God to be
a Spirit that made all things of water; Anaximander, that the gods
were always dying and entering into life again; and that there were an
infinite number of worlds; Anaximines, that the air was God, that he
was procreate and immense, always moving. Anaxagoras the first, was of
opinion that the description and manner of all things were conducted by
the power and reason of an infinite spirit. Alcmæon gave divinity to
the sun, moon, and stars, and to the soul. Pythagoras made God a spirit,
spread over the nature of all things, whence our souls are extracted;
Parmenides, a circle surrounding the heaven, and supporting the world by
the ardour of light. Empedocles pronounced the four elements, of which
all things are composed, to be gods; Protagoras had nothing to say,
whether they were or were not, or what they were; Democritus was one
while of opinion that the images and their circuitions were gods;
another while, the nature that darts out those images; and then,
our science and intelligence. Plato divides his belief into several
opinions; he says, in his _Timæus_, that the Father of the World cannot
be named; in his Laws, that men are not to inquire into his being; and
elsewhere, in the very same books, he makes the world, the heavens, the
stars, the earth, and our souls, gods; admitting, moreover, those which
have been received by ancient institution in every republic.
Xenophon reports a like perplexity in Socrates's doctrine; one while
that men are not to inquire into the form of God, and presently makes
him maintain that the sun is God, and the soul God; that there is but
one God, and then that there are many. Speusippus, the nephew of Plato,
makes God a certain power governing all things, and that he has a soul.
Aristotle one while says it is the spirit, and another the world; one
while he gives the world another master, and another while makes God the
heat of heaven. Zenocrates makes eight, five named amongst the planets;
the sixth composed of all the fixed stars, as of so many members; the
seventh and eighth, the sun and moon. Heraclides Ponticus does nothing
but float in his opinion, and finally deprives God of sense, and makes
him shift from one form to another, and at last says that it is heaven
and earth. Theophrastus wanders in the same irresolution amongst his
fancies, attributing the superintendency of the world one while to the
understanding, another while to heaven, and then to the stars. Strato
says that 'tis nature, she having the power of generation, augmentation,
and diminution, without form and sentiment Zeno says 'tis the law of
nature, commanding good and prohibiting evil; which law is an animal;
and takes away the accustomed gods, Jupiter, Juno, and Vesta. Diogenes
Apolloniates, that 'tis air. Zenophanes makes God round, seeing and
hearing, not breathing, and having nothing in common with human nature.
Aristo thinks the form of God to be incomprehensible, deprives him
of sense, and knows not whether he be an animal or something else;
Cleanthes, one while supposes it to be reason, another while the world,
another the soul of nature, and then the supreme heat rolling about, and
environing all. Perseus, Zeno's disciple, was of opinion that men have
given the title of gods to such as have been useful, and have added
any notable advantage to human life, and even to profitable things
themselves. Chrysippus made a confused heap of all the preceding
theories, and reckons, amongst a thousand forms of gods that he makes,
the men also that have been deified. Diagoras and Theodoras flatly
denied that there were any gods at all. Epicurus makes the gods shining,
transparent, and perflable, lodged as betwixt two forts, betwixt two
worlds, secure from blows, clothed in a human figure, and with such
members as we have; which members are to them of no use:--
Ego Deum genus esse semper duxi, et dicam colitum;
Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus.
"I ever thought that gods above there were,
But do not think they care what men do here."
Trust to your philosophy, my masters; and brag that you have found
the bean in the cake when you see what a rattle is here with so many
philosophical heads! The perplexity of so many worldly forms has gained
this over me, that manners and opinions contrary to mine do not so much
displease as instruct me; nor so much make me proud as they humble me,
in comparing them. And all other choice than what comes from the express
and immediate hand of God seems to me a choice of very little privilege.
The policies of the world are no less opposite upon this subject than
the schools, by which we may understand that fortune itself is not more
variable and inconstant, nor more blind and inconsiderate, than our
reason. The things that are most unknown are most proper to be deified;
wherefore to make gods of ourselves, as the ancients did, exceeds the
extremest weakness of understanding. I would much rather have gone along
with those who adored the serpent, the dog, or the ox; forasmuch as
their nature and being is less known to us, and that we have more room
to imagine what we please of those beasts, and to attribute to them
extraordinary faculties. But to have made gods of our own condition, of
whom we ought to know the imperfections; and to have attributed to
them desire, anger, revenge, marriages, generation, alliances, love,
jealousy, our members and bones, our fevers and pleasures, our death and
obsequies; this must needs have proceeded from a marvellous inebriety of
the human understanding;
Quæ procul usque adeo divino ab numine distant,
Inque Deûm numéro quæ sint indigna videri;
"From divine natures these so distant are,
They are unworthy of that character."
_Formo, otates, vestitus, omatus noti sunt; genera, conjugia,
cognationes, omniaque traducta ad similitudinem imbellitar tis
humano: nam et perturbatis animis inducuntur; accipimus enim deorurn
cupiditates, cegritudines, iracundias_; "Their forms, ages, clothes,
and ornaments are known: their descents, marriages, and kindred, and all
adapted to the similitude of human weakness; for they are represented to
us with anxious minds, and we read of the lusts, sickness, and anger
of the gods;" as having attributed divinity not only to faith,
virtue, honour, concord, liberty, victory, and piety; but also to
voluptuousness, fraud, death, envy, old age, misery; to fear, fever, ill
fortune, and other injuries of our frail and transitory life:--
Quid juvat hoc, templis nostros inducere mores?
O curvæ in terris animæ et colestium inanes!
"O earth-born souls! by earth-born passions led,
To every spark of heav'nly influence dead!
Think ye that what man values will inspire
In minds celestial the same base desire?"
The Egyptians, with an impudent prudence, interdicted, upon pain of
hanging, that any one should say that their gods, Serapis and Isis, had
formerly been men; and yet no one was ignorant that they had been
such; and their effigies, represented with the finger upon the mouth,
signified, says Varro, that mysterious decree to their priests, to
conceal their mortal original, as it must by necessary consequence
cancel all the veneration paid to them. Seeing that man so much desired
to equal himself to God, he had done better, says Cicero, to have
attracted those divine conditions to himself, and drawn them down hither
below, than to send his corruption and misery up on high; but, to take
it right, he has several ways done both the one and the other, with like
vanity of opinion.
When philosophers search narrowly into the hierarchy of their gods, and
make a great bustle about distinguishing their alliances, offices, and
power, I cannot believe they speak as they think. When Plato describes
Pluto's orchard to us, and the bodily conveniences or pains that attend
us after the ruin and annihilation of our bodies, and accommodates them
to the feeling we have in this life:--
Secreti celant calles, et myrtea circum
Sylva tegit; curæ non ipsâ in morte relinquunt;
"In secret vales and myrtle groves they lie,
Nor do cares leave them even when they die."
when Mahomet promises his followers a Paradise hung with tapestry,
gilded and enamelled with gold and precious stones, furnished with
wenches of excelling beauty, rare wines, and delicate dishes; it
is easily discerned that these are deceivers that accommodate their
promises to our sensuality, to attract and allure us by hopes and
opinions suitable to our mortal appetites. And yet some amongst us
are fallen into the like error, promising to themselves after the
resurrection a terrestrial and temporal life, accompanied with all sorts
of worldly conveniences and pleasures. Can we believe that Plato, he
who had such heavenly conceptions, and was so well acquainted with the
Divinity as thence to derive the name of the Divine Plato, ever thought
that the poor creature, man, had any thing in him applicable to that
incomprehensible power? and that he believed that the weak holds we are
able to take were capable, or the force of our understanding sufficient,
to participate of beatitude or eternal pains? We should then tell him
from human reason: "If the pleasures thou dost promise us in the other
life are of the same kind that I have enjoyed here below, this has
nothing in common with infinity; though all my five natural senses
should be even loaded with pleasure, and my soul full of all the
contentment it could hope or desire, we know what all this amounts to,
all this would be nothing; if there be any thing of mine there, there is
nothing divine; if this be no more than what may belong to our present
condition, it cannot be of any value. All contentment of mortals is
mortal. Even the knowledge of our parents, children, and friends,
if that can affect and delight us in the other world, if that still
continues a satisfaction to us there, we still remain in earthly and
finite conveniences. We cannot as we ought conceive the greatness of
these high and divine promises, if we could in any sort conceive them;
to have a worthy imagination of them we must imagine them unimaginable,
inexplicable, and incomprehensible, and absolutely another thing than
those of our miserable experience." "Eye hath not seen," saith St. Paul,
"nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things
that God hath prepared for them that love him." And if, to render us
capable, our being were reformed and changed (as thou, Plato, sayest, by
thy purifications), it ought to be so extreme and total a change, that
by physical doctrine it be no more us;--
Hector erat tunc cum bello certabat; at ille
Tractus ab Æmonio non erat Hector eqao;
He Hector was whilst he could fight, but when
Dragg'd by Achilles' steeds, no Hector then;
it must be something else that must receive these recompenses:--
Quod mutatur... dissolvitur; interit ergo;
Trajiciuntur enim partes, atque ordine migrant.
"Things changed dissolved are, and therefore die;
Their parts are mix'd, and from their order fly."
For in Pythagoras's metempsychosis, and the change of habitation that
he imagined in souls, can we believe that the lion, in whom the soul of
Cæsar is enclosed, does espouse Cæsar's passions, or that the lion
is he? For if it was still Cæsar, they would be in the right who,
controverting this opinion with Plato, reproach him that the son
might be seen to ride his mother transformed into a mule, and the like
absurdities. And can we believe that in the mutations that are made of
the bodies of animals into others of the same kind, the new comers are
not other than their predecessors? From the ashes of a phoenix, a worm,
they say, is engendered, and from that another phoenix; who can
imagine that this second phoenix is no other than the first? We see our
silk-worms, as it were, die and wither; and from this withered body a
butterfly is produced; and from that another worm; how ridiculous would
it be to imagine that this was still the first! That which once has
ceased to be is no more:--
Nec, si materiam nostram collegerit ætas
Post obitum, rursumque redegerit, ut sita nunc est,
Atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitæ,
Pertineat quidquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum,
Interrupta semel cum sit repetentia nostra.
"Neither tho' time should gather and restore
Our matter to the form it was before,
And give again new light to see withal,
Would that new figure us concern at all;
Or we again ever the same be seen,
Our being having interrupted been."
And, Plato, when thou sayest in another place that it shall be the
spiritual part of man that will be concerned in the fruition of the
recompense of another life, thou tellest us a thing wherein there is as
little appearance of truth:--
Scilicet, avolsis radicibus, ut nequit ullam
Dispicere ipsa oculus rem, seorsum corpore toto;
"No more than eyes once from their optics torn,
Can ever after any thing discern;"
for, by this account, it would no more be man, nor consequently us,
who would be concerned in this enjoyment; for we are composed of two
principal essential parts, the separation of which is the death and ruin
of our being:--
Inter enim jecta est vital pausa, vageque
Deerrarunt passim motus ab sensibus omnes;
"When once that pause of life is come between,
'Tis just the same as we had never been;"
we cannot say that the man suffers when the worms feed upon his members,
and that the earth consumes them:--
Et nihil hoc ad nos, qui coltu conjugioque
Corporis atque animæ consistimus uniter apti.
"What's that to us? for we are only we,
While soul and body in one frame agree."
Moreover, upon what foundation of their justice can the gods take notice
of or reward man after his death and virtuous actions, since it was
themselves that put them in the way and mind to do them? And why should
they be offended at or punish him for wicked ones, since themselves have
created in him so frail a condition, and when, with one glance of their
will, they might prevent him from falling? Might not Epicurus, with
great colour of human reason, object this to Plato, did he not often
save himself with this sentence: "That it is impossible to establish any
thing certain of the immortal nature by the mortal?" She does nothing
but err throughout, but especially when she meddles with divine things.
Who does more evidently perceive this than we? For although we have
given her certain and infallible principles; and though we have
enlightened her steps with the sacred lamp of truth that it has pleased
God to communicate to us; we daily see, nevertheless, that if she swerve
never so little from the ordinary path; and that she stray from, or
wander out of the way set out and beaten by the church, how soon she
loses, confounds and fetters herself, tumbling and floating in this
vast, turbulent, and waving sea of human opinions, without restraint,
and without any determinate end; so soon as she loses that great and
common road, she enters into a labyrinth of a thousand several paths.
Man cannot be any thing but what he is, nor imagine beyond the reach of
his capacity. "Tis a greater presumption," says Plutarch, "in them who
are but men to attempt to speak and discourse of the gods and demi-gods
than it is in a man utterly ignorant of music to give an opinion of
singing; or in a man who never saw a camp to dispute about arms and
martial affairs, presuming by some light conjecture to understand the
effects of an art he is totally a stranger to." Antiquity, I believe,
thought to put a compliment upon, and to add something to, the divine
grandeur in assimilating it to man, investing it with his faculties,
and adorning it with his ugly humours and most shameful necessities;
offering it our aliments to eat, presenting it with our dances,
mummeries, and farces, to divert it; with our vestments to cover it,
and our houses to inhabit, coaxing it with the odour of incense and the
sounds of music, with festoons and nosegays; and to accommodate it to
our vicious passions, flattering its justice with inhuman vengeance, and
with the ruin and dissipation of things by it created and preserved as
Tiberius Sempronius, who burnt the rich spoils and arms he had gained
from the enemy in Sardinia for a sacrifice to Vulcan; and Paulus
Æmilius, those of Macedonia, to Mars and Minerva; and Alexander,
arriving at the Indian Ocean, threw several great vessels of gold into
the sea, in honour of Thetes; and moreover loading her altars with
a slaughter not of innocent beasts only, but of men also, as several
nations, and ours among the rest, were commonly used to do; and I
believe there is no nation under the sun that has not done the same:--
Sulmone creatos
Quatuor hîc juvenes, totidem quos educat Ufens,
Viventes rapit, inferias quos immolet umbris.
"Four sons of Sulmo, four whom Ufens bred,
He took in flight, and living victims led,
To please the ghost of Pallas, and expire
In sacrifice before his fun'ral pyre."
The Getæ hold themselves to be immortal, and that their death is nothing
but a journey to their god Zamolxis. Every five years they dispatch some
one among them to him, to entreat of him such necessaries as they stand
in need of. This envoy is chosen by lot, and the form of dispatching
him, after he has been instructed by word of mouth what he is to
deliver, is that of the assistants, three hold up as many javelins, upon
which the rest throw his body with all their force. If he happen to
be wounded in a mortal part, and that he immediately dies, 'tis held a
certain argument of divine favour; but if he escapes, he is looked upon
as a wicked and execrable wretch, and another is dismissed after the
same manner in his stead. Amestris, the mother of Xerxes, being grown
old, caused at once fourteen young men, of the best families of Persia,
to be buried alive, according to the religion of the country, to gratify
some infernal deity. And even to this day the idols of Themixtitan
are cemented with the blood of little children, and they delight in no
sacrifice but of these pure and infantine souls; a justice thirsty of
innocent blood:--
Tantum religio potuit suadere maloram.
"Such impious use was of religion made,
So many demon acts it could persuade."
The Carthaginians immolated their own children to Saturn; and those who
had none of their own bought of others, the father and mother being in
the mean time obliged to assist at the ceremony with a gay and contented
countenance.
It was a strange fancy to think to gratify the divine bounty with our
afflictions; like the Lacedemonians, who regaled their Diana with the
tormenting of young boys, whom they caused to be whipped for her sake,
very often to death. It was a savage humour to imagine to gratify the
architect by the subversion of his building, and to think to take away
the punishment due to the guilty by punishing the innocent; and that
poor Iphigenia, at the port of Aulis, should by her death and immolation
acquit, towards God, the whole army of the Greeks from all the crimes
they had committed;
Et casta inceste, nubendi tempore in ipso,
Hostia concideret mactatu mosta parentis;
"That the chaste virgin in her nuptial band
Should die by an unnat'ral father's hand;"
and that the two noble and generous souls of the two Decii, the father
and the son, to incline the favour of the gods to be propitious to the
affairs of Rome, should throw themselves headlong into the thickest of
the enemy: _Quo fuit tanta deorum iniquitas, ut placari populo Romano
non possent, nisi tales viri occidissent?_ "How great an injustice in
the gods was it that they could not be reconciled to the people of Rome
unless such men perished!" To which may be added, that it is not for the
criminal to cause himself to be scourged according to his own measure
nor at his own time, but that it purely belongs to the judge, who
considers nothing as chastisements but the penalty that he appoints, and
cannot call that punishment which proceeds from the consent of him that
suffers. The divine vengeance presupposes an absolute dissent in us,
both for its justice and for our own penalty. And therefore it was a
ridiculous humour of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, who, to interrupt the
continued course of his good fortune, and to balance it, went and threw
the dearest and most precious jewel he had into the sea, believing
that by this voluntary and antedated mishap he bribed and satisfied
the revolution and vicissitude of fortune; and she, to mock his folly,
ordered it so that the same jewel came again into his hands, found
in the belly of a fish. And then to what end were those tearings and
dismemberments of the Corybantes, the Menades, and, in our times, of the
Mahometans, who slash their faces, bosoms, and limbs, to gratify their
prophet; seeing that the offence lies in the will, not in the breast,
eyes, genitals, roundness of form, the shoulders, or the throat?
_Tantus est perturbâto mentis, et sedibus suis pilso, furor, ut sic dii
placentur, quemadmodum ne homines quidem soviunt._ "So great is the
fury and madness of troubled minds when once displaced from the seat of
reason, as if the gods should be appeased with what even men are not so
cruel as to approve." The use of this natural contexture has not only
respect to us, but also to the service of God and other men; 'tis as
unjust for us voluntarily to wound or hurt it as to kill ourselves upon
any pretence whatever; it seems to be great cowardice and treason to
exercise cruelty upon, and to destroy, the functions of the body that
are stupid and servile, to spare the soul the solicitude of governing
them according to reason: _Ubi iratos deos timent, qui sic propitios
habere merentur? In regiæ libidinis voluptatem castrati sunt quidam;
sed nemo sibi, ne vir esset, jubente domino, mantis intulit._ "Where are
they so afraid of the anger of the gods as to merit their favour at that
rate? Some, indeed, have been made eunuchs for the lust of princes: but
no man at his master's command has put his own hand to unman himself."
So did they fill their religion with several ill effects:--
Sæpius olim Religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta.
"In elder times Religion did commit most fearful crimes."
Now nothing of ours can in any sort be compared or likened unto
the divine nature, which will not blemish and stain it with much
imperfection.
How can that infinite beauty, power, and goodness, admit of any
correspondence or similitude to such abject things as we are, without
extreme wrong and manifest dishonour to his divine greatness? _Infirmum
dei fortius est hominibs; et stultum dei sapientius est hominibus._ "For
the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is
stronger than men." Stilpo, the philosopher, being asked, "Whether
the gods were delighted with our adorations and sacrifices?"--"You are
indiscreet," answered he; "let us withdraw apart, if you would talk of
such things." Nevertheless, we prescribe him bounds, we keep his power
besieged by our reasons (I call our ravings and dreams reason, with the
dispensation of philosophy, which says, "That the wicked man, and even
the fool, go mad by reason, but a particular form of reason"), we
would subject him to the vain and feeble appearances of our
understandings,--him who has made both us and our knowledge. Because
that nothing is made of nothing, God therefore could not make the world
without matter. What! has God put into our hands the keys and most
secret springs of his power? Is he obliged not to exceed the limits of
our knowledge? Put the case, O man! that thou hast been able here to
mark some footsteps of his effects; dost thou therefore think that he
has employed all he can, and has crowded all his forms and ideas in this
work? Thou seest nothing but the order and revolution of this little
cave in which thou art lodged, if, indeed, thou dost see so much;
whereas his divinity has an infinite jurisdiction beyond. This part is
nothing in comparison of the whole:--
Omnia cum colo, terràque, manque,
Nil sunt ad summam summal totius omnem.
"The earth, the sea, and skies, from pole to pole,
Are small, nay, nothing to the mighty whole."
'Tis a municipal law that thou allegest, thou knowest not what is
universal Tie thyself to that to which thou art subject, but not him; he
is not of thy brotherhood, thy fellow-citizen, or companion. If he has
in some sort communicated himself unto thee, 'tis not to debase himself
unto thy littleness, nor to make thee comptroller of his power; the
human body cannot fly to the clouds; rules are for thee. The sun runs
every day his ordinary course; the bounds of the sea and the earth
cannot be confounded; the water is unstable and without firmness; a
wall, unless it be broken, is impenetrable to a solid body; a man cannot
preserve his life in the flames; he cannot be both in heaven and upon
earth, and corporally in a thousand places at once. 'Tis for thee that
he has made these rules; 'tis thee that they concern; he has manifested
to Christians that he has enfranchised himself from them all when it
pleased him. And, in truth, why, almighty as he is, should he have
limited his power within any certain bounds? In favour of whom should he
have renounced his privilege? Thy reason has in no other thing more of
likelihood and foundation than in that wherein it persuades thee that
there is a plurality of worlds:--
Terramque et solem, lunam, mare, estera quo rant,
Non esse unica, sed numéro magis innumerali.
"That earth, sun, moon, sea, and the rest that are,
Not single, but innumerable were."
The most eminent minds of elder times believed it; and some of this
age of ours, compelled by the appearances of human reason, do the same;
forasmuch as in this fabric that we behold there is nothing single and
one,
Cum in summà res nulla sit una,
Unica quo gignatur, et unica solaque crescat;
"Since nothing's single in this mighty place,
That can alone beget, alone increase;"
and that all the kinds are multiplied in some number; by which it seems
not to be likely that God should have made this work only without a
companion; and that the matter of this form should have been totally
drained in this individual.
Quare etiam atque etiam tales fateare necesse est
Esse alios alibi congressus materiali;
Qualis hic est, avido complexu quem tenet æther.
"Wherefore 'tis necessary to confess
That there must elsewhere be the like congress
Of the like matter, which the airy space
Holds fast within its infinite embrace."
Especially if it be a living creature, which its motions render so
credible that Plato affirms it, and that many of our people do either
confirm, or dare not deny it; no more than that ancient opinion that
the heavens, the stars, and other members of the world, are creatures
composed of body and soul, mortal in respect of their composition,
but immortal by the determination of the Creator. Now if there be many
worlds, as Democritus, Epicurus, and almost all philosophy has believed,
what do we know that the principles and rules of this of ours in like
manner concern the rest? They may peradventure have another form and
another polity. Epicurus supposes them either like or unlike. We see
in this world an infinite difference and variety, only by distance of
places; neither com, wine, nor any of our animals are to be seen in that
new comer of the world discovered by our fathers; 'tis all there another
thing; and in times past, do but consider in how many parts of the world
they had no knowledge either of Bacchus or Ceres. If Pliny and Herodotus
are to be believed, there are in certain places kinds of men very little
resembling us, mongrel and ambiguous forms, betwixt the human and brutal
natures; there are countries where men are bom without heads, having
their mouth and eyes in their breast; where they are all hermaphrodites;
where they go on all four; where they have but one eye in the forehead,
and a head more like a dog than like ours; where they are half fish the
lower part, and live in the water; where the women bear at five years
old, and live but eight; where the head and the skin of the forehead is
so hard that a sword will not touch it, but rebounds again; where men
have no beards; nations that know not the use of fire; others that eject
seed of a black colour. What shall we say of those that naturally change
themselves into wolves, colts, and then into men again? And if it be
true, as Plutarch says, that in some place of the Indies there are men
without mouths, who nourish themselves with the smell of certain odours,
how many of our descriptions are false? He is no longer risible, nor,
perhaps, capable of reason and society. The disposition and cause of our
internal composition would then for the most part be to no purpose, and
of no use.
Moreover, how many things are there in our own knowledge that oppose
those fine rules we have cut out for and prescribe to nature? And yet we
must undertake to circumscribe thereto God himself! How many things do
we call miraculous, and contrary to nature? This is done by every nation
and by every man, according to the proportion of his ignorance. How many
occult properties and quintessences do we daily discover? For, for us
to go "according to nature," is no more but to go "according to our
understanding," as far as that is able to follow, and as far as we
are able to see into it; all beyond that is, forsooth, monstrous and
irregular. Now, by this account, all things shall be monstrous to the
wisest and most understanding men; for human reason has persuaded them
that there was no manner of ground nor foundation, not so much as to be
assured that snow is white, and Anaxagoras affirmed it to be black; if
there be any thing, or if there be nothing; if there be knowledge
or ignorance, which Metrodorus of Chios denied that man was able to
determine; or whether we live, as Euripides doubts whether the life we
live is life, or whether that we call death be not life, [--Greek--]
and not without some appearance. For why do we derive the title of being
from this instant, which is but a flash in the infinite course of an
eternal night, and so short an interruption of our perpetual and natural
condition, death possessing all the before and after this moment, and
also a good part of the moment itself. Others swear there is no motion
at all, as followers of Melissus, and that nothing stirs. For if there
be but one, neither can that spherical motion be of any use to him,
nor motion from one place to another, as Plato proves: "That there is
neither generation nor corruption in nature." Protagoras says that there
is nothing in nature but doubt; that a man may equally dispute of all
things; and even of this, whether a man can equally dispute of all
things; Nausiphanes, that of things which seem to be, nothing is
more than it is not; that there is nothing certain but uncertainty;
Parmenides, that of that which seems, there is no one thing in general;
that there is but one thing; Zeno, that one same is not, and that there
is nothing; if there were one thing, it would either be in another or in
itself; if it be in another, they are two; if it be in itself, they are
yet two; the comprehending, and the comprehended. According to these
doctrines the nature of things is no other than a shadow, either false
or vain.
This way of speaking in a Christian man has ever seemed to me very
indiscreet and irreverent. "God cannot die; God cannot contradict
himself; God cannot do this or that." I do not like to have the divine
power so limited by the laws of men's mouths; and the idea which
presents itself to us in those propositions ought to be more religiously
and reverently expressed.
Our speaking has its failings and defects, as well as all the rest. Most
of the occasions of disturbance in the world are grammatical ones; our
suits only spring from disputes as to the interpretation of laws; and
most wars proceed from the inability of ministers clearly to express the
conventions and treaties of amity of princes. How many quarrels, and
of how great importance, has the doubt of the meaning of this syllable,
_hoc_,* created in the world? Let us take the clearest conclusion that
logic itself
* Montaigne here refers to the controversies between
the Catholics and Protestants about transubstantiation.
presents us withal; if you say, "It is fine weather," and that you
say true, it is then fine weather. Is not this a very certain form of
speaking? And yet it will deceive us; that it will do so, let us follow
the example: If you say, "I lie," if you say true, you do lie. The art,
the reason, and force of the conclusion of this, are the same with the
other, and yet we are gravelled. The Pyrrhonian philosophers, I see,
cannot express their general conception in any kind of speaking; for
they would require a new language on purpose; ours is all formed of
affirmative propositions, which are totally antarctic to them; insomuch
that when they say "I doubt," they are presently taken by the throat, to
make them confess that at least they know and are assured that they do
doubt. By which means they have been compelled to shelter themselves
under this medical comparison, without which their humour would be
inexplicable: when they pronounce, "I know not," or, "I doubt," they say
that this proposition carries off itself with the rest, no more nor less
than rhubarb, that drives out the ill humours, and carries itself
off with them. This fancy will be more certainly understood by
interrogation: "What do I know?" as I bear it with the emblem of a
balance.
See what use they make of this irreverent way of speaking; in the
present disputes about our religion, if you press its adversaries too
hard, they will roundly tell you, "that it is not in the power of God to
make it so, that his body should be in paradise and upon earth, and in
several places at once." And see, too, what advantage the old scoffer
made of this. "At least," says he, "it is no little consolation to man
to see that God cannot do all things; for he cannot kill himself, though
he would; which is the greatest privilege we have in our condition; he
cannot make mortal immortal, nor revive the dead; nor make it so, that
he who has lived has not; nor that he who has had honours has not had
them; having no other right to the past than that of oblivion." And that
the comparison of man to God may yet be made out by jocose examples: "He
cannot order it so," says he, "that twice ten shall not be twenty."
This is what he says, and what a Christian ought to take heed shall not
escape his lips. Whereas, on the contrary, it seems as if men studied
this foolish daring of language, to reduce God to their own measure:--
Cras vel atrâ Nube polum, Pater, occupato,
Vel sole puro; non tamen irritum
Quodcumque retro est efficiet, neque
Diffinget infectumque reddet
Quod fugiens semel hora vexit.
"To-morrow, let it shine or rain,
Yet cannot this the past make vain:
Nor uncreate and render void
That which was yesterday enjoyed."
When we say that the infinity of ages, as well past as to come, are but
one instant with God; that his goodness, wisdom, and power are the same
with his essence; our mouths speak it, but our understandings apprehend
it not; and yet, such is our vain opinion of ourselves, that we must
make the Divinity to pass through our sieve; and thence proceed all the
dreams and errors with which the world abounds, whilst we reduce and
weigh in our balance a thing so far above our poise. _Mirum quo procédat
improbitas cordis humani, parvulo aliquo intritata successu._ "'Tis
wonderful to what the wickedness of man's heart will proceed, if
elevated with the least success." How magisterially and insolently does
Epicurus reprove the Stoics, for maintaining that the truly good and
happy being appertained only to God, and that the wise man had nothing
but a shadow and resemblance of it! How temerariously have they bound
God to destiny (a thing which, by my consent, none that bears the name
of a Christian shall ever do again)! and Thales, Plato, and Pythagoras
have enslaved him to necessity. This arrogance of attempting to discover
God with our eyes has been the cause that an eminent person among us has
attributed to the Divinity a corporal form; and is the reason of what
happens to us every day, of attributing to God important events, by a
particular assignment. Because they weigh with us, they conclude that
they also weigh with him, and that he has a more intent and vigilant
regard to them than to others of less moment to us or of ordinary
course: _Magna Dii curant, parva negligunt:_ "The gods are concerned at
great matters, but slight the small." Listen to him; he will clear this
to you by his reason: _Nec in regnis quidem reges omnia minima curant:_
"Neither indeed do kings in their administration take notice of all the
least concerns." As if to that King of kings it were more or less
to subvert a kingdom, or to move the leaf of a tree; or as if his
providence acted after another manner in inclining the event of a battle
than in the leap of a flea. The hand of his government is laid upon
every thing after the same manner, with the same power and order; our
interest does nothing towards it; our inclinations and measures sway
nothing with him. _Deus ita artifex magnus in magnis, ut minor non sit
in parvis:_ "God is so great an artificer in great things, that he is no
less in the least" Our arrogancy sets this blasphemous comparison
ever before us. Because our employments are a burden to us, Strato has
courteously been pleased to exempt the gods from all offices, as their
priests are; he makes nature produce and support all things; and
with her weights and motions make up the several parts of the world,
discharging human nature from the awe of divine judgments: _Quod beatum
æterumque sit, id nec habere negotii quicquam, nec exhibere alteri:_
"What is blessed and eternal has neither any business itself nor gives
any to another." Nature will that in like things there should be a like
relation. The infinite number of mortals, therefore, concludes a
like number of immortals; the infinite things that kill and destroy
presupposes as many that preserve and profit. As the souls of the
gods, without tongue, eye, or ear, do every one of them feel amongst
themselves what the other feels, and judge our thoughts; so the souls of
men, when at liberty and loosed from the body, either by sleep or some
ecstacy, divine, foretell, and see things, which, whilst joined to the
body, they could not see. "Men," says St. Paul, "professing themselves
to be wise, they become fools; and change the glory of the uncorruptible
God into an image made like corruptible man." Do but take notice of the
juggling in the ancient deifications. After the great and stately pomp
of the funeral, so soon as the fire began to mount to the top of the
pyramid, and to catch hold of the couch where the body lay, they at the
same time turned out an eagle, which flying upward, signified that the
soul went into Paradise. We have a thousand medals, and particularly
of the worthy Faustina, where this eagle is represented carrying these
deified souls to heaven with their heels upwards. 'Tis pity that we
should fool ourselves with our own fopperies and inventions,
Quod finxere, timent,
"They fear their own inventions,"
like children who are frighted with the same face of their playfellow,
that they themselves have smeared and smutted. _Quasi quicquam
infelicius sit homine, cui sua figmenta dominantur:_
"As if any thing could be more unhappy than man, who is insulted over by
his own imagination." 'Tis far from honouring him who made us, to honour
him that we have made. Augustus had more temples than Jupiter, served
with as much religion and belief of miracles. The Thracians, in return
of the benefits they had received from Agesilaus, came to bring him word
that they had canonized him: "Has your nation," said he to them, "the
power to make gods of whom they please? Pray first deify some one
amongst yourselves, and when I shall see what advantage he has by it,
I will thank you for your offer." Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot
make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens. Hear Trismegistus
in praise of our sufficiency: "Of all the wonderful things, it surmounts
all wonder that man could find out the divine nature and make it." And
take here the arguments of the school of philosophy itself:--
Nosse cui divos et coli munina soli,
Aut soli nescire, datum.
"To whom to know the deities of heaven,
Or know he knows them not, alone 'tis given."
"If there is a God, he is a living creature; if he be a living creature,
he has sense; and if he has sense, he is subject to corruption. If he
be without a body he is without a soul, and consequently without action;
and if he has a body, it is perishable." Is not here a triumph? we
are incapable of having made the world; there must then be some more
excellent nature that has put a hand to the work. It were a foolish and
ridiculous arrogance to esteem ourselves the most perfect thing of the
universe. There must then be something that is better, and that must be
God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not
know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for
rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial
palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some
possessor, who is much greater than we? Is not the most supreme always
the most worthy? but we are in the lowest form. Nothing without a soul
and without reason can produce a living creature capable of reason. The
world produces us, the world then has soul and reason. Every part of us
is less than we. We are part of the world, the world therefore is endued
with wisdom and reason, and that more abundantly than we. 'Tis a fine
thing to have a great government; the government of the world then
appertains to some happy nature. The stars do us no harm; they are then
full of goodness. We have need of nourishment; then so have the gods
also, and feed upon the vapours of the earth. Worldly goods are not
goods to God; therefore they are not goods to us; offending and being
offended are equally testimonies of imbecility; 'tis therefore folly to
fear God. God is good by his nature; man by his industry, which is more.
The divine and human wisdom have no other distinction, but that the
first is eternal; but duration is no accession to wisdom, therefore we
are companions. We have life, reason, and liberty; we esteem goodness,
charity, and justice; these qualities are then in him. In conclusion,
building and destroying, the conditions of the Divinity, are forged by
man, according as they relate to himself. What a pattern, and what a
model! let us stretch, let us raise and swell human qualities as much as
we please; puff up thyself, poor man, yet more and more, and more:--
Non, si tu ruperis, inquit.
"Not if thou burst," said he.
_Profecto non Deum, quern cogitare non possunt, sed semetip pro illo
cogitantes, non ilium, sed seipsos, non illi, sed sibi comparant?_
"Certainly they do not imagine God, whom they cannot imagine; but
they imagine themselves in his stead; they do not compare him, but
themselves, not to him, but to themselves." In natural things the
effects do but half relate to their causes. What's this to the purpose?
His condition is above the order of nature, too elevated, too remote,
and too mighty, to permit itself to be bound and fettered by our
conclusions. 'Tis not through ourselves that we arrive at that place;
our ways lie too low. We are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis
than at the bottom of the sea; take the distance with your astrolabe.
They debase God even to the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times,
and so many generations. Paulina, the wife of Satuminus, a matron of
great reputation at Rome, thinking she lay with the god Serapis, found
herself in the arms of an amoroso of hers, through the panderism of the
priests of his temple. Varro, the most subtle and most learned of all
the Latin authors, in his book of theology, writes, that the sexton of
Hercules's temple, throwing dice with one hand for himself, and with the
other for Hercules, played after that manner with him for a supper and
a wench; if he won, at the expense of the offerings; if he lost, at his
own. The sexton lost, and paid the supper and the wench. Her name was
Laurentina, who saw by night this god in her arms, who moreover told
her, that the first she met the next day, should give her a heavenly
reward; which proved to be Taruncius, a rich young man, who took her
home to his house, and in time left her his inheritrix. She, in her
turn, thinking to do a thing that would be pleasing to the god, left the
people of Rome heirs to her; and therefore had divine honours attributed
to her. As if it had not been sufficient that Plato was originally
descended from the gods by a double line, and that he had Neptune for
the common father of his race, it was certainly believed at Athens, that
Aristo, having a mind to enjoy the fair Perictione, could not, and
was warned by the god Apollo, in a dream, to leave her unpolluted and
untouched, till she should first be brought to bed. These were the
father and mother of Plato. How many ridiculous stories are there of
like cuckoldings, committed by the gods against poor mortal men! And how
many husbands injuriously scandaled in favour of the children! In the
Mahometan religion there are Merlins enough found by the belief of the
people; that is to say, children without fathers, spiritual, divinely
conceived in the wombs of virgins, and carry names that signify so much
in their language.
We are to observe that to every thing nothing is more dear and estimable
than its being (the lion, the eagle the dolphin, prize nothing above
their own kind); and that every thing assimilates the qualities of all
other things to its own proper qualities, which we may indeed extend
or contract, but that's all; for beyond that relation and principle our
imagination cannot go, can guess at nothing else, nor possibly go out
thence, nor stretch beyond it; whence spring these ancient conclusions:
of all forms the most beautiful is that of man; therefore God must be
of that form. No one can be happy without virtue, nor virtue be without
reason, and reason cannot inhabit anywhere but in a human shape; God is
therefore clothed in a human figure. _Ita est informatum et anticipatum
mentibus nostris, ut homini, quum de Deo cogitet, forma occurrat
hu-mana._ "It is so imprinted in our minds, and the fancy is so
prepossessed with it, that when a man thinks of God, a human figure ever
presents itself to the imagination." Therefore it was that Xenophanes
pleasantly said, "That if beasts frame any gods to themselves, as 'tis
likely they do, they make them certainly such as themselves are, and
glorify themselves in it, as we do. For why may not a goose say thus;
"All the parts of the universe I have an interest in; the earth serves
me to walk upon; the sun to light me; the stars have their influence
upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters;
there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me;
I am the darling of nature! Is it not man that keeps, lodges, and serves
me? 'Tis for me that he both sows and grinds; if he eats me he does the
same by his fellow-men, and so do I the worms that kill and devour him."
As much might be said by a crane, and with greater confidence, upon the
account of the liberty of his flight, and the possession of that high
and beautiful region. _Tam blanda conciliatrix, et tam sui est lena ipsa
natura._ "So flattering and wheedling a bawd is nature to herself."
Now by the same consequence, the destinies are then for us; for us the
world; it shines it thunders for us; creator and creatures, all are for
us; ''tis the mark and point to which the universality of things aims.
Look into the records that philosophy has kept for two thousand years
and more, of the affairs of heaven; the gods all that while have
neither acted nor spoken but for man. She does not allow them any other
consultation or occupation. See them here against us in war:--
Domitosque Herculeâ manu
Telluris juvenes, unde periculum
Fulgens contre mu it domus
Saturai veteris.
"The brawny sons of earth, subdu'd by hand
Of Hercules on the Phlegræan strand,
Where the rude shock did such an uproar make,
As made old Saturn's sparkling palace shake."
And here you shall see them participate of our troubles, to make a
return for our having so often shared in theirs:--
Neptunus muros, magnoque emota tridenti
Fundamenta quatit, totamque à sedibus urbem
Emit: hie Juno Scæas sævissima portas Prima tenet.
"Amidst that smother Neptune holds his place,
Below the walls' foundation drives his mace,
And heaves the city from its solid base.
See where in arms the cruel Juno stands,
Full in the Scæan gate."
The Caunians, jealous of the authority of their own proper gods, armed
themselves on the days of their devotion, and through the whole of their
precincts ran cutting and slashing the air with their swords, by that
means to drive away and banish all foreign gods out of their territory.
Their powers are limited according that the plague, that the scurf, that
the phthisic; one cures one sort of itch, another another: _Adeo minimis
etiam rebus prava religio inserit Deos?_ "At such a rate does false
religion create gods for the most contemptible uses." This one makes
grapes grow, that onions; this has the presidence over lechery, that
over merchandise; for every sort of artisan a god; this has his province
and reputation in the east; that his in the west:--
"Here lay her armour, here her chariot stood."
O sancte Apollo, qui umbilicum certum terrarum obtines!
"O sacred Phoebus, who with glorious ray,
From the earth's centre, dost thy light display."
Pallada Cecropidæ, Minola Creta Dianam,
Vulcanum tellus Hypsipylea colit,
Junonem Sparte, Pelopeladesque Mycenæ;
Pinigerum Fauni Mænalis ora caput;
Mars Latio venerandus.
"Th' Athenians Pallas, Cynthia Crete adore,
Vulcan is worshipped on the Lemnian shore.
Proud Juno's altars are by Spartans fed,
Th' Arcadians worship Faunus, and 'tis said
To Mars, by Italy, is homage paid."
to our necessity; this cures horses, that men,
Hic illius arma, Hic currus fuit.
This has only one town or family in his possession; that lives alone;
that in company, either voluntary or upon necessity:--
Junctaque sunt magno templa nepotis avo.
"And temples to the nephew joined are,
To those were reared to the great-grandfather."
In here are some so wretched and mean (for the number amounts to six and
thirty thousand) that they must pack five or six together, to produce
one ear of corn, and thence take their several names; three to a
door--that of the plank, that of the hinge, and that of the threshold.
Four to a child--protectors of his swathing-clouts, his drink, meat, and
sucking. Some certain, some uncertain and doubtful, and some that are
not yet entered Paradise:--
Quos, quoniam coli nondum dignamur honore,
Quas dedimus certè terras habitare sinanras:
"Whom, since we yet not worthy think of heaven,
We suffer to possess the earth we've given."
There are amongst them physicians, poets, and civilians. Some of a
mean betwixt the divine and human nature; mediators betwixt God and us,
adorned with a certain second and diminutive sort of adoration; infinite
in titles and offices; some good; others ill; some old and decrepit,
and some that are mortal. For Chrysippus was of opinion that in the last
conflagration of the world all the gods were to die but Jupiter. Man
makes a thousand pretty societies betwixt God and him; is he not his
countryman?
Jovis incunabula Creten.
"Crete, the cradle of Jupiter."
And this is the excuse that, upon consideration of this subject,
Scævola, a high priest, and Varro, a great theologian in their times,
make us: "That it is necessary that the people should be ignorant of
many things that are true, and believe many things that are false."
_Quum veritatem qua liberetur inquirat credatur ei expedire quod
fallitur._ "Seeing he inquires into the truth, by which he would be
made free, 'tis fit he should be deceived." Human eyes cannot perceive
things but by the forms they know; and we do not remember what a leap
miserable Phæton took for attempting to guide his father's horses with
a mortal hand. The mind of man falls into as great a depth, and is after
the same manner bruised and shattered by his own rashness. If you ask of
philosophy of what matter the heavens and the sun are? what answer will
she return, if not that it is iron, or, with Anaxagoras, stone, or some
other matter that she makes use of? If a man inquire of Zeno what nature
is? "A fire," says he, "an artisan, proper for generation, and regularly
proceeding." Archimedes, master of that science which attributes to
itself the precedency before all others for truth and certainty;
"the sun," says he, "is a god of red-hot iron." Was not this a fine
imagination, extracted from the inevitable necessity of geometrical
demonstrations? Yet not so inevitable and useful but that Socrates
thought it was enough to know so much of geometry only as to measure the
land a man bought or sold; and that Polyænus, who had been a great
and famous doctor in it, despised it, as full of falsity and manifest
vanity, after he had once tasted the delicate fruits of the lozelly
gardens of Epicurus. Socrates in Xenophon, concerning this affair,
says of Anaxagoras, reputed by antiquity learned above all others in
celestial and divine matters, "That he had cracked his brain, as all
other men do who too immoderately search into knowledges which nothing
belong to them:" when he made the sun to be a burning stone, he did not
consider that a stone does not shine in the fire; and, which is worse,
that it will there consume; and in making the sun and fire one, that
fire does not turn the complexions black in shining upon them; that
we are able to look fixedly upon fire; and that fire kills herbs and
plants. 'Tis Socrates's opinion, and mine too, that the best judging
of heaven is not to judge of it at all. Plato having occasion, in his
_Timous_, to speak of the demons, "This undertaking," says he, "exceeds
my ability." We are therefore to believe those ancients who said they
were begotten by them; 'tis against all reason to refuse a man's faith
to the children of the gods, though what they say should not be proved
by any necessary or probable reasons; seeing they engage to speak of
domestic and familiar things.
Let us see if we have a little more light in the knowledge of human and
natural things. Is it not a ridiculous attempt for us to forge for those
to whom, by our own confession, our knowledge is not able to attain,
another body, and to lend a false form of our own invention; as is
manifest in this motion of the planets; to which, seeing our wits
cannot possibly arrive, nor conceive their natural conduct, we lend them
material, heavy, and substantial springs of our own by which to move:--
Temo aureus, aurea summæ
Curvatura rotæ, radiorum argenteus ordo.
"Gold was the axle, and the beam was gold;
The wheels with silver spokes on golden circles roll'd."
You would say that we had had coachmakers, carpenters, and painters,
that went up on high to make engines of various motions, and to range
the wheelwork and interfacings of the heavenly bodies of differing
colours about the axis of necessity, according to Plato:--
Mundus domus est maxima rerum,
Quam quinque altitonæ fragmine zonæ
Cingunt, per quam limbus pictus bis sex signis
Stellimicantibus, altus in obliquo æthere, lunæ
Bigas acceptat.
"The world's a mansion that doth all things hold,
Which thundering zones, in number five, enfold,
Through which a girdle, painted with twelve signs,
And that with sparkling constellations, shines,
In heaven's arch marks the diurnal course
For the sun's chariot and his fiery horse."
These are all dreams and fanatic follies. Why will not nature please for
once to lay open her bosom to us, and plainly discover to us the means
and conduct of her movements, and prepare our eyes to see them? Good
God, what abuse, what mistakes should we discover in our poor science!
I am mistaken if that weak knowledge of ours holds any one thing as it
really is, and I shall depart hence more ignorant of all other things
than my own ignorance.
Have I not read in Plato this divine saying, that "nature is nothing
but enigmatic poesy!" As if a man might perhaps see a veiled and shady
picture, breaking out here and there with an infinite variety of false
lights to puzzle our conjectures: _Latent ista omnia crassis occullata
et circumfusa tenebris; ut nulla acies humani ingenii tanta sit, quæ
penetrare in coelum, terram intrare, possit._ "All those things lie
concealed and involved in so dark an obscurity that no point of human
wit can be so sharp as to pierce heaven or penetrate the earth." And
certainly philosophy is no other than sophisticated poetry. Whence do
the ancient writers extract their authorities but from the poets? and
the first of them were poets themselves, and writ accordingly. Plato is
but a poet unripped. Timon calls him, insultingly, "a monstrous forger
of miracles." All superhuman sciences make use of the poetic style. Just
as women make use of teeth of ivory where the natural are wanting, and
instead of their true complexion make one of some artificial matter; as
they stuff themselves out with cotton to appear plump, and in the sight
of every one do paint, patch, and trick up themselves with a false and
borrowed beauty; so does science (and even our law itself has, they say,
legitimate fictions, whereon it builds the truth of its justice);
she gives us in presupposition, and for current pay, things which she
herself informs us were invented; for these _epicycles, eccentrics, and
concentrics_, which astrology makes use of to carry on the motions of
the stars, she gives us for the best she could invent upon that subject;
as also, in all the rest, philosophy presents us not that which really
is, or what she really believes, but what she has contrived with the
greatest and most plausible likelihood of truth, and the quaintest
invention. Plato, upon the discourse of the state of human bodies and
those of beasts, says, "I should know that what I have said is truth,
had I the confirmation of an oracle; but this I will affirm, that what I
have said is the most likely to be true of any thing I could say."
'Tis not to heaven only that art sends her ropes, engines, and wheels;
let us consider a little what she says of us ourselves, and of our
contexture.
There is not more retrogradation, trepidation, accession, recession, and
astonishment, in the stars and celestial bodies, than they have found
out in this poor little human body. In earnest, they have good reason,
upon that very account, to call it the little world, so many tools and
parts have they employed to erect and build it. To assist the motions
they see in man, and the various functions that we find in ourselves, in
how many parts have they divided the soul, in how many places lodged it?
in how many orders have they divided, and to how many stories have they
raised this poor creature, man, besides those that are natural and to
be perceived? And how many offices and vocations have they assigned him?
They make it an imaginary public thing. 'Tis a subject that they hold
and handle; and they have full power granted to them to rip, place,
displace, piece, and stuff it, every one according to his own fancy, and
yet they possess it not They cannot, not in reality only, but even in
dreams, so govern it that there will not be some cadence or sound that
will escape their architecture, as enormous as it is, and botched with
a thousand false and fantastic patches. And it is not reason to excuse
them; for though we are satisfied with painters when they paint heaven,
earth, seas, mountains, and remote islands, that they give us some
slight mark of them, and, as of things unknown, are content with a faint
and obscure description; yet when they come and draw us after life, or
any other creature which is known and familiar to us, we then require of
them a perfect and exact representation of lineaments and colours, and
despise them if they fail in it.
I am very well pleased with the Milesian girl, who observing the
philosopher Thales to be always contemplating the celestial arch, and
to have his eyes ever gazing upward, laid something in his way that he
might stumble over, to put him in mind that it would be time to take up
his thoughts about things that are in the clouds when he had provided
for those that were under his feet. Doubtless she advised him well,
rather to look to himself than to gaze at heaven; for, as Democritus
says, by the mouth of Cicero,--
Quod est ante pedes, nemo spectat: coeli scrutantur plagas.
"No man regards what is under his feet;
They are always prying towards heaven."
But our condition will have it so, that the knowledge of what we have in
hand is as remote from us, and as much above the clouds, as that of the
stars. As Socrates says, in Plato, "That whoever meddles with philosophy
may be reproached as Thales was by the woman, that he sees nothing of
that which is before him. For every philosopher is ignorant of what his
neighbour does; aye, and of what he does himself, and is ignorant of
what they both are, whether beasts or men."
Those people, who find Sebond's arguments too weak, that are ignorant of
nothing, that govern the world, that know all,--
Quæ mare compescant causæ; quid temperet annum;
Stellæ sponte suâ, jussæve, vagentur et errent;
Quid premat obscurum lunæ, quid proférât orbem;
Quid velit et posait rerum concordia discors;
"What governs ocean's tides,
And through the various year the seasons guides;
Whether the stars by their own proper force,
Or foreign power, pursue their wand'ring course;
Why shadows darken the pale queen of night;
Whence she renews her orb and spreads her light;--
What nature's jarring sympathy can mean;"
have they not sometimes in their writings sounded the difficulties they
have met with of knowing their own being? We see very well that the
finger moves, that the foot moves, that some parts assume a voluntary
motion of themselves without our consent, and that others work by our
direction; that one sort of apprehension occasions blushing; another
paleness; such an imagination works upon the spleen only, another upon
the brain; one occasions laughter, another tears; another stupefies and
astonishes all our senses, and arrests the motion of all our members;
at one object the stomach will rise, at another a member that lies
something lower; but how a spiritual impression should make such a
breach into a massy and solid subject, and the nature of the connection
and contexture of these admirable springs and movements, never yet
man knew: _Omnia incerta ratione, et in naturæ majestate abdita._ "All
uncertain in reason, and concealed in the majesty of nature," says
Pliny. And St Augustin, _Modus quo corporibus adhorent spiritus....
omnino minis est, nec comprehendi ab homine potest; et hoc ipse
homo est,_ "The manner whereby souls adhere to bodies is altogether
wonderful, and cannot be conceived by man, and yet this is man." And
yet it is not so much as doubted; for the opinions of men are received
according to the ancient belief, by authority and upon trust, as if
it were religion and law. 'Tis received as gibberish which is commonly
spoken; this truth, with all its clutter of arguments and proofs, is
admitted as a firm and solid body, that is no more to be shaken, no more
to be judged of; on the contrary, every one, according to the best of
his talent, corroborates and fortifies this received belief with the
utmost power of his reason, which is a supple utensil, pliable, and to
be accommodated to any figure; and thus the world comes to be filled
with lies and fopperies. The reason that men doubt of divers things is
that they never examine common impressions; they do not dig to the root,
where the faults and defects lie; they only debate upon the branches;
they do not examine whether such and such a thing be true, but if it
has been so and so understood; it is not inquired into whether Galen has
said any thing to purpose, but whether he has said so or so. In truth it
was very good reason that this curb to the liberty of our judgments and
that tyranny over our opinions, should be extended to the schools and
arts. The god of scholastic knowledge is Aristotle; 'tis irreligion to
question any of his decrees, as it was those of Lucurgus at Sparta;
his doctrine is a magisterial law, which, peradventure, is as false as
another. I do not know why I should not as willingly embrace either the
ideas of Plato, or the atoms of Epicurus, or the plenum or vacuum of
Leucippus and Democritus, or the water of Thales, or the infinity
of nature of Anaximander, or the air of Diogenes, or the numbers and
symmetry of Pythagoras, or the infinity of Parmenides, or the One of
Musæus, or the water and fire of Apollodorus, or the similar parts of
Anaxagoras, or the discord and friendship of Empedocles, or the fire of
Heraclitus, or any other opinion of that infinite confusion of opinions
and determinations, which this fine human reason produces by its
certitude and clearsightedness in every thing it meddles withal, as I
should the opinion of Aristotle upon this subject of the principles
of natural things; which principles he builds of three pieces--matter,
form, and privation. And what can be more vain than to make inanity
itself the cause of the production of things? Privation is a negative;
of what humour could he then make the cause and original of things that
are? And yet that were not to be controverted but for the exercise of
logic; there is nothing disputed therein to bring it into doubt, but to
defend the author of the school from foreign objections; his authority
is the non-ultra, beyond which it is not permitted to inquire.
It is very easy, upon approved foundations, to build whatever we please;
for, according to the law and ordering of this beginning, the other
parts of the structure are easily carried on without any failure. By
this way we find our reason well-grounded, and discourse at a venture;
for our masters prepossess and gain beforehand as much room in our
belief as is necessary towards concluding afterwards what they
please, as geometricians do by their granted demands, the consent and
approbation we allow them giving them wherewith to draw us to the right
and left, and to whirl us about at their pleasure. Whatever springs from
these presuppositions is our master and our God; he will take the level
of his foundations so ample and so easy that by them he may mount us
up to the clouds, if he so please. In this practice and negotiation
of science we have taken the saying of Pythagoras, "That every expert
person ought to be believed in his own art" for current pay. The
logician refers the signification of words to the grammarians; the
rhetorician borrows the state of arguments from the logician; the poet
his measure from the musician: the geometrician his proportions from
the arithmetician, and the metaphysicians take physical conjectures for
their foundations; for every science has its principle presupposed, by
which human judgment is everywhere kept in check. If you come to rush
against the bar where the principal error lies, they have presently this
sentence in their mouths, "That there is no disputing with persons who
deny principles." Now men can have no principles if not revealed to them
by the divinity; of all the rest the beginning, the middle, and the
end, is nothing but dream and vapour. To those that contend upon
presupposition we must, on the contrary, presuppose to them the same
axiom upon which the dispute is. For every human presupposition and
declaration has as much authority one as another, if reason do not make
the difference. Wherefore they are all to be put into the balance, and
first the generals and those that tyrannize over us. The persuasion of
certainty is a certain testimony of folly and extreme incertainty;
and there are not a more foolish sort of men, nor that are less
philosophers, than the Philodoxes of Plato; we must inquire whether fire
be hot? whether snow be white? if there be any such things as hard or
soft within our knowledge?
And as to those answers of which they make old stories, as he that
doubted if there was any such thing as heat, whom they bid throw himself
into the fire; and he that denied the coldness of ice, whom they bid
to put ice into his bosom;--they are pitiful things, unworthy of the
profession of philosophy. If they had let us alone in our natural
being, to receive the appearance of things without us, according as they
present themselves to us by our senses, and had permitted us to follow
our own natural appetites, governed by the condition of our birth, they
might then have reason to talk at that rate; but 'tis from them we have
learned to make ourselves judges of the world; 'tis from them that we
derive this fancy, "That human reason is controller-general of all that
is without and within the roof of heaven; that comprehends every thing,
that can do every thing; by the means of which every thing is known and
understood." This answer would be good among the cannibals, who enjoy
the happiness of a long, quiet, and peaceable life, without Aristotle's
precepts, and without the knowledge of the name of physics; this answer
would perhaps be of more value and greater force than all those they
borrow from their reason and invention; of this all animals, and all
where the power of the law of nature is yet pure and simple, would be
as capable as we, but as for them they have renounced it. They need not
tell us, "It is true, for you see and feel it to be so;" they must tell
me whether I really feel what I think I do; and if I do feel it, they
must then tell me why I feel it, and how, and what; let them tell me the
name, original, the parts and junctures of heat and cold, the qualities
of the agent and patient; or let them give up their profession, which is
not to admit or approve of any thing but by the way of reason; that is
their test in all sorts of essays; but, certainly, 'tis a test full of
falsity, error, weakness, and defect.
Which way can we better prove it than by itself? If we are not to
believe her when speaking of herself, she can hardly be thought fit to
judge of foreign things; if she know any thing, it must at least be her
own being and abode; she is in the soul, and either a part or an effect
of it; for true and essential reason, from which we by a false colour
borrow the name, is lodged in the bosom of the Almighty; there is her
habitation and recess; 'tis thence that she imparts her rays, when God
is pleased to impart any beam of it to mankind, as Balias issued from
her father's head, to communicate herself to the world.
Now let us see what human reason tells us of herself and of the soul,
not of the soul in general, of which almost all philosophy makes the
celestial and first bodies participants; nor of that which Thales
attributed to things which themselves are reputed inanimate, lead
thereto by the consideration of the loadstone; but of that which
appertains to us, and that we ought the best to know:--
Ignoratur enim, quæ sit natura animai;
Nata sit; an, contra, nascentibus insinuetur;
Et simnl intereat nobiscum morte dirempta;
An tenebras Orci visat, vastasque lacunas,
An pecudes alias divinitns insinuet se.
"For none the nature of the soul doth know,
Whether that it be born with us, or no;
Or be infused into us at our birth,
And dies with us when we return to earth,
Or then descends to the black shades below,
Or into other animals does go."
Crates and Dicæarchus were of opinion that there was no soul at all,
but that the body thus stirs by a natural motion; Plato, that it was a
substance moving of itself; Thales, a nature without repose; Aedepiades,
an exercising of the senses; Hesiod and Anaximander, a thing composed of
earth and water; Parmenides, of earth and fire; Empedocles, of blood:--
Sanguineam vomit ille animam;
"He vomits up his bloody soul."
Posidonius, Cleanthes, and Galen, that it was heat or a hot complexion--
Igneus est ollis vigor, et colestis origo;
"Their vigour of fire and of heavenly race."
Hippocrates, a spirit diffused all over the body; Varro, that it was an
air received at the mouth, heated in the lungs, moistened in the heart,
and diffused throughout the whole body; Zeno, the quintessence of the
four elements; Heraclides Ponticus, that it was the light; Zenocrates
and the Egyptians, a mobile number; the Chaldeans, a virtue without any
determinate form:--
Habitum quemdam vitalem corporis esse,
Harmoniam Græci quam dicunt.
"A certain vital habit in man's frame,
Which harmony the Grecian sages name."
Let us not forget Aristotle, who held the soul to be that which
naturally causes the body to move, which he calls entelechia, with
as cold an invention as any of the rest; for he neither speaks of the
essence, nor of the original, nor of the nature of the soul, but
only takes notice of the effect Lactantius, Seneca, and most of the
Dogmatists, have confessed that it was a thing they did not understand;
after all this enumeration of opinions, _Harum sententiarum quo vera
sit, Deus aliquis viderit:_ "Of these opinions which is the true, let
some god determine," says Cicero. "I know by myself," says St Bernard,
"how incomprehensible God is, seeing I cannot comprehend the parts of my
own being."
Heraclitus, who was of opinion that every being was full of souls and
demons, did nevertheless maintain that no one could advance so far
towards the knowledge of the soul as ever to arrive at it; so profound
was the essence of it.
Neither is there less controversy and debate about seating of it.
Hippocrates and Hierophilus place it in the ventricle of the brain;
Democritus and Aristotle throughout the whole body;--
Ut bona sæpe valetudo cum dicitur esse
Corporis, et non est tamen hæc pars ulla ralentis;
"As when the body's health they do it call,
When of a sound man, that's no part at all."
Epicurus in the stomach;
Hic exsultat enim pavor ac metus;
Hæc loca circum Lætitiæ mulcent.
"For this the seat of horror is and fear,
And joys in turn do likewise triumph here."
The Stoics, about and within the heart; Erasistratus, adjoining the
membrane of the epicranium; Empedocles, in the blood; as also Moses,
which was the reason why he interdicted eating the blood of beasts,
because the soul is there seated; Galen thought that every part of the
body had its soul; Strato has placed it betwixt the eyebrows; _Quâ facie
quidem sit animus, aut ubi habitet, ne quorendum quidem est:_ "What
figure the soul is of, or what part it inhabits, is not to be inquired
into," says Cicero. I very willingly deliver this author to you in his
own words; for should I alter eloquence itself? Besides, it were but a
poor prize to steal the matter of his inventions; they are neither
very frequent, nor of any great weight, and sufficiently known. But the
reason why Chrysippus argues it to be about the heart, as all the rest
of that sect do, is not to be omitted; "It is," says he, "because when
we would affirm any things we lay our hand upon our breasts; and when
we would pronounce èyù, which signifies I, we let the lower jaw fall
towards the stomach." This place ought not to be passed over without
a remark upon the vanity of so great a man; for besides that these
considerations are infinitely light in themselves, the last is only a
proof to the Greeks that they have their souls lodged in that part. No
human judgment is so sprightly and vigilant that it does not sometimes
sleep. Why do we fear to say? The Stoics, the fathers of human prudence,
think that the soul of a man, crushed under a ruin, long labours
and strives to get out, like a mouse caught in a trap, before it can
disengage itself from the burden. Some hold that the world was made to
give bodies, by way of punishment, to the spirits fallen, by their own
fault, from the purity wherein they had been created, the first creation
having been incorporeal; and that, according as they are more or less
depraved from their spirituality, so are they more or less jocundly or
dully incorporated; and that thence proceeds all the variety of so much
created matter. But the spirit that for his punishment was invested
with the body of the sun must certainly have a very rare and particular
measure of change.
The extremities of our perquisition do all fall into astonishment
and blindness; as Plutarch says of the testimony of histories, that,
according to charts and maps, the utmost bounds of known r countries are
taken up with marshes, impenetrable forests, deserts, and uninhabitable
places; this is the reason why the most gross and childish ravings were
most found in those authors who treat of the most elevated subjects, and
proceed the furthest in them, losing themselves in their own curiosity
and presumption. The beginning and end of knowledge are equally foolish;
observe to what a pitch Plato flies in his poetic clouds; do but take
notice there of the gibberish of the gods; but what did he dream of when
he defined a man to be "a two-legged animal without feathers: giving
those who had a mind to deride him a pleasant occasion; for, having
pulled a capon alive, they went about calling it the man of Plato."
And what did the Epicureans think of, out of what simplicity did they
first imagine that their _atoms_ that they said were bodies having some
weight, and a natural motion downwards, had made the world; till
they were put in mind, by their adversaries, that, according to this
description, it was impossible they should unite and join to one
another, their fall being so direct and perpendicular, and making so
many parallel lines throughout? Wherefore there was a necessity that
they should since add a fortuitous and sideways motion, and that they
should moreover accoutre their atoms with hooked tails, by which they
might unite and cling to one another. And even then do not those that
attack them upon this second consideration put them hardly to it? "If
the atoms have by chance formed so many sorts of figures, why did it
never fall out that they made a house or a shoe? Why at the same rate
should we not believe that an infinite number of Greek letters,
strewed all over a certain place, might fall into the contexture of the
_Iliad?_"--"Whatever is capable of reason," says Zeno, "is better than
that which is not capable; there is nothing better than the world;
the world is therefore capable of reason." Cotta, by this way of
argumentation, makes the world a mathematician; 'and tis also made a
musician and an organist by this other argumentation of Zeno: "The
whole is more than a part; we are capable of wisdom, and are part of the
world; therefore the world is wise." There are infinite like examples,
not only of arguments that are false in themselves, but silly ones, that
do not hold in themselves, and that accuse their authors not so much
of ignorance as imprudence, in the reproaches the philosophers dash one
another in the teeth withal, upon their dissensions in their sects and
opinions.
Whoever should bundle up a lusty faggot of the fooleries of human wisdom
would produce wonders. I willingly muster up these few for a pattern,
by a certain meaning not less profitable to consider than the most sound
and moderate instructions. Let us judge by these what opinion we are to
have of man, of his sense and reason, when in these great persons that
have raised human knowledge so high, so many gross mistakes and manifest
errors are to be found.
For my part, I am apt to believe that they have treated of knowledge
casually, and like a toy, with both hands; and have contended about
reason as of a vain and frivolous instrument, setting on foot all sorts
of fancies and inventions, sometimes more sinewy, and sometimes weaker.
This same Plato, who defines man as if he were a cock, says elsewhere,
after Socrates, "That he does not, in truth, know what man is, and that
he is a member of the world the hardest to understand." By this variety
and instability of opinions, they tacitly lead us, as it were by the
hand, to this resolution of their irresolution. They profess not always
to deliver their opinions barefaced and apparent to us; they have one
while disguised them in the fabulous shadows of poetry, and at another
in some other vizor; for our imperfection carries this also along with
it, that crude meat is not always proper for our stomachs; we must dry,
alter, and mix it; they do the same; they sometimes conceal their real
opinions and judgments, and falsify them to accommodate themselves to
the public use. They will not make an open profession of ignorance, and
of the imbecility of human reason, that they may not fright children;
but they sufficiently discover it to us under the appearance of a
troubled and inconstant science.
I advised a person in Italy, who had a great mind to speak Italian, that
provided he only had a desire to make himself understood, without being
ambitious in any other respect to excel, that he should only make use
of the first word that came to the tongue's end, whether Latin, French,
Spanish, or Gascon, and that, by adding the Italian termination, he
could not fail of hitting upon some idiom of the country, either Tuscan,
Roman, Venetian, Piedmontese, or Neapolitan, and so fall in with some
one of those many forms. I say the same of Philosophy; she has so many
faces, so much variety, and has said so many things, that all our dreams
and ravings are there to be found. Human fancy can conceive nothing
good or bad that is not there: _Nihil tam absurde did potest, quod non
dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum._ "Nothing can be said so absurd, that
has not been said before by some of the philosophers." And I am the more
willing to expose my whimsies to the public; forasmuch as, though they
are spun out of myself, and without any pattern, I know they will be
found related to some ancient humour, and some will not stick to say,
"See whence he took it!" My manners are natural, I have not called in
the assistance of any discipline to erect them; but, weak as they are,
when it came into my head to lay them open to the world's view, and that
to expose them to the light in a little more decent garb I went to adorn
them with reasons and examples, it was a wonder to myself accidentally
to find them conformable to so many philosophical discourses and
examples. I never knew what regimen my life was of till it was near
worn out and spent; a new figure--an unpremeditated and accidental
philosopher.
But to return to the soul. Inasmuch as Plato has placed reason in the
brain, anger in the heart, and concupiscence in the liver; 'tis likely
that it was rather an interpretation of the movements of
the soul, than that he intended a division and separation of it, as of
a body, into several members. And the most likely of their opinions
is that 'tis always a soul, that by its faculty, reasons, remembers,
comprehends, judges, desires, and exercises all its other operations by
divers instruments of the body; as the pilot guides his ship according
to his experience, one while straining or slacking the cordage, one
while hoisting the mainyard, or removing the rudder, by one and the same
power carrying on several effects; and that it is lodged in the brain;
which appears in that the wounds and accidents that touch that part do
immediately offend the faculties of the soul; and 'tis not incongruous
that it should thence diffuse itself through the other parts of the body
Medium non deserit unquam
Coeli Phoebus iter; radiis tamen omnia lustrât.
"Phoebus ne'er deviates from the zodiac's way;
Yet all things doth illustrate with his ray."
As the sun sheds from heaven its light and influence, and fills the
world with them:--
Cætera pars animas, per totum dissita corpus,
Paret, et ad numen mentis momenque movetur.
"The other part o' th' soul diffus'd all o'er
The body, does obey the reason's lore."
Some have said that there was a general soul, as it were a great body,
whence all the particular souls were extracted, and thither again
return, always restoring themselves to that universal matter:--
Deum namque ire per omnes
Terrasque, tractusque maris, columque profundum;
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas:
Scilicet hue reddi deinde, ac resoluta referri
Omnia; nec morti esse locum:
"For God goes forth, and spreads throughout the whole
Heaven, earth, and sea, the universal soul;
Each at its birth, from him all beings share,
Both man and brute, the breath of vital air;
To him return, and, loos'd from earthly chain,
Fly whence they sprung, and rest in God again,
Spurn at the grave, and, fearless of decay,
Dwell in high heaven, and star th' ethereal way."
Others, that they only rejoined and reunited themselves to it; others,
that they were produced from the divine substance; others, by the angels
of fire and air; others, that they were from all antiquity; and some
that they were created at the very point of time the bodies wanted
them; others make them to descend from the orb of the moon, and return
thither; the generality of the ancients believed that they were begotten
from father to son, after a like manner, and produced with all other
natural things; taking their argument from the likeness of children to
their fathers;
Instillata patris virtus tibi;
Fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis;
"Thou hast thy father's virtues with his blood:
For still the brave spring from the brave and good;"
and that we see descend from fathers to their children not only
bodily marks, but moreover a resemblance of humours, complexions, and
inclinations of the soul:--
Denique cur acris violentia triste leonum
Seminium sequitur? dolus vulpibus, et fuga, cervis
A patribus datur, et patrius pavor incitât artus?
Si non certa suo quia semine seminioque
Vis animi pariter crescit cum corpore toto.
"For why should rage from the fierce lion's seed,
Or from the subtle fox's craft, proceed;
Or why the tim'rous and flying hart
His fear and trembling to his race impart;
But that a certain force of mind does grow,
And still increases as the bodies do?"
That thereupon the divine justice is grounded, punishing in the children
the faults of their fathers; forasmuch as the contagion of paternal
vices is in some sort imprinted in the soul of children, and that the
ill government of their will extends to them; moreover, that if souls
had any other derivation than a natural consequence, and that they had
been some other thins out of the body, they would retain some memory
of their first being, the natural faculties that are proper to them of
discoursing, reasoning, and remembering, being considered:--
Si in corpus nascentibus insinuatur,
Cur super anteactam ætatem meminisse nequimus,
Nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus?
"For at our birth if it infused be,
Why do we then retain no memory
Of our foregoing life, and why no more
Remember any thing we did before?"
for, to make the condition of our souls such as we would have it to be,
we must suppose them all-knowing, even in their natural simplicity and
purity; by these means they had been such, being free from the prison of
the body, as well before they entered into it, as we hope they shall be
after they are gone out of it; and from this knowledge it should follow
that they should remember, being got in the body, as Plato said, "That
what we learn is no other than a remembrance of what we knew before;" a
thing which every one by experience may maintain to be false. Forasmuch,
in the first place, as that we do not justly remember any thing but
what we have been taught, and that if the memory did purely perform its
office it would at least suggest to us something more than what we have
learned. Secondly, that which she knew being in her purity, was a
true knowledge, knowing things as they are by her divine intelligence;
whereas here we make her receive falsehood and vice when we instruct
her; wherein she cannot employ her reminiscence, that image and
conception having never been planted in her. To say that the corporal
prison does in such sort suffocate her natural faculties, that they
are there utterly extinct, is first contrary to this other belief of
acknowledging her power to be so great, and the operations of it that
men sensibly perceive in this life so admirable, as to have thereby
concluded that divinity and eternity past, and the immortality to
come:--
Nam si tantopere est anirai mutata potestas,
Omnia ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum,
Non, ut opinor, ea ab letho jam longior errat.
"For if the mind be changed to that degree
As of past things to lose all memory,
So great a change as that, I must confess,
Appears to me than death but little less."
Furthermore, 'tis here with us, and not elsewhere, that the force
and effects of the soul ought to be considered; all the rest of her
perfections are vain and useless to her; 'tis by her present condition
that all her immortality is to be rewarded and paid, and of the life of
man only that she is to render an account It had been injustice to have
stripped her of her means and powers; to have disarmed her in order, in
the time of her captivity and imprisonment in the flesh, of her weakness
and infirmity in the time wherein she was forced and compelled, to pass
an infinite and perpetual sentence and condemnation, and to insist upon
the consideration of so short a time, peradventure but an hour or two,
or at the most but a century, which has no more proportion with infinity
than an instant; in this momentary interval to ordain and definitively
to determine of her whole being; it were an unreasonable disproportion,
too, to assign an eternal recompense in consequence of so short a life.
Plato, to defend himself from this inconvenience, will have future
payments limited to the term of a hundred years, relatively to human
duration; and of us ourselves there are enough who have given them
temporal limits. By this they judged that the generation of the soul
followed the common condition of human things, as also her life,
according to the opinion of Epicurus and Democritus, which has been the
most received; in consequence of these fine appearances that they saw
it bom, and that, according as the body grew more capable, they saw it
increase in vigour as the other did; that its feebleness in infancy was
very manifest, and in time its better strength and maturity, and after
that its declension and old age, and at last its decrepitude:--
Gigni pariter cum corpore, et una
Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem.
"Souls with the bodies to be born we may
Discern, with them t' increase, with them decay."
They perceived it to be capable of divers passions, and agitated with
divers painful motions, whence it fell into lassitude and uneasiness;
capable of alteration and change, of cheerfulness, of stupidity and
languor, and subject to diseases and injuries, as the stomach or the
foot;
Mentem sanari, corpus ut ægrum,
Ceraimus, et flecti medicinâ posse videmus;
"Sick minds, as well as bodies, we do see
By Med'cine's virtue oft restored to be;"
dazzled and intoxicated with the fumes of wine, jostled from her seat by
the vapours of a burning fever, laid asleep by the application of some
medicaments, and roused by others,--
Corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est,
Corporeis quoniam telis ictuque laborat;
"There must be of necessity, we find,
A nature that's corporeal of the mind,
Because we evidently see it smarts
And wounded is with shafts the body darts;"
they saw it astonished and overthrown in all its faculties through the
mere bite of a mad dog, and in that condition to have no stability
of reason, no sufficiency, no virtue, no philosophical resolution, no
resistance that could exempt it from the subjection of such accidents;
the slaver of a contemptible cur shed upon the hand of Socrates, to
shake all his wisdom and all his great and regulated imaginations, and
so to annihilate them, ad that there remained no trace of his former
knowledge,--
Vis.... animal Conturbatur, et.... divisa seorsum
Disjectatur, eodem illo distracta veneno;
"The power of the soul's disturbed; and when
That once is but sequestered from her, then
By the same poison 'tis dispersed abroad;"
and this poison to find no more resistance in that great soul than in an
infant of four years old; a poison sufficient to make all philosophy, if
it were incarnate, become furious and mad; insomuch that Cato, who
ever disdained death and fortune, could not endure the sight of a
looking-glass, or of water, overwhelmed with horror and affright at
the thought of falling, by the contagion of a mad dog, into the disease
called by physicians hydrophobia:--
Vis morbi distracta per artus
Turbat agens animam, spumantes æquore salso
Ventorum ut validis fervescunt viribus undæ.
"Throughout the limbs diffused, the fierce disease
Disturbs the soul, as in the briny seas,
The foaming waves to swell and boil we see,
Stirred by the wind's impetuosity."
Now, as to this particular, philosophy has sufficiently armed man to
encounter all other accidents either with patience, or, if the search
of that costs too dear, by an infallible defeat, in totally depriving
himself of all sentiment; but these are expedients that are only of use
to a soul being itself, and in its full power, capable of reason and
deliberation; but not at all proper for this inconvenience, where, in
a philosopher, the soul becomes the soul of a madman, troubled,
overturned, and lost; which many occasions may produce, as a too
vehement agitation that any violent passion of the soul may beget in
itself; or a wound in a certain part of the person, or vapours from the
stomach, any of which may stupefy the understanding and turn the brain.
Morbis in corporis avius errat
Sæpe animus; dementit enim, deliraque fatur;
Interdumque gravi lethargo fertur in altum
Æternumque soporem, oculis mi tuque cadenti:
"For when the body's sick, and ill at ease,
The mind doth often share in the disease;
Wonders, grows wild, and raves, and sometimes by
A heavy and a stupid lethargy,
Is overcome and cast into a deep,
A most profound and everlasting sleep."
The philosophers, methinks, have not much touched this string, no more
than another of equal importance; they have this dilemma continually
in their mouths, to console our mortal condition: "The soul is either
mortal or immortal; if mortal, it will suffer no pain; if immortal, it
will change for the better."--They never touch the other branch, "What
if she change for the worse?" and leave to the poets the menaces of
future torments. But thereby they make themselves a good game. These are
two omissions that I often meet with in their discourses. I return to
the first.
This soul loses the use of the sovereign stoical good, so constant and
so firm. Our fine human wisdom must here yield, and give up her arms. As
to the rest, they also considered, by the vanity of human reason, that
the mixture and association of two so contrary things as the mortal and
the immortal, was unimaginable:--
Quippe etenim mortale æterao jungere, et una
Consentire putare, et fungi mutua posse,
Desipere est. Quid enim diversius esse putandum est,
Aut magis inter se disjunctum discrepitansque,
Quam, mortale quod est, immortali atque perenni
Junctum, in concilio, sævas tolerare procellas?
"The mortal and th' eternal, then, to blend,
And think they can pursue one common end,
Is madness: for what things more diff'rent are.
Distinct in nature, and disposed to jar?
How can it then be thought that these should bear,
When thus conjoined, of harms an equal share?"
Moreover, they perceived the soul tending towards death as well as the
body:--
Simul ovo fessa fatiscit:
"Fatigued together with the weight of years:"
which, according to Zeno, the image of sleep does sufficiently
demonstrate to us; for he looks upon it "as a fainting and fall of the
soul, as well as of the body:" _Contrahi animum et quasi labi putat
atque decidere:_ and, what they perceived in some, that the soul
maintained its force and vigour to the last gasp of life, they
attributed to the variety of diseases, as it is observable in men at the
last extremity, that some retain one sense, and some another; one
the hearing, and another the smell, without any manner of defect or
alteration; and that there is not so universal a deprivation that some
parts do not remain vigorous and entire:--
Non alio pacto, quam si, pes cum dolet ægri,
In nullo caput interea sit forte dolore.
"So, often of the gout a man complains,
Whose head is, at the same time, free from pains."
The sight of our judgment is, to truth, the same that the owl's eyes
are to the splendour of the sun, says Aristotle. By what can we better
convince him, than by so gross blindness in so apparent a light? For the
contrary opinion of the immortality of the soul, which, Cicero says,
was first introduced, according to the testimony of books at least, by
Pherecydes
Syrius, in the time of King Tullus (though some attribute it to Thales,
and others to others), 'tis the part of human science that is treated of
with the greatest doubt and
reservation. The most positive dogmatists are fain, in this point
principally, to fly to the refuge of the Academy. No one doubts what
Aristotle has established upon this subject, no more than all the
ancients in general, who handle it with a wavering belief: _Rem
gratissimam promittentium magis quam probantium:_ "A thing more
acceptable in the promisors than the provers." He conceals himself in
clouds of words of difficult, unintelligible sense, and has left to
those of his sect as great a dispute about his judgment as about the
matter itself.
Two things rendered this opinion plausible to them; one, that, without
the immortality of souls, there would be nothing whereon to ground the
vain hopes of glory, which is a consideration of wonderful
repute in the world; the other, that it is a very profitable impression,
as Plato says, that vices, when they escape the discovery and cognizance
of human justice, are still within the reach of the divine, which will
pursue them even after the death of the guilty. Man is excessively
solicitous to prolong his being, and has to the utmost of his power
provided for it; there are monuments for the conservation of the body,
and glory to preserve the name. He has employed all his wit and opinion
to the rebuilding of himself, impatient of his fortune, and to prop
himself by his inventions. The soul, by reason of its anxiety and
impotence, being unable to stand by itself, wanders up and down to seek
out consolations, hopes, and foundations, and alien circumstances, to
which she adheres and fixes; and how light or fantastic soever invention
delivers them to her, relies more willingly, and with greater assurance,
upon them than upon herself. But 'tis wonderful to observe how the most
constant and obstinate maintainers of this just and clear persuasion
of the immortality of the soul fall short, and how weak their arguments
are, when they go about to prove it by human reason: _Somnia sunt non
docentis, sed optantis:_ "They are dreams, not of the teacher, but
wisher," says one of the ancients. By which testimony man may know that
he owes the truth he himself finds out to fortune and accident; since
that even then, when it is fallen into his hand, he has not wherewith to
hold and maintain it, and that his reason has not force to make use of
it. All things produced by our own meditation and understanding, whether
true or false, are subject to incertitude and controversy. 'Twas for
the chastisement of our pride, and for the instruction of our miserable
condition and incapacity, that God wrought the perplexity and confusion
of the tower of Babel. Whatever we undertake without his assistance,
whatever we see without the lamp of his grace, is but vanity and folly.
We corrupt the very essence of truth, which is uniform and constant,
by our weakness, when fortune puts it into our possession. What course
soever man takes of himself, God still permits it to come to the same
confusion, the image whereof he so lively represents to us in the just
chastisement wherewith he crushed Nimrod's presumption, and frustrated
the vain attempt of his proud structure; _Perdam sapientiam sapientium,
et prudentiam prudentium reprobabo._ "I will destroy the wisdom of the
wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." The
diversity of idioms and tongues, with which he disturbed this work,
what are they other than this infinite and perpetual alteration and
discordance of opinions and reasons, which accompany and confound the
vain building of human wisdom, and to very good effect too; for what
would hold us, if we had but the least grain of knowledge? This saint
has very much obliged me: _Ipsa veritatis occultatio ant humili-tatis
exercitatio est, aut elationis attritio_ "The very concealment of the
truth is either an exercise of humility or a quelling of presumption."
To what a pitch of presumption and insolence do we raise our blindness
and folly!
But to return to my subject. It was truly very good reason that we
should be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the
truth of so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive
the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal
beatitude. Let us ingenuously confess that God alone has dictated it
to us, and faith; for 'tis no lesson of nature and our own reason.
And whoever will inquire into his own being and power, both within
and without, without this divine privilege; whoever shall consider
man impartially, and without flattery, will see in him no efficacy or
faculty that relishes of any thing but death and earth. The more we
give and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the greater
Christianity. That which this Stoic philosopher says he holds from the
fortuitous consent of the popular voice; had it not been better that he
had held it from God? _Cum de animarum otemitate disserimus, non leve
momentum apud nos habet consensus hominum aut timentium inferos, aut
colentium. Utor hâc publicâ persuasione._ "When we discourse of the
immortality of souls, the consent of men that either fear or adore the
infernal powers, is of no small advantage. I make use of this public
persuasion." Now the weakness of human arguments upon this subject
is particularly manifested by the fabulous circumstances they have
superadded as consequences of this opinion, to find out of what
condition this immortality of ours was. Let us omit the Stoics, (_usuram
nobis largiuntur tanquam cornicibus; diu mansuros aiunt animos; semper,
negant._ "They give us a long life, as also they do to crows; they say
our soul shall continue long, but that it shall continue always they
deny,") who give to souls a life after this, but finite. The most
universal and received fancy, and that continues down to our times in
various places, is that of which they make Pythagoras the author; not
that he was the original inventor, but because it received a great deal
of weight and repute by the authority of his approbation: "That souls,
at their departure out of us, did nothing but shift from one body to
another, from a lion to a horse, from a horse to a king, continually
travelling at this rate from habitation to habitation;" and he himself
said that he remembered he had been Ætha-lides, since that Euphorbus,
afterwards Hermotimus, and, finally, from Pyrrhus was passed into
Pythagoras; having a memory of himself of two hundred and six years. And
some have added that these very souls sometimes mount up to heaven, and
come down again:--
O pater, aime aliquas ad colum hinc ire putandum est
Sublimes animas, iterumque ad tarda reverti
Corpora? Quæ lucis miseris tam dira cupido?
"O, father, is it then to be conceiv'd
That any of these spirits, so sublime,
Should hence to the celestial regions climb,
And thence return to earth to reassume
Their sluggish bodies rotting in a tomb?
For wretched life whence does such fondness come?"
Origen makes them eternally to go and come from a better to a worse
estate. The opinion that Varro mentions is that, after four hundred and
forty years' revolution, they should be reunited to their first bodies;
Chrysippus held that this would happen after a certain space of time
unknown and unlimited. Plato, who professes to have embraced this belief
from Pindar and the ancient poets, that we are to undergo infinite
vicissitudes of mutation, for which the soul is prepared, having neither
punishment nor reward in the other world but what is temporal, as its
life here is but temporal, concludes that it has a singular knowledge of
the affairs of heaven, of hell, of the world, through all which it has
passed, repassed, and made stay in several voyages, are matters for her
memory. Observe her progress elsewhere: "The soul that has lived well
is reunited to the stars to which it is assigned; that which has lived
ill removes into a woman, and if it do not there reform, is again
removed into a beast of condition suitable to its vicious manners, and
shall see no end of its punishments till it be returned to its natural
constitution, and that it has, by the force of reason, purged itself
from those gross, stupid, and elementary qualities it was polluted
with." But I will not omit the objection the Epicureans make against
this transmigration from one body to another; 'tis a pleasant one; they
ask what expedient would be found out if the number of the dying should
chance to be greater than that of those who are coming into the world.
For the souls, turned out of their old habitation, would scuffle and
crowd which should first get possession of their new lodging; and they
further demand how they shall pass away their time, whilst waiting
till new quarters are made ready for them? Or, on the contrary, if more
animals should be born than die, the body, they say, would be but in an
ill condition whilst waiting for a soul to be infused into it; and it
would fall out that some bodies would die before they had been alive.
Denique comrabia ad Veneris, partusque ferarum
Esse animas præsto, deridiculum esse videtur;
Et spectare immortales mortalia membra
Innumero numéro, certareque præproperanter
Inter se, quæ prima potissimaqæ insinueter.
"Absurd to think that whilst wild beasts beget,
Or bear their young, a thousand souls do wait,
Expect the falling body, fight and strive
Which first shall enter in and make it live."
Others have arrested the soul in the body of the deceased, with it to
animate serpents, worms, and other beasts, which are said to be bred
out of the corruption of our members, and even out of our ashes; others
divide them into two parts, the one mortal, the other immortal; others
make it corporeal, and nevertheless immortal. Some make it immortal,
without
sense or knowledge. There are others, even among ourselves, who have
believed that devils were made of the souls of the damned; as Plutarch
thinks that gods were made of those that were saved; for there are few
things which that author is so positive in as he is in this; maintaining
elsewhere a doubtful and ambiguous way of expression. "We are told,"
says he, "and steadfastly should believe, that the souls of virtuous
men, both according to nature and the divine justice, become saints, and
from saints demigods, and from demigods, after they are perfectly, as in
sacrifices of purgation, cleansed and purified, being delivered from all
passibility and all mortality, they become, not by any civil decree, but
in real truth, and according to all probability of reason, entire and
perfect gods, in receiving a most happy and glorious end." But who
desires to see him--him, who is yet the most sober and moderate of the
whole gang of philosophers, lay about him with greater boldness, and
relate his miracles upon this subject, I refer him to his treatise _of
the Moon,_ and _of the Demon of Socrates_, where he may, as evidently
as in any other place whatever, satisfy himself that the mysteries of
philosophy have many strange things in common with those of poetry;
human understanding losing itself in attempting to sound and search all
things to the bottom; even as we, tired and worn out with a long course
of life, return to infancy and dotage. See here the fine and certain
instructions which we extract from human knowledge concerning the soul.
Neither is there less temerity in what they teach us touching our
corporal parts. Let us choose out one or two examples; for otherwise we
should lose ourselves in this vast and troubled ocean of medical errors.
Let us first know whether, at least, they agree about the matter whereof
men produce one another; for as to their first production it is
no wonder if, in a thing so high and so long since past, human
understanding finds itself puzzled and perplexed. Archelaus, the
physician, whose disciple and favourite Socrates was, according to
Aristoxenus, said that both men and beasts were made of a lacteous
slime, expressed by the heat of the earth; Pythagoras says that our
seed is the foam or cream of our better blood; Plato, that it is the
distillation of the marrow of the backbone; raising his argument from
this, that that part is first sensible of being weary of the work;
Alcmeon, that it is part of the substance of the brain, and that it
is so, says he, is proved by the weakness of the eyes in those who
are immoderate in that exercise; Democritus, that it is a substance
extracted from the whole mass of the body; Epicurus, an extract from
soul and body; Aristotle, an excrement drawn from the aliment of the
blood, the last which is diffused over our members; others, that it is
a blood concocted and digested by the heat of the genitals, which they
judge, by reason that in excessive endeavours a man voids pure blood;
wherein there seems to be more likelihood, could a man extract any
appearance from so infinite a confusion. Now, to bring this seed to do
its work, how many contrary opinions do they set on foot? Aristotle
and Democritus are of opinion that women have no sperm, and that 'tis
nothing but a sweat that they distil in the heat of pleasure and
motion, and that contributes nothing at all to generation. Galen, on
the contrary, and his followers, believe that without the concurrence
of seeds there can be no generation. Here are the physicians, the
philosophers, the lawyers, and divines, by the ears with our wives about
the dispute, "For what term women carry their fruit?" and I, for my
part, by the example of myself, stick with those that maintain a woman
goes eleven months with child. The world is built upon this experience;
there is no so commonplace a woman that cannot give her judgment in all
these controversies; and yet we cannot agree.
Here is enough to verify that man is no better instructed in the
knowledge of himself, in his corporal than in his spiritual part We have
proposed himself to himself, and his reason to his reason, to see what
she could say. I think I have sufficiently demonstrated how little
she understands herself in herself; and who understands not himself in
himself, in what can he? _Quasi vero mensuram ullius rei possit agere,
qui sui nesciat._ "As if he could understand the measure of any other
thing, that knows not his own." In earnest, Protagoras told us a pretty
flam in making man the measure of all things, that never knew so much as
his own; and if it be not he, his dignity will not permit that any
other creature should have this advantage; now he being so contrary
in himself, and one judgment so incessantly subverting another, this
favourable proposition was but a mockery, which induced us necessarily
to conclude the nullity of the compass and the compasser. When Thales
reputes the knowledge of man very difficult for man to comprehend, he
at the same time gives him to understand that all other knowledge is
impossible.
You,* for whom I have taken the pains, contrary to my custom, to write
so long a discourse, will not refuse to support your Sebond by the
ordinary forms of arguing, wherewith you are every day instructed, and
in this will exercise both your wit and learning; for this last fencing
trick is never to be made use of but as an extreme remedy; 'tis a
desperate thrust, wherein you are to quit your own arms to make your
adversary abandon his; and a secret sleight, which must be very rarely,
and then very reservedly, put in practice. 'Tis great temerity to lose
yourself that you may destroy another; you must not die to be revenged,
as Gobrias did; for, being closely grappled in combat with a lord of
Persia, Darius coming in sword in hand, and fearing to strike lest he
should kill Gobrias, he called out to him boldly to fall on,
* The author, as we have already mentioned, is addressing
Margaret de Valois.
though he should run them both through at once. I have known desperate
weapons, and conditions of single combat, and wherein he that offered
them put himself and his adversary upon terms of inevitable death to
them both, censured for unjust. The Portuguese, in the Indian Sea, took
certain Turks prisoners, who, impatient of their captivity, resolved,
and it succeeded, by striking the nails of the ship one against another,
and making a spark to fall into the barrels of powder that were set in
the place where they were guarded, to blow up and reduce themselves,
their masters, and the vessel to ashes. We here touch the out-plate
and utmost limits of sciences, wherein the extremity is vicious, as
in virtue. Keep yourselves in the common road; it is not good to be so
subtle and cunning. Remember the Tuscan proverb:--
Chi troppo s'assottiglia, si scavezza.
"Who makes himself too wise, becomes a fool."
I advise you that, in all your opinions and discourses, as well as
in your manners and all other things, you keep yourself moderate and
temperate, and avoid novelty; I am an enemy to all extravagant ways.
You, who by the authority of your grandeur, and yet more by the
advantages which those qualities give you that are more your own, may
with the twinkle of an eye command whom you please, ought to have given
this charge to some one who made profession of letters, who might after
a better manner have proved and illustrated these things to you. But
here is as much as you will stand in need of.
Epicurus said of the laws, "That the worst were so necessary for us that
without them men would devour one another." And Plato affirms, "That
without laws we should live like beasts." Our wit is a wandering,
dangerous, and temerarious utensil; it is hard to couple any order or
measure to it; in those of our own time, who are endued with any rare
excellence above others, or any extraordinary vivacity of understanding,
we see them almost all lash out into licentiousness of opinions and
manners; and 'tis almost a miracle to find one temperate and sociable.
'Tis all the reason in the world to limit human wit within the strictest
limits imaginable; in study, as in all the rest, we ought to have
its steps and advances numbered and fixed, and that the limits of its
inquisition be bounded by art. It is curbed and fettered by religions,
laws, customs, sciences, precepts, mortal and immortal penalties. And
yet we see that it escapes from all these bonds by its volubility and
dissolution; *tis a vain body which has nothing to lay hold on or to
seize; a various and difform body, incapable of being either bound
or held. In earnest, there are few souls so regular, firm, and well
descended, as are to be trusted with their own conduct, and that can
with moderation, and without temerity, sail in the liberty of their own
judgments, beyond the common and received opinions; *tis more expedient
to put them under pupilage. Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the
possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly; and there is not a
beast to whom a headboard is more justly to be given, to keep his looks
down and before his feet, and to hinder him from wandering here and
there out of the tracks which custom and the laws have laid before him.
And therefore it will be better for you to keep yourself in the beaten
path, let it be what it will, than to fly out at a venture with this
unbridled liberty. But if any of these new doctors will pretend to be
ingenious in your presence, at the expense both of your soul and his
own, to avoid this dangerous plague, which is every day laid in your
way to infect you, this preservative, in the extremest necessity,
will prevent the danger and hinder the contagion of this poison from
offending either you or your company.
The liberty, then, and frolic forwardness of these ancient wits produced
in philosophy and human sciences several sects of different opinions,
every one undertaking to judge and make choice of what he would stick
to and maintain. But now that men go all one way, _Qui certis quibusdam
destinatisque sententiis addicti et consecrati sunt, ut etiam, quæ non
probant, cogantur defendere,_ "Who are so tied and obliged to certain
opinions that they are bound to defend even those they do not approve,"
and that we receive the arts by civil authority and decree, so that the
schools have but one pattern, and a like circumscribed institution and
discipline, we no more take notice what the coin weighs, and is really
worth, but every one receives it according to the estimate that common
approbation and use puts upon it; the alloy is not questioned, but how
much it is current for. In like manner all things pass; we take
physic as we do geometry; and tricks of hocus-pocus, enchantments,
and love-spells, the correspondence of the souls of the dead,
prognostications, domifications, and even this ridiculous pursuit of the
philosophers' stone, all things pass for current pay, without any manner
of scruple or contradiction. We need to know no more but that Mars'
house is in the middle of the triangle of the hand, that of Venus in
the thumb, and that of Mercury in the little finger; that when the
table-line cuts the tubercle of the forefinger 'tis a sign of cruelty,
that when it falls short of the middle finger, and that the natural
median-line makes an angle with the vital in the same side, 'tis a sign
of a miserable death; that if in a woman the natural line be open, and
does not close the angle with the vital, this denotes that she shall not
be very chaste. I leave you to judge whether a man qualified with such
knowledge may not pass with reputation and esteem in all companies.
Theophrastus said that human knowledge, guided by the senses, might
judge of the causes of things to a certain degree; but that being
arrived to first and extreme causes, it must stop short and retire, by
reason either of its own infirmity or the difficulty of things. 'Tis a
moderate and gentle opinion, that our own understandings may conduct
us to the knowledge of some things, and that it has certain measures
of power, beyond which 'tis temerity to employ it; this opinion is
plausible, and introduced by men of well composed minds, but 'tis hard
to limit our wit, which is curious and greedy, and will no more stop
at a thousand than at fifty paces; having experimentally found that,
wherein one has failed, the other has hit, and that what was unknown to
one age, the age following has explained; and that arts and sciences are
not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often
handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form;
what my force cannot discover, I do not yet desist to sound and to try;
and by handling and kneading this new matter over and over again, by
turning and heating it, I lay open to him that shall succeed me, a kind
of facility to enjoy it more at his ease, and make it more maniable and
supple for him,
Ut hymettia sole
Cera remollescit, tractataque poll ice multas
Vertitur in facies, ipsoque fit utilis usu;
"As wax doth softer in the sun become,
And, tempered 'twixt the finger and the thumb,
Will varions forms, and several shapes admit,
Till for the present use 'tis rendered fit;"
as much will the second do for the third; which is the cause that
the difficulty ought not to make me despair, and my own incapacity as
little; for 'tis nothing but my own.
Man is as capable of all things as of some; and if he confesses, as
Theophrastus says, the ignorance of first causes, let him at once
surrender all the rest of his knowledge; if he is defective in
foundation, his reason is aground; disputation and inquiry have no other
aim nor stop but principles; if this aim do not stop his career, he
runs into an infinite irresolution. _Non potest aliud alio magis minusve
comprehendi, quoniam omnium rerum una est dejinitio comprehendendi:_
"One thing can no more or less be comprehended than another, because
the definition of comprehending all things is the same." Now 'tis very
likely that, if the soul knew any thing, it would in the first place
know itself; and if it knew any thing out of itself, it would be its own
body and case, before any thing else. If we see the gods of physic to
this very day debating about our anatomy,
Mulciber in Trojam, pro Trojâ stabat Apollo;
"Vulcan against, for Troy Apollo stood;"
when are we to expect that they will be agreed? We are nearer neighbours
to ourselves than whiteness to snow, or weight to stones. If man do not
know himself, how should he know his force and functions? It is not,
perhaps, that we have not some real knowledge in us; but 'tis by chance;
forasmuch as errors are received into our soul by the same way, after
the same manner, and by the same conduct, it has not wherewithal to
distinguish them, nor wherewithal to choose the truth from falsehood.
The Academics admitted a certain partiality of judgment, and thought it
too crude to say that it was not more likely to say that snow was white
than black; and that we were no more assured of the motion of a stone,
thrown by the hand, than of that of the eighth sphere. And to avoid
this difficulty and strangeness, that can in truth hardly lodge in our
imagination, though they concluded that we were in no sort capable of
knowledge, and that truth is engulfed in so profound an abyss as is not
to be penetrated by human sight; yet they acknowledged some things to be
more likely than others, and received into their judgment this faculty,
that they had a power to incline to one appearance more than another,
they allowed him this propension, interdicting all resolution. The
Pyrrhonian opinion is more bold, and also somewhat more likely; for this
academic inclination, and this propension to one proposition rather than
another, what is it other than a recognition of some more apparent
truth in this than in that? If our understanding be capable of the form,
lineaments, port, and face of truth, it might as well see it entire as
by halves, springing and imperfect This appearance of likelihood,
which makes them rather take the left hand than the right, augments
it; multiply this ounce of verisimilitude that turns the scales to
a hundred, to a thousand, ounces; it will happen in the end that the
balance will itself end the controversy, and determine one choice, one
entire truth. But why do they suffer themselves to incline to and be
swayed by verisimilitude, if they know not the truth? How should they
know the similitude of that whereof they do not know the essence? Either
we can absolutely judge, or absolutely we cannot If our intellectual and
sensible faculties are without foot or foundation, if they only pull
and drive, 'tis to no purpose that we suffer our judgments to be carried
away with any part of their operation, what appearance soever they
may seem to present us; and the surest and most happy seat of our
understanding would be that where it kept itself temperate, upright, and
inflexible, without tottering, or without agitation: _Inter visa, vera
aut falsa, ad animi assensum, nihil interest:_ "Amongst things that
seem, whether true or false, it signifies nothing to the assent of the
mind." That things do not lodge in us in their form and essence, and
do not there make their entry by their own force and authority, we
sufficiently see; because, if it were so, we should receive them after
the same manner; wine would have the same relish with the sick as with
the healthful; he who has his finger chapt or benumbed would find the
same hardness in wood or iron that he handles that another does; foreign
subjects then surrender themselves to our mercy, and are seated in us as
we please. Now if on our part we received any thing without alteration,
if human grasp were capable and strong enough to seize on truth by our
own means, these means being common to all men, this truth would be
conveyed from hand to hand, from one to another; and at least there
would be some one thing to be found in the world, amongst so many as
there are, that would be believed by men with an universal consent;
but this, that there is no one proposition that is not debated and
controverted amongst us, or that may not be, makes it very manifest that
our natural judgment does not very clearly discern what it embraces; for
my judgment cannot make my companions approve of what it approves; which
is a sign that I seized it by some other means than by a natural power
that is in me and in all other men.
Let us lay aside this infinite confusion of opinions, which we see even
amongst the philosophers themselves, and this perpetual and universal
dispute about the knowledge of things; for this is truly presupposed,
that men, I mean the most knowing, the best bom, and of the best parts,
are not agreed about any one thing, not that heaven is over our heads;
for they that doubt of every thing, do also doubt of that; and they
who deny that we are able to comprehend any thing, say that we have not
comprehended that the heaven is over our heads, and these two opinions
are, without comparison, the stronger in number.
Besides this infinite diversity and division, through the trouble that
our judgment gives ourselves, and the incertainty that every one is
sensible of in himself, 'tis easy to perceive that its seat is very
unstable and insecure. How variously do we judge of things?--How often
do we alter our opinions? What I hold and believe to-day I hold and
believe with my whole belief; all my instruments and engines seize and
take hold of this opinion, and become responsible to me for it, at least
as much as in them lies; I could not embrace nor conserve any truth
with greater confidence and assurance than I do this; I am wholly and
entirely possessed with it; but has it not befallen me, not only once,
but a hundred, a thousand times, every day, to have embraced some other
thing with all the same instruments, and in the same condition, which
I have since judged to be false? A man must at least become wise at his
own expense; if I have often found myself betrayed under this colour; if
my touch proves commonly false, and my balance unequal and unjust, what
assurance can I now have more than at other times? Is it not stupidity
and madness to suffer myself to be so often deceived by my guide?
Nevertheless, let fortune remove and shift us five hundred times from
place to place, let her do nothing but incessantly empty and fill into
our belief, as into a vessel, other and other opinions; yet still the
present and the last is the certain and infallible one; for this we must
abandon goods, honour, life, health, and all.
Posterior.... res ilia reperta
Perdit, et immutat sensus ad pristina qnæqne.
"The last things we find out are always best,
And make us to disrelish all the rest."
Whatever is preached to us, and whatever we learn, we should still
remember that it is man that gives and man that receives; 'tis a mortal
hand that presents it to us; 'tis a mortal hand that accepts it The
things that come to us from heaven have the sole right and authority of
persuasion, the sole mark of truth; which also we do not see with our
own eyes, nor receive by our own means; that great and sacred image
could not abide in so wretched a habitation if God for this end did not
prepare it, if God did not by his particular and supernatural grace and
favour fortify and reform it. At least our frail and defective condition
ought to make us behave ourselves with more reservedness and moderation
in our innovations and changes; we ought to remember that, whatever we
receive into the understanding, we often receive things that are false,
and that it is by the same instruments that so often give themselves the
lie and are so often deceived.
Now it is no wonder they should so often contradict themselves, being
so easy to be turned and swayed by very light occurrences. It is certain
that our apprehensions, our judgment, and the faculties of the soul in
general, suffer according to the movements and alterations of the body,
which alterations are continual. Are not our minds more sprightly, ouï
memories more prompt and quick, and our thoughts more lively, in health
than in sickness? Do not joy and gayety make us receive subjects
that present themselves to our souls quite otherwise than care and
melancholy? Do you believe that Catullus's verses, or those of Sappho,
please an old doting miser as they do a vigorous, amorous young man?
Cleomenes, the son of Anexandridas, being sick, his friends reproached
him that he had humours and whimsies that were new and unaccustomed;
"I believe it," said he; "neither am I the same man now as when I am in
health; being now another person, my opinions and fancies are also other
than they were before." In our courts of justice this word is much in
use, which is spoken of criminals when they find the judges in a good
humour, gentle, and mild, _Gaudeat de bonâ fortunâ _; "Let him rejoice
in his good fortune;" for it is most certain that men's judgments are
sometimes more prone to condemnation, more sharp and severe, and at
others more facile, easy, and inclined to excuse; he that carries with
him from his house the pain of the gout, jealousy, or theft by his man,
having his whole soul possessed with anger, it is not to be doubted
but that his judgment will lean this way. That venerable senate of the
Areopagites used to hear and determine by night, for fear lest the sight
of the parties might corrupt their justice. The very air itself, and the
serenity of heaven, will cause some mutation in us, according to these
verses in Cicero:--
Tales sunt hominnm mentes, quali pater ipse
Jupiter auctiferâ lustravit lampade terras.
"Men's minds are influenc'd by th' external air,
Dark or serene, as days are foul or fair."
'Tis not only fevers, debauches, and great accidents, that overthrow our
judgments,--the least things in the world will do it; and we are not to
doubt, though we may not be sensible of it, that if a continued fever
can overwhelm the soul, a tertian will in some proportionate measure
alter it; if an apoplexy can stupefy and totally extinguish the sight of
our understanding, we are not to doubt but that a great cold will dazzle
it; and consequently there is hardly one single hour in a man's whole
life wherein our judgment is in its due place and right condition, our
bodies being subject to so many continual mutations, and stuffed with so
many several sorts of springs, that I believe the physicians, that it is
hard but that there must be always some one or other out of order.
As to what remains, this malady does not very easily discover itself,
unless it be extreme and past remedy; forasmuch as reason goes always
lame, halting, and that too as well with falsehood as with truth; and
therefore 'tis hard to discover her deviations and mistakes. I always
call that appearance of meditation which every one forges in himself
reason; this reason, of the condition of which there may be a hundred
contrary ones about one and the same subject, is an instrument of lead
and of wax, ductile, pliable, and accommodate to all sorts of biases,
and to all measures; so that nothing remains but the art and skill how
to turn and mould it. How uprightly soever a judge may mean, if he
does not look well to himself, which few care to do, his inclination to
friendship, to relationship, to beauty or revenge, and not only things
of that weight, but even the fortuitous instinct that makes us favour
one thing more than another, and that, without reason's permission, puts
the choice upon us in two equal subjects, or some shadow of like
vanity, may insensibly insinuate into his judgment the recommendation or
disfavour of a cause, and make the balance dip.
I, that watch myself as narrowly as I can, and that have my eyes
continually bent upon myself, like one that has no great business to do
elsewhere,
Quis sub Arcto Rex gelidæ metuatur oræ,
Quid Tyridatem terreat, unice Securus,
"I care not whom the northern clime reveres,
Or what's the king that Tyridates fears,"
dare hardly tell the vanity and weakness I find in myself My foot is so
unstable and unsteady, I find myself so apt to totter and reel, and my
sight so disordered, that, fasting, I am quite another man than when
full; if health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very affable,
good-natured man; if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humour,
and not to be seen. The same pace of a horse seems to me one while
hard, and another easy; and the same way one while shorter, and another
longer; and the same form one while more, another less agreeable: I am
one while for doing every thing, and another for doing nothing at all;
and what pleases me now would be a trouble to me at another time. I
have a thousand senseless and casual actions within myself; either I
am possessed by melancholy or swayed by choler; now by its own private
authority sadness predominates in me, and by and by, I am as merry as
a cricket. When I take a book in hand I have then discovered admirable
graces in such and such passages, and such as have struck my soul; let
me light upon them at another time, I may turn and toss, tumble
and rattle the leaves to no purpose; 'tis then to me an inform and
undiscovered mass. Even in my own writings I do not always find the air
of my first fancy; I know not what I would have said, and am often put
to it to correct and pump for a new sense, because I have lost the first
that was better. I do nothing but go and come; my judgment does not
always advance--it floats and roams:--
Velut minuta magno
Deprensa navis in mari vesaniente vento.
"Like a small bark that's tost upon the main.
When winds tempestuous heave the liquid plain."
Very often, as I am apt to do, having for exercise taken to maintain an
opinion contrary to my own, my mind, bending and applying itself that
way, does so engage me that way that I no more discern the reason of my
former belief, and forsake it I am, as it were, misled by the side to
which I incline, be it what it will, and carried away by my own weight.
Every one almost would say the same of himself, if he considered himself
as I do. Preachers very well know that the emotions which steal upon
them in speaking animate them towards belief; and that in passion we
are more warm in the defence of our proposition, take ourselves a deeper
impression of it, and embrace it with greater vehemence and approbation
than we do in our colder and more temperate state. You only give your
counsel a simple brief of your cause; he returns you a dubious and
uncertain answer, by which you find him indifferent which side he takes.
Have you feed him well that he may relish it the better, does he begin
to be really concerned, and do you find him interested and zealous in
your quarrel? his reason and learning will by degrees grow hot in your
cause; behold an apparent and undoubted truth presents itself to his
understanding; he discovers a new light in your business, and does in
good earnest believe and persuade himself that it is so. Nay, I do not
know whether the ardour that springs from spite and obstinacy, against
the power and violence of the magistrate and danger, or the interest of
reputation, may not have made some men, even at the stake, maintain the
opinion for which, at liberty, and amongst friends, they would not have
burned a finger. The shocks and jostles that the soul receives from the
body's passions can do much in it, but its own can do a great deal more;
to which it is so subjected that perhaps it may be made good that it has
no other pace and motion but from the breath of those winds, without the
agitation of which it would be becalmed and without action, like a
ship in the middle of the sea, to which the winds hare denied
their assistance. And whoever should maintain this, siding with the
Peripatetics, would do us no great wrong, seeing it is very well known
that the greatest and most noble actions of the soul proceed from, and
stand in need of, this impulse of the passions. Valour, they say,
cannot be perfect without the assistance of anger; _Semper Ajax fortis,
fortissimus tamen in furore;_ "Ajax was always brave, but most when in
a fury:" neither do we encounter the wicked and the enemy vigorously
enough if we be not angry; nay, the advocate, it is said, is to inspire
the judges with indignation, to obtain justice.
Irregular desires moved Themistocles, and Demosthenes, and have pushed
on the philosophers to watching, fasting, and pilgrimages; and lead us
to honour, learning, and health, which are all very useful ends. And
this meanness of soul, in suffering anxiety and trouble, serves to breed
remorse and repentance in the conscience, and to make us sensible of
the scourge of God, and politic correction for the chastisement of
our offences; compassion is a spur to clemency; and the prudence of
preserving and governing ourselves is roused by our fear; and how many
brave actions by ambition! how many by presumption! In short, there is
no brave and spiritual virtue without some irregular agitation. May not
this be one of the reasons that moved the Epicureans to discharge God
from all care and solicitude of our affairs; because even the effects of
his goodness could not be exercised in our behalf without disturbing its
repose, by the means of passions which are so many spurs and instruments
pricking on the soul to virtuous actions; or have they thought
otherwise, and taken them for tempests, that shamefully hurry the soul
from her tranquillity? _Ut maris tranquillitas intettigitur, nullâ, ne
minima quidem, aura fluctus commovente: Sic animi quietus et placatus
status cemitur, quum perturbatis nulla est, qua moveri queat.._ "As it
is understood to be a calm sea when there is not the least breath of air
stirring; so the state of the soul is discerned to be quiet and appeased
when there is no perturbation to move it."
What varieties of sense and reason, what contrariety of imaginations
does the diversity of our passions inspire us with! What assurance then
can we take of a thing so mobile and unstable, subject by its condition
to the dominion of trouble, and never going other than a forced and
borrowed pace? If our judgment be in the power even of sickness and
perturbation; if it be from folly and rashness that it is to receive the
impression of things, what security can we expect from it?
Is it not a great boldness in philosophy to believe that men perform the
greatest actions, and nearest approaching the Divinity, when they
are furious, mad, and beside themselves? We better ourselves by the
privation of our reason, and drilling it. The two natural ways to
enter into the cabinet of the gods, and there to foresee the course of
destiny, are fury and sleep.
This is pleasant to consider; by the dislocation that passions cause
in our reason, we become virtuous; by its extirpation, occasioned by
madness or the image of death, we become diviners and prophets. I was
never so willing to believe philosophy in any thing as this. 'Tis a pure
enthusiasm wherewith sacred truth has inspired the spirit of philosophy,
which makes it confess, contrary to its own proposition, that the most
calm, composed, and healthful estate ef the soul that philosophy can
seat it in is not its best condition; our waking is more a sleep than
sleep itself, our wisdom less wise than folly; our dreams are worth more
than our meditation; and the worst place we can take is in ourselves.
But does not philosophy think that we are wise enough to consider
that the voice that the spirit utters, when dismissed from man, so
clear-sighted, so great, and so perfect, and whilst it is in man so
terrestrial, ignorant, and dark, is a voice proceeding from the spirit
of dark, terrestrial, and ignorant man, and for this reason a voice not
to be trusted and believed?
I, being of a soft and heavy complexion, have no great experience of
these vehement agitations, the most of which surprise the soul on a
sudden, without giving it leisure to recollect itself. But the passion
that is said to be produced by idleness in the hearts of young men,
though it proceed leisurely, and with a measured progress, does
evidently manifest, to those who have tried to oppose its power, the
violence our judgment suffers in this alteration and conversion. I have
formerly attempted to withstand and repel it; for I am so far from being
one of those that invite vices, that I do not so much as follow them, if
they do not haul me along; I perceived it to spring, grow, and increase,
in spite of my resistance; and at last, living and seeing as I was,
wholly to seize and possess me. So that, as if rousing from drunkenness,
the images of things began to appear to me quite other than they used
to be; I evidently saw the advantages of the object I desired, grow,
and increase, and expand by the influence of my imagination, and the
difficulties of my attempt to grow more easy and smooth; and both my
reason and conscience to be laid aside; but this fire being evaporated
in an instant, as from a flash of lightning, I was aware that my soul
resumed another kind of sight, another state, and another judgment;
the difficulties of retreat appeared great and invincible, and the same
things had quite another taste and aspect than the heat of desire had
presented them to me; which of the two most truly? Pyrrho knows nothing
about it. We are never without sickness. Agues have their hot and cold
fits; from the effects of an ardent passion we fall again to shivering;
as much as I had advanced, so much I retired:--
Qualis ubi alterno procurrens gurgite pontus,
Nunc ruit ad terras, scopulosque superjacit undam
Spumeus, extremamque sinu perfundit arenam;
Nunc rapidus retro, atque æstu revoluta resorbens
Saxa, fugit, littusque vado labente relihquit.
"So swelling surges, with a thundering roar,
Driv'n on each others' backs, insult the shore,
Bound o'er the rocks, encroach upon the land,
And far upon the beach heave up the sand;
Then backward rapidly they take their way,
Repulsed from upper ground, and seek the sea."
Now, from the knowledge of this volubility of mine, I have accidentally
begot in myself a certain constancy of opinions, and have not much
altered those that were first and natural in me; for what appearance
soever there may be in novelty, I do not easily change, for fear of
losing by the bargain; and, as I am not capable of choosing, I take
other men's choice, and keep myself in the station wherein God has
placed me; I could not otherwise keep myself from perpetual rolling.
Thus have I, by the grace of God, preserved myself entire, without
anxiety or trouble of conscience, in the ancient faith of our religion,
amidst so many sects and divisions as our age has produced. The writings
of the ancients, the best authors I mean, being full and solid, tempt
and carry me which way almost they will; he that I am reading seems
always to have the most force; and I find that every one in his turn is
in the right, though they contradict one another. The facility that good
wits have of rendering every thing likely they would recommend, and
that nothing is so strange to which they do not undertake to give colour
enough to deceive such simplicity as mine, this evidently shows the
weakness of their testimony. The heavens and the stars have been
three thousand years in motion; all the world were of that belief
till Cleanthes the Samian, or, according to Theophrastus, Nicetas of
Syracuse, took it into his head to maintain that it was the earth that
moved, turning about its axis by the oblique circle of the zodiac.
And Copernicus has in our times so grounded this doctrine that it very
regularly serves to all astrological consequences; what use can we
make of this, if not that we ought not much to care which is the true
opinion? And who knows but that a third, a thousand years hence, may
over throw the two former.
Sic volvenda ætas commutât tempora rerum:
Quod fuit in pretio, fit nullo denique honore;
Porro aliud succedit, et e contemptibus exit,
Inque dies magis appetitur, floretque repertum
Laudibus, et miro est mortales inter honore.
"Thus ev'ry thing is changed in course of time,
What now is valued passes soon its prime;
To which some other thing, despised before,
Succeeds, and grows in vogue still more and more;
And once received, too faint all praises seem,
So highly it is rais'd in men's esteem."
So that when any new doctrine presents itself to us, we have great
reason to mistrust, and to consider that, before that was set on foot,
the contrary had been generally received; and that, as that has been
overthrown by this, a third invention, in time to come, may start
up which may damn the second. Before the principles that Aristotle
introduced were in reputation, other principles contented human reason,
as these satisfy us now. What patent have these people, what particular
privilege, that the career of our invention must be stopped by them, and
that the possession of our whole future belief should belong to them?
They are no more exempt from being thrust out of doors than their
predecessors were. When any one presses me with a new argument, I ought
to believe that what I cannot answer another can; for to believe all
likelihoods that a man cannot confute is great simplicity; it would
by that means come to pass that all the vulgar (and we are all of the
vulgar) would have their belief as tumable as a weathercock; for their
souls, being so easy to be imposed upon, and without any resistance,
must of force incessantly receive other and other impressions, the last
still effacing all footsteps of that which went before. He that finds
himself weak ought to answer, according to practice, that he will speak
with his counsel, or refer himself to the wiser, from whom he received
his instruction. How long is it that physic has been practised in the
world? 'Tis said that a new comer, called Paracelsus, changes and
overthrows the whole order of ancient rules, and maintains that, till
now, it has been of no other use but to kill men. I believe he will
easily make this good, but I do not think it were wisdom to venture my
life in making trial of his own experience. We are not to believe every
one, says the precept, because every one can say all things. A man of
this profession of novelties and physical reformations not long since
told me that all the ancients were notoriously mistaken in the nature
and motions of the winds, which he would evidently demonstrate to me if
I would give him the hearing. After I had with some patience heard his
arguments, which were all full of likelihood of truth: "What, then,"
said I, "did those that sailed according to Theophrastus make way
westward, when they had the prow towards the east? did they go sideward
or backward?" "That's fortune," answered he, "but so it is that they
were mistaken." I replied that I had rather follow effects than reason.
Now these are things that often interfere with one another, and I have
been told that in geometry (which pretends to have gained the highest
point of certainty of all science) there are inevitable demonstrations
found which subvert the truth of all experience; as Jacques Pelletier
told me, at my own house, that he had found out two lines stretching
themselves one towards the other to meet, which nevertheless he
affirmed, though extended to infinity, could never arrive to touch one
another. And the Pyrrhonians make no other use of their arguments and
their reason than to ruin the appearance of experience; and 'tis a
wonder how far the suppleness of our reason has followed them in this
design of controverting the evidence of effects; for they affirm that we
do not move, that we do not speak, and that there is neither weight nor
heat, with the same force of argument that we affirm the most likely
things. Ptolemy, who was a great man, had established the bounds of this
world of ours; all the ancient philosophers thought they had the measure
of it, excepting some remote isles that might escape their knowledge;
it had been Pyrrhonism, a thousand years ago, to doubt the science of
cosmography, and the opinions that every one had received from it; it
was heresy to admit the antipodes; and behold, in this age of ours,
there is an infinite extent of terra firma discovered, not an island or
single country, but a division of the world, nearly equal in greatness
to that we knew before. The geographers of our time stick not to assure
us that now all is found; all is seen:--
Nam quod adest prosto, placet, et pollere videtur;
"What's present pleases, and appears the best;"
but it remains to be seen whether, as Ptolemy was therein formerly
deceived upon the foundation of his reason, it were not very foolish to
trust now in what these people say? And whether it is not more likely
that this great body, which we call the world, is not quite another
thing than what we imagine.
Plato says that it changes countenance in all respects; that the
heavens, the stars, and the sun, have all of them sometimes motions
retrograde to what we see, changing east into west The Egyptian priests
told Herodotus that from the time of their first king, which was eleven
thousand and odd years since (and they showed him the effigies of all
their kings in statues taken from the life), the sun had four times
altered his course; that the sea and the earth did alternately change
into one another; that the beginning of the world is undetermined;
Aristotle and Cicero both say the same; and some amongst us are of
opinion that it has been from all eternity, is mortal, and renewed again
by several vicissitudes; calling Solomon and Isaiah to witness; to evade
those oppositions, that God has once been a creator without a creature;
that he has had nothing to do, that he got rid of that idleness by
putting his hand to this work; and that consequently he is subject to
change. In the most famous of the Greek schools the world is taken for a
god, made by another god greater than he, and composed of a body, and a
soul fixed in his centre, and dilating himself by musical numbers to
his circumference; divine, infinitely happy, and infinitely great,
infinitely wise and eternal; in him are other gods, the sea, the earth,
the stars, who entertain one another with an harmonious and perpetual
agitation and divine dance, sometimes meeting, sometimes retiring from
one another; concealing and discovering themselves; changing their
order, one while before, and another behind. Heraclitus was positive
that the world was composed of fire; and, by the order of destiny,
was one day to be enflamed and consumed in fire, and then to be again
renewed. And Apuleius says of men: _Sigillatim mortales, cunctim
perpetui._ "That they are mortal in particular, and immortal in
general." Alexander writ to his mother the narration of an Egyptian
priest, drawn from their monuments, testifying the antiquity of that
nation to be infinite, and comprising the birth and progress of other
countries. Cicero and Diodorus say that in their time the Chaldees kept
a register of four hundred thousand and odd years, Aristotle, Pliny,
and others, that Zoroaster flourished six thousand years before Plato's
time. Plato says that they of the city of Sais have records in writing
of eight thousand years; and that the city of Athens was built a
thousand years before the said city of Sais; Epicurus, that at the same
time things are here in the posture we see, they are alike and in the
same manner in several other worlds; which he would have delivered with
greater assurance, had he seen the similitude and concordance of the new
discovered world of the West Indies with ours, present and past, in so
many strange examples.
In earnest, considering what is come to our knowledge from the course
of this terrestrial polity, I have often wondered to see in so vast a
distance of places and times such a concurrence of so great a number of
popular and wild opinions, and of savage manners and beliefs, which by
no means seem to proceed from our natural meditation. The human mind is
a great worker of miracles! But this relation has, moreover, I know
not what of extraordinary in it; 'tis found to be in names, also, and a
thousand other things; for they found nations there (that, for aught we
know, never heard of us) where circumcision was in use; where there were
states and great civil governments maintained by women only, without
men; where our fasts and Lent were represented, to which was added
abstinence from women; where our crosses were several ways in repute;
here they were made use of to honour and adorn their sepultures, there
they were erected, and particularly that of St Andrew, to protect
themselves from nocturnal visions, and to lay upon the cradles of
infants against enchantments; elsewhere there was found one of wood,
of very great height, which was adored for the god of rain, and this
a great way in the interior; there was seen an express image of our
penance priests, the use of mitres, the celibacy of priests, the art
of divination by the entrails of sacrificed beasts, abstinence from all
sorts of flesh and fish in their diet, the manner of priests officiating
in a particular and not a vulgar language; and this fancy, that the
first god was driven away by a second, his younger brother; that they
were created with all sorts of necessaries and conveniences, which have
since been in a degree taken from them for their sins, their territory
changed, and their natural condition made worse; that they were of
old overwhelmed by the inundation of water from heaven; that but few
families escaped, who retired into caves on high mountains, the mouths
of which they stopped so that the waters could not get in, having shut
up, together with themselves, several sorts of animals; that when they
perceived the rain to cease they sent out dogs, which returning clean
and wet, they judged that the water was not much abated; afterwards
sending out others, and seeing them return dirty, they issued out to
repeople the world, which they found only full of serpents. In one place
we met with the belief of a day of judgment; insomuch that they were
marvellously displeased at the Spaniards for discomposing the bones of
the dead, in rifling the sepultures for riches, saying that those bones
so disordered could not easily rejoin; the traffic by exchange, and no
other way; fairs and markets for that end; dwarfs and deformed people
for the ornament of the tables of princes; the use of falconry,
according to the nature of their hawks; tyrannical subsidies; nicety in
gardens; dancing, tumbling tricks, music of instruments, coats of arms,
tennis-courts, dice and lotteries, wherein they are sometimes so eager
and hot as to stake themselves and their liberty; physic, no otherwise
than by charms; the way of writing in cypher; the belief of only one
first man, the father of all nations; the adoration of one God, who
formerly lived a man in perfect virginity, fasting, and penitence,
preaching the laws of nature, and the ceremonies of religion, and that
vanished from the world without a natural death; the theory of giants;
the custom of making themselves drunk with their beverages, and drinking
to the utmost; religious ornaments painted with bones and dead men's
skulls; surplices, holy water sprinkled; wives and servants, who present
themselves with emulation, burnt and interred with the dead husband or
master; a law by which the eldest succeeds to all the estate, no
part being left for the younger but obedience; the custom that, upon
promotion to a certain office of great authority, the promoted is to
take upon him a new name, and to leave that which he had before; another
to strew lime upon the knee of the new-born child, with these words:
"From dust thou earnest, and to dust thou must return;" as also the art
of augury. The vain shadows of our religion, which are observable in
some of these examples, are testimonies of its dignity and divinity. It
is not only in some sort insinuated into all the infidel nations on this
side of the world, by a certain imitation, but in these barbarians
also, as by a common and supernatural inspiration; for we find there the
belief of purgatory, but of a new form; that which we give to the fire
they give to the cold, and imagine that souls are purged and punished by
the rigour of an excessive coldness. And this example puts me in mind
of another pleasant diversity; for as there were there some people who
delighted to unmuffle the ends of their instruments, and clipped off
the prepuce after the Mahometan and Jewish manner; there were others who
made so great conscience of laying it bare, that they carefully pursed
it up with little strings to keep that end from peeping into the air;
and of this other diversity, that whereas we, to honour kings and
festivals, put on the best clothes we have; in some regions, to express
their disparity and submission to their king, his subjects present
themselves before him in their vilest habits, and entering his palace,
throw some old tattered garment over their better apparel, to the end
that all the lustre and ornament may solely be in him. But to proceed:--
If nature enclose within the bounds of her ordinary progress the
beliefs, judgments, and opinions of men, as well as all other things;
if they have their revolution, their season, their birth and death, like
cabbage plants; if the heavens agitate and rule them at their pleasure,
what magisterial and permanent authority do we attribute to them? If
we experimentally see that the form of our beings depends upon the air,
upon the climate, and upon the soil, where we are bom, and not only the
colour, the stature, the complexion, and the countenances, but moreover
the very faculties of the soul itself: Et plaga codi non solum ad robor
corporum, sed etiam anirum facit: "The climate is of great efficacy,
not only to the strength of bodies, but to that of souls also," says
Vegetius; and that the goddess who founded the city of Athens chose
to situate it in a temperature of air fit to make men prudent, as
the Egyptian priests told Solon: _Athenis tenue colum; ex quo etiam
acutiores putantur Attici; crassum Thebis; itaque pingues Thebani,
et valentes:_ "The air of Athens is subtle and thin; whence also the
Athenians are reputed to be more acute; and at Thebes more gross and
thick; wherefore the Thebans are looked upon as more heavy-witted and
more strong." In such sort that, as fruits and animals grow different,
men are also more or less warlike, just, temperate, and docile; here
given to wine, elsewhere to theft or uncleanness; here inclined to
superstition, elsewhere to unbelief; in one place to liberty, in another
to servitude; capable of one science or of one art, dull or ingenious,
obedient or mutinous, good or bad, according as the place where they
are seated inclines them; and assume a new complexion, if removed, like
trees, which was the reason why Cyrus would not grant the Persians
leave to quit their rough and craggy country to remove to another
more pleasant and even, saying, that fertile and tender soils made
men effeminate and soft. If we see one while one art and one belief
flourish, and another while another, through some celestial influence;
such an age to produce such natures, and to incline mankind to such and
such a propension, the spirits of men one while gay and another gray,
like our fields, what becomes of all those fine prerogatives we so
soothe ourselves withal? Seeing that a wise man may be mistaken, and a
hundred men and a hundred nations, nay, that even human nature
itself, as we believe, is many ages wide in one thing or another, what
assurances have we that she should cease to be mistaken, or that in this
very age of ours she is not so?
Methinks that amongst other testimonies of our imbecility, this ought
not to be forgotten, that man cannot, by his own wish and desire, find
out what he wants; that not in fruition only, but in imagination and
wish, we cannot agree about what we would have to satisfy and content
us. Let us leave it to our own thought to cut out and make up at
pleasure; it cannot so much as covet what is proper for it, and satisfy
itself:--
Quid enim ratione timemus,
Aut cupimus? Quid tain dextro pede concipis, ut te
Conatus non poniteat, votique peracti?
"For what, with reason, do we speak or shun,
What plan, how happily soe'r begun,
That, when achieved, we do not wish undone?"
And therefore it was that Socrates only begged of the gods that they
would give him what they knew to be best for him; and the private
and public prayer of the Lacedemonians was simply for good and useful
things, referring the choice and election of them to the discretion of
the Supreme Power:--
Conjugium petimus, partumqué uxoris; at illis
Notum, qui pueri, qualisque futura sit uxor:
"We ask for Wives and children; they above
Know only, when we have them, what they'll prove;"
and Christians pray to God, "Thy will be done," that they may not fall
into the inconvenience the poet feigns of King Midas. He prayed to
the gods that all he touched might be turned into gold; his prayer was
heard; his wine was gold, his bread was gold, the feathers of his
bed, his shirt, his clothes, were all gold, so that he found himself
overwhelmed with the fruition of his desire, and endowed with an
intolerable benefit, and was fain to unpray his prayers.
Attonitus novitate mali, divesque, miserque,
Effugere optât opes, et, quæ modo voverat, odit.
"Astonished at the strangeness of the ill,
To be so rich, yet miserable still;
He wishes now he could his wealth evade,
And hates the thing for which before he prayed."
To instance in myself: being young, I desired of fortune, above all
things, the order of St. Michael, which was then the utmost distinction
of honour amongst the French nobles, and very rare. She pleasantly
gratified my longing; instead of raising me, and lifting me up from my
own place to attain to it, she was much kinder to me; for she brought it
so low, and made it so cheap, that it stooped down to my shoulders, and
lower. Cleobis and Bito, Trophonius and Agamedes, having requested, the
first of their goddess, the last of their god, a recompense worthy of
their piety, had death for a reward; so differing from ours are heavenly
opinions concerning what is fit for us. God might grant us riches,
honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that
is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or
an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, _Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus
ipsa me consolata sunt._ "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he
does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly
discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it
in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand
Si consilium vis:
Permittee ipsis expendere numinibus, quid
Conveniat nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris...
Carior est illis homo quam sibi;
"If thou'lt be rul'd, to th' gods thy fortunes trust,
Their thoughts are wise, their dispensations just.
What best may profit or delight they know,
And real good, for fancied bliss, bestow;
With eyes of pity, they our frailties scan,
More dear to them, than to himself, is man;"
for to require of him honours and commands, is to require 'that he may
throw you into a battle, set you upon a cast at dice, or something of
the like nature, whereof the issue is to you unknown, and the fruit
doubtful.
There is no dispute so sharp and violent amongst the philosophers,
as about the question of the sovereign good of man; whence, by the
calculation of Varro, rose two hundred and eighty-eight sects. _Qui
autem de summo bono dissentit, de totâ philosophies ratione disputât._
"For whoever enters into controversy concerning the supreme good,
disputes upon the whole matter of philosophy."
Très mihi convivæ prope dissentire videntur,
Poscentes vario mul turn divers a palato;
Quid dem? Quid non dem? Renuis tu quod jubet alter;
Quod petis, id sane est invisum acidumque duobus;
"I have three guests invited to a feast,
And all appear to have a different taste;
What shall I give them? What shall I refuse?
What one dislikes the other two shall choose;
And e'en the very dish you like the best
Is acid or insipid to the rest:"
nature should say the same to their contests and debates. Some say that
our well-being lies in virtue, others in pleasure, others in submitting
to nature; one in knowledge, another in being exempt from pain, another
in not suffering ourselves to be carried away by appearances; and this
fancy seems to have some relation to that of the ancient Pythagoras,
Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici,
Solaque, quæ possit facere et servare beatum:
"Not to admire's the only art I know
Can make us happy, and can keep us so;"
which is the drift of the Pyrrhonian sect; Aristotle attributes the
admiring nothing to magnanimity; and Arcesilaus said, that constancy and
a right inflexible state of judgment were the true good, and consent
and application the sin and evil; and there, it is true, in being thus
positive, and establishing a certain axiom, he quitted Pyrrhonism; for
the' Pyrrhonians, when they say that ataraxy, which is the immobility
of judgment, is the sovereign good, do not design to speak it
affirmatively; but that the same motion of soul which makes them avoid
precipices, and take shelter from the cold, presents them such a fancy,
and makes them refuse another.
How much do I wish that, whilst I live, either some other or Justus
Lipsius, the most learned man now living, of a most polite and judicious
understanding, truly resembling my Turnebus, had both the will and
health, and leisure sufficient, carefully and conscientiously to collect
into a register, according to their divisions and classes, as many as
are to be found, of the opinions of the ancient philosophers, about the
subject of our being and manners, their controversies, the succession
and reputation of sects; with the application of the lives of the
authors and their disciples to their own precepts, in memorable
accidents, and upon exemplary occasions. What a beautiful and useful
work that would be!
As to what remains, if it be from ourselves that we are to extract the
rules of our manners, upon what a confusion do we throw ourselves! For
that which our reason advises us to, as the most likely, is generally
for every one to obey the laws of his country, as was the advice of
Socrates, inspired, as he says, by a divine counsel; and by that,
what would it say, but that our duty has no other rule but what is
accidental? Truth ought to have a like and universal visage; if man
could know equity and justice that had a body and a true being, he would
not fetter it to the conditions of this country or that; it would not be
from the whimsies of the Persians or Indians that virtue would receive
its form. There is nothing more subject to perpetual agitation than
the laws; since I was born, I have known those of the English, our
neighbours, three or four times changed, not only in matters of civil
regimen, which is the only thing wherein constancy may be dispensed
with, but in the most important subject that can be, namely, religion,
at which I am the more troubled and ashamed, because it is a nation with
whom those of my province have formerly had so great familiarity and
acquaintance, that there yet remains in my house some footsteps of our
ancient kindred; and here with us at home, I have known a thing that
was capital to become lawful; and we that hold of others are likewise,
according to the chance of war, in a possibility of being one day found
guilty of high-treason, both divine and human, should the justice of
our arms fall into the power of injustice, and, after a few years'
possession, take a quite contrary being. How could that ancient god more
clearly accuse the ignorance of human knowledge concerning the divine
Being, and give men to understand that their religion was but a thing of
their own contrivance, useful as a bond to their society, than declaring
as he did to those who came to his tripod for instruction, that every
one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he
chanced to be? O God, what infinite obligation have we to the bounty
of our sovereign Creator, for having disabused our belief from these
wandering and arbitrary devotions, and for having seated it upon the
eternal foundation of his holy word? But what then will philosophers say
to us in this necessity? "That we follow the laws of our country;" that
is to say, this floating sea of the opinions of a republic, or a prince,
that will paint out justice for me in as many colours, and form it
as many ways as there are changes of passions in themselves; I cannot
suffer my judgment to be so flexible. What kind of virtue is that which
I see one day in repute, and that to-morrow shall be in none, and which
the crossing of a river makes a crime? What sort of truth can that
be, which these mountains limit to us, and make a lie to all the world
beyond them?
But they are pleasant, when, to give some certainty to the laws, they
say, that there are some firm, perpetual, and immovable, which they call
natural, that are imprinted in human kind by the condition of their own
proper being; and of these some reckon three, some four, some more, some
less; a sign that it is a mark as doubtful as the rest Now they are so
unfortunate, (for what can I call it else but misfortune that, of so
infinite a number of laws, there should not be found one at least
that fortune and the temerity of chance has suffered to be universally
received by the consent of all nations?) they are, I say, so miserable,
that of these three or four select laws, there is not so much as one
that is not contradicted and disowned, not only by one nation, but by
many. Now, the only likely sign, by which they can argue or infer some
natural laws, is the universality of approbation; for we should, without
doubt, follow with a common consent that which nature had truly ordained
us; and not only every nation, but every private man, would resent the
force and violence that any one should do him who would tempt him to
any thing contrary to this law. But let them produce me one of this
condition. Proctagoras and Aristo gave no other essence to the justice
of laws than the authority and opinion of the legislator; and that,
these laid aside, the honest and the good lost their qualities, and
remained empty names of indifferent things; Thrasymachus, in Plato,
is of opinion that there is no other right but the convenience of the
superior. There is not any thing wherein the world is so various as in
laws and customs; such a thing is abominable here which is elsewhere in
esteem, as in Lacedemon dexterity in stealing; marriages between near
relations, are capitally interdicted amongst us; they are elsewhere in
honour:--
Gentes esse ferantur,
In quibus et nato genitrix, et nata parenti
Jungitur, et pietas geminato crescit amore;
"There are some nations in the world, 'tis said,
Where fathers daughters, sons their mothers wed;
And their affections thereby higher rise,
More firm and constant by these double ties;"
the murder of infants, the murder of fathers, the community of wives,
traffic of robberies, license in all sorts of voluptuousness; in short,
there is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some
nation or other.
It is credible that there are natural laws for us, as we see them
in other creatures; but they are lost in us, this fine human reason
everywhere so insinuating itself to govern and command, as to shuffle
and confound the face of things, according to its own vanity and
inconstancy: _Nihil itaque amplius nostrum est; quod nostrum dico,
artis est:_ "Therefore nothing is any more truly ours; what we call ours
belongs to art." Subjects have divers lustres and divers considerations,
and thence the diversity of opinions principally proceeds; one nation
considers a subject in one aspect, and stops there: another takes it in
a different point of view.
There is nothing of greater horror to be imagined than for a man to eat
his father; and yet the people, whose ancient custom it was so to do,
looked upon it as a testimony of piety and affection, seeking thereby to
give their progenitors the most worthy and honourable sepulture; storing
up in themselves, and as it were in their own marrow, the bodies
and relics of their fathers; and in some sort regenerating them by
transmutation into their living flesh, by means of nourishment and
digestion. It is easy to consider what a cruelty and abomination it
must have appeared to men possessed and imbued with this snperstition
to throw their fathers' remains to the corruption of the earth, and the
nourishment of beasts and worms.
Lycurgus considered in theft the vivacity, diligence, boldness, and
dexterity of purloining any thing from our neighbours, and the benefit
that redounded to the public that every one should look more narrowly
to the conservation of what was his own; and believed that, from this
double institution of assaulting and defending, advantage was to be made
for military discipline (which was the principal science and virtue to
which he would inure that nation), of greater consideration than the
disorder and injustice of taking another man's goods.
Dionysius, the tyrant, offered Plato a robe of the Persian fashion,
long, damasked, and perfumed; Plato refused it, saying, "That being
born a man, he would not willingly dress himself in women's clothes;"
but Aristippus accepted it with this answer, "That no accoutrement could
corrupt a chaste courage." His friends reproaching him with meanness of
spirit, for laying it no more to heart that Dionysius had spit in his
face, "Fishermen," said he, "suffer themselves to be drenched with the
waves of the sea from head to foot to catch a gudgeon." Diogenes was
washing cabbages, and seeing him pass by, "If thou couldst live on
cabbage," said he, "thou wouldst not fawn upon a tyrant;" to whom
Aristippus replied, "And if thou knewest how to live amongst men, thou
wouldst not be washing cabbages." Thus reason finds appearances for
divers effects; 'tis a pot with two ears that a man may take by the
right or left:--
Bellum, o terra hospita, portas:
Bello armantur eqni; bellum hæc armenta minantur.
Sed tamen idem olim curru succedere sueti
Quadrupedes, et frena jugo concordia ferre;
Spes est pacis.
"War, war is threatened from this foreign ground
(My father cried), where warlike steeds are found.
Yet, since reclaimed, to chariots they submit,
And bend to stubborn yokes, and champ the bit,
Peace may succeed to war."
Solon, being lectured by his friends not to shed powerless and
unprofitable tears for the death of his son, "It is for that reason that
I the more justly shed them," said he, "because they are powerless
and unprofitable." Socrates's wife exasperated her grief by this
circumstance: "Oh, how unjustly do these wicked judges put him to
death!" "Why," replied he, "hadst thou rather they should execute me
justly?" We have our ears bored; the Greeks looked upon that as a mark
of slavery. We retire in private to enjoy our wives; the Indians do it
in public. The Scythians immolated strangers in their temples; elsewhere
temples were a refuge:--
Inde furor vulgi, quod numina vicinorum
Odit quisque locus, cum solos credat habendos
Esse deos, quos ipse colit.
"Thus 'tis the popular fury that creates
That all their neighbours' gods each nation hates;
Each thinks its own the genuine; in a word,
The only deities to be adored."
I have heard of a judge who, coming upon a sharp conflict betwixt
Bartolus and Aldus, and some point controverted with many contrarieties,
writ in the margin of his book, "a question for a friend;" that is to
say, that truth was there so controverted and disputed that in a like
cause he might favour which of the parties he thought fit 'Twas only for
want of wit that he did not write "a question for a friend" throughout.
The advocates and judges of our times find bias enough in all causes
to accommodate them to what they themselves think fit. In so infinite
a science, depending upon the authority of so many opinions, and so
arbitrary a subject, it cannot be but that of necessity an extreme
confusion of judgments must arise; there is hardly any suit so clear
wherein opinions do not very much differ; what one court has determined
one way another determines quite contrary, and itself contrary to that
at another time. Of which we see very frequent examples, owing to that
practice admitted amongst us, and which is a marvellous blemish to the
ceremonious authority and lustre of our justice, of not abiding by one
sentence, but running from judge to judge, and court to court, to decide
one and the same cause.
As to the liberty of philosophical opinions concerning vice and virtue,
'tis not necessary to be insisted upon; therein are found many opinions
that are better concealed than published to weak minds. Arcesilaus said,
"That in venery it was no matter where, or with whom, it was committed:"
_Et obsccenas voluptates, si natura requirit, non genere, aut loco, aut
ordine, sed forma, otate, jigurâ, metiendas Epicurus putat.... ne amores
quidem sanctos a sapiente alienos esse arbitrantur.... Queeramus, ad
quam usque otatem juvenes amandi sint._ "And obscene pleasures, if
nature requires them," Epicurus thinks, "are not to be measured either
by race, kind, place, or rank, but by age, shape, and beauty.... Neither
are sacred loves thought to be foreign to wise men;... we are to
inquire till what age young men are to be loved." These last two stoical
quotations, and the reproach that Dicæarchus threw into the teeth of
Plato himself, upon this account, show how much the soundest philosophy
indulges licenses and excesses very remote from common custom.
Laws derive their authority from possession and custom. 'Tis dangerous
to trace them back to their beginning; they grow great, and ennoble
themselves, like our rivers, by running on; but follow them upward to
their source, 'tis but a little spring, scarce discernable,
that swells thus, and thus fortifies itself by growing old. Do but
consult the ancient considerations that gave the first motion to this
famous torrent, so full of dignity, awe, and reverence, you will find
them so light and weak that it is no wonder if these people, who weigh
and reduce every thing to reason, and who admit nothing by authority, or
upon trust, have their judgments often very remote, and differing from
those of the public. It is no wonder if people, who take their pattern
from the first image of nature, should in most of their opinions swerve
from the common path; as, for example, few amongst them would have
approved of the strict conditions of our marriages, and most of them
have been for having wives in common, and without obligation; they would
refuse our ceremonies. Chrysippus said, "That a philosopher would make
a dozen somersaults, aye, and without his breeches, for a dozen of
olives." That philosopher would hardly have advised Clisthenes to have
refused Hippoclides the fair Agarista his daughter, for having seen him
stand on his head upon a table. Metrocles somewhat indiscreetly broke
wind backwards while in disputation, in the presence of a great auditory
in his school, and kept himself hid in his own house for shame, till
Crates coming to visit him, and adding to his consolations and reasons
the example of his own liberty, by falling to try with him who should
sound most, cured him of that scruple, and withal drew him to his own
stoical sect, more free than that more reserved one of the Peripatetics,
of which he had been till then. That which we call decency, not to dare
to do that in public which is decent enough to do in private, the Stoics
call foppery; and to mince it, and to be so modest as to conceal and
disown what nature, custom, and our desires publish and proclaim of our
actions, they reputed a vice. The other thought it was to undervalue the
mysteries of Venus to draw them out of the private oratory, to expose
them to the view of the people; and that to bring them out from behind
the curtain was to debase them. Modesty is a thing of weight; secrecy,
reservation, and circumspection, are parts of esteem. Pleasure did
very ingeniously when, under the mask of virtue, she sued not to be
prostituted in the open streets, trodden under foot, and exposed to
the public view, wanting the dignity and convenience of her private
cabinets. Hence some say that to put down public stews is not only to
disperse fornication into all places, that was confined to one, but
moreover, by the difficulty, to incite wild and idle people to this
vice:--
Mochus es Aufidiæ, qui vir,
Scævine, fuisti:
Rivalis fuerat qui tuus, ille vir est.
Cur aliéna placet tibi, quæ tua non placet uxor?
Numquid securus non potes arrigere?
This experience diversifies itself in a thousand examples:--
Nullus in urbe fuit totâ, qui tangere vellet
Uxorem gratis, Cæciliane, tuam,
Dum licuit: sed nunc, positis custodibus, ingens
Turba fututorum est. Ingeniosus homo es.
A philosopher being taken in the very act, and asked what he was doing,
coldly replied, "I am planting man;" no more blushing to be so caught
than if they had found him planting garlic.
It is, I suppose, out of tenderness and respect to the natural modesty
of mankind that a great and religious author is of opinion that this act
is so necessarily obliged to privacy and shame that he cannot persuade
himself there could be any absolute performance in those impudent
embraces of the Cynics, but that they contented themselves to represent
lascivious gestures only, to maintain the impudence of their school's
profession; and that, to eject what shame had withheld and restrained,
it was afterward necessary for them to withdraw into the shade. But he
had not thoroughly examined their debauches; for Diogenes, playing the
beast with himself in public, wished, in the presence of all that saw
him, that he could fill his belly by that exercise. To those who asked
him why he did not find out a more commodious place to eat in than
in the open street, he made answer, "Because I am hungry in the open
street." The women philosophers who mixed with their sect, mixed also
with their persons, in all places, without reservation; and Hipparchia
was not received into Crates's society, but upon condition that she
should, in all things, follow the practice and customs of his rule.
These philosophers set a great price upon virtue, and renounce all other
discipline but the moral; and yet, in all their actions, they attributed
the sovereign authority to the election of their sage, and above the
laws; and gave no other curb to voluptuousness but moderation only, and
the conservation of the liberty of others.
Heraclitus and Protagoras, forasmuch as wine seemed bitter to the sick,
and pleasant to the sound, the rudder crooked in the water, and straight
when out, and such like contrary appearances as are found in subjects,
argued thence that all subjects had, in themselves, the causes of these
appearances; and there was some bitterness in the wine which had some
sympathy with the sick man's taste, and the rudder some bending quality
sympathizing with him that looks upon it in the water; and so of all
the rest; which is to say, that all is in all things, and, consequently,
nothing in any one; for, where all is, there is nothing.
This opinion put me in mind of the experience we have that there is
no sense or aspect of any thing, whether bitter or sweet, straight
or crooked, that the human mind does not find out in the writings it
undertakes to tumble over. Into the cleanest, purest, and most perfect
words that can possibly be, how many lies and falsities have we
suggested! What heresy has not there found ground and testimony
sufficient to make itself embraced and defended! 'Tis for this that the
authors of such errors will never depart from proof of the testimony of
the interpretation of words. A person of dignity, who would approve to
me, by authority, the search of the philosopher's stone, wherein he
was head over ears engaged, lately alleged to me at least five or six
passages of the Bible upon which, he said, he first founded his attempt,
for the discharge of his conscience (for he is a divine); and, in truth,
the idea was not only pleasant, but, moreover, very well accommodated to
the defence of this fine science.
By this way the reputation of divining fables is acquired. There is no
fortune-teller, if we have this authority, but, if a man will take the
pains to tumble and toss, and narrowly to peep into all the folds and
glosses of his words, he may make him, like the Sibyls, say what he
will. There are so many ways of interpretation that it will be hard but
that, either obliquely or in a direct line, an ingenious wit will
find out, in every subject, some air that will serve for his purpose;
therefore we find a cloudy and ambiguous style in so frequent and
ancient use. Let the author but make himself master of that, to busy
posterity about his predictions, which not only his own parts, but the
accidental favour of the matter itself, may do for him; and, as to
the rest, express himself, whether after a foolish or a subtle manner,
somewhat obscurely or contradictorily, 'tis no matter;--a number of
wits, shaking and sifting him, will bring out a great many several
forms, either according to his meaning, or collateral, or contrary, to
it, which will all redound to his honour; he will see himself enriched
by the means of his disciples, like the regents of colleges by their
pupils yearly presents. This it is which has given reputation to many
things of no worth at all; that has brought several writings in vogue,
and given them the fame of containing all sorts of matter can be
desired; one and the same thing receiving a thousand and a thousand
images and various considerations; nay, as many as we please.
Is it possible that Homer could design to say all that we make him
say, and that he designed so many and so various figures, as that the
divines, law-givers, captains, philosophers, and all sorts of men
who treat of sciences, how variously and opposite soever, should
indifferently quote him, and support their arguments by his authority,
as the sovereign lord and master of all offices, works, and artisans,
and counsellor-general of all enterprises? Whoever has had occasion for
oracles and predictions has there found sufficient to serve his turn.
'Tis a wonder how many and how admirable concurrences an intelligent
person, and a particular friend of mine, has there found out in favour
of our religion; and cannot easily be put out of the conceit that it was
Homer's design; and yet he is as well acquainted with this author as
any man whatever of his time. And what he has found in favour of our
religion there, very many anciently have found in favour of theirs. Do
but observe how Plato is tumbled and tossed about; every one ennobling
his own opinions by applying him to himself, and making him take what
side they please. They draw him in, and engage him in all the new
opinions the world receives; and make him, according to the different
course of things, differ from himself; every one makes him disavow,
according to his own sense, the manners and customs lawful in his age,
because they are unlawful in ours; and all this with vivacity and power,
according to the force and sprightliness of the wit of the interpreter.
From the same foundation that Heraclitus and this sentence of his had,
"that all things had in them those forms that we discern," Democritus
drew quite a contrary conclusion,--"that objects have in them nothing
that we discern in them;" and because honey is sweet to one and bitter
to another, he thence argued that it was neither sweet nor bitter. The
Pyrrhonians would say that they knew not whether it is sweet or bitter,
or whether the one or the other, or both; for these always gained
the highest point of dubitation. The Cyrenaics held that nothing was
perceptible from without, and that that only was perceptible that
inwardly touched us, as pain and pleasure; acknowledging neither sound
nor colour, but certain affections only that we receive from them; and
that man's judgment had no other seat Protagoras believed that "what
seems true to every one, is true to every one." The Epicureans lodged
all judgment in the senses, and in the knowledge of things, and in
pleasure. Plato would have the judgment of truth, and truth itself,
derived from opinions and the senses, to belong to the wit and
cogitation.
This discourse has put me upon the consideration of the senses, in which
lies the greatest foundation and Pro°f of our ignorance. Whatsoever is
known, is doubtless known by the faculty of the knower; for, seeing the
judgment proceeds from the operation of him that judges, 'tis reason
that this operation be performed by his means and will, not by the
constraint of another; as it would happen if we knew things by the
power, and according to the law of their essence. Now all knowledge is
conveyed to us by the senses; they are our masters:--
Via qua munita fidei
Proxima fert humanum in pectus, templaque mentis;
"It is the surest path that faith can find
By which to enter human heart and mind."
Science begins by them, and is resolved into them. After all, we should
know no more than a stone if we did not know there is sound, odour,
light, taste, measure, weight, softness, hardness, sharpness, colour,
smoothness, breadth, and depth; these are the platforms and principles
of the structure of all our knowledge; and, according to some, science
is nothing else but sense. He that could make me contradict the senses,
would have me by the throat; he could not make me go further back. The
senses are the beginning and the end of human knowledge:--
Invenies primis ab sensibns esse creatam
Notitiam veil; neque sensus posse refelli....
Quid majore fide porro, quam sensus, haberi Debet?
"Of truth, whate'er discoveries are made,
Are by the senses to us first conveyed;
Nor will one sense be baffled; for on what
Can we rely more safely than on that?"
Let us attribute to them the least we can, we must, however, of
necessity grant them this, that it is by their means and mediation that
all our instruction is directed. Cicero says, that Chrysippus having
attempted to extenuate the force and virtue of the senses, presented to
himself arguments and so vehement oppositions to the contrary that he
could not satisfy himself therein; whereupon Cameades, who maintained
the contrary side, boasted that he would make use of the very words and
arguments of Chrysippus to controvert and confute him, and therefore
thus cried out against him: "O miserable! thy force has destroyed thee."
There can be nothing absurd to a greater degree than to maintain that
fire does not warm, that light does not shine, and that there is no
weight nor solidity in iron, which are things conveyed to us by the
senses; neither is there belief nor knowledge in man that can be
compared to that for certainty.
The first consideration I have upon the subject of the senses is that I
make a doubt whether or no man be furnished with all natural senses. I
see several animals who live an entire and perfect life, some without
sight, others without hearing; who knows whether to us also one, two,
three, or many other senses may not be wanting? For if any one be
wanting, our examination cannot discover the defect. 'Tis the privilege
of the senses to be the utmost limit of our discovery; there is nothing
beyond them that can assist us in exploration, not so much as one sense
in the discovery of another:--
An poterunt oculos aures reprehendere? an aures
Tactus an hunc porro tactum sapor argnet oris?
An confutabunt nares, oculive revincent?
"Can ears the eyes, the touch the ears, correct?
Or is that touch by tasting to be check'd?
Or th' other senses, shall the nose or eyes
Confute in their peculiar faculties?"
They all make the extremest limits of our ability:--
Seorsum cuique potestas Divisa est, sua vis cuique est,
"Each has its power distinctly and alone,
And every sense's power is its own."
It is impossible to make a man naturally blind conceive that he does not
see; impossible to make him desire sight, or to regret his defect; for
which reason we ought not to derive any assurance from the soul's being
contented and satisfied with those we have; considering that it cannot
be sensible herein of its infirmity and imperfection, if there be any
such thing. It is impossible to say any thing to this blind man, either
by reasoning, argument, or similitude, that can possess his imagination
with any apprehension of light, colour, or sight; there's nothing
remains behind that can push on the senses to evidence. Those that
are born blind, whom we hear wish they could see, it is not that they
understand what they desire; they have learned from us that they want
something; that there is something to be desired that we have, which
they can name indeed and speak of its effect and consequences; but yet
they know not what it is, nor apprehend it at all.
I have seen a gentleman of a good family who was born blind, or at least
blind from such an age that he knows not what sight is; who is so little
sensible of his defect that he makes use as we do of words proper for
seeing, and applies them after a manner wholly particular and his own.
They brought him a child to which he was god-father, which, having taken
into his arms, "Good God," said he, "what a fine child! How beautiful
to look upon! what a pretty face it has!" He will say, like one of us,
"This room has a very fine prospect;--it is clear weather;--the sun
shines bright." And moreover, being that hunting, tennis, and butts are
our exercises, and he has heard so, he has taken a liking to them, will
ride a-hunting, and believes he has as good share of the sport as we
have; and will express himself as angry or pleased as the best of us
all, and yet knows nothing of it but by the ear. One cries out to him,
"Here's a hare!" when he is upon some even plain where he may safely
ride; and afterwards, when they tell him, "The hare is killed," he will
be as overjoyed and proud of it as he hears others say they are. He will
take a tennis-ball in his left hand and strike it away with the racket;
he will shoot with a harquebuss at random, and is contented with what
his people tell him, that he is over, or wide.
Who knows whether all human kind commit not the like absurdity, for want
of some sense, and that through this default the greatest part of
the face of things is concealed from us? What do we know but that the
difficulties which we find in several works of nature proceed hence;
and that several effects of animals, which exceed our capacity, are not
produced by faculty of some sense that we are defective in? and whether
some of them have not by this means a life more full and entire than
ours? We seize an apple with all our senses; we there find redness,
smoothness, odour, and sweetness; but it may have other virtues besides
these, as to heat or binding, which no sense of ours can have any
reference unto. Is it not likely that there are sensitive faculties in
nature that are fit to judge of and to discern those which we call the
occult properties in several things, as for the loadstone to attract
iron; and that the want of such faculties is the cause that we
are ignorant of the true essence of such things? 'Tis perhaps some
particular sense that gives cocks to understand what hour it is at
midnight, and when it grows to be towards day, and that makes them crow
accordingly; that teaches chickens, before they have any experience of
the matter, to fear a sparrow-hawk, and not a goose or a peacock, though
birds of a much larger size; that cautions them against the hostile
quality the cat has against them, and makes them not to fear a dog; to
arm themselves against the mewing, a kind of flattering voice, of the
one, and not against the barking, a shrill and threatening voice, of the
other; that teaches wasps, ants, and rats, to fall upon the best pear
and the best cheese before they have tasted them, and inspires the stag,
elephant, and serpent, with the knowledge of a certain herb proper for
their cure. There is no sense that has not a mighty dominion, and that
does not by its power introduce an infinite number of knowledges. If
we were defective in the intelligence of sounds, of harmony, and of the
voice, it would cause an unimaginable confusion in all the rest of our
science; for, besides what belongs to the proper effect of every sense,
how many arguments, consequences, and conclusions do we draw to other
things, by comparing one sense with another? Let an understanding man
imagine human nature originally produced without the sense of seeing,
and consider what ignorance and trouble such a defect would bring upon
him, what a darkness and blindness in the soul; he will then see by that
of how great importance to the knowledge of truth the privation of such
another sense, or of two or three, should we be so deprived, would be.
We have formed a truth by the consultation and concurrence of our five
senses; but perhaps we should have the consent and contribution of eight
or ten to make a certain discovery of it in its essence.
The sects that controvert the knowledge of man do it principally by the
uncertainty and weakness of our senses; for since all knowledge is
by their means and mediation conveyed unto us, if they fail in their
report, if they corrupt or alter what they bring us from without, if the
light which by them creeps into the soul be obscured in the passage,
we have nothing else to hold by. From this extreme difficulty all these
fancies proceed: "That every subject has in itself all we there find.
That it has nothing in it of what we think we there find;" and that of
the Epicureans, "That the sun is no bigger than 'tis judged by our sight
to be:--"
Quidquid id est, nihilo fertur majore figura,
Quam nostris oculis quam cemimus, esse videtur:
"But be it what it will in our esteems,
It is no bigger than to us it seems:"
that the appearances which represent a body great to him that is near,
and less to him that is more remote, are both true:--
Nee tamen hic oculos falli concedimus hilum....
Proinde animi vitium hoc oculis adfingere noli:
"Yet that the eye's deluded we deny;
Charge not the mind's faults, therefore, on the eye:"
"and, resolutely, that there is no deceit in the senses; that we are to
lie at their mercy, and seek elsewhere reasons to excuse the difference
and contradictions we there find, even to the inventing of lies and
other flams, if it come to that, rather than accuse the senses."
Timagoras vowed that, by pressing or turning his eye, he could never
perceive the light of the candle to double, and that the seeming so
proceeded from the vice of opinion, and not from the instrument. The
most absurd of all absurdities, with the Epicureans, is to deny the
force and effect of the senses:--
Proinde, quod in quoquo est his visum tempore, verum est
Et, si non potuit ratio dissolvere causam,
Cur ea, quæ fuerint juxtim quadrata, procul sint
Visa rotunda; tamen præstat rationis egentem
Beddere mendose causas utriusque figuræ,
Quam manibus manifesta suis emittere quæquam,
Et violare fidem primam, et convellere tota
Fundamenta, quibus nixatur vita salusque:
Non modo enim ratio ruat omnis, vita quoque ipsa
Concidat extemplo, nisi credere sensibus ausis,
Procipitesque locos vitare, et cætera, quæ sint
In genere hoc fugienda.
"That what we see exists I will maintain,
And if our feeble reason can't explain
Why things seem square when they are very near,
And at a greater distance round appear;
'Tis better yet, for him that's at a pause,
'T' assign to either figure a false cause,
Than shock his faith, and the foundations rend
On which our safety and our life depend:
For reason not alone, but life and all,
Together will with sudden ruin fall;
Unless we trust our senses, nor despise
To shun the various dangers that arise."
This so desperate and unphilosophical advice expresses only this,--that
human knowledge cannot support itself but by reason unreasonable,
foolish, and mad; but that it is yet better that man, to set a greater
value upon himself, make use of any other remedy, how fantastic soever,
than to confess his necessary ignorance--a truth so disadvantageous to
him. He cannot avoid owning that the senses are the sovereign lords
of his knowledge; but they are uncertain, and falsifiable in all
circumstances; 'tis there that he is to fight it out to the last; and
if his just forces fail him, as they do, to supply that defect with
obstinacy, temerity, and impudence. In case what the Epicureans say
be true, viz: "that we have no knowledge if the senses' appearances
be false;" and if that also be true which the Stoics say, "that the
appearances of the senses are so false that they can furnish us with no
manner of knowledge," we shall conclude, to the disadvantage of these
two great dogmatical sects, that there is no science at all.
As to the error and uncertainty of the operation of the senses, every
one may furnish himself with as many examples as he pleases; so ordinary
are the faults and tricks they put upon us. In the echo of a valley the
sound of a trumpet seems to meet us, which comes from a place behind:--
Exstantesque procul medio de gurgite montes,
Classibus inter qnos liber patet exitus, idem
Apparent, et longe divolsi licet, ingens
Insula conjunctis tamen ex his ana videtur...
Et fugere ad puppim colies campique videntur,
Qnos agimns proter navim, velisque volamus....
Ubi in medio nobis equus acer obhæsit
Flamine, equi corpus transversum ferre videtur
Vis, et in adversum flumen contrudere raptim.
"And rocks i' th' seas that proudly raise their head,
Though far disjoined, though royal navies spread,
Their sails between; yet if from distance shown,
They seem an island all combin'd in one.
Thus ships, though driven by a prosperous gale,
Seem fix'd to sailors; those seem under sail
That ride at anchor safe; and all admire,
As they row by, to see the rocks retire.
Thus, when in rapid streams my horse hath stood,
And I look'd downward on the rolling flood;
Though he stood still, I thought he did divide
The headlong streams, and strive against the tide,
And all things seem'd to move on every side."
Take a musket-ball under the forefinger, the middle finger being lapped
over it, it feels so like two that a man will have much ado to persuade
himself there is but one; the end of the two fingers feeling each of
them one at the same time; for that the senses are very often masters of
our reason, and constrain it to receive impressions which it judges and
knows to be false, is frequently seen. I set aside the sense of feeling,
that has its functions nearer, more lively, and substantial, that so
often, by the effects of the pains it helps the body to, subverts and
overthrows all those fine Stoical resolutions, and compels him to cry
out of his belly, who has resolutely established this doctrine in his
soul--"That the colic, and all other pains and diseases, are indifferent
things, not having the power to abate any thing of the sovereign
felicity wherein the wise man is seated by his virtue." There is no
heart so effeminate that the rattle and sound of our drums and trumpets
will not inflame with courage; nor so sullen that the harmony of our
music will not rouse and cheer; nor so stubborn a soul that will
not feel itself struck with some reverence in considering the gloomy
vastness of our churches, the variety of ornaments, and order of our
ceremonies; and in hearing the solemn music of our organs, and the grace
and devout harmony of our voices. Even those that come in with contempt
feel a certain shivering in their hearts, and something of dread that
makes them begin to doubt their opinions. For my part I do not think
myself strong enough to hear an ode of Horace or Catullus sung by a
beautiful young mouth without emotion; and Zeno had reason to say "that
the voice was the flower of beauty." One would once make me believe that
a certain person, whom all we Frenchmen know, had imposed upon me in
repeating some verses that he had made; that they were not the same upon
paper that they were in the air; and that my eyes would make a contrary
judgment to my ears; so great a power has pronunciation to give fashion
and value to works that are left to the efficacy and modulation of the
voice. And therefore Philoxenus was not so much to blame, hearing
one giving an ill accent to some composition of his, in spurning and
breaking certain earthen vessels of his, saying, "I break what is thine,
because thou corruptest what is mine." To what end did those men who
have, with a firm resolution, destroyed themselves, turn away their
faces that they might not see the blow that was by themselves appointed?
And that those who, for their health, desire and command incisions to
be made, and cauteries to be applied to them, cannot endure the sight of
the preparations, instruments, and operations of the surgeon, being that
the sight is not in any way to participate in the pain? Are not these
proper examples to verify the authority the senses have over the
imagination? 'Tis to much purpose that we know these tresses were
borrowed from a page or a lackey; that this rouge came from Spain, and
this pearl-powder from the Ocean Sea. Our sight will, nevertheless,
compel us to confess their subject more agreeable and more lovely
against all reason; for in this there is nothing of its own:--
Auferinrar cultu; gemmis, auroque teguntur
Crimina; pars minima est ipsa puella sni.
Sæpe, ubi sit quod ames, inter tarn multa requiras:
Decipit hac oculos ægide dives Amor.
"By dress we're won; gold, gems, and rich brocades
Make up the pageant that your heart invades;
In all that glittering figure which you see,
The far least part of her own self is she;
In vain for her you love amidst such cost
You search, the mistress in such dress is lost."
What a strange power do the poets attribute to the senses, that make
Narcissus so desperately in love with his own shadow,
Cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse;
Se cupit imprudens, et, qui probat, ipse probatur;
Dumque petit, petitur; pariterque accendit, et ardet:
"Admireth all; for which to be admired;
And inconsiderately himself desir'd.
The praises which he gives his beauty claim'd,
Who seeks is sought, th' inflamer is inflam'd:"
and Pygmalion's judgment so troubled by the impression of the sight
of his ivory statue that he loves and adores it as if it were a living
woman!
Oscnla dat, reddique putat: sequi turque, tenetque,
Et credit tactis digitos insidere membris;
Et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus.
"He kisses, and believes he's kissed again;
Seizes, and 'twixt his arms his love doth strain,
And thinks the polish'd ivory thus held
Doth to his fingers amorous pressure yield,
And has a timorous fear, lest black and blue
Should in the parts with ardour press'd ensue."
Put a philosopher into a cage of small thin set bars of iron, hang him
on the top of the high tower of Notre Dame at Paris; he will see, by
manifest reason, that he cannot possibly fall, and yet he will find
(unless he has been used to the plumber's trade) that he cannot help but
the sight of the excessive height will fright and astound him; for we
have enough to do to assure ourselves in the galleries of our steeples,
if they are made with open work, although they are of stone; and some
there are that cannot endure so much as to think of it. Let there be a
beam thrown over betwixt these two towers, of breadth sufficient to
walk upon, there is no philosophical wisdom so firm that can give us the
courage to walk over it as we should do upon the ground. I have often
tried this upon our mountains in these parts; and though I am one who am
not the most subject to be afraid, I was not able to endure to look into
that infinite depth without horror and trembling, though I stood above
my length from the edge of the precipice, and could not have fallen
unless I would. Where I also observed that, what height soever the
precipice was, provided there were some tree, or some jutting out of a
rock, a little to support and divide the sight, it a little eases our
fears, and gives greater assurance; as if they were things by which in
falling we might have some relief; but that direct precipices we are
not to look upon without being giddy; _Ut despici vine vertigine
timid ocvlorum animique non possit:_ "'To that one cannot look without
dizziness;" which is a manifest imposture of the sight. And therefore
it was that that fine philosopher put out his own eyes, to free the soul
from being diverted by them, and that he might philosophize at greater
liberty; but, by the same rule, he should have dammed up his ears,
that Theophrastus says are the most dangerous instruments about us for
receiving violent impressions to alter and disturb us; and, finally,
should have deprived himself of all his other senses, that is to say, of
his life and being; for they have all the power to command our soul and
reason: _Fit etiam sope specie quâdam, sope vocum gravitate et cantibus,
ut pettantur animi vehementius; sope etiam cura et timoré,_ "For it
often falls out that the minds are more vehemently struck by some sight,
by the quality and sound of the voice, or by singing; and ofttimes also
by grief and fear." Physicians hold that there are certain complexions
that are agitated by the same sounds and instruments even to fury. I
have seen some who could not hear a bone gnawed under the table without
impatience; and there is scarce any man who is not disturbed at the
sharp and shrill noise that the file makes in grating upon the iron;
as also to hear chewing near them, or to hear any one speak who has an
impediment in the throat or nose, will move some people even to anger
and hatred. Of what use was that piping prompter of Gracchus, who
softened, raised, and moved his master's voice whilst he declaimed at
Rome, if the movements and quality of the sound had not the power to
move and alter the judgments of the auditory? In earnest, there is
wonderful reason to keep such a clutter about the firmness of this fine
piece, that suffers itself to be turned and twined by the motion and
accidents of so light a wind.
The same cheat that the senses put upon our understanding they have in
turn put upon them; the soul also some times has its revenge; they lie
and contend which should most deceive one another. What we see and hear
when we are transported with passion, we neither see nor hear as it
is:--
Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas.
"Thebes seems two cities, and the sun two suns."
The object that we love appears to us more beautiful than it really is;
Multimodis igitur pravas turpesque videmus
Esse in deliciis, summoque in honore vigere;
"Hence 'tis that ugly things in fancied dress
Seem gay, look fair to lovers' eyes, and please;"
and that we hate more ugly; to a discontented and afflicted man the
light of the day seems dark and overcast. Our senses are not only
depraved, but very often stupefied by the passions of the soul; how many
things do we see that we do not take notice of, if the mind be occupied
with other thoughts?
In rebus quoque apertis noscere possis,
Si non advertas animum, proinde esse quasi omni
Tempore semotæ fuerint, longeque remotæ:
"Nay, even in plainest things, unless the mind
Take heed, unless she sets herself to find,
The thing no more is seen, no more belov'd,
Than if the most obscure and most remov'd:"
it would appear that the soul retires within, and amuses the powers of
the senses. And so both the inside and the outside of man is full of
infirmity and falsehood.
They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the
right than they were aware of. When we dream, the soul lives, works, and
exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake;
but more largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the
difference should be as great as betwixt night and the meridian
brightness of the sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps,
here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, 'tis still dark, and
Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so
clearly in my sleep; but as to my being awake, I never found it clear
enough and free from clouds; moreover, sleep, when it is profound,
sometimes rocks even dreams themselves asleep; but our waking is never
so sprightly that it rightly purges and dissipates those whimsies, which
are waking dreams, and worse than dreams. Our reason and soul receiving
those fancies and opinions that come in dreams, and authorizing the
actions of our dreams with the like approbation that they do those of
the day, wherefore do we not doubt whether our thought, our action, is
not another sort of dreaming, and our waking a certain kind of sleep?
If the senses be our first judges, it is not ours that we are alone to
consult; for, in this faculty, beasts have as great, or greater, than
we; it is certain that some of them have the sense of hearing more quick
than man; others that of seeing, others that of feeling, others that
of touch and taste. Democritus said, that the gods and brutes had the
sensitive faculties more perfect than man. But betwixt the effects of
their senses and ours the difference is extreme. Our spittle cleanses
and dries up our wounds; it kills the serpent:--
Tantaque in his rebas distantia differitasque est,
Ut quod aliis cibus est, aliis fuat acre venenum.
Sæpe etenim serpens, hominis contacta salivà,
Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa:
"And in those things the difference is so great
That what's one's poison is another's meat;
For serpents often have been seen, 'tis said,
When touch'd with human spittle, to go mad,
And bite themselves to death:"
what quality shall we attribute to our spittle? as it affects ourselves,
or as it affects the serpent? By which of the two senses shall we prove
the true essence that we seek for?
Pliny says there are certain sea-hares in the Indies that are poison to
us, and we to them; insomuch that, with the least touch, we kill
them. Which shall be truly poison, the man or the fish? Which shall we
believe, the fish of the man, or the man of the fish? One quality of the
air infects a man, that does the ox no harm; some other infects the ox,
but hurts not the man. Which of the two shall, in truth and nature, be
the pestilent quality? To them who have the jaundice, all things seem
yellow and paler than to us:--
Lurida præterea fiunt, quæcunque tuentur Arquati.
"Besides, whatever jaundic'd eyes do view
Looks pale as well as those, and yellow too."
They who are troubled with the disease that the physicians call
hyposphagma--which is a suffusion of blood under the skin--see all
things red and bloody. What do we know but that these humours, which
thus alter the operations of sight, predominate in beasts, and are usual
with them? for we see some whose eyes are yellow, like us who have the
jaundice; and others of a bloody colour; 'tis likely that the colours
of objects seem other to them than to us. Which of the two shall make
a right judgment? for it is not said that the essence of things has a
relation to man only; hardness, whiteness, depth, and sharpness, have
reference to the service and knowledge of animals as well as to us, and
nature has equally designed them for their use. When we press down
the eye, the body that we look upon we perceive to be longer and more
extended;--many beasts have their eyes so pressed down; this length,
therefore, is perhaps the true form of that body, and not that which our
eyes give it in the usual state. If we close the lower part of the eye
things appear double to us:--
Bina lucemarum fiorentia lumina flammis...
Et duplices hominum faciès, et corpora bina.
"One lamp seems double, and the men appear
Each on two bodies double heads to bear."
If our ears be hindered, or the passage stopped with any thing, we
receive the sound quite otherwise than we usually do; animals, likewise,
who have either the ears hairy, or but a very little hole instead of an
ear, do not, consequently, hear as we do, but receive another kind of
sound. We see at festivals and theatres that, opposing a painted glass
of a certain colour to the light of the flambeaux, all things in the
place appear to us green, yellow, or violet:--
Et vulgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela,
Et ferrugina, cum, magnis intenta theatris,
Per malos vulgata trabesque, trementia pendent;
Namque ibi consessum caveai subter, et omnem
Scenai speciem, patrum, matrumque, deorumque
Inficiunt, coguntque suo volitare colore:
"Thus when pale curtains, or the deeper red,
O'er all the spacious theatre are spread,
Which mighty masts and sturdy pillars bear,
And the loose curtains wanton in the air;
Whole streams of colours from the summit flow,
The rays divide them in their passage through,
And stain the scenes, and men, and gods below:"
'tis likely that the eyes of animals, which we see to be of divers
colours, produce the appearance of bodies the same with their eyes.
We should, therefore, to make a right judgment of the oppositions of
the senses, be first agreed with beasts, and secondly amongst ourselves;
which we by no means are, but enter into dispute every time that one
hears, sees, or tastes something otherwise than another does, and
contests, as much as upon any other thing, about the diversity of the
images that the senses represent to us. A child, by the ordinary rule of
nature, hears, sees, and talks otherwise than a man of thirty years old;
and he than one of threescore. The senses are, in some, more obscure and
dusky, and more open and quick in others. We receive things variously,
according as we are, and according as they appear to us. Those rings
which are cut out in the form of feathers, which are called _endless
feathers_, no eye can discern their size, or can keep itself from the
deception that on one side they enlarge, and on the other contract, and
come So a point, even when the ring is being turned round the finger;
yet, when you feel them, they seem all of an equal size. Now, our
perception being so uncertain and so controverted, it is no more a
wonder if we are told that we may declare that snow appears white to us;
but that to affirm that it is in its own essence really so is more
than we are able to justify; and, this foundation being shaken, all
the knowledge in the world must of necessity fall to ruin. What! do
our senses themselves hinder one another? A picture seems raised and
embossed to the sight; in the handling it seems flat to the touch.
Shall we say that musk, which delights the smell, and is offensive to
the taste, is agreeable or no? There are herbs and unguents proper for
one part o£ the body, that are hurtful to another; honey is pleasant to
the taste, but offensive to the sight. They who, to assist their lust,
used in ancient times to make use of magnifying-glasses to represent the
members they were to employ bigger, by that ocular tumidity to please
themselves the more; to which of their senses did they give the
prize,--whether to the sight, that represented the members as large and
great as they would desire, or to the feeling, which represented them
little and contemptible? Are they our senses that supply the subject
with these different conditions, and have the subjects themselves,
nevertheless, but one? As we see in the bread we eat, it is nothing but
bread, but, by being eaten, it becomes bones, blood, flesh, hair; and
nails:--
Ut cibus in membra atque artus cum diditur omnes,
Disperit,, atque aliam naturam sufficit ex se;
"As meats, diffus'd through all the members, lose
Their former state, and different things compose;"
the humidity sucked up by the root of a tree becomes trunk, leaf, and
fruit; and the air, being but one, is modulated, in a trumpet, to a
thousand sorts of sounds; are they our senses, I would fain know, that,
in like manner, form these subjects into so many divers qualities, or
have they them really such in themselves? And upon this doubt what can
we determine of their true essence? Moreover, since the accidents of
disease, of raving, or sleep, make things appear otherwise to us than
they do to the healthful, the wise, and those that are awake, is it
not likely that our right posture of health and understanding, and our
natural humours, have, also, wherewith to give a being to things
that have a relation to their own condition, and accommodate them to
themselves, as well as when they are disordered;--that health is as
capable of giving them an aspect as sickness? Why has not the temperate
a certain form of objects relative to it, as well as the intemperate?
and why may it not as well stamp it with its own character as the other?
He whose mouth is out of taste, says the wine is flat; the healthful man
commends its flavour, and the thirsty its briskness. Now, our condition
always accommodating things to itself, and transforming them according
to its own posture, we cannot know what things truly are in themselves,
seeing that nothing comes to us but what is falsified and altered by the
senses. Where the compass, the square, and the rule, are crooked, all
propositions drawn thence, and all buildings erected by those guides,
must, of necessity, be also defective; the uncertainty of our senses
renders every thing uncertain that they produce:--
Denique ut in fabricâ, si prava est régula prima,
Normaque si fallax rectis regionibus exit,
Et libella aliquâ si ex parte claudicat hilum;
Omnia mendose fieri, atque obstipa necessum est,
Prava, cubantia, prona, supina, atque absona tecta;
Jam ruere ut quædam videantux'velle, ruantque
Prodita judiciis fallacibus omnia primis;
Sic igitur ratio tibi reram prava necesse est,
Falsaque sit, falsis quæcunque ab sensibus orta est.
"But lastly, as in building, if the line
Be not exact and straight, the rule decline,
Or level false, how vain is the design!
Uneven, an ill-shap'd and tottering wall
Must rise; this part must sink, that part must fall,
Because the rules were false that fashion'd all;
Thus reason's rules are false if all commence
And rise from failing and from erring sense."
As to what remains, who can be fit to judge of and to determine those
differences? As we say in controversies of religion that we must have
a judge neither inclining to the one side nor the other, free from all
choice and affection, which cannot be amongst Christians, just so it
falls out in this; for if he be old he cannot judge of the sense of
old age, being himself a party in the case; if young, there is the same
exception; if healthful, sick, asleep, or awake, he is still the
same incompetent judge. We must have some one exempt from all these
propositions, as of things indifferent to him; and by this rule we must
have a judge that never was.
To judge of the appearances that we receive of subjects, we ought t
have a deciding instrument; to verify this instrument we must have
demonstration; to verify this demonstration an instrument; and here
we are round again upon the wheel, and no further advanced. Seeing
the senses cannot determine our dispute, being full of uncertainty
themselves, it must then be reason that must do it; but no reason can be
erected upon any other foundation than that of another reason; and so we
run back to all infinity. Our fancy does not apply itself to things that
are strange, but is conceived by the mediation of the senses; and the
senses do not comprehend a foreign subject, but only their own passions;
by which means fancy and appearance are no part of the subject, but only
of the passion and sufferance of sense; which passion and subject are
different things; wherefore whoever judges by appearances judges by
another thing than the subject. And to say that the passions of
the senses convey to the soul the quality of foreign subjects by
resemblance, how can the soul and understanding be assured of this
resemblance, having of itself no commerce with foreign subjects? As they
who never knew Socrates cannot, when they see his picture, say it is
like him. Now, whoever would, notwithstanding, judge by appearances, if
it be by all, it is impossible, because they hinder one another by their
contrarieties and discrepancies, as we by experience see: shall some
select appearances govern the rest? you must verify this select by
another select, the second by a third, and thus there will never be
any end to it. Finally, there is no constant existence, neither of the
objects' being nor our own; both we, and our judgments, and all mortal
things, are evermore incessantly running and rolling; and consequently
nothing certain can be established from the one to the other, both the
judging and the judged being in a continual motion and mutation.
We have no communication with being, by reason that all human nature is
always in the middle, betwixt being bom and dying, giving but an obscure
appearance and shadow, a weak and uncertain opinion of itself; and if,
perhaps, you fix your thought to apprehend your being, it would be but
like grasping water; for the more you clutch your hand to squeeze and
hold what is in its own nature flowing, so much more you lose of what
you would grasp and hold. So, seeing that all things are subject to
pass from one change to another, reason, that there looks for a real
substance, finds itself deceived, not being able to apprehend any thing
that is subsistent and permanent, because that every thing is either
entering into being, and is not yet arrived at it, or begins to die
before it is bom. Plato said, that bodies had never any existence, but
only birth; conceiving that Homer had made the Ocean and Thetis father
and mother of the gods, to show us that all things are in a perpetual
fluctuation, motion, and variation; the opinion of all the philosophers,
as he says, before his time, Parmenides only excepted, who would not
allow things to have motion, on the power whereof he sets a mighty
value. Pythagoras was of opinion that all matter was flowing and
unstable; the Stoics, that there is no time present, and that what we
call so is nothing but the juncture and meeting of the future and the
past; Heraclitus, that never any man entered twice into the same river;
Epichar-mus, that he who borrowed money but an hour ago does not owe
it now; and that he who was invited over-night to come the next day to
dinner comes nevertheless uninvited, considering that they are no more
the same men, but are become others; and that there could not a mortal
substance be found twice in the same condition; for, by the suddenness
and quickness of the change, it one while disperses, and another
reunites; it comes and goes after such a manner that what begins to be
born never arrives to the perfection of being, forasmuch as that birth
is never finished and never stays, as being at an end, but from the seed
is evermore changing and shifting one to another; as human seed is first
in the mother's womb made a formless embryo, after delivered thence a
sucking infant, afterwards it becomes a boy, then a youth, then a man,
and at last a decrepit old man; so that age and subsequent generation is
always destroying and spoiling that which went before:--
Mutât enira mundi naturam totius ætas,
Ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet;
Nec manet ulla sui similis res; omnia migrant,
Omnia commutât natura, et vertere cogit.
"For time the nature of the world translates,
And from preceding gives all things new states;
Nought like itself remains, but all do range,
And nature forces every thing to change."
"And yet we foolishly fear one kind of death, whereas we have already
passed, and do daily pass, so many others; for not only, as Heraclitus
said, the death of fire is generation of air, and the death of air
generation of water; but, moreover, we may more manifestly discern it in
ourselves; manhood dies, and passes away when age comes on; and youth is
terminated in the flower of age of a full-grown man, infancy in youth,
and the first age dies in infancy; yesterday died in to-day, and to-day
will die in to-morrow; and there is nothing that remains in the same
state, or that is always the same thing. And that it is so let this be
the proof; if we are always one and the same, how comes it to pass that
we are now pleased with one thing, and by and by with another? How
comes it to pass that we love or hate contrary things, that we praise
or condemn them? How comes it to pass that we have different affections,
and no more retain the same sentiment in the same thought? For it is not
likely that without mutation we should assume other passions; and, that
which suffers mutation does not remain the same, and if it be not the
same it is not at all; but the same that the being is does, like it,
unknowingly change and alter; becoming evermore another from another
thing; and consequently the natural senses abuse and deceive themselves,
taking that which seems for that which is, for want of well knowing
what that which is, is. But what is it then that truly is? That which is
eternal; that is to say, that never had beginning, nor never shall have
ending, and to which time can bring no mutation. For time is a mobile
thine, and that appears as in a shadow, with a matter evermore flowing
and running, without ever remaining stable and permanent; and to which
belong those words, _before and after, has been, or shall be:_ which at
the first sight, evidently show that it is not a thing that is; for it
were a great folly, and a manifest falsity, to say that that is which is
not ÿet being, or that has already ceased to be. And as to these words,
_present, instant, and now_, by which it seems that we principally
support and found the intelligence of time, reason, discovering, does
presently destroy it; for it immediately divides and splits it into the
_future and past_, being of necessity to consider it divided in two. The
same happens to nature, that is measured, as to time that measures it;
for she has nothing more subsisting and permanent than the other, but
all things are either born, bearing, or dying. So that it were sinful to
say of God, who is he only who _is, that he was, or that he shall be _;
for those are terms of declension, transmutation, and vicissitude, of
what cannot continue or remain in being; wherefore we are to conclude
that God alone is, not according to any measure of time, but according
to an immutable and an immovable eternity, not measured by time, nor
subject to any declension; before whom nothing was, and after whom
nothing shall be, either more new or more recent, but a real being, that
with one sole now fills the for ever, and that there is nothing that
truly is but he alone; without our being able to say, _he has been, or
shall be_; without beginning, and without end." To this so religious
conclusion of a pagan I shall only add this testimony of one of the same
condition, for the close of this long and tedious discourse, which would
furnish me with endless matter: "What a vile and abject thing," says he,
"is man, if he do not raise himself above humanity!" 'Tis a good word
and a profitable desire, but withal absurd; for to make the handle
bigger than the hand, the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope
to stride further than our legs can reach, is both impossible and
monstrous; or that man should rise above himself and humanity; for he
cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his hold. He shall
be exalted, if God will lend him an extraordinary hand; he shall exalt
himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by
suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means purely celestial.
It belongs to our Christian faith, and not to the stoical virtue, to
pretend to that divine and miraculous metamorphosis.
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