dolpho, a fortified place in Italy, in the region called the Vicariate, seeing the match touched to a gun aimed in his direction, it was well that he ducked,[1] for otherwise the ball, which merely grazed the top of his head, would doubtless have hit him in the stomach. To say the truth, I do not believe that such motions are made with intention; for what judgement can you form as to high or low aim in so sudden a matter? And it is much easier to believe that fortune smiled upon their fright, and that another time such action would be quite as likely to throw them in front of the blow as to avoid it. (b) If the flashing report of a musket strikes my ears without warning, in a place where I have no reason to expect it, I can not help starting violently — which I have seen happen to others who are better men than I. (c) Nor do the Stoics[2] hold that the soul of their sage can resist the first visions and fancies that occur to him; rather, they admit that from a natural subjection he may be affected by a loud noise in the sky, or of a falling building, for example, to the point of pallor and paralysis, as well as to other expressions of emotion, provided that his thought remains entrenched and whole, and that the seat of his judgement suffers no injury or change, and that he gives no countenance to his fright and suspense. With him who is no sage, it is the same as to the first point, but altogether different as to the second. For in him the impression of perturbations is not superficial, but penetrates to the seat of his reason, infecting and corrupting it; he judges according to them and adapts himself to them. See the state of the Stoic sage well and fully set forth: —
The Peripatetic sage is not free from agitations, but he governs them.
- ↑ Bien luy servit de faire le cane.
- ↑ This passage (to the end of the chapter), added after 1588, is a close imitation of Aulus Gellius, XIX, 1. But Montaigne probably took it from the summary given by St. Augustine in De Civ. Dei, IX, 4, where the verse of Virgil also is found.
- ↑ His mind remains unshaken; useless are her flowing tears. — Virgil, Æneid, IV, 449.
