Essays of Michel de Montaigne Part 73

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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.ds, 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; Herac.l.i.tus, 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 s.h.i.+fting 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:--

Mutat enira mundi naturam totius aetas, Ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet; Nec manet ulla sui similis res; omnia migrant, Omnia commutat 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 pa.s.sed, and do daily pa.s.s, so many others; for not only, as Herac.l.i.tus 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.s that we are now pleased with one thing, and by and by with another? How comes it to pa.s.s that we love or hate contrary things, that we praise or condemn them? How comes it to pa.s.s 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 a.s.sume other pa.s.sions; 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 et being, or that has already ceased to be. And as to these words, _present, instant, and now_, by which it seems that we princ.i.p.ally 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 G.o.d, who is he only who _is, that he was, or that he shall be _; for those are terms of declension, trans.m.u.tation, and vicissitude, of what cannot continue or remain in being; wherefore we are to conclude that G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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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A little cheese when a mind to make a feast A word ill taken obliterates ten years' merit Cato said: So many servants, so many enemies Cherish themselves most where they are most wrong Condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul Cruelty is the very extreme of all vices Disguise, by their abridgments and at their own choice Epicurus Flatterer in your old age or in your sickness He felt a pleasure and delight in so n.o.ble an action He judged other men by himself I cannot well refuse to play with my dog I do not much lament the dead, and should envy them rather I had rather be old a brief time, than be old before old age I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason Incline the history to their own fancy It (my books) may know many things that are gone from me Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment Learn the theory from those who best know the practice Loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men Motive to some vicious occasion or some prospect of profit My books: from me hold that which I have not retained My dog unseasonably importunes me to play My innocence is a simple one; little vigour and no art.

Never observed any great stability in my soul to resist pa.s.sions Nothing tempts my tears but tears Omit, as incredible, such things as they do not understand On all occasions to contradict and oppose Only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent Pa.s.sion of dandling and caressing infants scarcely born Perfection: but I will not buy it so dear as it costs Plato will have n.o.body marry before thirty Prudent and just man may be intemperate and inconsistent Puerile simplicities of our children Shelter my own weakness under these great reputations Socrates kept a confounded scolding wife The authors, with whom I converse There is no recompense becomes virtue To do well where there was danger was the proper office To whom no one is ill who can be good?

Turks have alms and hospitals for beasts Vices will cling together, if a man have not a care Virtue is much strengthened by combats Virtue refuses facility for a companion

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazlitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 11.

XIII. Of judging of the death of another.

XIV. That the mind hinders itself.

XV. That our desires are augmented by difficulty.

XVI. Of glory.

XVII. Of presumption.

CHAPTER XIII

OF JUDGING OF THE DEATH OF ANOTHER

When we judge of another's a.s.surance in death, which, without doubt, is the most remarkable action of human life, we are to take heed of one thing, which is that men very hardly believe themselves to have arrived to that period. Few men come to die in the opinion that it is their latest hour; and there is nothing wherein the flattery of hope more deludes us; It never ceases to whisper in our ears, "Others have been much sicker without dying; your condition is not so desperate as 'tis thought; and, at the worst, G.o.d has done other miracles." Which happens by reason that we set too much value upon ourselves; it seems as if the universality of things were in some measure to suffer by our dissolution, and that it commiserates our condition, forasmuch as our disturbed sight represents things to itself erroneously, and that we are of opinion they stand in as much need of us as we do of them, like people at sea, to whom mountains, fields, cities, heaven and earth are tossed at the same rate as they are:

"Provehimur portu, terraeque urbesque recedunt:"

["We sail out of port, and cities and lands recede."

--AEneid, iii. 72.]

Whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past and condemn the present time, laying the fault of his misery and discontent upon the world and the manners of men?

"Jamque caput qua.s.sans, grandis suspirat arator.

Et c.u.m tempora temporibus praesentia confert Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis, Et crepat antiquum genus ut pietate repletum."

["Now the old ploughman, shaking his head, sighs, and compares present times with past, often praises his parents' happiness, and talks of the old race as full of piety."--Lucretius, ii. 1165.]

We will make all things go along with us; whence it follows that we consider our death as a very great thing, and that does not so easily pa.s.s, nor without the solemn consultation of the stars:

"Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes dens,"

["All the G.o.ds to agitation about one man."

--Seneca, Suasor, i. 4.]

and so much the more think it as we more value ourselves. "What, shall so much knowledge be lost, with so much damage to the world, without a particular concern of the destinies? Does so rare and exemplary a soul cost no more the killing than one that is common and of no use to the public? This life, that protects so many others, upon which so many other lives depend, that employs so vast a number of men in his service, that fills so many places, shall it drop off like one that hangs but by its own simple thread? None of us lays it enough to heart that he is but one: thence proceeded those words of Caesar to his pilot, more tumid than the sea that threatened him:

"Italiam si coelo auctore recusas, Me pete: sola tibi causa est haec justa timoris, Vectorem non nosce tuum; perrumpe procellas, Tutela secure mea."

["If you decline to sail to Italy under the G.o.d's protection, trust to mine; the only just cause you have to fear is, that you do not know your pa.s.senger; sail on, secure in my guardians.h.i.+p."

--Lucan, V. 579.]

And these:

"Credit jam digna pericula Caesar Fatis esse suis; tantusne evertere, dixit, Me superis labor est, parva quern puppe sedentem, Tam magno petiere mari;"

["Caesar now deemed these dangers worthy of his destiny: 'What!'

said he, 'is it for the G.o.ds so great a task to overthrow me, that they must be fain to a.s.sail me with great seas in a poor little bark.'"--Lucan, v. 653.]

and that idle fancy of the public, that the sun bore on his face mourning for his death a whole year:

"Ille etiam extincto miseratus Caesare Romam, c.u.m caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit:"

["Caesar being dead, the sun in mourning clouds, pitying Rome, clothed himself."--Virgil, Georg., i. 466.]

and a thousand of the like, wherewith the world suffers itself to be so easily imposed upon, believing that our interests affect the heavens, and that their infinity is concerned at our ordinary actions:

"Non tanta caelo societas n.o.bisc.u.m est, ut nostro fato mortalis sit ille quoque siderum fulgor."

["There is no such alliance betwixt us and heaven, that the brightness of the stars should be made also mortal by our death."

--Pliny, Nat. Hist., ii. 8.]

Now, to judge of constancy and resolution in a man who does not yet believe himself to be certainly in danger, though he really is, is not reason; and 'tis not enough that he die in this posture, unless he purposely put himself into it for this effect. It commonly falls out in most men that they set a good face upon the matter and speak with great indifference, to acquire reputation, which they hope afterwards, living, to enjoy. Of all whom I have seen die, fortune has disposed their countenances and no design of theirs; and even of those who in ancient times have made away with themselves, there is much to be considered whether it were a sudden or a lingering death. That cruel Roman Emperor would say of his prisoners, that he would make them feel death, and if any one killed himself in prison, "That fellow has made an escape from me"; he would prolong death and make it felt by torments: