Chapter X. Of Managing the Will. edit
Few things, in comparison of what commonly affect other men, move, or, to
say better, possess me: for 'tis but reason they should concern a man,
provided they do not possess him. I am very solicitous, both by study
and argument, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in me
naturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I espouse and
am very much moved with very few things. I have a clear sight enough,
but I fix it upon very few objects; I have a sense delicate and tender
enough; but an apprehension and application hard and negligent. I am
very unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself
wholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb
and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into
it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over
which fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I
so much value, 'tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to
covet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable. A man ought
to moderate himself betwixt the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure:
and Plato sets down a middle path of life betwixt the two. But against
such affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere,
against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power. 'Tis my
opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself
to himself. Were my will easy to lend itself out and to be swayed, I
should not stick there; I am too tender both by nature and use:
"Fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus."
["Avoiding affairs and born to secure ease."
—Ovid, De Trist., iii. 2, 9.]
Hot and obstinate disputes, wherein my adversary would at last have the
better, the issue that would render my heat and obstinacy disgraceful
would peradventure vex me to the last degree. Should I set myself to it
at the rate that others do, my soul would never have the force to bear
the emotion and alarms of those who grasp at so much; it would
immediately be disordered by this inward agitation. If, sometimes, I
have been put upon the management of other men's affairs, I have promised
to take them in hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them upon
me, not to incorporate them; to take pains, yes: to be impassioned about
it, by no means; I have a care of them, but I will not sit upon them.
I have enough to do to order and govern the domestic throng of those that
I have in my own veins and bowels, without introducing a crowd of other
men's affairs; and am sufficiently concerned about my own proper and
natural business, without meddling with the concerns of others. Such as
know how much they owe to themselves, and how many offices they are bound
to of their own, find that nature has cut them out work enough of their
own to keep them from being idle. "Thou hast business enough at home:
look to that."
Men let themselves out to hire; their faculties are not for themselves,
but for those to whom they have enslaved themselves; 'tis their tenants
occupy them, not themselves. This common humour pleases not me. We must
be thrifty of the liberty of our souls, and never let it out but upon
just occasions, which are very few, if we judge aright. Do but observe
such as have accustomed themselves to be at every one's call: they do it
indifferently upon all, as well little as great, occasions; in that which
nothing concerns them; as much as in what imports them most. They thrust
themselves in indifferently wherever there is work to do and obligation,
and are without life when not in tumultuous bustle:
"In negotiis sunt, negotii cause,"
["They are in business for business' sake."—Seneca, Ep., 22.]
It is not so much that they will go, as it is that they cannot stand
still: like a rolling stone that cannot stop till it can go no further.
Occupation, with a certain sort of men, is a mark of understanding and
dignity: their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being
rocked in a cradle; they may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their
friends, as they are troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his
money to others, but every one distributes his time and his life: there
is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of these two things, of which
to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful. I am of a quite
contrary humour; I look to myself, and commonly covet with no great
ardour what I do desire, and desire little; and I employ and busy myself
at the same rate, rarely and temperately. Whatever they take in hand,
they do it with their utmost will and vehemence. There are so many
dangerous steps, that, for the more safety, we must a little lightly and
superficially glide over the world, and not rush through it. Pleasure
itself is painful in profundity:
"Incedis per ignes,
Suppositos cineri doloso."
["You tread on fire, hidden under deceitful ashes."
—Horace, Od., ii. i, 7.]
The Parliament of Bordeaux chose me mayor of their city at a time when I
was at a distance from France,—[At Bagno Della Villa, near Lucca,
September 1581]—and still more remote from any such thought.
I entreated to be excused, but I was told by my friends that I had
committed an error in so doing, and the greater because the king had,
moreover, interposed his command in that affair. 'Tis an office that
ought to be looked upon so much more honourable, as it has no other
salary nor advantage than the bare honour of its execution. It continues
two years, but may be extended by a second election, which very rarely
happens; it was to me, and had never been so but twice before: some years
ago to Monsieur de Lansac, and lately to Monsieur de Biron, Marshal of
France, in whose place I succeeded; and, I left mine to Monsieur de
Matignon, Marshal of France also: proud of so noble a fraternity—
"Uterque bonus pacis bellique minister."
["Either one a good minister in peace and war."
—AEneid, xi. 658.]
Fortune would have a hand in my promotion, by this particular
circumstance which she put in of her own, not altogether vain; for
Alexander disdained the ambassadors of Corinth, who came to offer him a
burgess-ship of their city; but when they proceeded to lay before him
that Bacchus and Hercules were also in the register, he graciously
thanked them.
At my arrival, I faithfully and conscientiously represented myself to
them for such as I find myself to be—a man without memory, without
vigilance, without experience, and without vigour; but withal, without
hatred, without ambition, without avarice, and without violence; that
they might be informed of my qualities, and know what they were to expect
from my service. And whereas the knowledge they had had of my late
father, and the honour they had for his memory, had alone incited them to
confer this favour upon me, I plainly told them that I should be very
sorry anything should make so great an impression upon me as their
affairs and the concerns of their city had made upon him, whilst he held
the government to which they had preferred me. I remembered, when a boy,
to have seen him in his old age cruelly tormented with these public
affairs, neglecting the soft repose of his own house, to which the
declension of his age had reduced him for several years before, the
management of his own affairs, and his health; and certainly despising
his own life, which was in great danger of being lost, by being engaged
in long and painful journeys on their behalf. Such was he; and this
humour of his proceeded from a marvellous good nature; never was there a
more charitable and popular soul. Yet this proceeding which I commend in
others, I do not love to follow myself, and am not without excuse.
He had learned that a man must forget himself for his neighbour, and that
the particular was of no manner of consideration in comparison with the
general. Most of the rules and precepts of the world run this way; to
drive us out of ourselves into the street for the benefit of public
society; they thought to do a great feat to divert and remove us from
ourselves, assuming we were but too much fixed there, and by a too
natural inclination; and have said all they could to that purpose: for
'tis no new thing for the sages to preach things as they serve, not as
they are. Truth has its obstructions, inconveniences, and
incompatibilities with us; we must often deceive that we may not deceive
ourselves; and shut our eyes and our understandings to redress and amend
them:
"Imperiti enim judicant, et qui frequenter
in hoc ipsum fallendi sunt, ne errent."
["For the ignorant judge, and therefore are oft to be deceived,
less they should err."—Quintil., Inst. Orat., xi. 17.]
When they order us to love three, four, or fifty degrees of things above
ourselves, they do like archers, who, to hit the white, take their aim a
great deal higher than the butt; to make a crooked stick straight, we
bend it the contrary way.
I believe that in the Temple of Pallas, as we see in all other religions,
there were apparent mysteries to be exposed to the people; and others,
more secret and high, that were only to be shown to such as were
professed; 'tis likely that in these the true point of friendship that
every one owes to himself is to be found; not a false friendship, that
makes us embrace glory, knowledge, riches, and the like, with a principal
and immoderate affection, as members of our being; nor an indiscreet and
effeminate friendship, wherein it happens, as with ivy, that it decays
and ruins the walls it embraces; but a sound and regular friendship,
equally useful and pleasant. He who knows the duties of this friendship
and practises them is truly of the cabinet of the Muses, and has attained
to the height of human wisdom and of our happiness, such an one, exactly
knowing what he owes to himself, will on his part find that he ought to
apply to himself the use of the world and of other men; and to do this,
to contribute to public society the duties and offices appertaining to
him. He who does not in some sort live for others, does not live much
for himself:
"Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse."
["He who is his own friend, is a friend to everybody else."
—Seneca, Ep., 6.]
The principal charge we have is, to every one his own conduct; and 'tis
for this only that we here are. As he who should forget to live a
virtuous and holy life, and should think he acquitted himself of his duty
in instructing and training others up to it, would be a fool; even so he
who abandons his own particular healthful and pleasant living to serve
others therewith, takes, in my opinion, a wrong and unnatural course.
I would not that men should refuse, in the employments they take upon
them, their attention, pains, eloquence, sweat, and blood if need be:
"Non ipse pro caris amicis
Aut patria, timidus perire:"
["Himself not afraid to die for beloved friends, or for his
country."—Horace, Od., iv. 9, 51.]
but 'tis only borrowed, and accidentally; his mind being always in repose
and in health; not without action, but without vexation, without passion.
To be simply acting costs him so little, that he acts even sleeping;
but it must be set on going with discretion; for the body receives the
offices imposed upon it just according to what they are; the mind often
extends and makes them heavier at its own expense, giving them what
measure it pleases. Men perform like things with several sorts of
endeavour, and different contention of will; the one does well enough
without the other; for how many people hazard themselves every day in war
without any concern which way it goes; and thrust themselves into the
dangers of battles, the loss of which will not break their next night's
sleep? and such a man may be at home, out of the danger which he durst
not have looked upon, who is more passionately concerned for the issue of
this war, and whose soul is more anxious about events than the soldier
who therein stakes his blood and his life. I could have engaged myself
in public employments without quitting my own matters a nail's breadth,
and have given myself to others without abandoning myself. This
sharpness and violence of desires more hinder than they advance the
execution of what we undertake; fill us with impatience against slow or
contrary events, and with heat and suspicion against those with whom we
have to do. We never carry on that thing well by which we are
prepossessed and led:
"Male cuncta ministrat
Impetus."
["Impulse manages all things ill."—Statius, Thebaid, x. 704.]
He who therein employs only his judgment and address proceeds more
cheerfully: he counterfeits, he gives way, he defers quite at his ease,
according to the necessities of occasions; he fails in his attempt
without trouble and affliction, ready and entire for a new enterprise;
he always marches with the bridle in his hand. In him who is intoxicated
with this violent and tyrannical intention, we discover, of necessity,
much imprudence and injustice; the impetuosity of his desire carries him
away; these are rash motions, and, if fortune do not very much assist,
of very little fruit. Philosophy directs that, in the revenge of
injuries received, we should strip ourselves of choler; not that the
chastisement should be less, but, on the contrary, that the revenge may
be the better and more heavily laid on, which, it conceives, will be by
this impetuosity hindered. For anger not only disturbs, but, of itself,
also wearies the arms of those who chastise; this fire benumbs and wastes
their force; as in precipitation, "festinatio tarda est,"—haste trips
up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself:
"Ipsa se velocitas implicat."—Seneca, Ep. 44
For example, according to what I commonly see, avarice has no greater
impediment than itself; the more bent and vigorous it is, the less it
rakes together, and commonly sooner grows rich when disguised in a visor
of liberality.
A very excellent gentleman, and a friend of mine, ran a risk of impairing
his faculties by a too passionate attention and affection to the affairs
of a certain prince his master;—[Probably the King of Navarre, afterward
Henry IV.]—which master has thus portrayed himself to me; "that he
foresees the weight of accidents as well as another, but that in those
for which there is no remedy, he presently resolves upon suffering; in
others, having taken all the necessary precautions which by the vivacity
of his understanding he can presently do, he quietly awaits what may
follow." And, in truth, I have accordingly seen him maintain a great
indifferency and liberty of actions and serenity of countenance in very
great and difficult affairs: I find him much greater, and of greater
capacity in adverse than in prosperous fortune; his defeats are to him
more glorious than his victories, and his mourning than his triumph.
Consider, that even in vain and frivolous actions, as at chess, tennis,
and the like, this eager and ardent engaging with an impetuous desire,
immediately throws the mind and members into indiscretion and disorder: a
man astounds and hinders himself; he who carries himself more moderately,
both towards gain and loss, has always his wits about him; the less
peevish and passionate he is at play, he plays much more advantageously
and surely.
As to the rest, we hinder the mind's grasp and hold, in giving it so many
things to seize upon; some things we should only offer to it; tie it to
others, and with others incorporate it. It can feel and discern all
things, but ought to feed upon nothing but itself; and should be
instructed in what properly concerns itself, and that is properly of its
own having and substance. The laws of nature teach us what justly we
need. After the sages have told us that no one is indigent according to
nature, and that every one is so according to opinion, they very subtly
distinguish betwixt the desires that proceed from her, and those that
proceed from the disorder of our own fancy: those of which we can see the
end are hers; those that fly before us, and of which we can see no end,
are our own: the poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the
soul is irreparable:
"Nam si, quod satis est homini, id satis esse potesset
Hoc sat erat: nunc, quum hoc non est, qui credimus porro
Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse?"
["For if what is for man enough, could be enough, it were enough;
but since it is not so, how can I believe that any wealth can give
my mind content."—Lucilius aped Nonium Marcellinum, V. sec. 98.]
Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniture
carried in pomp through his city: "How many things," said he, "I do not
desire!"—[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., V. 32.]—Metrodorus lived on twelve
ounces a day, Epicurus upon less; Metrocles slept in winter abroad
amongst sheep, in summer in the cloisters of churches:
"Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit."
["Nature suffices for what he requires."—Seneca, Ep., 90.]
Cleanthes lived by the labour of his own hands, and boasted that
Cleanthes, if he would, could yet maintain another Cleanthes.
If that which nature exactly and originally requires of us for the
conservation of our being be too little (as in truth what it is, and how
good cheap life may be maintained, cannot be better expressed than by
this consideration, that it is so little that by its littleness it
escapes the gripe and shock of fortune), let us allow ourselves a little
more; let us call every one of our habits and conditions nature; let us
rate and treat ourselves by this measure; let us stretch our
appurtenances and accounts so far; for so far, I fancy, we have some
excuse. Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful. What is
wanting to my custom, I reckon is wanting to me; and I should be almost
as well content that they took away my life as cut me short in the way
wherein I have so long lived. I am no longer in condition for any great
change, nor to put myself into a new and unwonted course, not even to
augmentation. 'Tis past the time for me to become other than what I am;
and as I should complain of any great good hap that should now befall me,
that it came not in time to be enjoyed:
"Quo mihi fortunas, si non conceditur uti?"
["What is the good fortune to me, if it is not granted to me
to use it."—Horace, Ep., i. 5, 12.]
so should I complain of any inward acquisition. It were almost better
never, than so late, to become an honest man, and well fit to live, when
one has no longer to live. I, who am about to make my exit out of the
world, would easily resign to any newcomer, who should desire it, all the
prudence I am now acquiring in the world's commerce; after meat, mustard.
I have no need of goods of which I can make no use; of what use is
knowledge to him who has lost his head? 'Tis an injury and unkindness in
fortune to tender us presents that will only inspire us with a just
despite that we had them not in their due season. Guide me no more; I
can no longer go. Of so many parts as make up a sufficiency, patience is
the most sufficient. Give the capacity of an excellent treble to the
chorister who has rotten lungs, and eloquence to a hermit exiled into the
deserts of Arabia. There needs no art to help a fall; the end finds
itself of itself at the conclusion of every affair. My world is at an
end, my form expired; I am totally of the past, and am bound to authorise
it, and to conform my outgoing to it. I will here declare, by way of
example, that the Pope's late ten days' diminution
[Gregory XIII., in 1582, reformed the Calendar, and, in consequence,
in France they all at once passed from the 9th to the 20th
December.]
has taken me so aback that I cannot well reconcile myself to it; I belong
to the years wherein we kept another kind of account. So ancient and so
long a custom challenges my adherence to it, so that I am constrained to
be somewhat heretical on that point incapable of any, though corrective,
innovation. My imagination, in spite of my teeth, always pushes me ten
days forward or backward, and is ever murmuring in my ears: "This rule
concerns those who are to begin to be." If health itself, sweet as it
is, returns to me by fits, 'tis rather to give me cause of regret than
possession of it; I have no place left to keep it in. Time leaves me;
without which nothing can be possessed. Oh, what little account should I
make of those great elective dignities that I see in such esteem in the
world, that are never conferred but upon men who are taking leave of it;
wherein they do not so much regard how well the man will discharge his
trust, as how short his administration will be: from the very entry they
look at the exit. In short, I am about finishing this man, and not
rebuilding another. By long use, this form is in me turned into
substance, and fortune into nature.
I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is excusable in
thinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; but
withal, beyond these limits, 'tis nothing but confusion; 'tis the largest
extent we can grant to our own claims. The more we amplify our need and
our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows of
Fortune and adversities. The career of our desires ought to be
circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and most
contiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be performed
not in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of which the
two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves. Actions
that are carried on without this reflection—a near and essential
reflection, I mean—such as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and so
many more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries them
before themselves, such actions, I say; are erroneous and sickly.
Most of our business is farce:
"Mundus universus exercet histrioniam."
—[Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8.]
We must play our part properly, but withal as a part of a borrowed
personage; we must not make real essence of a mask and outward
appearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we cannot distinguish the
skin from the shirt: 'tis enough to meal the face, without mealing the
breast. I see some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into as
many new shapes and new beings as they undertake new employments; and who
strut and fume even to the heart and liver, and carry their state along
with them even to the close-stool: I cannot make them distinguish the
salutations made to themselves from those made to their commission, their
train, or their mule:
"Tantum se fortunx permittunt, etiam ut naturam dediscant."
["They so much give themselves up to fortune, as even to unlearn
nature."—Quintus Curtius, iii. 2.]
They swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking,
according to the height of their magisterial place. The Mayor of
Bordeaux and Montaigne have ever been two by very manifest separation.
Because one is an advocate or a financier, he must not ignore the knavery
there is in such callings; an honest man is not accountable for the vice
or absurdity of his employment, and ought not on that account refuse to
take the calling upon him: 'tis the usage of his country, and there is
money to be got by it; a man must live by the world; and make his best of
it, such as it is. But the judgment of an emperor ought to be above his
empire, and see and consider it as a foreign accident; and he ought to
know how to enjoy himself apart from it, and to communicate himself as
James and Peter, to himself, at all events.
I cannot engage myself so deep and so entire; when my will gives me to
anything, 'tis not with so violent an obligation that my judgment is
infected with it. In the present broils of this kingdom, my own interest
has not made me blind to the laudable qualities of our adversaries, nor
to those that are reproachable in those men of our party. Others adore
all of their own side; for my part, I do not so much as excuse most
things in those of mine: a good work has never the worst grace with me
for being made against me. The knot of the controversy excepted, I have
always kept myself in equanimity and pure indifference:
"Neque extra necessitates belli praecipuum odium gero;"
["Nor bear particular hatred beyond the necessities of war."]
for which I am pleased with myself; and the more because I see others
commonly fail in the contrary direction. Such as extend their anger and
hatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that they
spring from some other occasion and private cause; like one who, being
cured of an ulcer, has yet a fever remaining, by which it appears that
the ulcer had another more concealed beginning. The reason is that they
are not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to the
state and general interest; but are only nettled by reason of their
particular concern. This is why they are so especially animated, and to
a degree so far beyond justice and public reason:
"Non tam omnia universi, quam ea, quae ad quemque pertinent,
singuli carpebant."
["Every one was not so much angry against things in general, as
against those that particularly concern himself."
—Livy, xxxiv. 36.]
I would have the advantage on our side; but if it be not, I shall not run
mad. I am heartily for the right party; but I do not want to be taken
notice of as an especial enemy to others, and beyond the general quarrel.
I marvellously challenge this vicious form of opinion: "He is of the
League because he admires the graciousness of Monsieur de Guise; he is
astonished at the King of Navarre's energy, therefore he is a Huguenot;
he finds this to say of the manners of the king, he is therefore
seditious in his heart." And I did not grant to the magistrate himself
that he did well in condemning a book because it had placed a heretic
—[Theodore de Beza.]—amongst the best poets of the time. Shall we not
dare to say of a thief that he has a handsome leg? If a woman be a
strumpet, must it needs follow that she has a foul smell? Did they in
the wisest ages revoke the proud title of Capitolinus they had before
conferred on Marcus Manlius as conservator of religion and the public
liberty, and stifle the memory of his liberality, his feats of arms, and
military recompenses granted to his valour, because he, afterwards
aspired to the sovereignty, to the prejudice of the laws of his country?
If we take a hatred against an advocate, he will not be allowed the next
day to be eloquent. I have elsewhere spoken of the zeal that pushed on
worthy men to the like faults. For my part, I can say, "Such an one does
this thing ill, and another thing virtuously and well." So in the
prognostication or sinister events of affairs they would have every one
in his party blind or a blockhead, and that our persuasion and judgment
should subserve not truth, but to the project of our desires. I should
rather incline towards the other extreme; so much I fear being suborned
by my desire; to which may be added that I am a little tenderly
distrustful of things that I wish.
I have in my time seen wonders in the indiscreet and prodigious facility
of people in suffering their hopes and belief to be led and governed,
which way best pleased and served their leaders, despite a hundred
mistakes one upon another, despite mere dreams and phantasms. I no more
wonder at those who have been blinded and seduced by the fooleries of
Apollonius and Mahomet. Their sense and understanding are absolutely
taken away by their passion; their discretion has no more any other
choice than that which smiles upon them and encourages their cause.
I had principally observed this in the beginning of our intestine
distempers; that other, which has sprung up since, in imitating, has
surpassed it; by which I am satisfied that it is a quality inseparable
from popular errors; after the first, that rolls, opinions drive on one
another like waves with the wind: a man is not a member of the body, if
it be in his power to forsake it, and if he do not roll the common way.
But, doubtless, they wrong the just side when they go about to assist it
with fraud; I have ever been against that practice: 'tis only fit to work
upon weak heads; for the sound, there are surer and more honest ways to
keep up their courage and to excuse adverse accidents.
Heaven never saw a greater animosity than that betwixt Caesar and Pompey,
nor ever shall; and yet I observe, methinks, in those brave souls,
a great moderation towards one another: it was a jealousy of honour and
command, which did not transport them to a furious and indiscreet hatred,
and was without malignity and detraction: in their hottest exploits upon
one another, I discover some remains of respect and good-will: and am
therefore of opinion that, had, it been possible, each of them would
rather have done his business without the ruin of the other than with it.
Take notice how much otherwise matters went with Marius and Sylla.
We must not precipitate ourselves so headlong after our affections and
interests. As, when I was young, I opposed myself to the progress of
love which I perceived to advance too fast upon me, and had a care lest
it should at last become so pleasing as to force, captivate, and wholly
reduce me to its mercy: so I do the same upon all other occasions where
my will is running on with too warm an appetite. I lean opposite to the
side it inclines to; as I find it going to plunge and make itself drunk
with its own wine; I evade nourishing its pleasure so far, that I cannot
recover it without infinite loss. Souls that, through their own
stupidity, only discern things by halves, have this happiness, that they
smart less with hurtful things: 'tis a spiritual leprosy that has some
show of health, and such a health as philosophy does not altogether
contemn; but yet we have no reason to call it wisdom, as we often do.
And after this manner some one anciently mocked Diogenes, who, in the
depth of winter and quite naked, went embracing an image of snow for a
trial of his endurance: the other seeing him in this position, "Art thou
now very cold?" said he. "Not at all," replied Diogenes. "Why, then,"
pursued the other, "what difficult and exemplary thing dost thou think
thou doest in embracing that snow?" To take a true measure of constancy,
one must necessarily know what the suffering is.
But souls that are to meet with adverse events and the injuries of
fortune, in their depth and sharpness, that are to weigh and taste them
according to their natural weight and bitterness, let such show their
skill in avoiding the causes and diverting the blow. What did King Cotys
do? He paid liberally for the rich and beautiful vessel that had been
presented to him, but, seeing it was exceedingly brittle, he immediately
broke it betimes, to prevent so easy a matter of displeasure against his
servants. In like manner, I have willingly avoided all confusion in my
affairs, and never coveted to have my estate contiguous to those of my
relations, and such with whom I coveted a strict friendship; for thence
matter of unkindness and falling out often proceeds. I formerly loved
hazardous games of cards and dice; but have long since left them off,
only for this reason that, with whatever good air I carried my losses,
I could not help feeling vexed within. A man of honour, who ought to be
touchily sensible of the lie or of an insult, and who is not to take a
scurvy excuse for satisfaction, should avoid occasions of dispute.
I shun melancholy, crabbed men, as I would the plague; and in matters I
cannot talk of without emotion and concern I never meddle, if not
compelled by my duty:
"Melius non incipient, quam desinent."
["They had better never to begin than to have to desist."
—Seneca, Ep., 72.]
The surest way, therefore, is to prepare one's self beforehand for
occasions.
I know very well that some wise men have taken another way, and have not
feared to grapple and engage to the utmost upon several subjects these
are confident of their own strength, under which they protect themselves
in all ill successes, making their patience wrestle and contend with
disaster:
"Velut rupes, vastum quae prodit in aequor,
Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto,
Vim cunctam atque minas perfert coelique marisque;
Ipsa immota manens."
["As a rock, which projects into the vast ocean, exposed to the
furious winds and the raging sea, defies the force and menaces of
sky and sea, itself unshaken."—Virgil, AEneid, x. 693.]
Let us not attempt these examples; we shall never come up to them. They
set themselves resolutely, and without agitation, to behold the ruin of
their country, which possessed and commanded all their will: this is too
much, and too hard a task for our commoner souls. Cato gave up the
noblest life that ever was upon this account; we meaner spirits must fly
from the storm as far as we can; we must provide for sentiment, and not
for patience, and evade the blows we cannot meet. Zeno, seeing
Chremonides, a young man whom he loved, draw near to sit down by him,
suddenly started up; and Cleanthes demanding of him the reason why he did
so, "I hear," said he, "that physicians especially order repose, and
forbid emotion in all tumours." Socrates does not say: "Do not surrender
to the charms of beauty; stand your ground, and do your utmost to oppose
it." "Fly it," says he; "shun the fight and encounter of it, as of a
powerful poison that darts and wounds at a distance." And his good
disciple, feigning or reciting, but, in my opinion, rather reciting than
feigning, the rare perfections of the great Cyrus, makes him distrustful
of his own strength to resist the charms of the divine beauty of that
illustrous Panthea, his captive, and committing the visiting and keeping
her to another, who could not have so much liberty as himself. And the
Holy Ghost in like manner:
"Ne nos inducas in tentationem."
["Lead us not into temptation."—St. Matthew, vi. 13.]
We do not pray that our reason may not be combated and overcome by
concupiscence, but that it should not be so much as tried by it; that we
should not be brought into a state wherein we are so much as to suffer
the approaches, solicitations, and temptations of sin: and we beg of
Almighty God to keep our consciences quiet, fully and perfectly delivered
from all commerce of evil.
Such as say that they have reason for their revenging passion, or any
other sort of troublesome agitation of mind, often say true, as things
now are, but not as they were: they speak to us when the causes of their
error are by themselves nourished and advanced; but look backward—recall
these causes to their beginning—and there you will put them to a
nonplus. Will they have their faults less, for being of longer
continuance; and that of an unjust beginning, the sequel can be just?
Whoever shall desire the good of his country, as I do, without fretting
or pining himself, will be troubled, but will not swoon to see it
threatening either its own ruin, or a no less ruinous continuance; poor
vessel, that the waves, the winds, and the pilot toss and steer to so
contrary designs!
"In tam diversa magister
Ventus et unda trahunt."
He who does not gape after the favour of princes, as after a thing he
cannot live without, does not much concern himself at the coldness of
their reception and countenance, nor at the inconstancy of their wills.
He who does not brood over his children or his honours with a slavish
propension, ceases not to live commodiously enough after their loss. He
who does good principally for his own satisfaction will not be much
troubled to see men judge of his actions contrary to his merit. A
quarter of an ounce of patience will provide sufficiently against such
inconveniences. I find ease in this receipt, redeeming myself in the
beginning as good cheap as I can; and find that by this means I have
escaped much trouble and many difficulties. With very little ado I stop
the first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to be
troublesome before it transports me. He who stops not the start will
never be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never,
get them out when they are once got in; and he who cannot arrive at the
beginning will never arrive at the end of all. Nor will he bear the fall
who cannot sustain the shock:
"Etenim ipsae se impellunt, ubi semel a ratione discessum est;
ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur
imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi."
["For they throw themselves headlong when once they lose their
reason; and infirmity so far indulges itself, and from want of
prudence is carried out into deep water, nor finds a place to
shelter it."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 18.]
I am betimes sensible of the little breezes that begin to sing and
whistle within, forerunners of the storm:
"Ceu flamina prima
Cum deprensa fremunt sylvis et caeca volutant
Murmura, venturos nautis prodentia ventos."
["As the breezes, pent in the woods, first send out dull murmurs,
announcing the approach of winds to mariners."—AEneid, x. 97.]
How often have I done myself a manifest injustice to avoid the hazard of
having yet a worse done me by the judges, after an age of vexations,
dirty and vile practices, more enemies to my nature than fire or the
rack?
"Convenit a litibus, quantum licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam
quam licet, abhorrentem esse: est enim non modo liberale, paululum
nonnunquam de suo jure decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum."
["A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may, and I know not
whether not something more; for 'tis not only liberal, but sometimes
also advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right.
—"Cicero, De Offic., ii. 18.]
Were we wise, we ought to rejoice and boast, as I one day heard a young
gentleman of a good family very innocently do, that his mother had lost
her cause, as if it had been a cough, a fever, or something very
troublesome to keep. Even the favours that fortune might have given me
through relationship or acquaintance with those who have sovereign
authority in those affairs, I have very conscientiously and very
carefully avoided employing them to the prejudice of others, and of
advancing my pretensions above their true right. In fine, I have so much
prevailed by my endeavours (and happily I may say it) that I am to this
day a virgin from all suits in law; though I have had very fair offers
made me, and with very just title, would I have hearkened to them, and a
virgin from quarrels too. I have almost passed over a long life without
any offence of moment, either active or passive, or without ever hearing
a worse word than my own name: a rare favour of Heaven.
Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes: what ruin did
our last Duke of Burgundy run into about a cartload of sheepskins!
And was not the graving of a seal the first and principal cause of the
greatest commotion that this machine of the world ever underwent?
—[The civil war between Marius and Sylla; see Plutarch's Life of Marius,
c. 3.]—for Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of
the two others: and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in this
kingdom assembled with great ceremony, and at the public expense, about
treaties and agreements, of which the true decision, in the meantime,
absolutely depended upon the ladies' cabinet council, and the inclination
of some bit of a woman.
The poets very well understood this when they put all Greece and Asia to
fire and sword about an apple. Look why that man hazards his life and
honour upon the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him acquaint you
with the occasion of the quarrel; he cannot do it without blushing: the
occasion is so idle and frivolous.
A little thing will engage you in it; but being once embarked, all the
cords draw; great provisions are then required, more hard and more
important. How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out?
Now we should proceed contrary to the reed, which, at its first
springing, produces a long and straight shoot, but afterwards, as if
tired and out of breath, it runs into thick and frequent joints and
knots, as so many pauses which demonstrate that it has no more its first
vigour and firmness; 'twere better to begin gently and coldly, and to
keep one's breath and vigorous efforts for the height and stress of the
business. We guide affairs in their beginnings, and have them in our own
power; but afterwards, when they are once at work, 'tis they that guide
and govern us, and we are to follow them.
Yet do I not mean to say that this counsel has discharged me of all
difficulty, and that I have not often had enough to do to curb and
restrain my passions; they are not always to be governed according to the
measure of occasions, and often have their entries very sharp and
violent. But still good fruit and profit may thence be reaped; except
for those who in well-doing are not satisfied with any benefit, if
reputation be wanting; for, in truth, such an effect is not valued but by
every one to himself; you are better contented, but not more esteemed,
seeing you reformed yourself before you got into the whirl of the dance,
or that the provocative matter was in sight. Yet not in this only, but
in all other duties of life also, the way of those who aim at honour is
very different from that they proceed by, who propose to themselves order
and reason. I find some who rashly and furiously rush into the lists and
cool in the course. As Plutarch says, that those who, through false
shame, are soft and facile to grant whatever is desired of them, are
afterwards as facile to break their word and to recant; so he who enters
lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it. The same
difficulty that keeps me from entering into it, would, when once hot and
engaged in quarrel, incite me to maintain it with great obstinacy and
resolution. 'Tis the tyranny of custom; when a man is once engaged; he
must go through with it, or die. "Undertake coolly," said Bias,
"but pursue with ardour." For want of prudence, men fall into want of
courage, which is still more intolerable.
Most accommodations of the quarrels of these days of ours are shameful
and false; we only seek to save appearances, and in the meantime betray
and disavow our true intentions; we salve over the fact. We know very
well how we said the thing, and in what sense we spoke it, and the
company know it, and our friends whom we have wished to make sensible of
our advantage, understand it well enough too: 'tis at the expense of our
frankness and of the honour of our courage, that we disown our thoughts,
and seek refuge in falsities, to make matters up. We give ourselves the
lie, to excuse the lie we have given to another. You are not to consider
if your word or action may admit of another interpretation; 'tis your own
true and sincere interpretation, your real meaning in what you said or
did, that you are thenceforward to maintain, whatever it cost you. Men
speak to your virtue and conscience, which are not things to be put under
a mask; let us leave these pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of
the law. The excuses and reparations that I see every day made and given
to repair indiscretion, seem to me more scandalous than the indiscretion
itself. It were better to affront your adversary a second time than to
offend yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction. You have braved
him in your heat and anger, and you would flatter and appease him in your
cooler and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at his
feet, whom before you pretended to overtop. I do not find anything a
gentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is
infamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him;
forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour than
pusillanimity. Passions are as easy for me to evade, as they are hard
for me to moderate:
"Exscinduntur facilius ammo, quam temperantur."
["They are more easily to be eradicated than governed."]
He who cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him secure
himself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what they
performed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament. The middle
region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers
and peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness:
"Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!
Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!"
["Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place
under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of
rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan,
and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs."—Virgil, Georg., ii. 490.]
The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we should
have our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, the
danger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as little
to be found. I had every day encountered a million of crosses, harder to
digest in the progress of ambition, than it has been hard for me to curb
the natural propension that inclined me to it:
"Jure perhorrui
Lath conspicuum tollere verticem."
["I ever justly feared to raise my head too high."
—Horace, Od.,iii. 16, 18.]
All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations;
for too many heads judge of them. Some say of this civic employment of
mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is
worth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that
I have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid
temperament; and they have some colour for what they say. I endeavoured
to keep my mind and my thoughts in repose;
"Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus;"
["As being always quiet by nature, so also now by age."
—Cicero, De Petit. Consul., c. 2.]
and if they sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression,
'tis in truth without my advice. Yet from this natural heaviness of
mine, men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for want of care
and want of sense are two very different things), and much less any
unkindness or ingratitude towards that corporation who employed the
utmost means they had in their power to oblige me, both before they knew
me and after; and they did much more for me in choosing me anew than in
conferring that honour upon me at first. I wish them all imaginable
good; and assuredly had occasion been, there is nothing I would have
spared for their service; I did for them as I would have done for myself.
'Tis a good, warlike, and generous people, but capable of obedience and
discipline, and of whom the best use may be made, if well guided. They
say also that my administration passed over without leaving any mark or
trace. Good! They moreover accuse my cessation in a time when everybody
almost was convicted of doing too much. I am impatient to be doing where
my will spurs me on; but this itself is an enemy to perseverance. Let
him who will make use of me according to my own way, employ me in affairs
where vigour and liberty are required, where a direct, short, and,
moreover, a hazardous conduct are necessary; I may do something; but if
it must be long, subtle, laborious, artificial and intricate, he had
better call in somebody else. All important offices are not necessarily
difficult: I came prepared to do somewhat rougher work, had there been
great occasion; for it is in my power to do something more than I do, or
than I love to do. I did not, to my knowledge, omit anything that my
duty really required. I easily forgot those offices that ambition mixes
with duty and palliates with its title; these are they that, for the most
part, fill the eyes and ears, and give men the most satisfaction; not the
thing but the appearance contents them; if they hear no noise, they think
men sleep. My humour is no friend to tumult; I could appease a commotion
without commotion, and chastise a disorder without being myself
disorderly; if I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it,
and put it on. My manners are languid, rather faint than sharp. I do
not condemn a magistrate who sleeps, provided the people under his charge
sleep as well as he: the laws in that case sleep too. For my part, I
commend a gliding, staid, and silent life:
"Neque submissam et abjectam, neque se efferentem;"
["Neither subject and abject, nor obtrusive."
—Cicero, De Offic., i. 34]
my fortune will have it so. I am descended from a family that has lived
without lustre or tumult, and, time out of mind, particularly ambitious
of a character for probity.
Our people nowadays are so bred up to bustle and ostentation, that good
nature, moderation, equability, constancy, and such like quiet and
obscure qualities, are no more thought on or regarded. Rough bodies make
themselves felt; the smooth are imperceptibly handled: sickness is felt,
health little or not at all; no more than the oils that foment us, in
comparison of the pains for which we are fomented. 'Tis acting for one's
particular reputation and profit, not for the public good, to refer that
to be done in the public squares which one may do in the council chamber;
and to noon day what might have been done the night before; and to be
jealous to do that himself which his colleague can do as well as he; so
were some surgeons of Greece wont to perform their operations upon
scaffolds in the sight of the people, to draw more practice and profit.
They think that good rules cannot be understood but by the sound of
trumpet. Ambition is not a vice of little people, nor of such modest
means as ours. One said to Alexander: "Your father will leave you a
great dominion, easy and pacific"; this youth was emulous of his father's
victories and of the justice of his government; he would not have enjoyed
the empire of the world in ease and peace. Alcibiades, in Plato, had
rather die young, beautiful, rich, noble, and learned, and all this in
full excellence, than to stop short of such condition; this disease is,
peradventure, excusable in so strong and so full a soul. When wretched
and dwarfish little souls cajole and deceive themselves, and think to
spread their fame for having given right judgment in an affair, or
maintained the discipline of the guard of a gate of their city, the more
they think to exalt their heads the more they show their tails. This
little well-doing has neither body nor life; it vanishes in the first
mouth, and goes no further than from one street to another. Talk of it
by all means to your son or your servant, like that old fellow who,
having no other auditor of his praises nor approver of his valour,
boasted to his chambermaid, crying, "O Perrete, what a brave, clever man
hast thou for thy master!" At the worst, talk of it to yourself, like a
councillor of my acquaintance, who, having disgorged a whole cartful of
law jargon with great heat and as great folly, coming out of the council
chamber to make water, was heard very complacently to mutter betwixt his
teeth:
"Non nobis, domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam."
["Not unto us, O Lord, not to us: but unto Thy name be the glory."
—Psalm cxiii. I.]
He who gets it of nobody else, let him pay himself out of his own purse.
Fame is not prostituted at so cheap a rate: rare and exemplary actions,
to which it is due, would not endure the company of this prodigious crowd
of petty daily performances. Marble may exalt your titles, as much as
you please, for having repaired a rod of wall or cleansed a public sewer;
but not men of sense. Renown does not follow all good deeds, if novelty
and difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, according
to the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; nor
will they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, abstains from an
old blear-eyed crone. Those who have known the admirable qualities of
Scipio Africanus, deny him the glory that Panaetius attributes to him, of
being abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of his
age. We have pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of
grandeur: our own are more natural, and by so much more solid and sure,
as they are lower. If not for that of conscience, yet at least for
ambition's sake, let us reject ambition; let us disdain that thirst of
honour and renown, so low and mendicant, that it makes us beg it of all
sorts of people:
"Quae est ista laus quae: possit e macello peti?"
["What praise is that which is to be got in the market-place (meat
market)?" Cicero, De Fin., ii. 15.]
by abject means, and at what cheap rate soever: 'tis dishonour to be so
honoured. Let us learn to be no more greedy, than we are capable, of
glory. To be puffed up with every action that is innocent or of use, is
only for those with whom such things are extraordinary and rare: they
will value it as it costs them. The more a good effect makes a noise,
the more do I abate of its goodness as I suspect that it was more
performed for the noise, than upon account of the goodness: exposed upon
the stall, 'tis half sold. Those actions have much more grace and
lustre, that slip from the hand of him that does them, negligently and
without noise, and that some honest man thereafter finds out and raises
from the shade, to produce it to the light upon its own account,
"Mihi quidem laudabiliora videntur omnia, quae sine
venditatione, et sine populo teste fiunt,"
["All things truly seem more laudable to me that are performed
without ostentation, and without the testimony of the people."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 26.]
says the most ostentatious man that ever lived.
I had but to conserve and to continue, which are silent and insensible
effects: innovation is of great lustre; but 'tis interdicted in this age,
when we are pressed upon and have nothing to defend ourselves from but
novelties. To forbear doing is often as generous as to do; but 'tis less
in the light, and the little good I have in me is of this kind. In fine,
occasions in this employment of mine have been confederate with my
humour, and I heartily thank them for it. Is there any who desires to be
sick, that he may see his physician at work? and would not the physician
deserve to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst us, that he
might put his art in practice? I have never been of that wicked humour,
and common enough, to desire that troubles and disorders in this city
should elevate and honour my government; I have ever heartily contributed
all I could to their tranquillity and ease.
He who will not thank me for the order, the sweet and silent calm that
has accompanied my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of the
share that belongs to me by title of my good fortune. And I am of such a
composition, that I would as willingly be lucky as wise, and had rather
owe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God, than to any
operation of my own. I had sufficiently published to the world my
unfitness for such public offices; but I have something in me yet worse
than incapacity itself; which is, that I am not much displeased at it,
and that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of
life that I have proposed to myself.
Neither have I satisfied myself in this employment; but I have very near
arrived at what I expected from my own performance, and have much
surpassed what I promised them with whom I had to do: for I am apt to
promise something less than what I am able to do, and than what I hope to
make good. I assure myself that I have left no offence or hatred behind
me; to leave regret or desire for me amongst them, I at least know very
well that I never much aimed at it:
"Mene huic confidere monstro!
Mene salis placidi vultum, fluctusque quietos
Ignorare?"
["Should I place confidence in this monster? Should I be ignorant
of the dangers of that seeming placid sea, those now quiet waves?"
—Virgil, Aeneid, V. 849.]