Chapter 57

To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and, therefore, so much less natural than the others; ‘tis the last and extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for. It is, indeed, the bourn beyond which we are not to pass, and which the law of nature has set as a limit, not to be exceeded; but it is, withal, a privilege she is rarely seen to give us to last till then. ‘Tis a lease she only signs by particular favour, and it may be to one only in the space of two or three ages, and then with a pass to boot, to carry him through all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way of this long career. And therefore my opinion is, that when once forty years we should consider it as an age to which very few arrive. For seeing that men do not usually proceed so far, it is a sign that we are pretty well advanced; and since we have exceeded the ordinary bounds, which is the just measure of life, we ought not to expect to go much further; having escaped so many precipices of death, whereinto we have seen so many other men fall, we should acknowledge that so extraordinary a fortune as that which has hitherto rescued us from those eminent perils, and kept us alive beyond the ordinary term of living, is not like to continue long. ‘Tis a fault in our very laws to maintain this error: these say that a man is not capable of managing his own estate till he be five-and-twenty years old, whereas he will have much ado to manage his life so long. Augustus cut off five years from the ancient Roman standard, and declared that thirty years old was sufficient for a judge. Servius Tullius superseded the knights of above seven-and-forty years of age from the fatigues of war; Augustus dismissed them at forty-five; though methinks it seems a little unreasonable that men should be sent to the fireside till five-and-fifty or sixty years of age. I should be of opinion that our vocation and employment should be as far as possible extended for the public good: I find the fault on the other side, that they do not employ us early enough. This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter. For my part, I believe our souls are adult at twenty as much as they are ever like to be, and as capable then as ever. A soul that has not by that time given evident earnest of its force and virtue will never after come to proof. The natural qualities and virtues produce what they have of vigorous and fine, within that term or never, “Si l’espine rion picque quand nai, A pene que picque jamai,” [“If the thorn does not prick at its birth, ‘twill hardly ever prick at all.”] as they say in Dauphin. Of all the great human actions I ever heard or read of, of what sort soever, I have observed, both in former ages and our own, more were performed before the age of thirty than after; and this ofttimes in the very lives of the same men. May I not confidently instance in those of Hannibal and his great rival Scipio? The better half of their lives they lived upon the glory they had acquired in their youth; great men after, ‘tis true, in comparison of others; but by no means in comparison of themselves. As to my own particular, I do certainly believe that since that age, both my understanding and my constitution have rather decayed than improved, and retired rather than advanced. ‘Tis possible, that with those who make the best use of their time, knowledge and experience may increase with their years; but vivacity, promptitude, steadiness, and other pieces of us, of much greater importance, and much more essentially our own, languish and decay: “Ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus aevi Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus, Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque, mensque.” [“When once the body is shaken by the violence of time, blood and vigour ebbing away, the judgment halts, the tongue and the mind dote.”--Lucretius, iii. 452.] Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind; and I have seen enough who have got a weakness in their brains before either in their legs or stomach; and by how much the more it is a disease of no great pain to the sufferer, and of obscure symptoms, so much greater is the danger. For this reason it is that I complain of our laws, not that they keep us too long to our work, but that they set us to work too late. For the frailty of life considered, and to how many ordinary and natural rocks it is exposed, one ought not to give up so large a portion of it to childhood, idleness, and apprenticeship. [Which Cotton thus renders: “Birth though noble, ought not to share so large a vacancy, and so tedious a course of education.” Florio (1613) makes the passage read as-follows: “Methinks that, considering the weakness of our life, and seeing the infinite number of ordinary rocks and natural dangers it is subject unto, we should not, so soon as we come into the world, allot so large a share thereof unto unprofitable wantonness in youth, ill-breeding idleness, and slow-learning prentisage.”] ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: Advise to choose weapons of the shortest sort An ignorance that knowledge creates and begets Ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it Can neither keep nor enjoy anything with a good grace Change of fashions Chess: this idle and childish game Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato Death of old age the most rare and very seldom seen Diogenes, esteeming us no better than flies or bladders Do not to pray that all things may go as we would have them Excel above the common rate in frivolous things Expresses more contempt and condemnation than the other Fancy that others cannot believe otherwise than as he does Gradations above and below pleasure Greatest apprehensions, from things unseen, concealed He did not think mankind worthy of a wise man’s concern Home anxieties and a mind enslaved by wearing complaints How infirm and decaying material this fabric of ours is I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback Led by the ears by this charming harmony of words Little knacks and frivolous subtleties Men approve of things for their being rare and new Must of necessity walk in the steps of another Natural death the most rare and very seldom seen Not to instruct but to be instructed. Present Him such words as the memory suggests to the tongue Psalms of King David: promiscuous, indiscreet Rhetoric: an art to flatter and deceive Rhetoric: to govern a disorderly and tumultuous rabble Sitting betwixt two stools Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind Stupidity and facility natural to the common people The Bible: the wicked and ignorant grow worse by it. The faintness that surprises in the exercises of Venus Thucydides: which was the better wrestler To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular To make little things appear great was his profession To smell, though well, is to stink Valour will cause a trembling in the limbs as well as fear Viscid melting kisses of youthful ardour in my wanton age We can never be despised according to our full desert When we have got it, we want something else Women who paint, pounce, and plaster up their ruins ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE Translated by Charles Cotton Edited by William Carew Hazlitt 1877 CONTENTS OF VOLUME 9. I. Of the inconstancy of our actions. II. Of drunkenness. III. A custom of the Isle of Cea. IV. To-morrow’s a new day. V. Of conscience. VI. Use makes perfect. ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE BOOK THE SECOND CHAPTER I OF THE INCONSTANCY OF OUR ACTIONS Such as make it their business to oversee human actions, do not find themselves in anything so much perplexed as to reconcile them and bring them into the world’s eye with the same lustre and reputation; for they commonly so strangely contradict one another that it seems impossible they should proceed from one and the same person. We find the younger Marius one while a son of Mars and another a son of Venus. Pope Boniface VIII. entered, it is said, into his Papacy like a fox, behaved himself in it like a lion, and died like a dog; and who could believe it to be the same Nero, the perfect image of all cruelty, who, having the sentence of a condemned man brought to him to sign, as was the custom, cried out, “O that I had never been taught to write!” so much it went to his heart to condemn a man to death. All story is full of such examples, and every man is able to produce so many to himself, or out of his own practice or observation, that I sometimes wonder to see men of understanding give themselves the trouble of sorting these pieces, considering that irresolution appears to me to be the most common and manifest vice of our nature witness the famous verse of the player Publius: “Malum consilium est, quod mutari non potest.” [“‘Tis evil counsel that will admit no change.” --Pub. Mim., ex Aul. Gell., xvii. 14.] There seems some reason in forming a judgment of a man from the most usual methods of his life; but, considering the natural instability of our manners and opinions, I have often thought even the best authors a little out in so obstinately endeavouring to make of us any constant and solid contexture; they choose a general air of a man, and according to that interpret all his actions, of which, if they cannot bend some to a uniformity with the rest, they are presently imputed to dissimulation. Augustus has escaped them, for there was in him so apparent, sudden, and continual variety of actions all the whole course of his life, that he has slipped away clear and undecided from the most daring critics. I can more hardly believe a man’s constancy than any other virtue, and believe nothing sooner than the contrary. He that would judge of a man in detail and distinctly, bit by bit, would oftener be able to speak the truth. It is a hard matter, from all antiquity, to pick out a dozen men who have formed their lives to one certain and constant course, which is the principal design of wisdom; for to comprise it all in one word, says one of the ancients, and to contract all the rules of human life into one, “it is to will, and not to will, always one and the same thing: I will not vouchsafe,” says he, “to add, provided the will be just, for if it be not just, it is impossible it should be always one.” I have indeed formerly learned that vice is nothing but irregularity, and want of measure, and therefore ‘tis impossible to fix constancy to it. ‘Tis a saying of. Demosthenes, “that the beginning oh all virtue is consultation and deliberation; the end and perfection, constancy.” If we would resolve on any certain course by reason, we should pitch upon the best, but nobody has thought on’t: “Quod petit, spernit; repetit, quod nuper omisit; AEstuat, et vitae disconvenit ordine toto.” [“That which he sought he despises; what he lately lost, he seeks again. He fluctuates, and is inconsistent in the whole order of life.”--Horace, Ep., i. I, 98.] Our ordinary practice is to follow the inclinations of our appetite, be it to the left or right, upwards or downwards, according as we are wafted by the breath of occasion. We never meditate what we would have till the instant we have a mind to have it; and change like that little creature which receives its colour from what it is laid upon. What we but just now proposed to ourselves we immediately alter, and presently return again to it; ‘tis nothing but shifting and inconsistency: “Ducimur, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum.” [“We are turned about like the top with the thong of others.” --Idem, Sat., ii. 7, 82.] We do not go, we are driven; like things that float, now leisurely, then with violence, according to the gentleness or rapidity of the current: “Nonne videmus, Quid sibi quisque velit, nescire, et quaerere semper Commutare locum, quasi onus deponere possit?” [“Do we not see them, uncertain what they want, and always asking for something new, as if they could get rid of the burthen.” --Lucretius, iii. 1070.] Every day a new whimsy, and our humours keep motion with the time. “Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse Juppiter auctificas lustravit lumine terras.” [“Such are the minds of men, that they change as the light with which father Jupiter himself has illumined the increasing earth.” --Cicero, Frag. Poet, lib. x.] We fluctuate betwixt various inclinations; we will nothing freely, nothing absolutely, nothing constantly. In any one who had prescribed and established determinate laws and rules in his head for his own conduct, we should perceive an equality of manners, an order and an infallible relation of one thing or action to another, shine through his whole life; Empedocles observed this discrepancy in the Agrigentines, that they gave themselves up to delights, as if every day was their last, and built as if they had been to live for ever. The judgment would not be hard to make, as is very evident in the younger Cato; he who therein has found one step, it will lead him to all the rest; ‘tis a harmony of very according sounds, that cannot jar. But with us ‘t is quite contrary; every particular action requires a particular judgment. The surest way to steer, in my opinion, would be to take our measures from the nearest allied circumstances, without engaging in a longer inquisition, or without concluding any other consequence. I was told, during the civil disorders of our poor kingdom, that a maid, hard by the place where I then was, had thrown herself out of a window to avoid being forced by a common soldier who was quartered in the house; she was not killed by the fall, and therefore, repeating her attempt would have cut her own throat, had she not been prevented; but having, nevertheless, wounded herself to some show of danger, she voluntarily confessed that the soldier had not as yet importuned her otherwise; than by courtship, earnest solicitation, and presents; but that she was afraid that in the end he would have proceeded to violence, all which she delivered with such a countenance and accent, and withal embrued in her own blood, the highest testimony of her virtue, that she appeared another Lucretia; and yet I have since been very well assured that both before and after she was not so difficult a piece.