regarded them as we do? (b) We allow ourselves to lean so heavily on the shoulders of others, that we enfeeble our own powers. Do I desire to arm myself against the fear of death? It is from Seneca’s storehouse. Do I desire to obtain consolation for myself or another? I borrow it from Cicero. I should have found it in myself if I had been practised in so doing. I do not like this derived and solicited competency. (a) Even if we could be learned with another’s learning, in any case we can be wise only with our own wisdom.
(c) Ex quo Ennius: Nequicquam sapere sapientem, qui ipse sibi prodesse non quiret.[2]
(b) Si cupidus, si
Vanus et Euganea quamtumvis vilior agna.[3]
(c) Non enim paranda nobis solum, sed fruenda sapientia est.[4] Dionysius derided the grammarians who investigate so carefully the misfortunes of Ulysses and are ignorant of their own; the musicians who tune their flutes, but do not tune their morals; the orators who study to speak justly but not so to act.[5]
(a) If our minds do not go a livelier pace,[6] if we have not a sounder judgement, I would as lief that the student had passed his time playing at tennis; at least, his body would be the better for it. See him when he returns home after thus spending fifteen or sixteen years: there is nothing in the world so unfitted to be employed; all the gain you can see in
- ↑ I hate the wise man who is not wise in his own affairs. — Euripides, in Stobæus, Sermon 3. (See also Cicero, Epistulæ Familiares, XII, 15.) In 1580-1588, Montaigne supplied a French translation: Je haï, dict-il, le Sage qui n'est pas sage pour soy-mesmes.
- ↑ As to which Ennius [says]: Fruitless is wisdom to the wise man if he himself can not profit by it. — Cicero, De Off., III, 15.
- ↑ If greedy, false, and weaker than a Euganean Jamb. — Juvenal, Satires, VIII, 14.
- ↑ For wisdom should not only be acquired by us, but be enjoyed. — Cicero, De Fin., I, 1; but Montaigne probably borrowed it from Justus Lipsius, Politics, I, 10.
- ↑ For “Dionysius” read “Diogenes the Cynic.” See Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes.
- ↑ Un meilleur branle.
