Chapter 108

“Gloria nostra est testimonium conscientiae nostrae.” [“For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience.” --Corinthians, i. I.] He who is only a good man that men may know it, and that he may be the better esteemed when ‘tis known; who will not do well but upon condition that his virtue may be known to men: is one from whom much service is not to be expected: “Credo ch ‘el reste di quel verno, cose Facesse degne di tener ne conto; Ma fur fin’ a quel tempo si nascose, Che non a colpa mia s’ hor ‘non le conto Perche Orlando a far l’opre virtuose Piu ch’a narrar le poi sempre era pronto; Ne mai fu alcun’ de’suoi fatti espresso, Se non quando ebbe i testimonii appresso.” [“The rest of the winter, I believe, was spent in actions worthy of narration, but they were done so secretly that if I do not tell them I am not to blame, for Orlando was more bent to do great acts than to boast of them, so that no deeds of his were ever known but those that had witnesses.”--Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, xi. 81.] A man must go to the war upon the account of duty, and expect the recompense that never fails brave and worthy actions, how private soever, or even virtuous thoughts-the satisfaction that a well-disposed conscience receives in itself in doing well. A man must be valiant for himself, and upon account of the advantage it is to him to have his courage seated in a firm and secure place against the assaults of fortune: “Virtus, repulsaa nescia sordidx Intaminatis fulget honoribus Nec sumit, aut ponit secures Arbitrio popularis aura.” [“Virtue, repudiating all base repulse, shines in taintless honours, nor takes nor leaves dignity at the mere will of the vulgar.”--Horace, Od., iii. 2, 17.] It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part, but for ourselves within, where no eyes can pierce but our own; there she defends us from the fear of death, of pain, of shame itself: there she arms us against the loss of our children, friends, and fortunes: and when opportunity presents itself, she leads us on to the hazards of war: “Non emolumento aliquo, sed ipsius honestatis decore.” [“Not for any profit, but for the honour of honesty itself.” --Cicero, De Finib., i. 10.] This profit is of much greater advantage, and more worthy to be coveted and hoped for, than, honour and glory, which are no other than a favourable judgment given of us. A dozen men must be called out of a whole nation to judge about an acre of land; and the judgment of our inclinations and actions, the most difficult and most important matter that is, we refer to the voice and determination of the rabble, the mother of ignorance, injustice, and inconstancy. Is it reasonable that the life of a wise man should depend upon the judgment of fools? “An quidquam stultius, quam, quos singulos contemnas, eos aliquid putare esse universes?” [“Can anything be more foolish than to think that those you despise singly, can be anything else in general.” --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 36.] He that makes it his business to please them, will have enough to do and never have done; ‘tis a mark that can never be aimed at or hit: “Nil tam inaestimabile est, quam animi multitudinis.” [“Nothing is to be so little understood as the minds of the multitude.”--Livy, xxxi. 34.] Demetrius pleasantly said of the voice of the people, that he made no more account of that which came from above than of that which came from below. He [Cicero] says more: “Ego hoc judico, si quando turpe non sit, tamen non esse non turpe, quum id a multitudine laudatur.” [“I am of opinion, that though a thing be not foul in itself, yet it cannot but become so when commended by the multitude.” --Cicero, De Finib., ii. 15.] No art, no activity of wit, could conduct our steps so as to follow so wandering and so irregular a guide; in this windy confusion of the noise of vulgar reports and opinions that drive us on, no way worth anything can be chosen. Let us not propose to ourselves so floating and wavering an end; let us follow constantly after reason; let the public approbation follow us there, if it will; and as it wholly depends upon fortune, we have no reason sooner to expect it by any other way than that. Even though I would not follow the right way because it is right, I should, however, follow it as having experimentally found that, at the end of the reckoning, ‘tis commonly the most happy and of greatest utility. “Dedit hoc providentia hominibus munus, ut honesta magis juvarent.” [“This gift Providence has given to men, that honest things should be the most agreeable.”--Quintilian, Inst. Orat., i. 12.] The mariner of old said thus to Neptune, in a great tempest: “O God, thou wilt save me if thou wilt, and if thou choosest, thou wilt destroy me; but, however, I will hold my rudder straight.”--[Seneca, Ep., 85.]-- I have seen in my time a thousand men supple, halfbred, ambiguous, whom no one doubted to be more worldly-wise than I, lose themselves, where I have saved myself: “Risi successus posse carere dolos.” [“I have laughed to see cunning fail of success.” --Ovid, Heroid, i. 18.] Paulus AEmilius, going on the glorious expedition of Macedonia, above all things charged the people of Rome not to speak of his actions during his absence. Oh, the license of judgments is a great disturbance to great affairs! forasmuch as every one has not the firmness of Fabius against common, adverse, and injurious tongues, who rather suffered his authority to be dissected by the vain fancies of men, than to do less well in his charge with a favourable reputation and the popular applause. There is I know not what natural sweetness in hearing one’s self commended; but we are a great deal too fond of it: “Laudari metuam, neque enim mihi cornea fibra est Sed recti finemque extremumque esse recuso Euge tuum, et belle.” [“I should fear to be praised, for my heart is not made of horn; but I deny that ‘excellent--admirably done,’ are the terms and final aim of virtue.”--Persius, i. 47.] I care not so much what I am in the opinions of others, as what I am in my own; I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing. Strangers see nothing but events and outward appearances; everybody can set a good face on the matter, when they have trembling and terror within: they do not see my heart, they see but my countenance. One is right in decrying the hypocrisy that is in war; for what is more easy to an old soldier than to shift in a time of danger, and to counterfeit the brave when he has no more heart than a chicken? There are so many ways to avoid hazarding a man’s own person, that we have deceived the world a thousand times before we come to be engaged in a real danger: and even then, finding ourselves in an inevitable necessity of doing something, we can make shift for that time to conceal our apprehensions by setting a good face on the business, though the heart beats within; and whoever had the use of the Platonic ring, which renders those invisible that wear it, if turned inward towards the palm of the hand, a great many would very often hide themselves when they ought most to appear, and would repent being placed in so honourable a post, where necessity must make them bold. “Falsus honor juvat, et mendax infamia terret Quem nisi mendosum et mendacem?” [“False honour pleases, and calumny affrights, the guilty and the sick.”--Horace, Ep., i. 16, 89.] Thus we see how all the judgments that are founded upon external appearances, are marvellously uncertain and doubtful; and that there is no so certain testimony as every one is to himself. In these, how many soldiers’ boys are companions of our glory? he who stands firm in an open trench, what does he in that more than fifty poor pioneers who open to him the way and cover it with their own bodies for fivepence a day pay, do before him? “Non quicquid turbida Roma Elevet, accedas; examenque improbum in illa Castiges trutina: nec to quaesiveris extra.” [“Do not, if turbulent Rome disparage anything, accede; nor correct a false balance by that scale; nor seek anything beyond thyself.” --Persius, Sat., i. 5.] The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call making them more great; we will have them there well received, and that this increase turn to their advantage, which is all that can be excusable in this design. But the excess of this disease proceeds so far that many covet to have a name, be it what it will. Trogus Pompeius says of Herostratus, and Titus Livius of Manlius Capitolinus, that they were more ambitious of a great reputation than of a good one. This is very common; we are more solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak; and it is enough for us that our names are often mentioned, be it after what manner it will. It should seem that to be known, is in some sort to have a man’s life and its duration in others’ keeping. I, for my part, hold that I am not, but in myself; and of that other life of mine which lies in the knowledge of my friends, to consider it naked and simply in itself, I know very well that I am sensible of no fruit nor enjoyment from it but by the vanity of a fantastic opinion; and when I shall be dead, I shall be still and much less sensible of it; and shall, withal, absolutely lose the use of those real advantages that sometimes accidentally follow it. I shall have no more handle whereby to take hold of reputation, neither shall it have any whereby to take hold of or to cleave to me; for to expect that my name should be advanced by it, in the first place, I have no name that is enough my own; of two that I have, one is common to all my race, and indeed to others also; there are two families at Paris and Montpellier, whose surname is Montaigne, another in Brittany, and one in Xaintonge, De La Montaigne. The transposition of one syllable only would suffice so to ravel our affairs, that I shall share in their glory, and they peradventure will partake of my discredit; and, moreover, my ancestors have formerly been surnamed, Eyquem,--[Eyquem was the patronymic.]--a name wherein a family well known in England is at this day concerned. As to my other name, every one may take it that will, and so, perhaps, I may honour a porter in my own stead. And besides, though I had a particular distinction by myself, what can it distinguish, when I am no more? Can it point out and favour inanity? “Non levior cippus nunc imprimit ossa? Laudat posteritas! Nunc non e manibus illis, Nunc non a tumulo fortunataque favilla, Nascentur violae?” [“Does the tomb press with less weight upon my bones? Do comrades praise? Not from my manes, not from the tomb, not from the ashes will violets grow.”--Persius, Sat., i. 37.] but of this I have spoken elsewhere. As to what remains, in a great battle where ten thousand men are maimed or killed, there are not fifteen who are taken notice of; it must be some very eminent greatness, or some consequence of great importance that fortune has added to it, that signalises a private action, not of a harquebuser only, but of a great captain; for to kill a man, or two, or ten: to expose a man’s self bravely to the utmost peril of death, is indeed something in every one of us, because we there hazard all; but for the world’s concern, they are things so ordinary, and so many of them are every day seen, and there must of necessity be so many of the same kind to produce any notable effect, that we cannot expect any particular renown from it: “Casus multis hic cognitus, ac jam Tritus, et a medio fortunae ductus acervo.” [“The accident is known to many, and now trite; and drawn from the midst of Fortune’s heap.”--Juvenal, Sat., xiii. 9.] Of so many thousands of valiant men who have died within these fifteen hundred years in France with their swords in their hands, not a hundred have come to our knowledge. The memory, not of the commanders only, but of battles and victories, is buried and gone; the fortunes of above half of the world, for want of a record, stir not from their place, and vanish without duration. If I had unknown events in my possession, I should think with great ease to out-do those that are recorded, in all sorts of examples. Is it not strange that even of the Greeks and Romans, with so many writers and witnesses, and so many rare and noble exploits, so few are arrived at our knowledge: “Ad nos vix tenuis famx perlabitur aura.” [“An obscure rumour scarce is hither come.”--AEneid, vii. 646.] It will be much if, a hundred years hence, it be remembered in general that in our times there were civil wars in France. The Lacedaemonians, entering into battle, sacrificed to the Muses, to the end that their actions might be well and worthily written, looking upon it as a divine and no common favour, that brave acts should find witnesses that could give them life and memory. Do we expect that at every musket-shot we receive, and at every hazard we run, there must be a register ready to record it? and, besides, a hundred registers may enrol them whose commentaries will not last above three days, and will never come to the sight of any one. We have not the thousandth part of ancient writings; ‘tis fortune that gives them a shorter or longer life, according to her favour; and ‘tis permissible to doubt whether those we have be not the worst, not having seen the rest. Men do not write histories of things of so little moment: a man must have been general in the conquest of an empire or a kingdom; he must have won two-and-fifty set battles, and always the weaker in number, as Caesar did: ten thousand brave fellows and many great captains lost their lives valiantly in his service, whose names lasted no longer than their wives and children lived: “Quos fama obscura recondit.” [“Whom an obscure reputation conceals.”--AEneid, v. 302.] Even those whom we see behave themselves well, three months or three years after they have departed hence, are no more mentioned than if they had never been.