hand, at the hazard of war, were not more beneficial than those effected in all security by plots and stratagems.
Moreover, this ought to console us, that, in the nature of things, if pain is violent, it is short; if it lasts long, it is slight; (c) si gravis [dolor], brevis; si longus, levis.[2] (a) You will hardly feel it long if you feel it too much; it will put an end to itself or to you; the one or the other comes to the same thing.[3] (c) If you do not bear it well, it will bear you off. Memineris maximos morte finiri; parvos multa habere intervalla requietis; mediocrium nos esse dominos: ut si tolerabiles sint feramus, sin minus, e vita, quum ea non placet, tamquam e theatro exeamus.[4]
(a) What makes us suffer pain so intolerantly is the not being accustomed to take our chief satisfaction in the soul,[5] (c) the not relying enough on her[6] who is the one sovereign mistress of our being and our behaviour. The body has for the most part but one mode of action and one kind of life; the soul changes into every variety of guise and brings into relation with herself and her condition, whatever that may be, the perceptions of the body and all other external things.[7] Therefore we must study her and question her and
- ↑ The nobler the virtue, the more it costs us. — Lucan, IX, 404.
- ↑ Cicero, De Fin., II, 29. Translated by Montaigne before quoting. Cf. Seneca, Epistles 34 and 78.
- ↑ See Seneca, Epistle 78.
- ↑ Remember that the greatest sufferings are ended by death; that the little ones have many intermittences; that of those that are moderate we are the masters; that, if they are tolerable, we can bear them, but if not, when life is not agreeable to us, we can make our exit from it as from a theatre. — Cicero, De Fin., I, 15.
- ↑ In the early editions, including 1588, there followed here the clause, c'est d’avoir en trop de commerce avec le corps — a thought borrowed from Seneca, Epistle 78: Illud autem est quod imperitos in vexatione corporis male habet; non assueverent animo esse intensi; multum illis cum corpore fuit. On the Bordeaux copy of 1588 (Édition Municipale), Montaigne first substituted for this clause: Et de nous armer d’elle contre la mollesse du corps; this he afterwards struck out, and added the long passage that follows in the text, in which, however, he made many changes.
- ↑ That is, the soul.
- ↑ Tous autres accidens.
