that purpose produc't a Book from under his Robe wherein he told them was an exact account of his receipts and disbursments but being required to deliver it to the Pronotary to be examined and enrolled he refused saying he would not do himself so great a disgrace and in the presence of the whole Senate tore the Book with his own hands to peices I do not believe that the most fear'd Conscience could have counterfeited so great an assurance He had naturally too high a spirit and was accustomed to too high a fortune says Titus Livius to know how to be criminal and to dispose himself to the meanness of defending his innocency This putting men to the Rack is a dangerous invention and seemes to be rather a tryal of patience than truth Both he who has the fortitude to endure it conceals the truth and he who has not for why should paine sooner make me to confesse what really is than force me to say what is not And on the contrary if he who is not guilty of that whereof he is accused has the courage to undergo those torments why should not he who is guilty have the same so fair a reward as life being in his prospect I think the ground of this invention proceeds from the consideration of the force of Conscience For to the guilty it seemes to assist the Rack to make him confess his fault and to shake his resolution and on the other side that it fortifies the innocent against the torture But when 's all 's don 't is in plain truth a tryal full of incertainty and danger What would not a man say what would not a man do to avoid so intolerable torments Etiam innocentes cogit mentiri dolor Pain the most innocent will make to lye Whence it comes to pass that he whom the Judg has rackt that he may not dye innocent he makes him die both innocent and rackt A thousand and a thousand have charged their own heads by false confessions Amongst which I place Philotas considering the circumstances of the Tryal Alexander put him upon and the progress of his torture But so it is says one that it is the least evill humane weakness could invent very inhumanely notwithstanding and to very little purpose in my opinion Many Nations less Barbarous in this than the Greeks and Romans who call them so repute it horrible and cruel to torment and pull a man to peices for a fault of which they are yet in doubt How can he help your ignorance Are not you unjust that not to kill him without cause do worse than kill him And that this is so do but observe how many ways he had rather die without Reason than undergo this Examination more painful than Execution it self and that oft-times by its extremity prevents Execution and dispatches him I know not where I had this Story but it exactly matches the Conscience of our Justice in this particular A Country woman to a General of very severe Discipline accused one of his Souldiers that he had taken from her Children the little milke she had lest to nourish them withal the Army having consum'd all the rest but of this Proof there was none The General after having caution'd the woman to take good heed to what she said for that she would make herself guilty of a false Accusation if she told a lie and she persisting he presently caused the Souldiers belly to be ript up to clear the truth of the fact and the Woman was found to be in the right An instructive Sentence CHAP. VI. Vse makes Perfectness 'T IS not to be expected that Argument and Instruction though we never so voluntarily surrender our belief to what is read to us should be of force to lead us on so far as to Action if we do not over and above exercise and form the Soul by Experience to the course for which we design it it will otherwise doubtless find it self at a loss when it comes to the pinch of the business This is the reason why those amongst the Philosophers who were ambitious to attain to a greater excellence were not contented to expect the severities of fortune in their retirement and repose of their own habitations lest she should have surpriz'd them raw and unexpert in the Combat but sallied out to meet her and purposely threw themselves into the proof of difficulties Some of which abandon'd Riches to exercise themselves in a voluntary proverty others have sought out labour and an â—usterity of life to inure them to hard-ships and inconveniencies others have deprived themselves of their dearest members as of their sight and instruments of Generation left their too delightful and effeminate service should soften and debauch the stability of their Souls But in dying which is the greatest work we have to do Practice is out of doors and can give us no assistance at all A man may by custom fortisie himself against paines shame necessity and such like accidents but as to death we can experiment it but once and are all Apprentices when we come to it There have antiently been men so excellent managers of their time that they have tried even in death it self to relish and tast it and who have bent their utmost faculties of mind to discover what this passage is but they are none of them come back to tell us the news Nemo expergitus extat Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa sequuta No one was ever known to wake Who once in deaths cold arms a nap did take Canius Julius a noble Roman of singular constancy and vertue having been condemn'd to die by that Beast Caligula besides many admirable testimonies that he gave of his resolution as he was just going to receive the stroke of the Executioner was askt by a Philosoper a freind of his well Canius said he wherabout is your Soul now What is she doing What are you thinking of I was thinking reply'd the other to keep my self ready and the faculties of my mind settled and fixt to try if in this short and quick instant of death I could perceive the motion of the Soul when she parts from the body and whether she has any resentment at the separation that I may after come again if I can to acquaint my freinds with it This man Philosophizes not unto death onely but in death self What a strange assurance was this and what bravery of courage to desire his death should be a lesson to him and to have leisure to think of other things in so great an affair Jus hoc animi morientis habebat This mighty pow'r of mind he dying had And yet I fancy there is a certain way of making it familiar to us and in some sort of making tryal what it is We may gain experience if not entire and perfect yet such at least as shall not be totally useless to us and that may render us more assur'd If we cannot overtake it we
to have stript her of her Means and Powers and to have disarm'd her only from the time of her Captivity and Imprisonment in the Flesh of her Weakness and Infirmity from the time wherein she was forc'd and compell'd to extract an infinite and perpetual Sentence and Condemnation and to insist upon the Consideration of so short a time peradventure but an hour or two or at the most but an Age which have no more proportion with Infinity than an Instant for this Momentary Interval to ordain and definitively to determine of her whole Eternity It were an unreasonable disproportion to extract an eternal Recompence in consequence of so short a Life Plato to defend himself from this inconvenience will have future Rewards limited to the term of a hundred years relatively to Human Duration And of us our selves there are enow who have given them Temporal Limits By this they judg'd that the Generation of the Soul follow'd the common condition of Human things As also her Life according to the Opinion of Epicurus and Democritus which has been the most receiv'd in consequence of these fine apparences that they saw it born and that according as the Body grew more capable they saw it increase in Vigour as the other did that its feebleness in Infancy was very manifest and in time its better Strength and Maturity and after that its Declension and Old Age and at last its decripitude gigni pariter cum corpore unà Crescere sentimus paritèrque senescere mentem Souls with the Bodies to be born we may Discern with them t' increase with them decay They perceiv'd it to be capable of divers Passions and agitated with several painful Motions from whence it fell into lassitude and uneasiness capable of Alteration and Change of Chearfulness and Stupidity and Faintness and subject to Diseases and Injuries as the Stomach or the Foot Mentem sanari corpus ut aegrum Cernimus flecti medicina posse videmus Sick Minds as well as Bodies we do see By Medicines Vertue oft restor'd to be Dazled and intoxicated with the Fumes of Wine justled from her Seat by the Vapours of a burning Feaver laid asleep by the application of some Medicaments and rous'd awake by others Corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est Corporis quoniam telis ictúque laborat There must be of necessity we find A Nature that 's corporal of the Mind Because we evidently see it smarts And wounded is with Shafts the Body darts They saw it in Astonishment and such a one as overthrow all its Faculties through the mere Contagion of a mad Dog and in that condition to have no Stability of Reason no Sufficiency no Vertue no Philosophical Resolution no resistance that could exempt it from the subjection of Accidents The slaver of a contemptible Curr shed upon the hand of Socrates to shake all his Wisdom and all his great and regular Imaginations and so to annihilate them as that there remain'd no Tracen or Footstep of his former Knowledge vis animai Conturbatur divisa seorsum Disjectatur eodem illo distracta veneno Th' power of the Souls disturb'd and when That once is but sequestred from her then By the same Poyson 't is dispers'd abroad And this Poyson to find no more resistance in that great Soul than in that of an Infant of four years old A Poyson sufficient to make all Philosophy if it were incarnate to become furious and mad insomuch that Cato who ever disdain'd Death and Fortune could not indure the sight of a Looking-glass or of Water confounded with Horror and Affright at the thought of falling by the Contagion of a mad Dog into the Disease call'd by Physitians Hydrophobia vis morbi distracta per artus Turbat agens animam spumantes aequore falso Ventorum ut validis fervescunt viribus undae Throughout the Limbs diffus'd the fierce Disease Disturbs the Soul as in the briny Seas The foaming Waves to swell and boyl we see Stirr'd by the Winds impetuosity Now as to this particular Philosophy has sufficiently arm'd Man to encounter all other Accidents either with Patience or if the Search of that costs too dear by an infallible Defeat in totally depriving himself of all sentiment But these are Expedients that are only of use to a Soul being it self and in its full power capable of Reason and Deliberation But not at all proper for this Inconvenience where even in a Philosopher the Soul becomes the Soul of a Madman troubled overturn'd and lost Which many Occasions may produce as a too vehement Agitation that any violent Passion of the Soul may beget in it self or a Wound in a certain part of the Person or Vapours from the Stomach any of which may stupify the Understanding and turn the Brain Morbis in corporis auius errat Saepe animus dementit enim deliraque fatur Interdúmque gravi lethargo fertur in altum Aeternúmque soporem oculis nutúque cadenti For when the Body's sick and ill at ease The Mind does often share in the Disease Wanders grows wild and raves and sometimes by A heavy and a stupid Lethargy Is overcome and cast into a deep A most profound and everlasting Sleep The Philosophers methinks have not much touch'd this string no more than another of the same Importance They have this Dilemma continually in their Mouths to consolate our mortal Condition The Soul is either mortal or immortal if mortal it will suffer no pain if immortal it will change for the better they never touch the other Branch what if she change for the worse and leave to the Poets the menaces of future Torments But thereby they make themselves a good Game They are two Omissions that I often meet with in their Discourses I return to the first This Soul loses the use of the soveraign stoical Good so constant and so firm Our fine human Wisdom must here yield and give up her Armes As to the rest they did also consider by the vanity of human Reason that the mixture and association of two so contrary things as mortal and immortal was unimaginable Quippe etenim mortale aeterno jungere unà est Consentire putare fungi mutua posse Desipere est Quid enim diversus esse putandum Aut magis inter se disjunctum discrepitánsque Quà m mortale quod est immortali atque perenni Junctum in concilio saevas tolerare procellas To join the mortal then and the aetern And think they can agree in one concern Is Madness For what things more diff'ring are Unlike betwixt themselves and fit to jarr How can it then be thought that these should bear When thus conjoin'd of Stormes an equal share Moreover they perceiv'd the Soul tending towards death as well as the Body Simul aevo fessa fatiscit Which according to Zeno the Image of Sleep does sufficiently demonstrate to us For he looks upon it as a fainting and
they might have more room and there is scarce two or three little corners of the World that have not felt the effect of such Removals The Romans by this means erected their Colonies for perceiving their City to grow immeasurably populous they eas'd it of the most unnecessary People and sent them to inhabit and cultivate the Lands by them conquer'd sometimes also they purposely maintain'd Wars with some of their Enemies not only to keep their men in action for fear lest Idleness the Mother of Corruption should bring upon them some worse inconvenience Et patimur longae pacis mala saevior armis Luxuria incumbit We suffer th' ills of a long Peace by far Greater and more pernicious than War but also to serve for a Blood-letting to their Republick and a little to evaporate the too vehement heat of their Youth to prune and cleanse the Branches from the Stock too luxuriant in Wood and to this end it was that they formerly maintain'd so long a War with Carthage In the Treaty of Bretigny Edward the third King of England would not in the general Peace he then made with our King comprehend the Controversie about the Dutchy of Brittany that he might have a Place wherein to discharge himself of his Souldiers and that the vast number of English he had brought over to serve him in that Expedition might not return back into England And this also was one reason why our King Philip consented to send his Son John that Foreign Expedition that he might take along with him a great number of hot Young-men that were then in his Pay There are many in our Times who talk at this rate wishing that this hot Emotion that is now amongst us might discharge it self in some neighbouring War for fear lest all the peccant Humours that now reign in this politick Body of ours may not diffuse themselves farther keep the Fever still in the height and at last cause our total Ruin and in truth a Foreign is much more supportable than a Civil War but I do not believe that God will favour so unjust a design as to offend and quarrel others for our own advantage Nil mihi tam valde placeat Rhamnusia virgo Quod temere invitis suscipiatur heris In War that does invade another's right Whose end is plunder I take no delight And yet the weakness of our condition does often push us upon the necessity of making use of ill means to a good end Lycurgus the most vertuous and perfect Legislator that ever was invented this unjust practice of making the Helotes who were there Slaves drunk by force by so doing to teach his People Temperance to the end that the Spartiates seeing them so overwhelmed and buried in Wine might abhor the excess of this beastly Vice And yet they were more too blame who of old gave leave that Criminals to what sort of death soever condemn'd should be cut up alive by the Physicians that they might make a true discovery of our inward parts and build their Art upon greater certainty for if we must run into excesses 't is more excusable to do it for the health of the Soul than that of the Body as the Romans train'd up the People to Valour and the contempt of Dangers and Death by those furious Spectacles of Gladiators and Fencers who being to fight it out to the last cut mangled and killed one another in their Presence Quid vesani aliud sibi vult ars impia ludi Quid mortes juvenum quid sanguine pasta voluptas Of such inhumane sports what further use What Pleasure can slaughters of men produce and this custom continued till the Emperour Theodosius his time Arripe dilatam tua dux in tempora famam Quodque patris superest successor laudis habeto Nullus in Vrbe cadat cujus sit poena Voluptas Jam solis contenta feris infamis arena Nulla cruentatis homicidia ludat in armis Prince take the Honours destin'd for thy Reign Inherit of thy Father those remain Henceforth let none at Rome for sport be slain Let beast's Blood stain th' infamous Theater And no more Homicides be acted there It was in truth a wonderful Example and of great advantage for the training up the People to see every day before their Eyes a hundred two hundred nay a thousand couples of Men arm'd against one another cut one another to pieces with so great a constancy of Courage that they were never heard to utter so much as one syllable of Weakness or Commiseration never seen to turn their back nor so much as to make one cowardly step to evade a Blow but rather expose their Necks to the Adversaries Sword and present themselves to receive the stroke And many of them when wounded to Death have sent to ask the Spectators if they were satisfied with their behaviour before they lay down to dye upon the Place It was not enough for them to Fight and to Dye bravely but cheerfully too insomuch that they were hiss'd and curs'd if they made any Dispute about receiving their Death The very Maids themselves set them on consurgit ad ictus Et quoties victor ferrum jugulo inserit illa Delicias ait esse suas pectusque jacentis Virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi The modest Virgin is delighted so With the fell sport that she applauds the blow And when the Victor baths his bloody brand In 's fellow's Throat and lays him on the sand Then she 's most pleas'd and shews by signs she 'd fain Have him rip up the bosom of the slain The first Romans only condemn'd Criminals to this Example but they have since employ'd innocent Slaves in the work and even Freemen too who sold themselves to this effect nay moreover Senators and Knights of Rome and also Women Nunc caput in mortem vendunt funus arenae Atque hostem sibi quisque parat cum bella quiescunt They sell themselves to death and since the Wars Are ceas'd each for himself a Foe prepares Hos inter fremitus novosque lusus Stat sexus rudis insciusque ferri Et pugnat capit improbus viriles Amidst these Tumults and Alarms The tender Sex unskill'd in Arms Immodestly will try their mights And now engag'd in manly Fights which I should think strange and incredible if we were not accustom'd every day to see in our own Wars many thousands of men of other Nations for Money to stake their Blood and their Lives in Quarrels wherein they have no manner of concern CHAP. XXIV Of the Roman Grandeur I will only say a word or two of this infinite Argument to shew the simplicity of those who compare the pittiful Grandeurs of these Times to that of Rome In the seventh Book of Cicero's Familiar Epistles and let the Grammarians put out that sirname of Familiar if they please for in truth it is not very proper and they who in stead of
he represents he will imprint in himself a true and real Grief by means of the part he plays to transmit it to the Audience who are yet less concern'd than he as they do who are hir'd at Funerals to assist in the ceremony of Sorrow who fell their Tears and Mourning by weight and measure For although they act in a borrow'd Form nevertheless by habituating themselves and settling their Countenances to the occasion 't is most certain they oft are really affected with a true and real Sorrow I was one amongst several other of his Friends who convey'd the Body of Monsieur de Grammont to Soissons from the siege of la Fere where he was slain I observ'd that in all places we pass'd through we met with sorrowful Countenances occasion'd by the meer solemn pomp of our Convoy for the Name of the Defunct was not there so much as known Quintillian reports to have seen Comedians so deeply engag'd in a Mourning part that they could not give over weeping when they came home and who having taken upon them to stir up Passion in another have themselves espous'd it to that degree as to find themselves infected with it not only to Tears but moreover with Paleness and the comportment of men really over-whelm'd with Grief In a Countrey near our Mountains the Women play Priest Martin that is to say both the Priest and the Clerk for as they augment the regret of the deceased Husband by the remembrance of the good and agreeable Qualities he was master of they also at the same time make a register of and publish his imperfections as if of themselves to enter into some compensation and so divert themselves from compassion to disdain and yet with much better grace than we who when we lose an old Acquaintance strive to give him new and false praises and to make him quite another thing when we have lost sight of him than he appear'd to us when we did see him as if regret was an instructive thing or that tears by washing our Understandings clear'd them For my part I henceforth renounce all favourable testimonies men would give of me not because I shall not be worthy of them but because I shall be dead Whoever shall ask a man what Interest have you in this Siege the interest of Example he will say and of the common obedience to my Prince I pretend to no profit by it and for glory I know how small a part can reflect upon such a private man as I I have here neither passion nor quarrel And yet you shall see him the next day quite another man chasing and red with fury rang'd in Battel for the Assault 't is the glittering of so much Steel the fire and noise of our Canon and Drums that have infus'd this new Rancour and Fury into his Veins A frivolous Cause you will say how a Cause There needs none to agitate the mind a meer whimsie without body and without subject will rule and sway it Let me think of building Castles in Spain my imagination suggests to me Conveniences and Pleasures with which my Soul is really delighted and pleas'd How oft do we torment our Mind with Anger or Sorrow by such shadows and engage our selves in fantastick Passions that alter both the Soul and Body What astonish'd fleering and confus'd Grimaces does this raving put our Faces into What sallies and agitation both of Members and Voices does it inspire us with Does it not seem that this individual man has false Visions from the crowd of others with whom he has to do or that he is possess'd with some internal Daemon that persecutes him Enquire of your self where is the object of this Mutation Is there any thing but us in Nature but subsisting nullity over which it has power Cambyses for having dreamt that his Brother should be one day King of Persia put him to death a beloved Brother and one in whom he had always confided Aristodemus King of the Messenians kill'd himself out of a fancy of ill Omen from I know not what howling of his Dogs and King Midas did as much upon the account of some foolish dream he had dream'd 'T is to prize Life at its just value to abandon it for a dream and yet here the Soul triumphs over the miseries and weakness of the Body and truly in that it is expos'd to all offences and alterations it has reason to speak after this manner O prima infoelix fingenti Terra Prometheo Ille parum cauti pectori egit opus Corpora disponens mentem non vidit in arte Recta Animi primum debuit esse via Oh 't was for man a most unhappy Day When rash Prometheus form'd him out of Clay In his attempt th' ambitious Architect Did indiscreetly the main thing neglect In framing Bodies he had not the Art To form the Mind which is the chiefest part CHAP. V. Vpon some Verses of Virgil. BY how much profitable Thoughts are more full and solid by so much are they also more cumbersome and heavy Vice Death Poverty Diseases are grave and grievous Subjects A man must have his Soul instructed in the means to sustain and to contend with Evils and in the rules of living and believing well and often rouse it up and exercise it in this noble study But in an ordinary Soul it must be by intervals and with Moderation it will otherwise grow besotted if continually intent upon it I found it necessary when I was young to put my self in mind and to sollicit my self to keep me to my Duty Gayety and Health do not they say so well agree with those grave and serious Meditations I am at present in another Condition The Indispositions of Age do but too much put me in mind and preach to me From the excess of spriteliness I am fallen into that of Severity which is much more troublesome And for that reason I now suffer my self on purpose a little to run into disorder and sometimes busie my Mind in wanton and youthful Thoughts wherewith it diverts it self I am of late but too reserv'd too heavy and too ripe my Age does every day read to me new Lectures of Coldness and Temperance This Body of mine avoids Disorder and dreads it 't is now my Body's turn to guide my Mind towards Reformation it governs in turn and more rudely and imperiously than the other it lets me not an hour alone sleeping nor waking but is always preaching to me Death Patience and Repentance I now defend my self from Temperance as I have formerly done from Pleasure it draws me too much back and even to Stupidity Now I will be Master of my self to all intents and purposes Wisdom has its excess and has no less need of Moderation than Folly Therefore lest I should wither dry up and overcharge my self with Prudence in the intervals and truces my Infirmities allow me Mens intenta suis ne siet usque malis That my Mind may'nt
Medicine He died in the Year 1592 the 13 th of September a very constant and Philosophical Death being aged fifty nine Years six Months and eleven Dayes and was buried at Bourdeaux in the Church of a Commandery of St. Anthony now given to the religious Feuillantines where his Wife Francoise de la Cassaigne and his Daughter have erected for him an honourable Monument having like his Ancestors past over his Life and Death in the Catholick Religion The Contents of the Chapters of the first Book Ch. 1. THat Men by various wayes arrive at the same End Chap. 2. Of Sorrow Chap. 3. That our Affections carry themselves beyond Vs. Chap. 4. That the Soul discharges her Passions upon false Objects where the true are wanting Chap. 5. Whether the Governour of a Place besieg'd ought himself to go out to parle Chap. 6. That the Hour of Parle is dangerous Chap. 7. That the Intention is Judge of our Actions Chap. 8. Of Idleness Chap. 9. Of Lyars Chap. 10. Of Quick or Slow Speech Chap. 11. Of Prognostication Chap. 12. Of Constancy Chap. 13. The Ceremony of the Interview of Princes Chap. 14. That men are justly punisht for being obstinate in the Defence of a Fort that is not in reason to be defended Chap. 15. Of the Punishment of Cowardize Chap. 16. A Proceeding of some Ambassadours Chap. 17. Of Fear Chap. 18. That Men are not to judge of our Happiness till after Death Chap. 19. That to study Philosophy is to learn to Dye Chap. 20. Of the Force of Imagination Chap. 21. That the Profit of one Man is the Inconvenience of another Chap. 22. Of Custome and that we should not easily change a Law received Chap. 23. Various Events from the same Counsel Chap. 24. Of Pedantry Chap. 25. Of the Education of Children To Madam Diana of Foix Countess of Gurson Chap. 26. That it is folly to measure Truth and Errour by our own capacity Chap. 27. Of Friendship Chap. 28. Nine and twenty Sonnets of Estienne de la Boetie to Madam de Grammont Countess of Guisson Chap. 29. Of Moderation Chap. 30. Of Cannibals Chap. 31. That a Man is soberly to judge of Divine Ordinances Chap. 32. That we are to avoid Pleasures even at the expence of Life Chap. 33. That Fortune is oftentimes observed to act by the Rule of Reason Chap. 34. Of one Defect in one Government Chap. 35. Of the Custom of wearing Cloths Chap. 36. Of Cato the younger Chap. 37. That we Laugh and Cry for the same thing Chap. 38. Of Solitude Chap. 39. A Consideration upon Cicero Chap. 40. That the Relish of Goods and Evils does in a great Measure depend upon the Opinion we have of them Chap. 41. Not to Communicate a Man 's Honour Chap. 42. Of the Inequality amongst us Chap. 43. Of Sumptuary Laws Chap. 44. Of Sleep Chap. 45. Of the Battel of Dreux Chap. 46. Of Names Chap. 47. Of the Incertainty of our Judgment Chap. 48. Of Horses drest to the Menage call'd Destrials Chap. 49. Of Ancient Customs Chap. 50. Of Democritus and Heraclitus Chap. 51. Of the Vanity of Words Chap. 52. Of the Parcimony of the Ancients Chap. 53. Of a Saying of Caesar. Chap. 54. Of Vain Subtilties Chap. 55. Of Smells Chap. 56. Of Prayers Chap. 57. Of Age. ERRATA PAge 8. l. 15. read Saciety p. 18. l. 23. r. were to deprive p. 25. l. 13. r. solicitude ib. l. 28. r. solicitude p. 28. l. 11. r. solicitude p. 44. l. 21. r. of the two Counts p. 58. l. 4. r. come to the Court p. 65. l. 14. r. from dreams p. 70. l. 8. r. conlineet p. 72. l. 9. r. fortuiâ—ous id l. 16. r. fortunately p. 73. l. 13. r. flying way p. 77. l. 21. r. it is enough p. 85. l. 30. r. Periander p. 96. l. 13. r. Panick ib. l. 18. dicique p. 111. l. 26. r. imbellis p. 132. l· 14. r. 't was I. ib. l. 17. r. answer him and l. 26. r. lassitude p. 136. l. 8. r. his enflamed p. 153. l. 1. r. his sight p. 157. l. 21. r. chang'd p. 159. l. 20. r. Whirle-batts p. 170. l. 18. r. cense the men p. 188. l. 5. r. those p. 190. l. 7. r. of doing p. 200. l. 17. r. were to p. 229. l. 14. r. form of p. 232. l. 22. r. Grammar p. 233. l. 7. r. incite p. 238. l. 27. r. hope p. 239. l 2. r. with any one p. 240. l. 5. r. Cento's What other Errata's shall occur not here mention'd the Reader is desiâ—'d to amend at his discretion ESSAYS OF Michael Seigneur de Montaigne The First BOOK CHAP. I. That Men by various Ways arrive at the same end THE most likely and most usual way in Practice of appeasing the Indignation of such as we have any way offended when we see them in Possession of the Power of Revenge and find that we absolutely lye at their Mercy is by Submission than which nothing more flatters the Glory of an Adversary to move them to Commiseration and Pity and yet Bravery Constancy and Resolution however quite contrary means have sometimes served to produce the same effect Edward the Black Prince of Wales the same who so long govern'd our Province of Guienne a Person whose high Condition excellent Qualities and remarkable Fortune have in them a great deal of the most noble and most considerable Parts of Grandeur having through some Misdemeanours of theirs been highly incens'd by the Limosins and in the heat of that Resentment taking their City by Assault was not in the Riot commonly attending such Executions either by the Out-cries of the People or the Prayers and Tears of the Women and Children abandon'd to Slaughter and prostrate at his Feet for Mercy to be stayed from prosecuting his Revenge till penetrating further into the Body of the Town he at last took notice of three French Gentlemen who with incredible Bravery alone sustain'd the whole Power of his victorious Army and then it was that the Consideration of and the Respect unto so remarkable a Vertue first stopt the Torrent of his Fury and that his Clemency beginning in the Preservation of these three Cavaliers was afterwards extended to all the remaining Inhabitants of the City Scanderbeg Prince of Epirus in great Wrath pursuing one of his Souldiers with a resolute Purpose to kill him and the Souldier having in vain tryed by all the ways of Humility and Supplication to appease him seeing him notwithstanding obstinately bent to his Ruine resolv'd as his last Refuge to face about and expect him with his Sword in his Hand which Behaviour of his gave a sudden stop to his Captains Fury who for seeing him assume so notable a Resolution receiv'd him to Grace an Example however that might suffer another Interpretation with such as have not read of the prodigious Force and Valour of that invincible Prince The Emperour Conrade the 3 d. having besieg'd Guelpho Duke of Bavaria would not
maintain'd that a Souldier could not justly be put to Death for his want of Courage And in truth a Man should make a great Difference betwixt Faults that merely proceed from Infirmity and those that are visibly the Effects of Treachery and Malice for in the last they will fully act against the Rules of Reason that Nature has imprinted in us whereas in the former it seems as if we might produce the same Nature who left us in such a state of Imperfection and defect of Courage for our justification Insomuch that many have thought we are not justly questionable for any thing but what we commit against the Light of our own Conscience And it is partly upon this Rule that those ground their Opinion who disapprove of Capital and Sanguinary Punishments inflicted upon Hereticks and Miscreants and theirs also who hold that an Advocate or a Judge are not accountable for having ignorantly fail'd in their Administration But as to Cowardize it is most certain that the most usual way of chastising that is by Ignominy and Disgrace and it is suppos'd that this Practice was first brought into use by the Legislator Cherondas and that before his time the Laws of Greece punish'd those with Death who fled from a Battel whereas he ordain'd only that they should be three days expos'd in the publick Place dress'd in Womens Attire hoping yet for some Service from them having awak'd their Courage by this open Shame Suffundere malis hominis sanguinem quà m effundere choosing rather to bring the Blood into their Cheeks than to let it out of their Bodies It appears also that the Roman Laws did anciently punish those with Death who had run away for Ammianus Marcellinus says that the Emperour Julian commanded ten of his Souldiers who had turn'd their Backs in an Encounter against the Parthians to be first degraded and afterwards put to death according says he to the ancient Laws and yet else-where for the like Offence he only condemns others to remain amongst the Prisoners under the Baggage Ensign The punishment the People of Rome inflicted upon those who fled from the Battle of Cannae and those who run away with Cneius Fulvius at his Defeat did not extend to death And yet methinks Men should consider what they do in such Cases lest disgrace should make such Delinquents desperate and not only faint Friends but implacable and mortal Enemies Of late memory the Seigneur de Franget Lieutenant to the Mareschal de Chattilion's Company having by the Mareschal de Chabanes been put in Governour of Fontarabie in the Place of Monsieur de Lude and having surrender'd it to the Spaniard he was for that condemn'd to be degraded from all Nobility and both himself and his Posterity declar'd ignoble taxable and for ever incapable of bearing Arms which severe Sentence was afterwards accordingly executed at Lions and since that all the Gentlemen who were in Guise when Count Nassau enter'd into it underwent the same Punishment as several others have done since for the like Offence Notwithstanding in case of such a manifest Ignorance or Cowardize as exceeds all other ordinary Example 't is but reason to take it for a sufficient Proof of Treachery and Malice and for such it ought to be censur'd and punish'd CHAP. XVI A Proceeding of some Ambassadours I Observe in all my Travels this Custom ever to learn something from the Information of those with whom I confer which is the best School of all other and to put my Company upon those Subjects they are the best able to speak of Basti al nocchiero ragionar de venti Al bifolco de j Torj le sue Piaghe Contj'l guerrier conti'l Pastor glj armenti The Sea-men best can reason of the Winds Of Oxen none so well as lab'ring Hinds The huffing Souldier best of Wounds and Knocks And gentler Shepheards of their harmless Flocks For it often falls out that on the contrary every one will rather choose to be prating of another Man's Province than his own thinking it so much new Reputation acquir'd witness the Jeer Archidamus put upon Pariander That he had quitted the Glory of being an excellent Physician to gain the Repute of a very bad Poet. And do but observe how large and ample Caesar is to make us understand his Invention of building Bridges and contriving Engines of War and how succinct and reserv'd in Comparison where he speaks of the Offices of his Profession his own Valour and military Conduct His Exploits sufficiently prove him a great Captain and that he knew well enough but he would be thought a good Engineer to boot a quality something rare and not much to be expected in him The elder Dionysius was a very great Captain as it befitted his Fortune he should be but he took very great Pains to get a particular Reputation by Poetry and yet he was never cut out for a Poet. A Gentleman of the long Robe being not long since brought to see a Study furnish'd with all sorts of Books both of his own and all other Faculties took no occasion at all to entertain himself with any of them but fell very rudely and impertinently to descant upon a Barricado plac'd before the Study-door a thing that a hundred Captains and common Souldiers see every day without taking any notice or offence Optat ephippia bos piger optat arare caballus The lazy Oxe would Saddle have and Bit The Steed a Yoke neither for either fit By this course a Man shall never improve himself nor arrive at any Perfection in any thing He must therefore make it his Business always to put the Architect the Painter the Statuary as also every Mechanick Artizan upon discourse of their own Capacities And to this purpose in reading Histories which is every Body's Subject I use to consider what kind of Men are the Authors which if Persons that profess nothing but mere Learning I in and from them principally observe and learn the Stile and Language if Physicians I upon that account the rather incline to credit what they report of the Temperature of the Air of the Health and Complexions of Princes of Wounds and Diseases if Lawyers we are from them to take notice of the Controversies of Right and Title the Establishment of Laws and Civil Government and the like if Divines the Affairs of the Church Ecclesiastical Censures Marriages and Dispensations if Courtiers Manners and Ceremonies if Souldiers the things that properly belong to their Trade and principally the Accounts of such Actions and Enterprizes wherein they were personally engaged and if Ambassadours we are to observe their Negotiations Intelligences and Practices and the Manner how they are to be carried on And this is the reason why which perhaps I should have lightly pass'd over in another I dwelt upon and maturely consider'd one Passage in the History writ by Monsieur de Langey a Man of very great Judgment in things of that nature which was after having given a
envious of the Grandeurs here below Vsque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam Obterit pulcros Fasces saevasque secures Proculcare ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur By which it does appear a Power unseen Rome's awful Fasces and her Axes keen Spurns under foot and plainly does despise Of humane Power the vain Formalities And it should seem also that Fortune sometimes lies in wait to surprize the last Hour of our Lives to shew the Power she has in a Moment to overthrow what she was so many Years in building making us cry out with Laberius Nimirum hac die una plus vixi mihi quà m vivendum fuit I have liv'd longer by this one day than I ought to have done And in this Sense this good Advice of Solon may reasonably be taken but he being a Philosopher with which sort of Men the Favours and Disgraces of Fortune stand for nothing either to the making a Man happy or unhappy and with whom Grandeurs and Powers Accidents of Quality are upon the Matter indifferent I am apt to think that he had some further Aim and that his meaning was that the very Felicity of Life it self which depends upon the Tranquillity and Contentment of a well-descended Spirit and the Resolution and Assurance of a well-order'd Soul ought never to be attributed to any Man till he has first been seen to play the last and doubtless the hardest act of his Part because there may be Disguise and Dissimulation in all the rest where these fine Philosophical Discourses are only put on and where Accidents do not touch us to the Quick they give us leisure to maintain the same sober Gravity but in this last Scene of Death there is no more counterfeiting we must speak plain and must discover what there is of pure and clean in the bottom Nam verae voces tum demum pectore ab imo Ejiciuntur eripitur persona manet res Then then at last Truth issues from the Heart The Vizor's gone we act our own true part Wherefore at this last all the other Actions of our Life ought to be tryed and sifted 'T is the Master-day 't is the day that is judge of all the rest 'T is the Day says one of the Ancients that ought to be judge of all my foregoing Years To Death do I refer the Essay of the Fruit of all my Studies We shall then see whether my Discourses came only from my Mouth or from my Heart I have seen many by their Death give a good or an ill Repute to their whole Life Scipio the Father-in-law of Pompey the great in dying well wip'd away the ill Opinion that till then every one had conceiv'd of him Epaminondas being ask'd which of the three he had in greatest esteem Chabrias Iphicrates or himself You must first see us die said he before that Question can be resolv'd and in truth he would infinitely wrong that great Man who would weigh him without the Honour and Grandeur of his End God Almighty has order'd all things as it has best pleas'd him But I have in my time seen three of the most execrable Persons that ever I knew in all manner of abominable living and the most infamous to boot who all dyed a very regular Death and in all Circumstances compos'd even to Perfection There are brave and fortunate Deaths I have seen Death cut the Thread of the Progress of a prodigious Advancement and in the height and Flower of its encrease of a certain Person with so glorious an end that in my Opinion his Ambitious and generous Designs had nothing in them so high and great as their Interruption and he arriv'd without compleating his course at the Place to which his Ambition pretended with greater Glory than he could himself either hope or desire and anticipated by his Fall the Name and Power to which he aspir'd by perfecting his Career In the Judgment I make of another man's Life I always observe how he carried himself at his Death and the principal Concern I have for my own is that I may dye handsomly that is patiently and without noise CHAP. XIX That to study Philosophy is to learn to dye CIcero says That to study Philosophy is nothing but to prepare a Man's self to dye The reason of which is because Study and Contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us and deprive us of our Souls and employ it separately from the Body which is a kind of Learning to dye and a resemblance of Death or else because all the Wisdom and reasoning in the World does in the end conclude in this Point to teach us not to fear to dye And to say the Truth either our Reason does grosly abuse us or it ought to have no other Aim but our Contentment only nor to endeavour any thing but in Sum to make us live well and as the Holy Scripture says at our Ease All the Opinions of the World agree in this That Pleasure is our end though we make use of divers means to attain unto it they would otherwise be rejected at the first motion for who would give Ear to him that should propose Affliction and Misery for his end The Controversies and Disputes of the Philosophical Sects upon this Point are merely verbal Transcurramus solertissimas nugas Let us skip over those learned and subtle Fooleries and Trifles there is more in them of Opposition and Obstinacy than is consistent with so sacred a Profession but what kind of Person soever Man takes upon him to personate he over-mixes his own part with it and let the Philosophers all say what they will the main thing at which we all aim even in Virtue it self is Pleasure It pleases me to rattle in their Ears this Word which they so nauseate to hear and if it signifie some supream Pleasure and excessive Delight it is more due to the Assistance of Vertue than to any other Assistance whatever This Delight for being more gay more sinewy more robust and more manly is only to be more seriously voluptuous and we ought to give it the Name of Pleasure as that which is more benign gentle and natural and not that of Vigour from which we have deriv'd it the other more mean and sensual part of Pleasure if it could deserve this fair Name it ought to be upon the Account of Concurrence and not of Priviledge I find it less exempt from Traverses and Inconveniences than Vertue it self and besides that the Enjoyment is more momentary fluid and frail it has its Watchings Fasts and Labours even to Sweat and Blood and moreover has particular to it self so many several sorts of sharp and wounding Passions and so stupid a Saciety attending it as are equal to the severest Penance And we mistake to think that Difficulties should serve it for a Spur and a seasoning to its Sweetness as in Nature one Contrary is quickned by another and to say when we
their Tables Dishes Cups and all And as the Egyptians after their Feasts were wont to present the Company with a great Image of Death by one that cry'd out to them Drink and be merry for such shalt thou be when thou art dead so it is my Custom to have Death not only in my Imagination but continually in my Mouth neither is there any thing of which I am so inquisitive and delight to inform my self as the manner of mens Deaths their Words Looks and Gestures nor any places in History I am so intent upon and it is manifest enough by my crowding in Examples of this kind that I have a particular fancy for that Subject If I were a Writer of Books I would compile a Register with a Comment of the various Deaths of men and it could not but be useful for who should teach men to dye would at the same time teach them to live Dicearchus made one to which he gave that Title but it was design'd for another and less profitable end Peradventure some one may object and say that the pain and terror of dying indeed does so infinitely exceed all manner of imagination that the best Fencer will be quite out of his Play when it comes to the Push but let them say what they will to premeditate is doubtless a very great Advantage and besides is it nothing to come so far at least without any visible Disturbance or Alteration But moreover Nature her self does assist and encourage us If the Death be sudden and violent we have not leisure to fear if otherwise I find that as I engage further in my Disease I naturally enter into a certain loathing and disdain of Life I find I have much more ado to digest this Resolution of dying when I am well in Health than when sick languishing of a Fever and by how much I have less to do with the Commodities of Life by reason I even begin to lose the use and Pleasure of them by so much I look upon Death with less Terror and Amazement which makes me hope that the further I remove from the first and the nearer I approach to the latter I shall sooner strike a Bargain and with less Unwillingness exchange the one for the other And as I have experimented in other Occurrences that as Caesar says things often appear greater to us at distance than near at hand I have found that being well I have had Diseases in much greater Horror than when really afflicted with them The Vigour wherein I now am and the Jollity and Delight wherein I now live make the contrary Estate appear in so great a disproportion to my present condition that by imagination I magnifie and make those inconveniences twice greater than they are and apprehend them to be much more troublesome than I find them really to be when they lie the most heavy upon me and I hope to find Death the same Let us but observe in the ordinary changes and Declinations our Constitutions daily suffer how Nature deprives us of all sight and sense of our bodily decay What remains to an old man of the vigour of his Youth and better days Heu senibus vitae portio quanta manet Alas to men of youthful Heat bereft How small a Portion of Life is left Caesar to an old weather-beaten Souldier of his Guards who came to ask him leave that he might kill himself taking notice of his wither'd Body and decrepid motion pleasantly answer'd Thou fanciest then that thou art yet alive Should a man fall into the Aches and impotencies of Age from a spritely and vigorous Youth on the sudden I do not think Humanity capable of enduring such a change but Nature leading us by the hand an easie and as it were an insensible pace step by step conducts us to that miserable condition and by that means makes it familiar to us so that we perceive not nor are sensible of the stroak then when our Youth dies in us though it be really a harder Death than the final Dissolution of a languishing Body which is only the Death of old Age forasmuch as the Fall is not so great from an uneasie Being to none at all as it is from a spritely and florid Being to one that is unweildy and painful The Body when bow'd beyond its natural spring of Strength has less Force either to rise with or support a Burthen and it is with the Soul the same and therefore it is that we are to raise her up firm and erect against the Power of this Adversary for as it is impossible she should ever be at rest or at Peace within her self whilst she stands in fear of it so if she once can assure her self she may boast which is a thing as it were above Humane Condition that it is impossible that Disquiet Anxiety or Fear or any other Disturbance should inhabit or have any Place in her Non vultus instantis tyranni Mente quatit solida neque Auster Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae Nec fulminantis magna Jovis manus A Soul well settled is not to be shook With an incensed Tyrant's threatning Look Nor can loud Auster once that Heart dismay The ruffling Prince of stormy Adria Nor yet th' advanced hand of mighty Jove Though charg'd with Thunder such a Temper move She is then become Sovereign of all her Lusts and Passions Mistress of Necessity Shame Poverty and all the other Injuries of Fortune Let us therefore as many of us as can get this Advantage which is the true and sovereign Liberty here on Earth and that fortifies us wherewithall to defie Violence and Injustice and to contemn Prisons and Chains in Manicis Compedibus saevo te sub custode tenebo Ipse Deus simul atque volam me solvet opinor Hoc sentit moriar mors ultima linea verum est With rugged Chains I 'll load thy Hands and Feet And to a surly Keeper thee commit Why let him shew his worst of Cruelty God will I think for asking set me free Ay but he thinks I 'll dye that Comfort brings For Death 's the utmost Line of Humane things Our very Religion it self has no surer humane Foundation than the Contempt of Death Not only the Argument of Reason invites us to it for why should we fear to lose a thing which being lost can never be miss'd or lamented But also seeing we are threatned by so many sorts of Death is it not infinitely worse eternally to fear them all than once to undergo one of them And what matter is it when it shall happen since it is once inevitable To him that told Socrates the thirty Tyrants have sentenc'd thee to Death and Nature them said he What a ridiculous thing it is to trouble and afflict our selves about taking the only Step that is to deliver us from all Misery and Trouble As our Birth brought us the Birth of all things so in our Death is the Death of
does not follow it and sees Knowledge but makes no use of it Plato's principal Institution in his Republick is to fit his Citizens with Employments suitable to their Nature Nature can do all and does all Cripples are very unfit for Exercises of the Body and lame Souls for Exercises of the Mind Degenerate and vulgar Souls are unworthy of Philosophy If we see a Shooe-maker with his Shooes out at the Toes we say 't is no wonder for commonly none go worse shod than their Wives and they In like manner Experience does often present us a Physician worse physick'd a Divine worse reform'd and frequently a Scholar of less Sufficiency than another Aristo of Chios had anciently Reason to say That Philosophers did their Auditories harm forasmuch as most of the Souls of those that heard them were not capable of making benefit of their Instructions and if they did not apply them to good would certainly apply them to ill 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ex Aristippi acerbos ex Zenonis Schola exire They proceeded effeminate Prodigals from the School of Aristippus and Churles and Cynicks from that of Zeno. In that excellent Institution that Xenophon attributes to the Persians we find that they taught their Children Vertue as other Nations do Letters Plato tells us that the eldest Son in their Royal Succession was thus brought up So soon as he was born he was deliver'd not to Women but to Eunuchs of the greatest Authority about their Kings for their Vertue whose Charge it was to keep his Body healthful and in good plight and after he came to seven Years of Age to teach him to ride and to go a Hunting when he arriv'd at fourteen he was transferr'd into the hands of four the wisest the most just the most temperate and most valiant of the Nation of which the first was to instruct him in Religion the second to be always upright and sincere the third to conquer his Appetites and Desires and the fourth to despise all Danger 'T is a thing worthy of very great Consideration that in that excellent and in truth for its Perfection prodigious form and civil Regiment set down by Lycurgus though so sollicitous of the Education of Children as a thing of the greatest Concern and even in the very Seat of the Muses he should make so little mention of Learning as if their generous Youth disdaining all other Subjection but that of Vertue only ought to be supply'd instead of Tutors to read to them Arts and Sciences with such Masters as should only instruct them in Valour Prudence and Justice An Example that Plato has followed in his Laws the manner of whose Discipline was to propound to them Questions upon the Judgments of Men and of their Actions and if they commended or condemned this or that Person or Fact they were to give a Reason for so doing by which means they at once sharp'ned their Understanding and became skillful in the Laws Mandane in Xenophon asking her Son Cyrus how he would do to learn Justice and the other Vertues amongst the Medes having left all his Masters behind him in Persia He made Answer That he had learn'd those things long since that his Master had often made him a Judge of the Differences amongst his School-Fellows and had one day whip'd him for giving a wrong Sentence and thus it was A great Boy in the School having a little short Cassock by force took a longer from another that was not so tall as he and gave him his own in exchange whereupon I being appointed Judge of the Controversie gave Judgment That I thought it best either of them should keep the Coat he had for that they both of them were better fitted with that of one another than with their own upon which my Master told me I had done ill in that I had only consider'd the Fitness and Decency of the Garments whereas I ought to have consider'd the Justice of the thing which requires that no one should have any thing forcibly taken from him that is his own But it seems poor Cyrus was whip'd for his Pains as we are in our Villages for forgetting the first Aoriste of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my Pedant must make me a very learned Oration in genere demonstrativo before he can perswade me that his School is like unto that They knew how to go the readiest way to work and seeing that Science when most rightly apply'd and best understood can do no more but teach us Prudence moral Honesty and Resolution they thought fit to initiate their Children with the knowledge of Effects and to instruct them not by Hear-say and by Rote but by the Experiment of Action in lively forming and moulding them not only by Words and Precepts but chiefly Works and Examples to the end it might not be a Knowledge of the Mind only but a Complexion and a Habit and not an Acquisition but a natural Possession One asking to this Purpose Agesilaus what he thought most proper for Boys to learn What they ought to do when they come to be Men said he It is therefore no wonder if such an Institution have produc'd so admirable Effects They us'd to go 't is said in the other Cities of Greece to enquire out Rhetoricians Painters and Musick-Masters but in Lacedaemon Legislators Magistrates and Generals of Armies at Athens they learnt to speak well and here to do well there to disengage themselves from a Sophistical Argument and to unravel Syllogisms here to evade the Baits and Allurements of Pleasure and with a noble Courage and Resolution to confute and conquer the menaces of Fortune and Death those cudgell'd their Brains about Words these made it their Business to enquire into things there was an eternal Babble of the Tongue here a continual Exercise of the Soul And therefore it is nothing strange if when Antipater demanded of them fifty Children for Hostages they made Answer quite contrary to what we should do That they would rather give him twice as many full grown Men so much did they value the loss of their Country's Education When Agesilaus courted Xenophon to send his Children to Sparta to be bred it is not said he there to learn Logick or Rhetorick but to be instructed in the noblest of all Sciences namely the Science to Obey and to Command It is very pleasant to see Socrates after his manner rallying Hippias who recounts to him what a World of Money he has got especially in certain little Villages of Sicily by teaching School and that he got never a Penny at Sparta What a sottish and stupid People says Socrates are they without Sense or Understanding that make no Account either of Grammars or Poetry and only busie themselves in studying the Genealogies and Successions of their Kings the Foundations Rises and Declensions of States and such Tales of a Tub After which having made Hippias particularly to acknowledge the Excellency of their Form of Publick Administration and the
do not so Maliciously play the Censurers as they do it Ignorantly and Rudely in all their Detractions The same pains and licence that others take to Blemish and Bespatter these illustrious Names I would willingly undergo to lend them a shoulder to raise them higher These rare Images and that are cull'd out by the consent of the wisest Men of all Ages for the Worlds Example I should endeavour to Honour anew as far as my Invention would permit in all the Circumstances of favourable Interpretation And we are to believe that the force of our Invention is infinitely short of their Merit 'T is the Duty of good Men to Pourtray Vertues as Beautiful as they can and there would be no Indecency in the Case should our Passion a little Transport us in favour of so Sacred a Form What these People do to the contrary they either do out of Malice or by the Vice of confining their Belief to their own Capacity or which I am more inclin'd to think for not having their sight strong clear and elevated enough to conceive the splendour of Vertue in her Native Purity As Plutarch complains that in his time some Attributed the cause of the Younger Cato's Death to his Fear of Caesar at which he seems very Angry and with good reason and by that a Man may guess how much more he would have been offended with those who have Attributed it to Ambitious Senceless People He would rather have perform'd a handsome just and generous Action and to have had Ignominy for his Reward than for Glory That Man was in truth a Pattern that Nature chose out to shew to what height Humane Vertue and Constancy could arrive but I am not capable of handling so Noble an Argument and shall therefore only set Five Latine Poets together by the Ears who has done best in the praise of Cato and inclusively for their own too Now a Man well Read in Poetry will think the two first in comparison of the others a little Flat and Languishing the Third more Vigorous but overthrown by the Extravagancy of his own force He will then think that there will be yet room for one or two Gradations of Invention to come to the Fourth but coming to mount the pitch of that he will lift up his Hands for admiration the last the first by some space but a space that he will swear is not to be fill'd up by any Humane Wit he will be astonish'd he will not know where he is These are Wonders We have more Poets than Judges and Interpreters of Poetry It is easier to Write an indifferent Poem than to Understand a good one There is indeed a certain low and moderate sort of Poetry that a Man may well enough judg by certain Rules of Art but the true supream and divine Poesie is equally above all Rules and Reason And whoever discerns the Beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a Flash of Lightning This is a sort of Poesie that does not exercise but ravishes and overwhelms our Judgment The Fury that possesses him who is able to penetrate into it wounds yet a Third Man by hearing him repeat it Like a Loadstone that not only attracts the Needle but also infuses into it the Vertue to attract others And it is more evidently Eminent upon our Theatres that the Sacred Inspiration of the Muses having first stirr'd up the Poet to Anger Sorrow Hatred and out of himself to whatever they will does moreover by the Poet possess the Actor and by the Actor consecutively all the Spectators So much do our Passions hang and depend upon one another Poetry has ever had that power over me from a Child to Transpierce and Transport me But this quick resentment that is Natural to me has been variously handled by variety of Forms not so much higher and lower for they were ever the highest of every kind as differing in Colour First a Gay and Spritely Fluency afterwards a Lofty and Penetrating Subtilty and lastly a Mature and Constant Force Their Names will better express them Ovid Lucan Virgil. But our Poets are beginning their Career Sit Cato dum vivit sane vel Caesare Major Let Cato's Fame Whilst he shall Live Eclipse great Caesar's Name Says one Et invictum devicta Morte Catonem And Cato fell Death being overcome invincible Says the Second And the Third speaking of the Civil Wars betwixt Caesar and Pompey Victrix causa Diis placuit sed Victa Catoni Heaven approves The Conquering Cause the Conquer'd Cato loves And the Fourth upon the Praises of Caesar Et Cuncta terrarum subjacta Praetor atrocem animum Catonis And Conquer'd all where e're his Eagle flew But Cato's Mind that nothing could subdue And the Master of the Quire after having set forth all the great Names of the greatest Romans ends thus His dantem jura Catonem Great Cato giving Laws to all the rest CHAP. XXXVII That we Laugh and Cry for the same thing WHen we Read in History that Antigonus was very much displeas'd with his Son for presenting him the Head of King Pyrrhus his Enemy but newly Slain Fighting against him and that seeing it he wept That Rene Duke of Lorraine also Lamented the Death of Charles Duke of Burgundy whom he had himself Defeated and appear'd in Mourning at his Funeral And that in the Battel of Auroy which Count Montfort obtain'd over Charles de Blois his Concurrent for the Dutchy of Brittany the Conquerour meeting the Dead Body of his Enemy was very much Afflicted at his Death we must not presently Cry out Et cosi auen che l' animo ciascuna Sua Passion sotto el contrario manto Ricopre con la vista hor'chiara hor bruna That every one whether of Joy or Woe The Passion of their Mind can palliate so As when most Griev'd to shew a Count'nance clear And Melancholick when best pleas'd t' appear When Pompey's Head was presented to Caesar the Histories tell us that he turn'd away his Face as from a sad and unpleasing Object There had been so long an Intelligence and Society betwixt them in the management of the Publick Affairs so great a Community of Fortunes so many mutual Offices and so near an Alliance that this Countenance of his ought not to suffer under any Misinterpretation or to be suspected for either False or Counterfeit as this other seems to believe Tutumque putavit Jam bonus esse socer lacrymas non sonte cadentes Effudit gemitusque expressit pectore laeto Non aliter manifesta putans abscondere mentis Gaudia quam Lacrymes And now he saw 'T was safe to be a Pious Father in Law He shed forc'd Tears and from a Joyful Breast Fetch'd Sighs and Groans conceiving Tears would best Conceal his Inward Joy For though it be true that the greatest part of our Actions are no other than Vizor and Disguise
Letters will render their names as known and famous as their own publick actions themselves could do And besides this difference these are not Idle and empty Letters that contain nothing but a fine Gingle of well chosen Words and fine Coucht phrases but rather repleat and abounding with Grave and Learn'd Discourses by which a Man may render himself not more Eloquent but more Wise and that instruct us not to speak but to do well A way with that Eloquence that so enchants us with its Harmony that we should more Study it than things Unless you will allow that of Cicero to be of so Supream a perfection as to form a compleat Body of it self And of him I shall further add one Story we read of him to this purpose wherein his nature will much more manifestly be laid open to us He was to make an Oration in publick and found himself a little straightned in time to fit his Words to his Mouth as he had a mind to do when Eros one of his Slaves brought him word that the audience was deferr'd till the next Day at which he was so ravisht with Joy that he enfranchis'd him for the good news Upon this subject of Letters I will add this more to what has been already said that it is a kind of Writing wherein my Friends think I can do something and I am willing to confess I should rather have chose to publish my Whimsies that way than any other had I had to whom to Write but I wanted such a settled Correspondency as I once had to attract me to it to raise my Fancy and to maintain the rest against me For to Traffick with the Wind as some others have done and to Forge vain Names to direct my Letters to in a serious subject I could never do it but in a Dream being a sworn Enemy to all manner of falsification I should have been more diligent and more confidently secure had I had a Judicious and Indulgent Friend to whom to address than thus to expose my self to various judgements of a whole People and I am deceiv'd if I had not succeeded better I have naturally a Comick and familiar Stile but it is a peculiar one and not proper for Publick business but like the Language I speak too Compact Irregular Abrubt and Singular and as to Letters of Ceremony that have no other substance than a fine contexture of courteous and obliging Words I am wholly to seek I have neither faculty nor relish for those tedious offers of Service and Affection I am not good natur'd to that degree and should not forgive my self should I offer more than I intend which is very remote from the present practice for there never was so abject and servile prostitution of tenders of Life Soul Devotion Adoration Vassal Slave and I cannot tell what as now all which expressions are so commonly and so indifferently Posted to and fro by every one and to every one that when they would profess a greater and more respective inclination upon more just occasions they have not wherewithal to express it I hate all air of Flattery to Death which is the cause that I naturally fall into a Shy Rough and crude way of speaking that to such as do not know me may seem a little to relish of disdain I Honour those most to whom I shew the least Honour and Respect and where my Soul moves with the greatest Cheerfulness I easily forget the Ceremonies of Look and Gesture I offer my self Faintly and Bluntly to them whose I effectually am and tender my self the least to him to whom I am the most devoted Methinks they should read it in my Heart and that my expression would but injure the Love I have conceived within To Welcome take Leave give Thanks Accost offer my Service and such verbal Formalities as the Laws of our modern civility enjoyn I know no Man so stupidly unprovided of Language as my self And have never been employ'd in Writing Letters of Favour and Recommendation that he in whose behalf it was did not think my mediation Cold and Imperfect The Italians are great Printers of Letters I do believe I have at least an hundred several Volumes of them of all which those of Hannibal Caro seem to me to be the best If all the Paper I have Scribled to the Ladies all the time when my Hand was really prompted by my Passion were now in being there might Peradventure be found a Page worthy to be communicated to our young enamorato's that are Besotted with that Fury I always Write my Letters Post and so precipitously that though I Write an intollerable ill Hand I rather choose to do it my self than to imploy another for I can find none able to follow me and never transcribe any but have accustomed the great ones that know me to endure my Blots and Dashes and upon Paper without Fold or Margent Those that cost me the most Pains are the worst of mine when I once begin to draw it in by Head and Shoulders 't is a sign that I am not there I fall too without premeditation or design the first word begets the second and so to the end of the Chapter The Letters of this Age consist more in fine Foldings and Prefaces than matter whereas I had rather Write two Letters than Close and Fold up one and always assign that employment to some other as also when the business of my Letter is dispatcht I would with all my heart transferr it to another Hand to add those long Harangues Offers and Prayers that we place at the Bottom and should be glad that some new custom would discharge us of that unnecessary trouble as also of superscribing them with a long Ribble-row of Qualities and Titles which for fear of mistakes I have several times given over Writing and especially to Men of the long Robe There are so many innovations of Offices that 't is hard to place so many Titles of Honour in their proper and due order which also being so dearly bought they are neither to be mistaken nor omitted without offence I find the same fault likewise with charging the fronts and Title Pages of the Books we commit to the Press with such a clutter of Titles CHAP. XL. That the Relish of Goods and Evils does in a great measure depend upon the opinion we have of them MEn says an ancient Greek Sentence are tormented with the Opinions they have of things and not by the things themselves It were a great Victory obtain'd for the relief of our miserable Humane Condition could this proposition be establish'd for certain and true throughout For if evils have no admission into us but by the judgement we our selves make of them it should seem that it is then in our own power to despise them or to turn them to good If things surrender themselves to our mercy why do we not convert and accommodate them to our advantage If what we call Evil and Torment
is neither Evil nor Torment of it self but only that our Fancy gives it that Quality and makes it so it is in us to change and alter it and it being in our own choice if there be no constraint upon us we must certainly be very strange Fools to take Arms for that side which is most offensive to us and to give Sickness Want and contempt a nauseous tast if it be in our power to give them a more graceful Relish and if Fortune simply providing the matter 't is for us to give it the form Now that which we call Evil is not so of it self or at least to that degree that we make it and that it depends upon us to give it another tast or complexion for all comes to one let us examine how that can be maintain'd If the original being of those things we fear had power to lodge themselves in us by their own authority it would then lodge it self alike and in like manner in all for Men are all of the same kind and saving in greater and less proportions are all provided with the same utensils and instruments to conceive and to judge but the diversity of opinions we have of those things does clearly evidence that they only enter us by composition One particular Person peradventure admits them in their true being but a thousand others give them a new and contrary being in them We hold Death Poverty and Grief for our principal Enemies but this Death which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things who does not know that others call it the only secure Harbour from the Storms and Tempests of Life The Soveraign good of Nature the sole Support of Liberty and the Common and sudden Remedy of all Evils And as the one expect it with Fear and Trembling the other support it with greater Ease than Life That Blade complains of its facility Mors utinam pavidos vitae subducere nolles Sed virtus te sola daret O Death I would thou wouldst the Coward spare That but the daring none might the conferr But let us leave these Glorious Courages Theodorus answer'd Lysimachus who threatned to Kill him thou wilt do a brave thing said he to arrive at the force of a Cantharides The greatest part of Philosophers are observ'd to have either purposely prevented or hastned and assisted their own Death How many ordinary people do we see led to Execution and that not to a simple Death but mixt with Shame and sometimes with grievous Torments appear with such assurance what through obstinacy or natural simplicity that a Man can discover no change from their ordinary condition Setling their Domestick affairs recommending them to their Friends Singing Preaching and Diverting the People so much as sometimes to Sally into Jests and to Drink to their Companions as well as Socrates One that they were leading to the Gallows told them they must not carry him through such a Street lest a Merchant that lived there should Arrest him by the way for an old Debt Another told the Hangman he must not touch his Neck for fear of making him Laugh he was so Ticklish Another answer'd his Confessor who promised him he should that day Sup with our Lord. Do you go then said he in my Room for I for my part keep fast to day Another having call'd for Drink and the Hangman having Drank first said he would not Drink after him for fear of catching the Pox. Every body has heard the Tale of the Picard to whom being upon the Ladder they presented a Whore telling him as our Law does sometimes permit that if he would Marry her they would save his Life he having a while considered her and perceiving that she Halted Come tye up tye up said he she limps And they tell another Story of the same kind of a fellow in Denmark who being condemn'd to lose his Head and the like condition being propos'd to him upon the Scaffold refus'd it by reason the Maid they offer'd him had hollow Cheeks and too sharp a Nose A Servant at Tholouse being accus'd of Heresie for the summ of his Belief referr'd himself to that of his Master a young Student Prisoner with him choosing rather to dye than suffer himself to be perswaded that his Master could err We read that of the inhabitants of Arras when Lewis the eleventh took that City a great many let themselves be Hang'd rather than they would say God Save the King And amongst that mean-soul'd race of Men the Buffoons there having been some who would not leave their Fooling at the very moment of Death He that the Hangman turn'd off the Ladder cry'd Launch the Galley an ordinary foolish saying of his and the other whom at the point of Death his Friends having laid upon a Pallet before the Fire the Physician asking him where his Pain lay betwixt the Bench and the Fire said he and the Priest to give him the extream Unction Groping for his Feet which his Pain had made him pull up to him you will find them said he at the end of my Legs To one that being present exhorted him to recommend himself to God why who goes thither said he and the other replying it will presently be your self if it be his good pleasure would I were sure to be there by to morrow Night said he do but recommend your self to him said the other and you will soon be there I were best then said he to carry my recommendations my self In the Kingdom of Narsingua to this day the Wives of their Priests are buried alive with the Bodies of their Husbands all other Wives are burnt at their Husbands Funerals which also they do not only constantly but chearfully undergo At the death of their King his Wives and Concubines his Favourites all his Officers and Domestick servants which make up a great number of people present themselves so chearfully to the Fire where his Body is burnt that they seem to take it for a singular honour to accompany their Master in death During our late War of Milan where there hapned so many takings and re-takings of Towns the people impatient of so many various changes of Fortune took such a resolution to dye that I have heard my Father say he there saw a List taken of five and twenty Masters of Families that made themselves away in one weeks time An accident somewhat resembling that of the Zanthians who being besieg'd by Brutus precipitated themselves Men Women and Children into such a furious appetite of dying that nothing can be done to evade death they did not put in practice to avoid life insomuch that Brutus had much ado to save but a very small number Every opinion is of force enough to make it self to be espoused at the expence of life The first Article of that valiant Oath that Greece took and observ'd in the Median War was that every one should sooner exchange life for death than their own Laws for
and Offences She makes her profit indifferently of all things Errour and Dreams serve her to good use as a Loyal matter to Lodg us in Safety and Contentment 'T is plain enough to be seen that 't is the sharpness of our Conceit that gives the Edg to our Pains and Pleasures Beasts that have no such thing leave to their Bodies their own free and natural Sentiments and consequently in every kind very near the same as appears by the resembling Application of their Motions If we would not disturb in our Members the Jurisdiction that appertains to them in this 't is to be believed it would be the better for us and that Nature has given them a just and moderate Temper both to Pleasure and Pain neither can it fail of being Just being Equal and Common But seeing we have Enfranchis'd our selves from these Rules to give our selves up to the rambling Liberty of our own Fancies let us at least help to encline them to the most agreeable side Plato fears our too vehemently engaging our selves with Grief and Pleasure forasmuch as these too much Knit and Ally the Soul to the Body whereas I rather quite contrary by reason it too much separates and disunites them As an Enemy is made more Feirce by our Flight so Pain grows Proud to see us Truckle under it She will surrender upon much better Terms to them who make Head against her A Man must oppose and stoutly set himself against it In retiring and giving ground we invite and pull upon our selves the Ruine that Threatens us As the Body is more firm in an Encounter the more stifly and obstinately it applys it self to it so is it with the Soul But let us come to Examples which are the proper Commodity for Fellows of such feeble Reins as my self where we shall find that it is with Pain as with Stones that receive a more spritely or a more languishing Lustre according to the Foil they are set upon and that it has no more room in us than we are pleas'd to allow it Tantum doluerunt quantum doloribus se inserverunt They Griev'd so much the more by how much they set themselves to Grieve We are more sensible of one little touch of a Chyrurgeons Lancet than of Twenty Wounds with a Sword in the heat of Fight The Pains of Child-bearing said by the Physician and by God himself to be very great and which our Women keep so great a Clutter about there are whole Nations that make nothing of it To say nothing of the Lacedemonian Women what alteration can you see in our Switzers Wives of the Guard saving as they trot after their Husbands you see them to Day with the Child hanging at their Backs that they carried yesterday in their Bellies And the counterfeit Gipsies we have amongst us go themselves to Wash their's so soon as they come into the World in the first River they meet Besides so many Whores as Daily steal their Children out of their Womb as before they stole them in that fair and noble Wife of Sabinus a Patrician of Rome for anothers interest alone without help without crying out or so much as a Groan endur'd the Bearing of Two Twins A poor simple Boy of Lacedemon having stole a Fox for they more fear the Shame of their Knavery in stealing than we do the Punishment of our Knavery and having got him under his Coat did rather endure the tearing out of his Bowels than he would discover his Theft And another Cursing at a Sacrifice suffer'd himself to be Burnt to the Bone by a Coal that fell into his Sleive rather than disturb the Ceremony And there have been a great Number for a sole Trial of Vertue following their instructions who have at Seven Years old endur'd to be Whipt to Death without changing their Countenance And Cicero has seen them Fight in Parties with Fists Feet and Teeth till they have fainted and sunk down rather than confess themselves overcome Custom would never Conquer Nature for she is ever Invincible but we have infected the Mind with Shadows Delights Wantonness Negligence and Sloath and with vain Opinions and corrupt Manners render'd it Effeminate and Mean Every one knows the Story of Scevola that being slipt into the Enemies Camp to Kill their General and having miss'd his Blow to repair his fault by a more strange Invention and to deliver his Country he boldly confess'd to Porsenna who was the King he had a purpose to Kill not only his design but moreover added that there were then in his Camp a great Number of Romans his Complices in the Enterprize as good Men as he and to shew what a one he himself was having caus'd a Pan of Burning Coals to be brought he saw and endur'd his Arm to Broil and Roast till the King himself conceiving Horrour at the sight commanded the Pan to be taken away What would you say of him that would not vouchsafe to respite his Reading in a Book whilst he was under Incision And of the other that persisted to Mock and Laugh in Contempt of the Pains Inflicted upon him so that the provok'd Cruelty of the Executioners that had him in handling and all the Inventions of Tortures redoubled upon him one after another spent in vain gave him the Bucklers But he was a Philosopher What! a Fencer of Caesar's Endur'd and Laughing all the while his Wounds to be search'd Launc'd and laid open Quis mediocris gladiator ingenuit Quis vultum mutavit unquam Quis non modo stet it verum etiam decubuit turbiter Quis cum decubuisset ferrum recipere jussus collum contraxit What mean Fencer ever so much as gave a Groan Which of them ever so much as chang'd his Countenance Which of them standing or falling did either with Shame Which of them when he was down and commanded to receive the Blow of the Sword ever shrunk in his Neck Let us bring in the Women too Who has not heard at Paris of her that caus'd her Face to be fley'd only for the fresher Complexion of a new Skin There are who have drawn good and sound Teeth to make their Voices more soft and sweet or to place them in better Order How many Examples of the Contempt of Pain have we in that Sex What can they not do What do they fear to do for never so little hopes of an Addition to their Beauty Vellere queis cura est albos a stirpe capillos Et faciem dempta pelle referre novam Who pluck their Gray Hairs by the Roots and try An old Head Face with young Skin to supply I have seen some of them swallow Sand Ashes and do their utmost to destroy their Stomachs to get Pale Complexions To make a fine Spanish Body what Wracks will they not endure of Tweaking and Bracing till they have Notches in their Sides cut into the very quick Flesh and sometimes to Death It is an ordinary thing with several
beleaguered places The shaft whereof being roul'd round with Flax Wax Rozin Oyl and other combustible matter took Fire in its flight and lighting upon the Body of a Man or his Targuet took away all the use of Arms and Limbs And yet coming to close fight I should think they should also endammage the Assailant and that the Camp being as it were planted with these Flaming Truncheons should produce a common innonvenience to the whole crowd Magnum stridens contorta Phalarica venit Fulminis acta modo The Comet like Phalarica does fly With a huge noise like lightning through the Sky They had moreover other devices which custom made them perfect in which will seem incredible to us who have not seen them by which they supply'd the effects of our powder and shot They darted their Piles with so great violence as oft-times transfixt two Targuets and two Armed Men at once and pinn'd them together Neither was the effect of their slings less certain of execution or of shorter carriage Saxis globosis funda mare apertum incessantes coronas modici circuli magno ex intervallo loci assueti trajicere non capita modo hostium vulnerabant sed quem locum destinassent Calling round stones from the shoar for their slings and with them practising at a great distance to throw through a Circle of very small circumference they would not only wound an Enemy in the head but hit any other part at pleasure Their pieces of Battery had not only the execution but the thunder of our Canon also ad ictus menium cum terribili sonitu editos pavor trepidatio caepit At the Battery of the Walls which is performed with a dreadful noise the defendants began to fear and tremble within The Gaules our Kinsmen in Asia abominated these treacherous missite Arms it being their use to fight with greater Bravery Hand to Hand Non tam patentibus plagis moventur ubi latior quam altior plaga est etiam gloriosius se pugnare putant iidem quum aculeus sagitte aut glandis abditae introrsus tenui vulnere in speciem urit tum in rabium et pudorem tam parvae perimentis pestis versi prosternunt corpora humi They are not so much concern'd at large wounds when a wound is wider than deep they think they have fought with greater glory But when they find themselves tormented within under the aspect of a slight wound with the point of a Dart or some concealed glandulous Body then transported with fury and shame to perish by so small and contemptible an Officer of death they fall to ground an expression of something very like a harquebuse shot The ten thousand Greeks in their long and famous retreat met with a Nation who very much gall'd them with great and strong Bows carrying Arrows so long that taking them up one might return them back like a Dart and with them pierce a Buckler and an Armed Man through and through The Engines of Dionysius his invention at Syracusa to shoot vast massy Darts and Stones of a prodigious greatness with so great impetuosity and at so great a distance came very near to our modern inventions But in this discourse of Horses and Horsemanship we are not to forget the pleasant posture of one Maistre Pierre Pol a Doctor of Divinity upon his Mule whom Menstrelet reports always to have rid aside through the streets of Paris like a Woman He says also elsewhere that the Gascons had terrible Horses that would wheel and make the Pirouette in their full speed which the French Picards Dutch and Brabanters lookt upon as a Miracle having never seen the like before which are his very words Caesar speaking of the Swedes in the charges they make on Horseback says he they often throw themselves off to fight on foot having taught their Horses not to stir in the mean time from the place to which they presently run again upon occasion and according to their custome nothing is so unmanly and so base as to use Saddles or Pads and they dispise such as make use of those conveniences insomuch that being but a very few in number they fear not to attack a great many That which I have formerly wondred at to see a Horse made to perform all his Airs with a Switch only and the Reins upon his Neck was common with the Massilians who rid their Horses without Saddle or Bridle Et gens quae nudo residens Massilia dorso Ora levi flectit fraenorum nescia virga Et numidae infraeni cingunt Massilians who on the bare Backs do ride And with a Switch not knowing Bridles guide The menag'd Steed and fierce Numidians too That use no Rein begirt us round Equi sine fraenis deformis ipse 〈◊〉 rigida cervice extento capite currentium The Career of a Horse without a Bridle must needs be ungrateful his Neck being extended stiff and his Nose thrust out King Alphonso he who first instituted the Order des Chevaliers de la Bande or de l' Escharpe in Spain amongst other rules of the Order gave them this that they should never ride Mule or Mulet upon penalty of a Mark of Silver which I had lately out of Guevara's Letters which whoever gave them the title of Golden Epistles had another kind of opinion of them than I have and perhaps saw more in them than I do The Courtier says that till his time it was a disgrace to a Gentleman to ride one of these Creatures But the Abyssins on the contrary as they are nearer advanc'd to the person of Prester John do affect to be mounted upon large Mules for the greatest dignity and grandeur Xenophon tells us that the Assyrians were fain to keep their Horses fetter'd in the Stable they were so fierce and vicious and that it requir'd so much time to loose and harness them that to avoid any disorder this tedious preparation might bring upon them in case of surprize they never sate down in their Camp till it was first well fortified with Ditches and Rampires His Cyrus who was so great a Master in alâ—â—â—â—ner of Horse Service kept his Horses to their ordinary and never suffer'd them to have any thing to eat till first they had earn'd it by the sweat of some kind of exercise The Scythians when in the Field and in scarcity of provisions us'd to let their Horses blood which they drank and sustain'd themselves by that diet Venit epoto Sarmata pastus equo The Scythian also comes without remorse Having before quafft up his bleeding Horse Those of Crotta being besieg'd by Metellus were in so great necessity for drink that they were fain to quench their thirst with their Horses Urine and to shew how much better cheap the Turkish Armies support themselves than our European Forces 't is said that besides that the Souldiers drink nothing but Water and eat nothing but Rice and Salt Flesh pulveriz'd of which
life which we pretend to purchase at the price of dying are of no manner of advantage to us That man evades war to very little purpose that can have no fruition of peace and as impertinently does he avoid labour and toile who cannot enjoy repose Amongst those of the first of these two opinions there has been great debate what occasions are sufficient to justifie the meditation of self-murther which they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a handsome Exit For though they say that men are often to dye for trivial causes seeing those that deteine us in life are of no very great weight yet there is to be some measure There are fantastick and sencelesse humors that have prompted not only particular men but whole Nations to destroy themselves of which I have elsewhere given some examples and we further read of the Milesian virgins that by a furious compact they hang'd themselves one after another till the Magistrate took order in it enacting that the bodies of such as should be found so hang'd should be drawn by the same halter starke naked through the City When Threicion persuaded Cleomenes to dispatch himself by reason of the ill posture of his affairs and having evaded a death of the most honor in the battail he had lost to accept of this the second in honor to it and not to give the Conquerors leisure to make him undergo either an ignominious death or an infamous life Cleomenes with a courage truly Stoick and Lacedaemonian rejected his Counsel as unmanly and poor that said he is a remedy that can never be wanting and which a man is never to make use of whilst there is an inch of hope remaining telling him that it was sometimes constancy and valour to live that he would that even his death should be of use to his Country and would make of it an act of honor and vertue Threicion notwithstanding thought himself in the right and did his own business and Cleomenes after did the same but not till he had first tried the utmost malevolence of fortune All the inconvenences in the world are not considerable enough that a man should die to evade them and besides there being so many so suddain and unexpected changes in humane things it is hard rightly to judg when we are at the end of our hope Sperat in saeva victus gladiator arena Sit licet infesto pollice turba minax The fencer conquer'd in the lists hopes on Though the Spectators point that he is gon All things says the old Adage are to be hop'd for by a man whilst he lives ay but replies Seneca why should this rather be always running in a mans head that Fortune can do all things for the living man than this that Fortune has no power over him that knows how to dye Josephus when engag'd in so near and apparent danger a whole People being violently bent against him that there was no visible means of escape neverthelesse being as himself says in this extreamity counsell'd by Simon one of his faithful Guards to dispatch himself it was well for him that he yet maintain'd himself in some hope for fortune diverted the accident beyond all humane expectation so that he saw himself deliver'd without any manner of inconvenience Whereas Brutus and Cassius on the contrary threw away the remains of the Roman liberty of which they were the sole Protectors by the precipitation and temerity wherewith they kill'd themselves before the due time and a just occasion Monsieur d' Anguien at the Battel of Cerisolles twice attempted to run himself through despairing of the fortune of the day which went indeed very untowardly on that side of the Feild where he was engag'd and by that precipitation was very near depriving himself of the joy and honor of so brave a Victory I have seen a hundred Hares escape out of the very teeth of the Grey-hounds Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit Some have surviv'd their Executioners Multa dies variúsque labor mutabilis aevi Rettulit in melius multos alterna revisens Lusit in solido rursus fortuna locavit Much time and labour often does translate Life's mutability t' a better state Now fortune turning shews a reverse face And then again in solid joy does place Pliny says there are three sorts of diseases to escape any of which a man has good title to destroy himself the worst of which is the stone in the bladder when the urine is supprest Seneca says those only which for a long time discompose the functions of the Soul And some there have been who to avoid a worse have chosen one to their own liking Democritus General of the Aetolians being brought prisoner to Rome found means to make his escape by night but close pursu'd by his keepers rather than suffer himself to be retaken he fell upon his own sword and died Antinous and Theodotus their City of Epirus being reduct by the Romans to the last extremity gave the People counsel generally to kill themselves but the advice of giving themselves up to the armes of the Enemy prevayling they went to seek the death they desir'd rushing furiously upon the Enemy with an intention to strike home but not to defend a blow The Isle Gosa forc't some years ago by the Turks a Sicilian who had two beautiful daughters marriagable kill'd them both with his own hand and their mother running in to save them to boot Which having done sallying out of the House with a cros-bow and a harquebuze with those two shoots he kill'd two of the first Turks nearest to his door and drawing his sword charg'd furiously in amongst the rest where he was suddainly enclos'd and cut to peices By that means delivering his family and himself from slavery and dishonor The Jewish women after having circumciz'd their Children threw themselves down a Precipice to avoid the cruelty of Antigonus I have been told of a prisoner of condition in one of our prisons that his friends being inform'd he would certainly be condemn'd to avoid the ignominy of such a death suborn'd a Preist to tell him that the only means of his deliverance was to recommend himself to such a Saint under such and such vowes and fast eight days togeather without taking any manner of nourishment what ever what weakeness or faintness so ever he might find in himself during the time he follow'd their advice and by that means destroid himself before he was aware not dreaming of death or any danger in the Experiment Scribonia advising her Nephew Libo to kill himself rather than to attend the stroke of Justice told him that it was properly to do others Peoples business to preserve his life to put it after into the hands of those who within three or four days would come fetch him to execution and that it was to serve his Enemies to keep hi◠blood to gratifie their malice We read in the Bible that Nicanor
may approach it and view it and if we do not advance so far as to the Fort we may at least discover it and make our selves perfect in the Avenues It is not without reason that we are taught to consider sleep as a resemblance of death With how great facility do we pass from waking to sleeping and with how little concern do we lose the knowledg of light and of ourselves Peradâ—â—nture the faculty of sleeping would seem useless and contrary to nature being it deprives us of all action and sense were it not that by it Nature instructs us that she has equally made us to die as to live and from life presents us the Eternal Estate she reserves for us after it to accustom us to it and to take from us the fear of it But such as have by some violent accident fallen into a swoon and in it have lost all sense these methinks have been very near seeing the true and natural face of death for as to the moment of the passage it is not to be fear'd that it brings with it any pain or displeasure for as much as we can have no feeling without leisure Our sufferings require time which in death is so short and so precipitous that it must necessarily be insensible They are the approaches that we are to fear and those may fall within the limits of experience Many things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect I have past a good part of my age in a perfect and entire health I say not only entire but moreover spritely and wanton This estate so full of verdure jollity and vigour made the consideration of sickness so formidable to me that when I came to experiment it I found the attacques faint and easy in comparison of what I had apprehended Of this I have daily experience If I am under the shelter of a warm room in a stormy and tempestuous night I wonder how People can live abroad and am afflicted for those who are out in the 〈◊〉 If I am there my self I do not wish to be any where else This one thing of being always shut up in a chamber I fancâ—ed insupportable but I was presently inur'd to be so imprison'd a week nay a month togeather And have found that in the time of my health I did much more lament the sick than I think my self to be lamented when I am so and that the force of my imagination enhances near one half of the essence and reality of the thing I hope that when I come to die I shall find the same and that I shall not find it worth the pains I take so much preparation and so much assistance as I call in to undergo the stroak But we cannot give our selves too much advantage at all adventures In the time of our third or second troubles I do not well remember which going one day abroad to take the aire about a league from my own house which is seated in the very Center of all the bustle and mischeif of the late Civil wars of France thinking my self in all security and so near to my retreat that I stood in need of no better Equipage I had taken a horse that went very easy upon his pace but was not very strong Being upon my return home a suddain occasion falling out to make use of this horse in a kind of service that he was not acquainted with one of my train a lusty proper fellow mounted upon a strong German horse that had a very ill mouth but was otherwise vigorous and unfoild to play the Bravo and appear a better man than his fellowes comes thundring full speed in the very track where I was rushing like a Colossus upon the little man and the little horse with such a carreer of strength and weight that he turn'd us both over and over topsy turvy with our heeles in the aire so that there lay the horse over thrown and stun'd with the fall and I ten or twelve paces from him stretcht out at length with my face all batter'd and broken my sword which I had in my hand above ten paces beyond that and my belt broke all to pieces without motion or sence any more than a stock 'T was the only swoon I was ever in till this hour in my life Those who were with me after having used all the means they could to bring me to my self concluding me dead took me up in their arms and carried me with very much difficulty home to my house which was about half a French league from thence Having been by the way and two long hours after given over for a dead man I began to move and to fetch my breath for so great abundance of blood was fall'n into my stomack that Nature had need to rouse her forces to discharge it They then raised me upon my feet where I threw off a great quantity of pure Florid blood as I had also don several times by the way which gave me so much ease that I began to recover a little life but so leisurely and by so small advances that my first sentiments were much neare the approaches of death than life Perche dubbiosa anchor del suo ritorna Non s'assecura attonita la mente Because the Soul her mansion half had quit And was not sure she was return'd to it The remembrance of this accident which is very well imprinted in my memory so naturally representing to me the Image and Idea of death has in some sort reconcil'd me to that untoward accident When I first began to â—pen my eyes after my trance it was with so perplex't so weak and dead a sight that I could yet distinguish nothing and could only discern the light Come quel ch'or apre or chiude Gli occhi mezzo tra'l sonno è l'esser desto As people in the morning when they rise 'Twixt sleep and wake open and shut their eyes As to the functions of the Soul they advanced with the same pace and measure with those of the Body I saw my self all bloody my doublet being stain'd and spotted all over with the blood I had vomited and the first thought that came into my mind was that I had a Harquebuze shot in my head and indeed at the same time there were a great many fir'd round about us Methought my life but just hung upon my lips and I shut my eyes to help methought to thrust it out and took a pleasure in languishing and letting my self go It was an imagination that only superficially sloâ—ed upon my Soul as tender and weak as all the rest but really not only exempt from pain but mixt with that sweetness and pleasure that People are sensible of when they indulge themselves to drop into a slumber I beleive it is the very same condition those People are in whom we see to swoon with weakness in she agonie of death and am of opinion that we lament them without cause supposing
them agitated with greivous dolours or that their Souls suffer under painful thoughts It has ever been my beleif contrary to the opinion of many and particularly of Stephen Boetius that those whom we see so subdued and stupified at the approaches of their end or deprest with the length of the disease or by accident of an Apoplexie or falling Sickness Vi morbi saepe coactus Ante oculos aliquis nostros ut fulminis ictu Concidit spumas agit ingemit fremit artus Desipit extentat nervos torquetur anhelat Inconstanter et in jactando membra fatigat By the disease compell'd so we see some As they were thunder-struk fall groan and foam Tremble stretch writh breath short until at length In various struglings they tire out their strength Or hurt in the head whom we hear to mutter and by fits to utter greivous groanes though we gather from thence some sign by which it seems as if they had some remains of sense and knowledge I have always believ'd I say both the Body and the Soul benumn'd and asleep Vivit est vitae nescius ipse suae He lives but does not know That he does so And could not beleive that in so great a stupefaction of the members and so great a defection of the senses the â—oul could maintain any force within to take cognizance of herself or look into her own condition and that therefore they had no tormenting reflexions to make them consider and be sensible of the misery of their condition and consequently were not much to be lamented I can for my part think of no estate so insupportable and dreadful as to have the Soul spritely and afflicted without means to declare it self as one should say of such who are sent to Execution with their tongues first cut out were it not that in this kind of dying the most silent seems to me the most graceful if accompanied with a grave and constant countenance or of those miserable Prisoners who fall into the hands of the base bloody Souldiers of this Age by whom they are tormented with all sorts of inhumane usage to compel them to some excessive and impossible ransom kept in the mean time in such condition and place where they have no means of expressing or signifying their mind and misery to such as they may expect should releive them The Poets have feign'd some Gods who favour the deliverance of such as suffer under a languishing death Hunc ego Diti Sacrum jussa fero téque isto corpore solvo I by command offer to Pluto this And from that body do the Soul dismiss Both the interrupted words and the short and irregular answers one gets from them somtimes by bawling and keeping a clutter about them or the motions which seem to yeild some consent to what we would have them do are no testimony nevertheless that they live an entire life at least So it happens that in the yawning of sleep before it has fully possest us to perceive as in a dream what is don about us and to follow the last things are said with a perplex't and uncertain hearing which seem but to touch upon the borders of the Soul and make answers to the last words have been spoken to us which have more in them of fortune than sense Now seing I have effectually tried it I make no doubt but I have hitherto made a right judgment For first being in a swoon I labour'd with both hands to rip open the buttons of my doublet for I was without arms and yet I felt nothing in my imagination that hurt me for we have many motions in us that do not proceed from our direction Semianimésque micant digiti ferrúmque retractant And half-dead fingers grope about and feel To grasp again the late abandon'd steel So falling People extend their arms before them by a natural impulse which prompts them to offices and motions without any Commission from us Falciferos memorant currus abscindere membra Vt tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod Decidit abscissum cùm mens tamen atque hominis Mobilitate mali non quit sentire dolorem How limbs syth-bearing Chariots lopt they tell Would move and tremble on the ground they fell When he himself from whom the limb was ta'ne Could by the swiftness feel no kind of pain My stomack was so opprest with the coagulated blood that my hands mov'd to that part of their own voluntary motion as they frequently do to the part that itches without being directed by our Will There are several Animals and even Men in whom one may perceive the muscles to stir and tremble after they are dead Every one experimentally knows that there are some members which grow stiff and slag without his leave Now those passions which only touch the outward Bark of us as a man may say cannot be said to be ours to make them so there must be a concurrence of the whole man and the pains which are felt by the hand or the foot while we are sleeping are none of ours As I drew near my own house where the Alarm of my fall was already got before me and that my family were come out to meet me with the hubbub usual in such cases I did not only make some little answer to some questions were askt me but they moreover tell me that I had so much sense as to order that a horse I saw trip and faulter in the way which is mountainous and uneasy should be given to my wife This consideration should seem to proceed from a Soul that retained its functions but it was nothing so with me I knew not what I said or did and they were nothing but idle thoughts in the clouds that were stir'd up by the senses of the eyes and eares and proceeded not from me I knew not for all that or whence I came or whither I went neither was I capable to weigh and consider what was said to me these were light effects that the senses produc't of themselves as of custom what the Soul contributed was in a dream as being lightly toucht lick't and bedew'd by the soft impression of the senses Notwithstanding my condition was in truth very easy and quiet I had no afflictions upon me either for others or my self It was an extream drooping and weekness without any manner of pain I saw my own house but knew it not When they had put me to bed I found an inexpressible sweetness in that repose for I had been damnably tugg'd and lugg'd by those poor People who had taken the pains to carry me upon their Arms a very great and a very ill way and had in so doing all quite tir'd out themselves twice or thrice one after another They offer'd me several remedies but I would take none certainly beleiving that I was mortally wounded in the head And in earnest it had been a very happy death for the weakness of my
this Death and the Facility of Dying he had acquired by the vigour of his Soul shall we say that it ought to abate any thing of the lustre of his Vertue And who that has his Brain never so little tinctur'd with the true Philosophy can be content to imagine Socrates only free from Fear and Passion in the Accident of his Prison Fetters and Condemnation And that will not discover in him not only Stability and Constancy which was his ordinary Composure but moreover I know not what new Satisfaction and a frolick Chearfulness in his last Words and Actions At the Start he gave with the pleasure of scratching his Leg when his Irons were taken off does he not discover an equal Serenity and Joy in his Soul for being freed from past Inconveniences and at the same time to enter into the Knowledge of things to come Cato shall pardon me if he please his Death indeed is more tragical and more taken notice of but yet this is I know not how methinks finer Aristippus to one that was lamenting his Death The Gods grant me such an one said he A Man discerns in the Souls of these two great Men and their Imitators for I very much doubt whether there was ever their like so perfect a Habitude to Vertue that it was turn'd to a Complection It is no more a laborious Vertue nor the Precepts of Reason to maintain which the Soul is so wracked but the very Essence of their Souls their natural and ordinary Habit. They have rendred it such by a long Practice of Philosophical Precepts having light upon a rich and ingenious Nature The vicious Passions that spring in us can find no Entrance into them The Force and Vigour of their Souls stifle and extinguish irregular Desires so soon as they begin to move Now that it is not more noble by a high and divine Resolution to hinder the Birth of Temptations and to be so form'd to Vertue that the very Seeds of Vice be rooted out than to hinder their Progress and having suffer'd themselves to be surprized with the first Motions of Passions to arm themselves and to stand firm to oppose their Progress and overcome them And that this second Effect is not also much more generous than to be simply endowed with a frail and affable Nature of it self disaffected to Debauchery and Vice I do not think can be doubted for this third and last sort of Vertue seems to render a Man innocent but not vertuous free from doing ill but not apt enough to do well considering also that this Condition is so near Neighbour to Imperfection and Cowardize that I know not very well how to separate the Confines and distinguish them The very name of Good Nature and Innocence are for this reason in some sort grown into Contempt I very well know that several Vertues as Chastity Sobriety and Temperance may come to a Man through Personal Defects Constancy in Danger if it must be so called the Contempt of Death and Patience in Misfortunes may oft times be found in Men for want of well judging of such Accidents and not apprehending them for such as they are Want of Apprehension and Sottishness do sometimes counterfeit vertuous Effects As I have oft seen it happen that Men have been commended for what really merited Blame An Italian Lord once said this in my presence to the disadvantage of his own Nation That the Subtilty of the Italians and the Vivacity of their Conceptions were so great that they foresaw the Dangers and Accidents that might befal them so far off that it must not be thought strange if they were often in War observed to provide for their Safety even before they had discover'd the Peril That we French and Spaniards who were not so cunning went on further and that we must be made to see and feel the danger before we would take the Alarm and that even then we had no Apprehension But the Germans and Swisse more heavy and thick-skull'd had not the Sense to look about them even then when the Blows were falling about their Ears Peradventure he only talk'd so for Mirths sake and yet it is most certain that in War raw Soldiers rush into danger with more Precipitancy than after they have been well cudgell'd Haud ignarus quantùm nova gloria in armis Et praedulce decus primo certamine possit Not ign'rant in the first Essay of Arms How hope of Glory the raw Soldier warms For this reason it is that when we judge of a particular Action we are to consider several Circumstances and the whole Man by whom it is perform'd before we give it a name To instance in my self I have sometimes known my Friends call that Prudence in me which was meerly Fortune and repute that Courage and Patience which was Judgment and Opinion and attribute to me one Title for another sometimes to my advantage and sometimes otherwise As to the rest I am so far from being arriv'd at the first and most perfect degree of Excellence where Vertue is turn'd into Habit that even of the second I have made no great Tryal I have not been very solicitous to curb the Desires by which I have been importun'd My Vertue is a Vertue or rather an Innocence casual and accidental If I had been born of a more irregular Complection I am afraid I should have made scurvy work for I never observ'd any great Stability in my Soul to resist Passions if they were never so little vehement I have not the knack of nourishing Quarrels and Debates in my own Bosom and consequently owe my self no great Thanks that I am free from several Vices Si vitiis mediocribus mea paucis Mendosa est natura alioqui recta velut si Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos If of small Crimes and few my Nature be To be accus'd and from the great ones free Those Venial Faults will no more spot my Soul Than a fair Body's blemish'd with a Mole I owe it rather to my Fortune than my Reason She has made me to be descended of a Race famous for Integrity and of a very good Father I know not whether or no he has infus'd into me part of his Humours or whether Domestick Examples and the good Education of my Infancy hath insensibly assisted in the Work or if I was otherwise born so Seu Libra seu me Scorpius aspicit Formidolosus pars violentior Natalis horae seu tyrannus Hesperiae Capricornus unde Whether the Ballance weigh'd my future Fate Or Scorpio Lord of my Ascendent sate Or Tyrant Capricorn that rudely sways And ruffles up the Occidental Seas But so it is that I have naturally a Horror for most Vices The Answer of Antisthenes to him who askt him Which was the best Apprentisage To unlearn Evil seems to point at this I have them in Horror I say with a Detestation so Natural and so much my own that
ordinary Executions of Justice how reasonable soever with a steady Eye Some one being to give testimony of Julius Caesar's Clemency he was says he mild and moderate in his Revenges For having compelled the Pyrates to yield by whom he had before been taken Prisoner and put to Ransom forasmuch as they had threatned him with the Cross he indeed condemn'd them to it but it was after they had been first strangled He punished his Secretary Philomon who had attempted to poyson him with no greater severity than a single Death Without naming that Latin Author that dare alledge for a Testimony of Mercy the killing only of those by whom we have been offended It is easie to guess that he was struck with the horrid and inhumane Examples of Cruelty practis'd by the Roman Tyrants For my part even in Justice it self all that exceeds a Simple Death appears to me perfect Cruelty especially in us who ought to have regard to their Souls to dismiss them in a good and calm Condition which cannot be when we have discompos'd them by insufferable Torments Not long since a Souldier who was a Criminal Prisoner perceiving from a Tower where he was shut up that the people began to assemble to the place of Execution and that the Carpenters were busie erecting a Scaffold he presently concluded that the Preparation was for him and therefore entred into a Resolution to kill himself but could find no Instrument to assist him in his Design saving an old rusty Cart-Nayle that Fortune presented to him With this he first gave himself two great Wounds about his Throat but finding those would not do he presently after gave himself a third in the Belly where he left the Nayle sticking up to the head The first of his Keepers that came in found him in this Condition yet alive but sunk down and near expiring by his Wounds To make use of time therefore before he should die and defeat the Law they made hast to read his Sentence Which having done and he hearing that he was only condemn'd to be Beheaded he seem'd to take new Courage accepted of Wine which he had before refus'd and thanked his Judges for the unhop'd for Mildness of their Sentence saying That indeed he had taken a resolution to dispatch himself for fear of a more severe and insupportable Death Having entertain'd an Opinion by the Preparations he had seen in the Place that they were resolved to torment him with some horrible Execution and seem'd to be delivered from Death for having it changed from what he apprehended I should advise that these Examples of Severity by which 't is design'd to retain the people in their Duty might be exercised upon the dead Bodies of Criminals for to see them deprived of Sepulture to see them boyl'd and divided into Quarters would almost work as much upon the Vulgar as the Pain they make the Living to endure though that in effect be little or nothing as God himself says Who kill the Body and after that have no more that they can do I hapned to come by one day accidentally at Rome just as they were upon executing Catena a notorious Robber He was strangled without any Emotion of the Spectators but when they came to cut him in Quarters the Hangman gave not a Blow that the People did not follow with a doleful Cry and with Exclamation as if every one had lent his Feeling to the miserable Carkass Those inhumane Excesses ought to be exercised upon the Bark and not upon the Quick Artaxerxes in almost a like case moderated the Severity of the Ancent Laws of Persia Ordaining that the Nobility who had committed a Fault instead of being whipt as they were us'd to be should be stript only and their Cloaths whipt for them and that whereas they were wont to tear off their Hair they should only take off their High-crown'd Tiara The so devout Egyptians thought they sufficiently satisfied the Divine Justice in Sacrificing Hogs in Effigie and Representation a bold Invention to pay God so Essential a Substance in Picture only and in show I live in a time wherein we abound in credible Examples of this Vice thorough the licence of our Civil Wars and we see nothing in Ancient Histories more extream than what we have proof of every day I could hardly perswade my self before I saw it with my Eyes that there could be found out Souls so cruel and fell who for the sole Pleasure of Murther would commit hack and lop off the Limbs of others sharpen their Wits to invent unusual Torments and new kinds of Deaths without Hatred without Profit and for no other end but only to enjoy the pleasant Spectacle of the Gestures and Motions the lamentable Groans and Crys of a Man in anguish For this is the utmost point to which Cruelty can arrive Vt hominem non iratus non timens tantùm spectaturus occidat That a Man should kill a Man without being angry or without fear only for the Pleasure of the Spectacle For my own part I cannot without Grief see so much as an innocent Beast pursu'd and kil'd that has no Defence and from whom we have receiv'd no Offence at all And that which frequently happens that the Stage we hunt finding himself weak and out of breath seeing no other Remedy surrenders himself to us who pursue him imploring Mercy by his Tears questuque cruentus Atque imploranti similis That Bleeding by his Tears does Mercy crave It has ever been to me a very unpleasing sight and I hardly ever take beast alive that I do not presently turn out Pythagoras bought them of Fishermen and Fowlers to do the same primòque à caede ferarum Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum I think 't was Slaughter of wild beasts that made Too docile Man first learn the Killing Trade Those Natures that are sanguinary towards Beasts discover a Natural Propension to Cruelty After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to Spectacles of the Slaughter of Animals they proceeded to those of the Slaughter of Men the Fencers Nature has her self I doubt imprinted in Man a kind of instinct to Inhumanity no body takes pleasure in seeing Beasts play and caress one another but every one is delighted with seeing them dismember and tear one another to pieces And that I may not be laught at for the simpathy I have with them Theologie it self enjoyns us some Favour in their behalf And considering that one and the same Master has lodg'd us together in this Palace for his Service and that they as well as we are of his Family it has reason to enjoyn us some affection and regard to them Pythagoras borrow'd the Metempsycosis from the Egyptians but it has since been receiv'd by several Nations and particularly by our Druids Morte carent animae sempèrque priore relicta Sede novis domibus vivunt hà bitantque receptae Souls never dye but having
left one Seat Into new Houses they Admittance get The Religion of our Ancient Gauls maintain'd that Souls being Eternal never ceased to remove and shift their places from one body to another Mixing moreover with this Fancy some Consideration of Divine Justice For according to the Deportments of the Soul whilst it had been in Alexander they said that God ordered it another body to inhabit more or less painful and proper for its Conditions muta ferarum Cogit vincla pati truculentos ingerit ursis Pradonèsque lupis fallaces vulpibus addit Atque ubi per varios annos per mille figuras Egit Lethaeo purgatos flumine tandem Rursus ad humanae revocat primordia formae The silent Yoak of Brutes he made them wear The Bloody Souls he did enclose in Bears The ravenousin Woolves he wisely shut The sly and cunning he in Foxes put Where after having through successive years And thousand Figures finisht their Carreers Purging them well in Lethe's Flood at last In humane Bodies he the Souls replac't If it had been valiant he lodg'd it in the Body of a Lyon if voluptuous in that of Hog if timorous in that of a Hart or Hare if subtil in that of a Fox and so of the rest till having purified it by this Chastisement it again enter'd into the Body of some other Man Ipse ego nam memini Trojani tempore Belli Panthoides Euphorbus eram For I my self remember in the days O' th' Trojan War that I Euphorbus was As to the Relation betwixt us and Beasts I do not much admit of it nor allow what several Nations and those the most Ancient and most Noble have practised who have not only receiv'd Brutes into their Society but have given them a Rank infinitely above them Esteeming them one while Familiars and Favorites of the Gods and having them in more than humane Reverence and Respect and others knowing no other nor other Divinity but they Belluae à Barbaris propter beneficium consecratae The Barbarians consecrated Beasts out of Opinion of some Benefit received by them Crocodilon adorat Pars haec illa pavet saturam serpentibus Ibin Effigies sacri hic nitet aurea Cercopitheci Hic piscem fluminis illic Oppida tota canem venerantur One Country does adore the Crocodile That does inhabit Monster-breeding Nile Another does the Long-bild Ibis dread With poysonous Flesh of ugly Serpents fed And in another place you may behold The Statue of a Monkey shine in Gold Here Men some monstrous Fishes aid implore And there whole Towns a Grinning Dog adore And the very Interpretation that Plutarch gives to this Error which is very well taken is advantageous to them For he says that it was not the Cat or the Oxe for example that the Egyptians ador'd But that they in those Beasts ador'd some Image of the Divine Faculties in this the Patience and Utility in that the Vivacity or as our Neighbours the Burgundians with the Germans the Impatience to see it self shut up by which they represented the Liberty they lov'd and ador'd above all other Divine Faculty and so of the rest But when amongst the more moderate Opinions I meet with Arguments that endeavour to demonstrate the near resemblance betwixt us and Animals how great a share they in our greatest Priviledges and with how great probability they compare and couple us together in earnest I abate a great deal of our Presumption and willingly let fall the Title of that imaginary Sovereignty that some attribute to us over other Creatures But supposing all this were true there is nevertheless a certain Respect and a general Duty of Humanity that ties us not only to Beasts that have Liâ—e and Sense but even to Trees and Plants We owe Justice to Men and Grace and Benignity to other Creatures that are capable of it There is a certain Natural Commerce and Mutual Obligation betwixt them and us neither shall I be afraid to discover the Tenderness of my Nature so childish that I cannot well refuse to play with my Dog when he the most unseasonably importunes me so to do The Turks have Alms and Hospitals for Beasts The Romans had a publick regard to the Nourishment of Geese by whose Vigilancy their Capitol had been preserv'd The Athenians made a Decree that the Mules and Moyles which had serv'd at the building of the Temple call'd Hecatompedon should be free and suffer'd to pasture at their own choice without hindrance The Agrigentines had a common usance solemnly to enter the Beasts they had a kindness for as Horses of some rare qualities Dogs and Birds of whom they had had profit and even those that had only been kept to divert their Children And the Magnificence that was ordinary with them in all other things did also particularly appear in the Sumptuosity and Numbers of Monuments erected to this very end that remain'd in their Beauty several Ages after The Egyptians buried Wolves Bears Crocodiles Dogs and Cats in Sacred Places embalm'd their Bodies and put on Mourning at their Death Cimon gave an honourable Sepulture to the Mares with which he had three times gain'd the Prize of the Course at the Olympick Games The Ancient Xanthippus caus'd his Dog to be inter'd on an Eminence near the Sea which has euer since retain'd the Name And Plutarch says That he made Conscience of selling for a small profit to the Slaughter an Oxe that had been long in his Service CHAP. XII Apology for Raimond de Sebonde LEarning is in truth a very great and a very considerable quality and such as despise it sufficiently discover their own want of Understanding But yet I do not prize it at the excessive rate some others do as Herillus the Philosopher for one who therein places the Sovereign Good and maintain'd that it was only in her to render us wise and contented which I do not believe no more than I do what others have said That Learning is the Mother of all Vertue and that all Vice proceeds from Ignorance which if it be true is subject to a very long Interpretation My House has long been open to Men of Knowledge and is very well known so to be for my Father who govern'd it Fifty years and more inflam'd with the new ardour with which Francis the First embraced Letters and brought them into esteem with great Diligence and Expence hunted after the Acquaintance of Learned Men receiving them at his House as Persons Sacred and that had some particular Inspiration of Divine Wisdom collecting their Sayings and Sentences as so many Oracles and with so much the greater Reverence and Religion as he was the less able to judge for he had no Knowledge of Letters no more than his Predecessors For my part I love them well but I do not adore them Amongst others Peter Bunel a Man of great Reputation for Knowledge in his time having with some others of his sort stayed some days at Montaigne
are able to take were capable or the Force of our Understanding sufficient to participate of Beatitude or Eternal Pains We should then tell him from Human Reason If the Pleasures thou dost promise us in the other Life are of the same kind that I have injoy'd here below this has nothing in common with Infinity Though all my five Natural Senses should be even loaded with Pleasure and my Soul full of all the Contentment it could hope or desire we know what all this amounts to all this would be nothing If there be any thing of mine there there is nothing Divine if this be no more than what may belong to our present Condition it cannot be of any value All Contentment of Mortals is mortal Even the Knowledge of our Parents Children and Friends if that can effect and delight us in the other World if there that still continue a satisfaction to us we still remain in earthly and finite Conveniences We cannot as we ought conceive the greatness of these High and Divine Promises if we could in any sort conceive them To have a worthy Imagination of them we must imagine them inimaginable inexplicable and incomprehensible and absolutely another thing than those of our miserable experience Eye hath not seen saith St. Paul nor ear heard neither have entred into the Heart of Man the things that God hath prepared for them that love him And if to render us capable our being be reform'd and chang'd as thou Plato sayst in thy Purifications it ought to be so extream and total a Change that by Physical Doctrine it will be no more Hector erat tunc cùm bello certabat at ille Tractus ab Aemonio non erat Hector equo He Hector was whilst he could fight but when Drag'd by Achilles Steeds no Hector then It must be something else that must receive these Recompences quod mutatur dissolvitur interit ergo Trajiciuntur enim partes atque ordine migrant What 's chang'd dissolv'd is and doth therefore dye For parts are mixt and from their Order fly For in Pythagoras his Metempsycosis and the change of Habitation that he imagin'd in Souls can we believe that the Lyon in whom the Soul of Caesar is inclos'd does espouse Caesar's Passions or that the Lyon is he For if it was still Caesar they would be in the right who controverting this Opinion with Plato reproach him that the Son might be seen to ride his Mother transform'd into a Mule and the like Absurdities And can we believe that in the Mutations that are made of the Bodies of Animals into others of the same kind that the new Commers are not other than their Predecessors From the Ashes of a Phoenix a Worm they say is engendred and from that another Phoenix who can imagine that this second Phoenix is not other than the first We see our Silk-worms as it were dye and wither and from this wither'd Body a Butterflie is produced and from that another Worm how ridiculous would it be to imagine that this were still the first That which has once ceas'd to be is no more Nec si materiam nostram collegerit aetas Post obitum rursumque redegerit ut sit a nunc est Atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitae Pertineat quidquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum Interrupta semel cùm sit repetentia nostra Neither though time should gather and restore Our Matter to the Form it was before And give again new Light to see withal Would that new Figure us concern at all Or we again ever the same be seen Our Being having interrupted been And Plato when thou saist in another place that it shall be the Spiritual part of Man that will be concern'd in the Fruition of the Recompences of another Life thou tellest us a thing wherein there is as little appearance of Truth Scilicet avolsis radicibus ut neque ullam Dispicere ipse oculus rem seorsum corpore toto No more than Eyes once from their Opticks torn Can ever after any thing discern For by this account it would no more be Man nor consequently us who should be concern'd in this Enjoyment For we are compos'd of two principally Essential Parts the separation of which is the Death and Ruin of our Being Inter enim jacta est vitai pausa vagèque Deerarunt passim motus ab sensibus omnes When Life 's extinct all Motions of Sence Are ta'ne away dispers'd and banish'd thence We cannot say that the Man suffers much when the Worms feed upon his Members and that the Earth consumes them Et nihil hoc ad nos qui coitu conjugiòque Corporis atque animae consistimus uniter apti What 's that to us who longer feel not Pain Than Body and Soul united do remain Moreover upon what Foundation of their Justice can the Gods take notice of or reward Man after his Death for his good and vertuous Actions since it was they themselves that put them in the way and mind to do them And why should they be offended at or punish him for wicked ones since themselves have created him in so frail a condition and what with one Glaunce of their Will they might prevent him from falling Might not Epicurus with great colour of Human Reason object that to Plato did he not often save himself with this Sentence That it is impossible to establish any thing certain of the immortal Nature by the Mortal She does nothing but err throughout but especially when she meddles with Divine things Who does more evidently perceive this than we For although we have given her certain and infallible Principles and though we have inlightned her Steps with the Sacred Lamp of Truth that it has pleas'd God to communicate to us we daily see nevertheless that if she swerve never so little from the ordinary Path and that she strays from or wander out of the way set out and beaten by the Church how soon she loses confounds and fetters her self tumbling and floating in this vast turbulent and waving Sea of Human Opinions without restraint and without any determinate end So soon as she loses that Great and Common Road she enters into a Labyrinth of a thousand several Paths Man cannot be any thing but what he is nor imagine beyond the reach of his Capacity 'T is a greater Presumption says Plutarch in them who are but Men to attempt to speak and discourse of the Gods and Demi-Gods than it is in a Man utterly ignorant of Musick to judge of Singing or in a Man who never saw a Camp to dispute about Arms and Martial Affairs presuming by some light Conjecture to understand the effects of an Art he is totally a Stranger to Antiquity I believe thought to put a Complement upon and to add something to the Divine Grandeur in assimilating it to Man investing it with his Faculties and adorning it with his ugly Humors and more
a wonder to my self accidentally to find them conformable to so many Philosophical Discourses and Examples I never knew what Regiment my Life was of till after it was near worn out and spent A new Figure An unpremeditate and accidental Philosopher But to return to the Soul in that Plato has plac'd the Reason in the Brain the Anger in the Heart and the Concupiscence in the Liver 't is likely that it was rather an Interpretation of the Movements of the Soul than that he intended a Division and Separation of it as of a Body into several Members And the most likely of their Opinions is that 't is always a Soul that by its Faculty Reasons remembers comprehends judges desires and exercises all its other Operations by divers Instruments of the Body as the Pilot guides his Ship according to his Experience one while straining or slacking the Cordage one while hoisting the Mainyard or removing the Rudder by one and the same strength carrying on so many several effects And that it is lodg'd in the Brain which appears in that the Wounds and Accidents that touch that part do immediately offend the Faculties of the Soul And 't is not incongruous that it should thence diffuse it self into the other parts of the Body medium non diserit unquam Caeli Phoebus iter radiis tamen omnia lustrat Phaebus ne're deviates from the Zodiack's way Yet all things does illustrate with his Ray. As the Sun sheds from Heaven's Light and Influence and fills the World with them Caetera pars animae per totum dissita corpus Paret ad numen mentis noménque movetur The other part o' th' Soul diffus'd all o're The Body does obey the Reasons lore Some have said that there was a General Soul as it were a great Body from whence all the particular Souls were extracted and thither again return always restoring it self to that Universal Matter Deum namque ire per omnes Terrásque tractusque maris caelumque profundum Hinc pecudes armenta viros genus omne ferarum Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri Omnia Nec morti esse locum For they suppose That God through Earth the Sea and Heavens goes Hence Men Beasts Reptiles Insects Fishes Fouls Take all their issue to the Light their Souls And there again restore them when they dye They being not subject to Mortality Others that they only rejoyn'd and re-united themselves to it others that they were produc'd from the Divine Substance Others by the Angels of Fire and Air Others that they were from all Antiquity and some that they were created at the very Article of time the Bodies wanted them Others make them to descend from the Orb of the Moon and to return thither The generality of the Ancients that they were begot from Father to Son after a like manner and produc'd with all other Natural things raising their Argument from the likeness of Children to their Fathers Instillata patris virtus tibi Fortes creantur fortibus bonis Thou hast thy Fathers Vertues with his Blood For the Brave still spring from the Brave and Good And that we see descend from Fathers to their Children not only Bodily Marks but moreover a Resemblance of Humours Complexions and Inclinations of the Soul Denique cur acrum violentia triste leonum Seminium sequitur dolus vulpibus fuga cervis A patribus datur patrius pavor incitat artus Si non certa suo quia semine seminioque Vis animi pariter crescit cum corpore toto For why should Rage from the fierce Lyon's Seed Or from the subtle Foxes Craft proceed Or why the tim'rous and flying Hart His fear and trembling to his Race impart But that a certain Force of Mind does grow And still increases as the Bodies do That thereupon the Divine Justice is grounded punishing in the Children the Faults of their Fathers Forasmuch as the Contagion of Paternal Vices is in some sort imprinted in the Soul of Children and that the ill government of their Will extends to them Moreover that if Souls had any other Derivation than a Natural Consequence and that they had been some other thing out of the Body they would retain some Memory of their first Being the Natural Faculties that are proper to them of discoursing reasoning and remembring consider'd Si in corpus nascentibus insinuatur Cur superantes actam aetatem meminisse nequimus Nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus For at our Birth if it infused be Why do we then retain no Memory Of our foregoing Life and why no more Remember any thing we did before For to make the condition of our Souls such as we would have it to be we must suppose them all knowing even in their Natural Simplicity and Purity By these means they had been such being free from the Prison of the Body as well before they entred into it as we hope they shall be after they are gone out of it And from this knowledge it should follow that they should remember being get in the Body as Plato said That what we learn is no other than a remembrance of what we knew before a thing which every one by experience may maintain to be false Forasmuch in the first place as that we do not justly remember any thing but what we have been taught And that if the Memory did purely perform its Office it would at least suggest to us something more than what we have learned Secondly That which she knew being in her Purity was a true Knowledge knowing things as they are by her Divine Intelligence Whereas here we make her receive Falshood and Vice when we instruct her wherein she cannot imploy her Reminiscence that Image and Conception having never been planted in her â—o say that the Corporal Prison does in such sort suffocate her Natural Faculties that they are there utterly extinct is first contrary to this other Belief of acknowledging her Power to be so great and and the Operations of it that Men sensibly perceive in this Life so admirable as to have thereby concluded this Divinity and past Eternity and the Immortality to come Nam si tantopere est animi mutata potestas Omnis ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum Non ut opinor ea ab letho jam longior errat For if the Mind be chang'd to that degree As of past things to lose all Memory So great a Change as that I must confess Appears to me than Death but little less Furthermore 't is here with us and not elsewhere that the Forces and Effects of the Soul ought to be consider'd All the rest of her Perfections are vain and useless to her 't is by her present condition that all her Immortality is to be rewarded and paid and of the Life of Man only that she is to render an account It had been Injustice
fall of the Soul as well as of the Body Contrahi animum quasi labi putat atque decidere He thinks the Mind is transported and that it slips and falls And what they perceiv'd in some that the Soul maintained its force and vigour to the last gasp of Life they attributed to the variety of Diseases as it is observable in Men at the last Extremity that some retain one Sence and some another one the Hearing and another the Smell without any manner of Defects or Alteration and that there is no so universal a Deprivation that some parts do not remain vigorous and entire Non alio pacto quà m si pes cum dolet agri In nullo caput intera sit fortè dolore As if a sick Man's Foot in pain should be And yet his Head perhaps from Dolours free The sight of our Judgment is to Truth the same that the Owles Eyes are to the Sun says Aristotle By what can we better convince him than by so gross Blindness in so apparent a Light For the contrary Opinion of the immortality of the Soul which Cicero says was first introduc'd by the Testimony of the Authors at least by Pherecides Syrius in the time of King Tullus though others attribute it to Thales and others to others 't is the part of human Science that is treated of with the most doubt and the greatest reservation The most positive Dogmatists are in this point principally to fly to the Refuge of Academy No one knows what Aristotle has established upon this Subject no more than all the Ancients in general who handle it with a wavering Belief Rem gratissimam promittentium magis quà m probantium A thing more acceptable in the Promisers than the Provers He conceals himself in clouds of Words of difficult and unintelligible Sense and has left to those of his Sect as great a Dispute about his Judgment as the matter it self Two things rendred this Opinion plausible to them One that without the immortality of Souls there would be nothing whereon to ground the vain Hopes of Glory which is a Consideration of wonderful Repute in the World The other that it is a very profitable Impression as Plato says that Vices when they escape the Discovery and Cognizance of human Justice are still within the reach of the Divine which will pursue them even after the Death of the Guilty Man is excessively solicitous to prolong his Being and has to the utmost of his Power provided for it Monuments are erected and embalming in use for the Conservation of the Body and glory to preserve the Name He has employed all his Wit and Opinion to the rebuilding of himself impatient of his Form and to prop himself by his Inventions The Soul by reason of its Anxiety and Impotence being unable to stand by it self wanders up and down to seek out Consolations Hopes and Foundations and alien Circumstances to which she adheres and fixes And how light or fantastick soever Invention delivers them to it relies more willingly and with greater Assurance upon them than it self But 't is wonderful to observe how short the most constant and obstinate Maintainers of this just and clear Persuasion of the Immortality of the Soul do fall and how weak their Arguments are when they go about to prove it by human Reason Somnia sunt non docentis sed optantis They are Dreams not of the Teacher but Wisher says one of the Antients By which Testimony Man may know that he owes the Truth he himself finds out to Fortune and Accident since that even then when it is fallen into his Hand he has not wherewith to hold and maintain it and that his Reason has not Force to make use of it All things produc'd by our own Meditation and Understanding whether true or false are subject to Incertitude and Controversy 'T was for the Chastisement of our Pride and for the Instruction of our Misery and Incapacity that God wrought the Perplexity and Confusion at the Tower of Babel Whatever we undertake without his Assistance whatever we see without the Lamp of his Grace is but Vanity and Folly We corrupt the very Essence of Truth which is uniform and constant by our Weakness when Fortune puts it into our Possession What Course soever Man takes of himself God still permits it to come to the same Confusion the Image whereof he so lively represents to us in the just Chastisement wherewith he crusht Nimrod's Presumption and frustrated the vain Attempt of his proud Structure Perdam sapientiam sapientium prudentiam prudentium reprobabe I will destroy the Wisdom of the Wise and will bring to nothing the Vnderstanding of the Prudent The Diversity of Idiomes and Languages with which he disturb'd this work what are they other than this infinite and perpetual alteration and discordance of Opinions and Reasons which accompany and confound the vain Building of human Wisdom And 't is to very good effect that they do so For what would hold us if we had but the least grain of Knowledg This Saint has very much oblig'd me Ipsa utilitatis occultatio aut humilitatis exercitatio est aut elationis attritio The very concealment of the Vtility is either an exercise of Humility or a quelling of Presumption To what a pitch of Presumption and Insolence do we raise our Blindness and Folly But to return to my Subject it was truly very good Reason that we should be beholding to God only and to the favour of his Grace for the Truth of so noble a Belief since from his sole Bounty we receive the Fruit of Immortality which consists in the Enjoyment of eternal Beatitude Let us ingeniously confess that God alone has dictated it to us and the Faith For 't is no Lesson of Nature and our own Reason And whoever will enquire into his own Being and Power both within and without without this divine Privilege Whoever shall consider Man impartially and without Flattery will see nothing in him of Efficacy nor any kind of Faculty that relishes of any thing but Death and Earth The more we give and confess to owe and render to God we do it with the greater Christianity That which this Stoick Philosopher says he holds from the fortuitous Consent of the popular Voice had it not been better that he had held it from God Cùm de animorum aeternitate disserimus non leve momentum apud nos habet consensus hominum aut timentium inferos aut colentium Vtor hac publica persuasione When we discourse of the Immortality of Souls the consent of Men that either fear or adore the infernal Power is of no small Advantage I make use of this publick Persuasion Now the weakness of human Arguments upon this Subject is particularly manifested by the fabulous Arguments they have superadded as Consequences of this Opinion to find out of what Condition this Immortality of ours was Let us omit the Stoicks
he would not have burn'd his Finger The Shocks and Justles that the Soul receives from the Bodies Passions can do much in it but it s own can do a great deal more To which it is so subjected that peradventure it is to be made good that it has no other Pace and Motion but from the Breath of those Winds without the Agitation of which it would be becalm'd and without Action like a Ship in the middle of the Sea to which the Winds have denyed their Assistance And whoever should maintain this siding with the Peripatetick would do us no great Wrong Seeing it is very well known that the greatest and most noble Actions of the Soul proceed from and stand in need of this Impulse of Passions Valour they say cannot be perfect without the assistance of Anger Semper Ajax fortis fortissimus tamen in furore Ajax was always brave but most when mad Neither do we encounter the Wicked and the Enemy vigorously enough if we be not angry Nay the Advocate is to inspire the Judges with Indignation to obtain Justice Illicite Desires disordered Themistocles and Demosthenes and have push'd on the Philosophers to Watching Fasting and Pilgrimages and lead us to Honour Learning and Health which are all very useful Ends. And this meanness of Soul in suffering Anxiety and Trouble serves to breed Penitency and Repentance in the Conscience and to make us sensible of the Scourge of God and politick Correction for the Chastisement of our Offences Compassion is a Spur to Clemency and Prudence and the Prudence of preserving and governing our selves is rous'd by our Fear and how many brave Actions by Ambition How many by Presumption Finally there is no brave and spiritual Virtue without some irregular Agitation Should it not be one of the Reasons that mov'd the Epicureans to discharge God from all Care and solicitude of our Affairs because even the Eâ—fects of his Bounty could not be exercis'd in our Behalf without disturbing his Repose by the Means of Passions which are as so many Spurs and Instruments pricking on the Soul to vertuous Actions or have they thought otherwise and taken them for Tempests that shamefully hurry the Soul from her Tranquility Vt maris tranquillitas intelligitur nulla ne minima quidem aura fluctus commovente Sic animi quietus placatus status cernitur quum perturbatio nulla est qua moveri queat As it is understood to be a Calm at Sea when there is aot the least Breath of Air stirring So the State of the Soul is discern'd to be quiet and appeased when there is no Perturbation to move it What varietys of Sense and Reason what contrariety of Imaginations does the Diversity of our Passions inspire us with What Assurance than can we take of a thing so mobile and unstable subject by its Condition to the Dominion of Trouble and never going other than a forced and borrowed Pace If our Judgment be in the Power even of Sickness and Perturbation If it be from Folly and Temerity that it is held to receive the Impression of things what Assurance can we expect from it Is it not a great Boldness in Philosophy to believe that Men perform the greatest Actions and nearest approaching the Divinity when they are Furious Mad and besides themselves We better our selves by the Astonishment and Privation of Reason The two natural Ways to enter into the Cabinet of the Gods and there to foresee the Course of Destiny are Fury and Sleep This is pleasant to consider By the Dislocation that Passions cause in our Reason we must become Vertuous By its Extirpation occasioned by Madness as the Image of Death we become Diviners and Prophets I was never so willing to believe Philosophy in any thing as this 'T is a Pure Enthusiasme wherewith Sacred Truth has inspir'd the Spirit of Philosophy which makes it confess contrary to its own Proposition that the most calm composed and healthful Estate of the Soul that Philosophy can seat it in is not its best Condition Our waking is more asleep than Sleep it self our Wisdom less Wise than Folly Our Dreams are worth more than our Meditation and the worst Place we can take is in our selves But does not Philosophy think that we are VVise enough to consider that the Voice that the Spirit utters when dismist from Man so clear-sighted so great and so perfect and whilst it is in Man so terrestrial Ignorant and dark is a Voice proceeding from the Spirit of a dark terrestrial and ignorant Man and for this Reason a Voice not to be trusted and believed I have no great Experience of these vehement Agitations being of a soft and heavy Complexion the most of which surprize the Soul on a suddain without giving it leisure to recollect it self But the Passion that is said to be produced by Idleness in the Hearts of young Men tho' it proceed leisurely and with a measured Progress does evidently manifest to those who have tryed to oppose its Power the Violence our Judgment suffers in this Alteration and Conversion I have formerly attempted to withstand and repel it For I am so far from being one of those who invite Vices that I do not so much as follow them if they do not hale me along I perceiv'd it to spring grow and encrease in despight of my Resistance and at last living and seeing as I was wholy to seize and possess me so that as if newly rous'd frum Drunkenness the Images of things began to appear to me quite other than they were wont to be I evidently saw the Person I desired grow and encrease in Advantages of Beauty and to expand and blow fairer by the influence of my Imagination the Difficulties of my Attempt to grow more easy and smooth and both my Reason and Conscience to be laid aside But this Fire being evaporated in an Instant as from a flash of Lightning I was aware that my Soul resum'd another kind of Sight and another sort of Estate and another Judgment The Difficulties of my Retreat appear'd great and invincible and the same things had quite another Tast and Aspect than the heat of Desire had presented them to me Than which Pyrrho himself knows nothing more truly We are never without Sickness Agues have their hot and cold Fits from the Effects of an ardent Passion we fall again to shivering As much as I had advanc'd so much I retir'd Qualis ubi alterno procurrens gurgite pontus Nunc ruit ad terras scopulisque superjacit undam Spumeus extremámque sinu perfundit arenam Nunc rapidus retro atque aestu revoluta resorbens Sixa fugit littusque vado labente reliquit As spumy Neptune with repeated VVaves Now the pale Shoar and craggy Beaches laves And like a Drunckard vomits up the Sand That deepest lay in heaving Tides to Land And now retiring thence as loud does roare Sucking in Pebbles from the new wash'd Shore Now from the
Poetae confugiunt ad Deum cum explicare argumenti exitum non possunt As tragick Poets fly to some God when they cannot explain the issue of their Argument Seeing that Men by their insufficiency cannot pay themselves well enough with current Money let the counterfeit be superaded 'T is a way that has been practis'd by all the Legislators and there is no Government that has not some mixture either of ceremonial Vanity or of false Opinion that serves for a curb to keep the People in their Duty 'T is for this that most of them have their fabulous Originals and Beginnings and so enrich'd with supernatural Mysteries 'T is this that has given Credit to Bastard Religions and caus'd them to be countenanc'd by men of Understanding and for this that Numa and Sextorius to possess their Men with a better Opinion of them fed them with this Foppery one That the Nympth Egeria the other That his white Hind brought them all their Resolutions from the Gods And the Authority that Numa gave to his Laws under the Title of a Patronage of this Goddess Zeroaster Legislator of the Bactrians and Persians gave to his under the name of Oromazis Trismegistus Legislator of the Egyptians under that of Mercury Xamobxis Legislator of the Scythians under that of Vesta Charondas Legislator of the Chalcedonians under that of Saturn Minos Legislator of the Candiots under that of Jupiter Licurgus Legislator of the Lacedaemonians under that of Apollo and Draco and Solon Legislators of the Athenians under that of Minerva And every Government has a God at the head of it others falsely that truly which Moses set over the Jews at their departure out of Egypt The Religion of of the Bedoins as the Sire de Joinville reports amongst other things enjoin'd a Belief that the Soul of him amongst them who died for his Prince went into another more happy Body more beautiful and more robust than the former by which means they much more willingly ventur'd their Lives In ferrum mens prona viris animaeque capaces Mortis ignavum est rediturae parcere vitae Men covet wounds and strive Death to embrace To save a Life that 's to return is base This is a very comfortable however an erronious Belief Every Nation has many such Examples of it's own but this Subject would require a Treatise by it self To add one word more to my former Discourse I would advise the Ladies no more to call that Honour which is but their Duty Vt enim consuetudo loquitur id solum dicitur honestum quod est populari fama gloriosum According to the vulgar Chat which only approves that for laudable that is glorious by the publick Voice their Duty is the mark their Honour but the outward rind Neither would I advise them to give that excuse for payment of their denial for I presuppose that their Intentions their Desire and Will which are things wherein their Honour is not at all concern'd forasmuch as nothing appears without are much better regulated than the effects Quae quia non liceat non facit illa facit She who not sins 'cause it unlawful is In being therefore Chaste has done amiss The Offence both towards God and in the Conscience would be as great to desire as to do it And besides they are Actions so private and secret of themselves as would be easily enough kept from the Knowledge of others wherein the Honour Consists if they had not another respect to their Duty and the Affection they bear to Chastity for it self Every Woman of Honour will much rather choose to lose her Honour than to hurt her Conscience CHAP. XVII Of Presumption THere is another sort of Glory which is the having too good an opinion of our own Worth 'T is an inconsiderate Affection with which we flatter our selves and that represents us to our selves other than we truly are Like the passion of Love that lends beauties and graces to the Person it does embrace and that makes those who are caught with it with a deprav'd and corrupt Judgement consider the thing they love other and more perfect than it is I would not nevertheless for fear of failing on the other side that a man should not know himself aright or think himself less than he is the Judgement ought in all things to keep it self upright and just 't is all the reason in the world he should discern in himself as well as in others what Truth sets before him if it be Caesar let him boldly think himself the greatest Captain in the world We are nothing but Ceremony Ceremony carries us away and we leave the Substance of things we hold by the Branches and quit the Trunk We have taught the Ladies to blush when they hear that but nam'd that they are not at all afraid to do we dare not call our members by their right names and are not afraid to employ them in all sorts of Debauches Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural and we obey it Reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill and no body obeys it I find my self here fetter'd by the Laws of Ceremony for it neither permits a man to speak well of himself nor ill We will leave her there for this time They whom fortune call it good or ill has made to pass their Lives in some eminent degree may by their publick Actions manifest what they are but they whom she has only employed in the crowd and of whom no body will say a word unless they speak themselves are to be excus'd if they take the boldness to speak of themselves to such whose Interest it is to know them by the Example of Lucilius Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim Credebat libris neque si malè cesserat usquam Decurrens alio neque si benè quo fit ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita senis His way was in his Books to speak his mind As freely as his Secrets he would tell To a try'd Friend and took it ill or well He held his Custom Hence it came to pass The old man's Life is there as in a Glass He always committed to Paper his Actions and Thoughts and there pourtray'd himself such as he found himself to be Nec id Rutilio Scauro citra fidem aut obtrectationi fuit Nor were Rutilius or Scaurus misbeliev'd or condemn'd for so doing I remember then that from my Infancy there was observ'd in me I know not what kind of Carriage and Behaviour that seem'd to relish of Pride and Arrogancy I will say this by the way that it is not inconvenient to have Propensions so proper and incorporated into us that we have not the means to feel and be aware of them And of such natural Inclinations the Body will retain a certain bent without our Knowledge or Consent It was an Affectation confederate with
where after having joyfully feasted their Friends and Acquaintance they laid them down with so great Resolution that Fire being apply'd to it they were never seen to stir either Hand or Foot and after this manner one of them Calanus by Name expir'd in the presence of the whole Army of Alexander the Great and he was neither reputed holy nor happy amongst them that did not thus destroy himself dismissing his Soul purg'd and purified by the Fire after having consum'd all that was earthy and mortal This constant premeditation of the whole Life is that which makes the wonder Amongst our other Controversies that of Fatum is also crept in and to tye things to come and even our own Wills to a certain and inevitable Necessity we are yet upon this Argument of time past Since God foresees that all things shall so fall out as doubtless he does it must then necessarily follow that they must so fall out to which our Masters reply that the seeing any thing come to pass as we do and as God himself also does for all things being present with him he rather sees than foresees is not to compell an Event that is we see because things do fall out but things do not fall out because we see Events cause Knowledge but Knowledge does not cause Events That which we see happen does happen but it might have hapned otherwise and God in the Catalogue of the Causes of Events which he has in his Prescience has also those which we call accidental and unvoluntary which depend upon the Liberty he has given our free Will and knows that we do amiss because we would do so I have seen a great many Commanders encourage their Souldiers with this fatal Necessity for if our time be limited to a certain hour neither the Enemies shot nor our own Boldness nor our Flight and Cowardize can either shorten or prolong our Lives This is easily said but see who will be so perswaded and if it be so that a strong and lively Faith draws along with it Actions of the same certainly this Faith we so much brag of is very light in this Age of ours unless the Contempt it has of Works makes it disdain their Company So it is that to this very purpose the Sire de Joinville as credible a Witness as any other whatever tells us of the Bedoins a Nation amongst the Saracens with whom the King St. Lewis had to do in the Holy-land that they in their Religion did so firmly believe the number of every mans days to be from all eternity prefix'd and set down by an inevitable Decree that they went naked to the Wars excepting a Turkish Sword and their Bodies only cover'd with a white Linnen Cloth and for the greatest Curse they could invent when they were angry this was always in their Mouths Accursed be thou as he that arms himself for fear of Death This is a Testimony of Faith very much beyond ours And of this sort is that also that two Religious men of Florence gave in our Fathers days Being engag'd in some Controversie of Learning they agreed to go both of them into the Fire in the sight of all the People each for the verification of his Argument and all things were already prepar'd and the things just upon the point of Execution when it was interrupted by an unexpected accident A young Turkish Lord having perform'd a notable Exploit in his own Person in the sight of both Armies that of Amurath and that of Hunniades ready to joyn Battel being ask'd by Amurath who in so tender and unexperienc'd years for it was his first sally into Arms had inspir'd him with so brave a Courage reply'd that his chief Tutor for Valour was a Hare For being said he one day a hunting I found a Hare sitting and though I had a brace of excellent Grey-hounds with me yet methought it would be best for sureness to make use of my Bow for she sat very fair I then fell to letting fly my Arrows and shot forty that I had in my Quiver not only without hurting but without starting her from her form At last I slipt my Dogs after her but to no more purpose than I had shot by which I understood that she had been secur'd by her Destiny and that neither Darts nor Swords can wound without the permission of Fate which we can neither hasten nor defer This Story which I am going to tell may serve by the way to let us see how flexible our Reason is to all sorts of Images A Person of great Years Name Dignity and Learning boasted to me to have been induc'd to a certain very important mutation in his Faith by a strange whimsical Incitation and otherwise so very ill concluding that I thought it much stronger being taken the contrary way He call'd it a Miracle I look upon it quite otherwise The Turkish Historians say that the perswasion those of their Nation have imprinted in them of the fatal and unalterable Prescription of their Days does manifestly conduce to the giving them great assurance in Dangers and I know a great Prince who makes very fortunate use of it whether it be that he does really believe it or that he makes it his excuse for so wonderfully hazarding himself provided Fortune be not too soon weary of her Favour to him There has not happened in our memory a more admirable effect of Resolution than in those two who conspir'd the Death of the Prince of Orange 'T is to be wonder'd at how the second that executed it could ever be persuaded into an attempt wherein his Companion who had done his utmost had had so ill Success and after the same Method and with the same Arms to go attaque a Lord arm'd with a late Instruction of distrust powerful in followers and bodily Strength in his own Hall amidst his Guards and in a City wholly at his Devotion He doubtless employ'd a very resolute Arm and a Courage enflam'd with furious Passions A Poignard is surer for striking home but by reason that more motion and force of hand is required than with a Pistol the Blow is more subject to be put by or hindred That this man did not run to a certain Death I make no great doubt for the hopes any one could flatter him withall could not find place in any sober Understanding and the Conduct of his Exploit does sufficiently manifest that he had no want of that no more than of Courage The motives of so powerful a Perswasion may be divers for our fancy does what it will both with it self and us The Execution that was done near Orleans was nothing like this there was in that more of Chance than Vigour the wound was not mortal if Fortune had not made it so and to attempt to shoot on Horse-back and at a great distance and at one whose body was in motion by the moving of his Horse was the attempt of a man
one of his Enemies who was arm'd from Head to Foot so great a blow with his Sword that he clave him down from his Crown to his seat so that the Body was divided into two parts In this Example I find no great Miracle nor do not admit of the Salvo with which he excuses Plutarch to have added this Word as 't is said to suspend our Belief for unless it be in things received by Authority and the reverence to Antiquity or Religion he would never have himself admitted or enjoyned us things incredible in themselves to believe and that this Word as 't is said is not put in this place to that effect is easie to be seen because he elsewhere relates to us upon this Subject of the Patience of the Lacedaemonian Children Examples happening in his Time more unlikely to prevail upon our Faith as what Cicero also has testified before him as having as he says been upon the Place that even to their Times there were Children found who in the tryal of Patience they were put to before the Altar of Diana suffered themselves to be there whip'd till the Blood run down all over their Bodies not only without crying out but without so much as a Groan and some till they there voluntarily lost their Lives and that which Plutarch also amongst an hundred other Witnesses relates that at a Sacrifice a burning Coal being fall'n into the sleeve of a Lacedaemonian Boy as he was censing he suffered his whole Arm to be burn'd till the smell of the broyling flesh was perceiv'd by the Assistants There was nothing according to their Custom wherein their Reputation was more concerned nor for which they were to undergo more blame and disgrace than in being taken in Theft I am so fully satisfied of the greatness of those Peoples Courage that his story does not only not appear to me as to Bodinus incredible but I do not find it so much as rare and strange The Spartan History is full of a thousand more cruel and rare examples and is indeed all Miracles in Comparison of this Marcellinus concerning theft reports that in his time there was no sort of Torments which could compell the Egyptians when taken in the manner though a People very much addicted to it so much as to tell their Name A Spanish Peasant being put to the Wrack about the Accomplices of the murder of the Pretor Lucius Piso cried out in the height of the Torment that his Friends should not leave him but look on in all assurance and that no Pain had the Power to force from him one word of Confession which was all they could get the first day the next day as they were leading him a second time to another Tryal strongly disengaging himself from the Hands of his Guards he furiously run his Head against a Wall and beat out his Brains Epicharis having tir'd and glutted the Cruelty of Nero's Yeomen of the Guard and undergone their Fire their beating and their Engines a whole day together without one Syllable of Confession of her Conspiracy being the next day brought again to the Wrack with her Limbs almost torn to pieces conveyed the Lace of her Robe with a running noose over one of the Arms of her Chair and suddenly slipping her Head into it with the weight of her own Body hang'd herself who having the Courage to dye after that manner is it not to be presum'd that she purposely lent her Life to the Tryal of her Fortitude the day before to mock the Tyrant and encourage others to the like attempt And whoever will enquire of our Argoulets of the Experiences they have had in our Civil-Wars will find effects of Patience and Obstinacy in this miserable Age of ours and amongst the soft and effeminate Rabble worthy to be compar'd with those we have now related of the Spartan Virtue I know there have been simple Peasants amongst us who have endur'd the Soles of their Feet to be broil'd upon a Grid-iron their Fingers-ends to be writhen off with the Cock of a Pistol and their bloody Eyes squeez'd out of their Heads by force of a Cord twisted about their Brows before they would so much as consent to ransom I have seen one left stark naked for dead in a Ditch his Neck black and swell'd with a Halter yet about it with which they had drag'd him all Night at a Horses Tail his Body wounded in a hundred Places with stabs of Daggers had been given him not to kill him but to put him to Pain and to affright him who had endur'd all this and even to being speechless and insensible resolv'd as he himself told me rather to dye a thousand deaths as indeed as to matter of suffering he already had before he would pay a penny and yet he was one of the richest Husbandmen of all the Country How many have been seen patiently to suffer themselves to be burnt and roasted for Opinions taken upon trust from others and by them not at all understood I have known a hundred and a hundred Women for Gascony has a certain Prerogative for Obstinacy whom you might sooner have made eat Fire than forsake an Opinion they had conceiv'd in Anger They are more exasperated by blows and constraint And he that made the Story of the Woman who in defiance of all Correction Threats and Bastinadoes ceast not to call her Husband lowzy Knave and that being plung'd over Head and Ears in Water could yet lift her Hands above her Head and make a sign of cracking Lice fein'd a Tale of which in truth we every day see a manifest image in the Obstinacy of Women And Obstinacy is the Sister of Constancy at least in Vigour and Stability We are not to judge what is possible and what is not according to what is credible and incredible to our Apprehension as I have said elsewhere and it is a great Fault and yet that most men are guilty of which nevertheless I do not mention with any Reflection upon Bodinus to make a difficulty of believing that in another which they could not or would not do themselves Every one thinks that the sovereign stamp of humane Nature is imprinted in him and that from it all others must take their Rule and that all proceedings which are not like his are feign'd and false Is any thing of anothers Actions or Faculties propos'd to him The first thing he calls to the Consultation of his Judgment is his own Example and as matters go with him so they must of Necessity do with all the World besides O dangerous and intollerable Folly For my part I consider some men as infinitely beyond me especially amongst the Antients and yet though I clearly discern my inability to come near them by a thousand paces I do not forbear to keep them in sight and to judge of what does elevate them so of which I also perceive some seeds in my self as I
Consciences though never so much commanded to it by them themselves In such Commissions there is an evident mark of Ignominy and Condemnation And he who gives it does at the same time accuse you and gives it if you understand it right for a Burthen and a Punishment As much as the publick Affairs are better'd by your Exploit so much are your own the worse and the better you behave your self in it 't is so much the worse for your self And it will be no new thing nor peradventure without some colour of Justice if the same Person ruin you who set you on work If Treachery can be in any case excusable it must be only so when it is practis'd to chastise and betray Treachery There are Examples enow of Treacheries not only rejected but chastised and punish'd by those in Favour of whom they were undertaken Who is ignorant of Fabricius his Sentence against Pyrrhus his Physician But this we also find recorded that some Persons have commanded a thing who afterward have severely reveng'd the Execution of it upon him they had employ'd rejecting the Reputation of so unbridled an Authority and disowning so lewd and so base a Servitude and Obedience Jaropele Duke of Russia tamper'd with a Gentleman of Hungary to betray Boleslaus King of Poland either by killing him or by giving the Russians opportunity to do him some notable Mischief This Gallant goes presently in hand with it was more assiduous in the Service of that King than before so that he obtain'd the honour to be of his Council and one of the chiefest in his Trust with these Advantages and taking an opportune occasion of his Masters absence he betray'd Visilicia a great and rich City to the Russians which was entirely sack'd and burn't and not only all the Inhabitants of both Sexes young and old put to the Sword but moreover a great number of Neighbouring Gentry that he had drawn thither to that wicked end Jaropele his Revenge being thus satisfied and his Anger appeas'd which was not however without pretence for Boleslaus had highly offended him and after the same manner and sated with the effect of this Treachery coming to consider the foulness of it with a sound Judgment and clear from Passion look'd upon what had been done with so much horror and remorse that he caus'd the Eyes to be boar'd out and the Tongue and shameful Parts to be cut off of him that had perform'd it Antigonus perswaded Agaraspides's Souldiers to betray Eumenes their General his Adversary into his hands But after he had caus'd him so deliver'd to be slain he would himself be the Commissioner of the Divine Justice for the Punishment of so detestable a Crime and committed them into the hands of the Governour of the Province with express command by all means to destroy and bring them all to an evil end So that of all that great number of men not so much as one ever return'd again into Macedonia The better he had been serv'd the more wickedly he judg'd it to be and meriting greater Punishment The Slave that betray'd the place where his Master P. Sulpitius lay conceal'd was according to the promise of Sylla's proscription manumitted for his Pains but according to the promise of the publick Justice which was free from any such Engagement he was thrown headlong from the Tarpeian Rock And our King Clouis instead of the Arms of Gold he had promised them caus'd three of Canacre's Servants to be hang'd after they had betray'd their Master to him though he had debauch'd them to it They hang'd them with the purse of their Reward about their Necks After having satisfied their second and special faith they satisfie the general and first Mahomet the second being resolv'd to rid himself of his Brother out of Jealousie of State according to the Practice of the Ottoman Family he employ'd one of his Officers in the Execution who pouring a quantity of Water too fast into him choak'd him This being done to expiate the Murther he deliver'd the Murtherer into the hands of the Mother of him he had so caus'd to be put to Death for they were but half Brothers by the Fathers side who in his Presence ript up the Murtherers Bosom and with her own revenging hands rifled his Breast for his Heart tore it out and threw it to the Dogs And even to the vilest Dispositions it is the sweetest thing imaginable having once got the trick in a vicious Action to foist in all security into it some shew of Virtue and Justice as by way of Compensation and Conscientious Remorse To which may be added that they look upon the Ministers of such horrid Crimes as upon People that reproach them with them and think by their Deaths to race out the Memory and Testimony of such Proceedings Or if perhaps you are rewarded not to frustrate the publick Necessity of that extream and desperate Remedy he that does it cannot for all that if he be not such himself but look upon you as a cursed and execrable fellow and conclude you a greater Traytor than he does against whom you are so for he tries the Lewdness of your Disposition by your own hands where he cannot possibly be deceiv'd you having no Object of preceding hatred to move you to such an Act. But he employs you as they do condemn'd Malefactors in Executions of Justice an Office as necessary as dishonest Besides the baseness of such Commissions there is moreover a Prostitution of Conscience Being the Daughter of Sejanus could not be put to death by the Law of Rome because she was a Virgin she was to make it lawful first ravish'd by the Hang-man and then strangled not only his hand but his Soul is slave to the publick Convenience When Amurath the first more grievously to punish his Subjects who had taken part in the Parricide Rebellion of his Son ordain'd that their nearest Kindred should assist in the Execution I find it very handsome in some of them to have rather chosen to be unjustly thought guilty of the Parricide of another than to serve Justice by a Parricide of their own And whereas I have seen at the taking of some little Fort by assault in my time some Rascals who to save their own Lives would consent to hang their Friends and Companions I look upon them to be in a worse Condition than those that were hang'd 'T is said that Wittoldus Prince of Lituania introduc'd into that Nation that the Criminal condemn'd to death should with his own hand execute the Sentence thinking it strange that a third Person innocent of the Fault should be made guilty of Homicide A Prince when by some urgent Circumstance or some impetuous and unforeseen accident that very much concerns his Estate compell'd to forfeit his Word and break his Faith or otherwise forc'd from his ordinary Duty ought to attribute this Necessity to a lash of the Divine Rod Vice it is not for
evade it This other lesson is too high and too difficult 'T is for men of the first Form of knowledge purely to insist upon the thing to consider and judge of it It appertains to one sole Socrates only to entertain Death with an indifferent Countenance to grow acquainted with it and to sport with it he seeks no consolation out of the thing it self dying appears to him a natural and indifferent accident 't is there that he fixes his sight and resolution without looking elsewhere The Disciples of Hegesias that pine themselves to death animated thereunto by his fine Lectures which were so frequent that King Ptolomy order'd he should be forbidden to entertain his followers with such homicide Doctrines those People do not consider death it self neither do they judge of it it is not there that they fix their Thoughts they run towards and aim at a new Being The poor wretches that we see brought upon the Scaffold full of ardent devotion and therein as much as in them lies employing all their Senses their Ears in hearing the instructions are given them their Eyes and Hands lifted up towards Heaven their Voices in loud Prayers with a vehement and continual emotion are doubtless things very commendable and proper for such a necessity We ought to commend them for their Devotion but not properly for their constancy They shun the encounter they divert their thoughts from the consideration of death as Children are amus'd with some Toy or other when the Chirurgion is going to give them a prick with his Lancet I have seen some who casting sometimes their eyes upon the dreadful Instruments of death round about have fainted and furiously turn'd their thoughts another way Such as are to pass a formidable Precipice are advis'd either to shut their eyes or to look another way Subrius Flavius being by Nero's command to be put to death and by the hand of Niger both of them great Captains when they led him to the place appointed for his Execution seeing the hole that Niger had caus'd to be hollow'd to put him into ill-favour'dly contriv'd Neither is this said he turning to the Souldiers who guarded him according to Military Discipline And to Niger who exhorted him to keep his head firm do but thou strike as firmly said he And he very well fore-saw what would follow when he said so for Niger's arm so trembled that he had several blows at his head before he could cut it off This man seems to have had his thoughts rightly fix'd upon the subject he that dyes in a Battel with his Sword in his hand does not then think of death he feels nor considers it not the ardour of the Fight diverts his thoughts another way An honest Man of my acquaintance falling as he was fighting a Duel at single Rapier and feeling himself nail'd to the earth by nine or ten thrusts of his Enemy every one present call'd to him to think of his Conscience but he has since told me that though he very well heard what they said it nothing mov'd him and that he never thought of any thing but how to disengage and revenge himself He afterwards kill'd his Man in that very Duel He who brought L. Syllanus the sentence of Death did him a very great kindness in that having receiv'd his answer that he was well prepar'd to dye but not by base hands he run upon him with his Souldiers to force him and as he naked as he was obstinately defended himself with his fists and feet he made him lose his Life in the dispute by that means dissipating and diverting in a sudden and furious Rage the painful apprehension of the lingring Death to which he was design'd We always think of something else either the hope of a better Life comforts and supports us or the hope of our Childrens Valour or the future glory of our Name or the leaving behind the evils of this Life or the Vengeance that threatens those who are the causers of our death administers Consolation to us Spero equidem mediis si quid pia numina possunt Supplicia hausurum scopulis nomine Dido Saepe vocaturum Audiam haec manes veniet mihi fama subimos Sure if the Gods have any power at all Split on a Rock thou shalt on Dido call thy Fortunes I shall know By Fame convey'd me to the shades below Xenophon was sacrificing with a Crown upon his Head when one came to bring him News of the Death of his Son Gryllus slain in the Battel of Mantinea At the first surprize of the News he threw his Crown to the Ground but understanding by the sequel of the Narrative the manner of a most brave and valiant Death he took it up and replac'd it upon his Head Epicurus himself at his Death consolates himself upon the Utility and Eternity of his Writings Omnes clari nobilitati Labores fiunt tolerabiles All Labours that are illustrious and renown'd are supportable And the same Wound the same Fatigue is not says Xenophon so intolerable to a General of an Army as to a common Souldier Epaminondas dyed much more cheerful having been inform'd that the Victory remain'd to him Haec sunt solatia haec fomenta summorum Dolorum These are lenitives and fomentations to the greatest Pains And such other Circumstances amuse divert and turn our thoughts from the consideration of the thing in it self Even the Arguments of Philosophy are always diverting and putting by the Matter so as scarce to rub upon the Sore The greatest man of the first Philosophical School and Superintendent over all the rest the great Zeno against Death forms this Syllogism No Evil is honourable but Death is honourable Therefore Death is no Evil. Against Drunkenness this No one commits his Secrets to a Drunkard but every one commits his Secrets to a Wise Man therefore a wise man is no Drunkard Is this to hit the white I love to see that these great and leading Souls cannot rid themselves of our Company As perfect men as they would be they are yet but simple men Revenge is a sweet Passion of great and natural impression I discern it well enough though I have no manner of Experience of it From which not long ago to divert a young Prince I did not tell him that he must to him who had struck him upon the one Cheek turn the other upon the account of Charity nor go about to represent to him the tragical Events that Poetry attributes to this Passion I did not touch upon that string but made it my Business to make him relish the Beauty of a contrary Image and by representing to him what Honour Esteem and good Will he would acquire by Clemency and good Nature diverted him to Ambition Thus a man is to deal in such Cases If your Passion of Love be too violent disperse it say they and they say true for I have oft try'd it with Advantage break
such a Person I do quite contrary and amongst so many borrow'd things am glad if I can steal one disguising and altering it for some new service at the hazard of having it said that 't is for want of understanding its natural use I give it some particular address of my own hand to the end it may not be so absolutely strange These set their thefts to shew and value themselves upon them And also they have more credit with the Laws than with me We Naturalists think that there is a great and incomparable preference in the honour of Invention to that of Quotation If I would have spoke by Learning I had spoke sooner I had writ in a time nearer to my Studies when I had more Wit and better Memory and would sooner have trusted to the vigour of that Age than this would I have profess'd Writing And what if this gracious Favour which Fortune has lately offer'd me upon the account of this work had befall'n me in such a time of my Life instead of this wherein 't is equally desirable to possess and ready to lose Two of my Acquaintance great men in this faculty have in my Opinion lost half in refusing to publish at forty years old that they might stay till threescore Maturity has its defects as well as verdure and worse and old age is as unfit for this kind of business as any other Who commits his Decrepitude to the Press plays the fool if he think to squeeze any thing out thence that does not relish of Dotage and Stupidity Our Wits grow costive and thick in growing old I deliver my Ignorance in pomp and state and my Learning meagerly and poorly this accidentally and accessorily that principally and expresly and write purposely of nothing but nothing nor of any Science but that of Inscience I have chosen a time when my Life which I am to give an account of lies wholly before me what remains holds more of Death And of my death only should I find it a prating death as others do I would moreover give an account at my departure Socrates was a perfect Exemplar in all great Qualities and I am vext that he had so deform'd a Body as is said and so unsuitable to the Beauty of his Soul himself being so amorous and such an admirer of Beauty Nature surely did him wrong There is nothing more likely than a conformity and relation of the Body to the Soul Ipsi animi magni refert quali in corpore locati sint multi enim è corpore exâ—stunt quae acuunt montem multa quae obtundant It is of great consequence in what Bodies Souls are plac'd for many things spring from the Body that sharpen the Mind and many that blunt and dull it This speaks of an unnatural ugliness and deformity of Limbs but we call that ill-favour'dness also an unseemliness at first sight which is principally lodg'd in the Face and distasts us by the Complexion a Spot a rude Countenance sometimes from some inexplicable cause in members nevertheless of good simmetry and perfect The Deformity that cloth'd a very beautiful Soul in Boetia was of this Predicament That superficial ugliness which nevertheless is always the most imperious is of least prejudice to the state of the Mind and of little certainty in the Opinion of men The other which by a more proper name is call'd a more substantial Deformity strikes deeper in Not every Shooe of smooth sliming Leather but every Shooe neatly made shews the interior shape of the Foot As Socrates said of his that it accus'd just so much in his Soul had he not corrected it by institution but in saying so I believe he did but scoff as his Custom was and never so excellent a Soul made it self I cannot oft enough repeat how great an esteem I have for Beauty that potent and advantageous Quality He call'd it a short Tyranny and Plato the Priviledge of Nature We have nothing that excells it in Reputation it has the first place in the commerce of men it presents it self to meet 〈◊〉 seduces and prepossesses our Judgments with great Authority and wonderful Impression Phrâ—ne had lost her Cause in the hands of an excellent Advocate if opening her Robe she had not corrupted her Judges by the lustre of her Beauty And I find that Cyrus Alexanâ—nder and Caesar the three Masters of the World never neglected Beauty in their greatest Affairs no more did the first Scipio The same word in Greek signifies both fair and good and the Holy-Ghost oft calls those good whom he means fair I should willingly maintain the priority in things call'd goods according to the Song which Plato calls an idle thing taken out of some of the ancient Poets of Health Beauty and Riches Aristotle says that the right of Command appertains to the beautiful and when there is a Person whose Beauty comes near the Images of the Gods that then Veneration is likewise due To him who askt him why People ofter and longer frequented the company of handsome Persons That Question said he is not to be askt by any but one that is blind The most and the greateâ—â— Philosophers paid for their schooling and acquired Wisdom by the Favour and Mediatioâ— Beauty Not only in the men that serve me but also in the Beasts I consider them within two fingers breadth of Goodness And yet I fancy that those Features and Moulds of a Face and those Lineaments by which men guess at our internal Complexions and our Fortunes to come is a thing that does not very directly and simply lye under the Chapter of Beauty and Deformity no more than every good odour and serenity of Air promises Health nor all fogg and stink Infection and a time of Pestilence Such as accuse Ladies of contradicting their Beauty by their Manners do not always hit right for in a Face which is none of the best there may lye some air of probity and trust as on the contrary I have seen betwixt two beautiful Eyes menaces of a dangerous and malignant Nature There are some Physiognomies that are favourable so that in a crowd of victorious Enemies you shall presently choose amongst men you never saw before one rather than another to whom to surrender and with whom to intrust your Life and yet not properly upon the Consideration of Beauty A mans look is but a feeble warranty and yet it is something considerable too And if I were to lash them I would most severely scourge the wicked ones who belye and betray the promises that Nature has planted in their Fore-heads I should with great Severity punish Malice in a mild and gentle Aspect It seems as if there were some happy and some unhappy Faces and I believe there is some Art in distinguishing affable from simple Faces severe from rude malicious from pensive scornful from melancholick and such other bordering Qualities There are Beauties which are not only fair but sour and
others that are not only sweet but more than that faint To prognosticate future adventures is a thing that I shall leave undecided I have as to my own concern as I have said elsewhere simply and nakedly embrac'd this ancient Rule That we cannot fail in following Nature and that the sovereign Precept is to conform our selves to her I have not as Socrates did corrected my natural Complexions by the force of Reason and have not in the least molested Inclination by Art I have let my self go as I came I contend not My two principal parts live of their own accord in Peace and good Intelligence but my Nurses Milk thanks be to God was tollerably wholsome and good Let me say this by the way that I see a certain Image of scolastick Honesty almost only in use amongst us in greater esteem than 't is really worth a slave to Precepts and fetter'd with hope and fear I would have it such as that Laws and Religions should not make but perfect and authorise it that finds it has wherewithall to support it self without help born and rooted in us from the seed of universal Reason and imprinted in every man by Nature That Reason which rectified Socrates from his vicious bent renders him obedient to Gods and Men of Authority in his City courageous in Death not because his Soul is immortal but because he is mortal 'T is a Doctrine ruinous to all Government and much more hurtful than ingenious and subtle which persuades the People that a religious belief is alone sufficient and without manners to satisfie the Divine Justice Usance demonstrates to us a vast distinction betwixt Devotion and Conscience I have a tolerable aspect both in Form and Interpretation Quid dâ—xi habere mâ— Iuro habui Chreme Heu tantum attriti corporis ossa vidâ—s Have did I say No Chremes I had onâ—â— Of a worn Body thou but see'st the Bones and that makes a quite contrary shew to that of Socrates It has oft befall'n me that upon the mere credit of my presence and the air of my face Persons who had no manner of knowledge of me have put a very great confidence in me whether in their own affairs or mine And I have in foreign Parts obtain'd favours both singular and rare but amongst the rest these two Examples are peradventure worth particular relation A certain Person deliberated to surprize my House and me in it his Artifice was to come to my Gates alone and to be importunate to be let in I knew him by name and had reason to repose a confidence in him as being my neighbour and something related to me I â—aus'd the Gates to be open'd to him as I do to every one where I found his Horse panting and all on a foaâ—â— He presently popt me in the mouth with this Flim-flam That about half a League off he had unluckily met with a certain enemy of his whom I also knew and had heard of their quarrel that this enemy had given him a very brisk chace and that having been surpriz'd in disorder and his Party being too weak he was fled to my Gates for refuge And that he was in great trouble for his followers whom he said he concluded to be all either dead or taken I innocently did my best to comfort assure and refresh him Presently after comes four or five of his Souldiers that presented themselves in the same countenance and affright to get in too and after them more and still more very well mounted and arm'd to the number of five and twenty or thirty pretending that they had the Enemy at their heels This mystery began a little to awake my suspiâ—ion I was not ignorant what an Age I liv'd in how much my House might be envy'd and I had several examples of others of my Acquaintance who had miscarried after that manner So it was that knowing there was nothing to be got in having begun to do a courtesie unless I went through with it and I could not disengage my self from them without spoiling all I let my self go the most natural and simple way as I alwayes do and invited them all to come in And in truth I am naturally very little inclin'd to suspition and distrust I willingly incline towards excuse and the gentlest interpretation I take men according to the common order and no more believe those perverse and unnatural inclinations unless convinc'd by manifest evidence than I do Monsters and Miracles and am moreover a man who willingly commit my self to Fortune and throw my self headlong into her arms and have hitherto found more reason to applaud than to condemn my self for so doing having ever found her more sollicitious of and more a friend to my affairs than I am my self There are some actions in my Life wherein the Conduct may justly be call'd difficult or if they please prudent Yet of those supposing the third part to have been my own doubtless the other two Thirds were absolutely and solely hers We are methinks too blame in that we do not enough trust Heaven with our affairs and pretend to more from our own Conduct than appertains to us And therefore it is that our designs so oft miscarry Heaven is displeas'd at the extent that we attribute to the right of humane Prudence above his and cuts it shorter by how much the more we amplifie it The last comers kept themselves on horseback in my Court whilst their Leader was with me in the Parlour who would not have his Horse set up in the Stable saying he would immediately retire so soon as he should have news of the rest of his men He saw himself Master of his Enterprize and nothing now remain'd but the execution He has since several times said for he was not asham'd to tell the story himself that my Countenance and freedom had snatch'd the Treachery out of his hands He again mounted his horse his followers having continually their Eyes intent upon him to see when he would give the sign very much astonish'd to see him march away and leave his prey behind him Another time relying upon I know not what Truce newly publish'd in the Army I took a Journey through a very tickle Countrey I had not rid far but I was discover'd and two or three Parties of Horse from several places were sent out to take me one of them the third day overtook me where I was charg'd by fifteen or twenty Gentlemen in Vizors followed at a distance by a Band of Argoulets Here was I surrendred and taken withdrawn into the thick of a neigh'bring Forest dismounted sob'd my Trunks rifled my Cabinet taken and my Horses and Equipage divided amongst new Masters We had in this Copse a very long Contest about my Ransom which they set so high that it very well appear'd I was not known to them They were moreover in a very great debate about my Life and in truth there were several circumstances that threatned me
with God Cicer. de Nat. Deo lib. 2. Lucret. l. 5. Manil. l. 3. Id. lib. 1. Id. lib. 4. Id. ibid. Cic. de Nat. Deo l. 1. Sen de ira lib. 2. cap. 9. Communication of Beasts amongst themselves Lucret. l. 5. Ibid. Aminta del Tasso Nature above Art Lucret. l. 5. The Skin of a Man sufficient proof against Weather The Ancients us'd to wear their Bosom open The swathing of Infants not necessary Ibid. Lucret. l. 2. The Natural Arms of Men. The Elephants Teeth Refibility attributed to Beasts Lucret. l. 5. Why Men naturally deaf speak not Ibid. Ibid. Tib. l. 1. Eleg. 10. Obsequies of the Scythian Kings Juvenal Sat. 14. Elephants wearing Cymbals Elephants taught to dance A Story of a Magpye at Rome The Cunning of a Dog to get the Oyl out of a Jar. The Subtlety of Elephants to disengage one another An Elephant discovers the Cheet of his Keeper Juvenal sat p. Mart. l. 4. Epig. 30. Elephants participate of Religion Communication of Ants. Change of colour in the Cameleon and Polypus Augurie the most certain way of Prediction Plutarch Lucret. l. 4. Ibid. The love of Dogs to their Masters Hor. lib. 2. Sat. 2. Animals more regular than we Ovid. Metam lib. 10. Wars betwixt Bees Virg. Georg. lib. 4. Lucret. lib. 2. Horat. lib. 2. Epist. 2. Laws of Asia about the Loves of Paris and Helen Mart. l. 11. Epig. 21. Aeneid lib. 7. Virg. Aen. lib. 4. Virg. Geor lib. 4. The Seige of Tamly rais'd by Bees Dogs revenge the Death of their Masters The Fidelity of a Dog in persuing a Sacrilegious person The Gratitude of a Lyon towards a Slave Weeping of Beasts for the loss of those we love Virg. Eneid lib. 11. Society amongst Beasts A Fish that chews Magnanimity of an Indian Dog Repentance of an Elephant Marvellous condition of the Halcyons The structure of their Nests and the matter whereof they are built Lucret. l. 4. Ibid. Ibid. Propert. lib. 2. Eleg. 13. Beauty of the Indians White Teeth despis'd Senec. Epist. 124. Ovid. Met. lib. 2. Cic. de Nat. Deor. lib. 1. ex Ennio Ovid. de Rem Amor. l. 2. Health the best and richest Gift of Nature Cicero 's two Potions Cicero de Nat. Deor. l. 3. simile Horat. Ep. 8. Juv. Sat. 14. Humility and Submission the Parents of Virtue Gen. 3. Coloss. c. 2. Horat. l. 1. Epist. 1. Lucr. l. 5. Temerity and Presumption of some Philosophers Cicero de Nat. Deor. l. 3. Cic. Tusc l. 2. Diseases caus'd by Imagination Ariosto Lucret. Cicer. Thus. l. 2. Cicer. Thus. l. 3. Proverb Cicero de Fin. l. 2. Cic. de Fin. lib. 1. Lucr. l. 3. Senec. Oed. Act. 3. Horat. Ep. ib. 1. Horat. l. 2. Epist. 2. Learning and Wisdom accompanied with Trouble Cicer. Thus. l. 2. Horat. l. 2. Epist. 2. Luc. l. 3. Plutarch How Love is to be cured The Lacedemonian Policy without Letters The new World without Law or Magistrate Ariosto Can. 15. Sir John Harrrington Trans Socrates apud Stobaeum Div. Aug. l. 2. de ord Tacit. de mor. Germ. Cice in Freg Lucr. l. 5. Cicer. de Nat. Deorum 1 Cor. Ch. 1. Ver. 19 20 21. Cicer. Acad. lib. 1. Cicero Acad. Lucret l. 3. Lucret. l. 4. Mr. Creech Ataraxie what Doubt and suspence of Judgment the principal Effect of Pyrrhonisme Cicer. Acad. The Immortality of the Soul maintained by Aristotle Cicer. de Divin l. 61. Psal. 94. Cicero Thus lib. 1. Cicero in Timaeo Cicero de Nat. Deo lib. 1. Obscure Lueret l. 1. The liberal Art despis'd Sal. de Bello Jug * Call'd Wise Women in French Plutarch Wisdom c. 9. v. 14. Seneca Epist. 89. Incerto What the Knowledg of God was amongst the Pagans The unknown God ador'd at Athens Numa 's Religion Ronsard Cicer. de Divin l. 2. ex Ennio Lucret. lib. 5. Cicer. de Nat. Deo lib. 2. Per. Sat. 2. Aeneid l. 6. 1 Cor. 2.9 Ovid. Trist. l. 3. El. 11. Lucret. l. 1 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Aeneid lib. 10. Zamolxis the God of the Getes Sacrifice of 14 young men Lucr. l. 1. Carthaginian Children sacrific'd to Saturn Ibid. Cicero de Nat. Deo lib. 3. Div. Aug. de Cicitat Dei lib. 6. cap. 10. Lucr. l. 1. 1. Cor. c. 1. v. 25. Lucr. l. 6. Lucr. l. 2. Ibid. Ibid. Motion of things below denyed Hor. Car. l. 3. Ode 29. Lord Fanshaw Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 2. Cicero de Nat. Deor. lib. 3. Cicer. de Nat. Deo lib. 1. Rom. 1. v. 22 23. Luan l. 1. Lucan l. 1. Heaven God's Palace The Government of the World Hor. l. 2. Sat. 3. Cicero de Nat. Deor. lib. 1. Ibid. Hor. l. 2. Ode 12. Aeneid l. 2. Liv. l. 27. Aen. l. 1. Cicero de Div. l. 2. Ovid. Fast. lib. 3. Ibid. l. 1. Ovid. Met. lib. 1. Ovid. Me. l. 8. Aug. de Civit. Dei l. 4. cap. 27. Geometry how far useful Ovid. Met. lib. 2. Varro in Catal. Cicero in Academ Cicero de Divinat lib. 2. Hor. lib. 1. Epist. 12. Plin. l. 2. Cap. 37. St. Aug. de spir anim Lucret. lib. 1. Aeneid lib. 9. Aeneid lib. 9. Lucret. lib. 6. Cicero in Philos. Lucret. lib. 3. Ibid. Cicer. Thus. l. 1. The Atoms of the Epicureans What. Cicero de Divin l. 1. Claud. in Paneg. de Consal Hon. Lucret. lib. 3. Virg. Geor. lib. 4. Hor. lib. 4 Ode 4. Lucret. lib. 3. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Cicero de Div. l. 2. Ibid. Vice punished by the Divine Justice after Death Cic. Acad. lib. 4. 1 Cor. 1. â—19 Seneca Epist. 117. Cicero Thus. l. 1. Virg. l. 6. Lucret. lib. 3. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 2. cap. 1. Proverb Cicero Sign of Cruelty Of a miserable Death Of Vnchastity Ovid. Met. lib. 10. Simile Ovid. Tr. lib. 1. El. 2. Cic. Acad. lib. 4. Lucret. lib. 5. Cicero ex Incerto Hor. l. 2. Ode 26. Catullus Cicero Thus. l. 4. Cicero Ibid. l. 5. Aeneid lib. 11. Lucr. l. 5. Why new Opinions are to be rejected Aristotle's Principles in Vogue Ibid. Several Opinions concerning the World Apuleius Circumcision St. Andrew his Cross. A Cross ador'd for the God of Rain The Creation of the World The day of Judgment Dwarfs at the Tables of Princes Divers sorts of Games Adoration of one God made man A new sort of Purgatory Veget. l. 1. cap. 2. Cicero de Fato Juv. stat 10. Socrates his Prayer Ibid. Ovid Metam lib. 11. The Order of St. Michel of high esteem in France Psal. 23. Juven Sat. 10. Cicero de finibus lib. 5. Hor. lib. 1. Epist. 2. Hor. lib. 1. Epist. 6. Character of Justus Lipsius Apollo Natural Laws Ovid. Met. lib. 10. The bodies of their deceased Fathers eaten by some People and why Theft allowed by Lycurgus and why A perfum'd Robe refused by Plato and accepted by Aristippus Aeneid lib. 3. Solon's Tears for the death of his Son The mourning of Socrates his Wife Juven Sat. 15. Cicero Thus. lib. 5. Laws authoriz'd by
Oppius and Caesar than Caesar and Oppius and me and thee than thee and me which is the reason that made me formerly take notice in the life of Flaminius in our French Plutarch of one passage where it seems as if the Author speaking of the jealousie of honour betwixt the Aetolians and Romans about the winning of a Battel they had with their join'd forces obtain'd made it of some importance that in the Greek Songs they had put the Aetolians before the Romans If there be no amphibology or double dealing in the words of the French translation an instance of which I present you out of Plutarch though Monsieur de Montaigne did not think it worth repeating Here Friendly Passenger we Buried lie Without Friends Tears or Fun'ral Obsequie Full Thirty Thousand Men in Battel Slain By the Aetolians on Thesalian Plain And Latines whom Flaminius led on And brought from Italy to Macedon With his fierce Valour when faint Philip fled With greater speed to save his tim'rous Head Than Hart or Hind when Dogs upon the Trace Through Woods pursue them with a full Cry Chace The Ladies in their Baths made no scruple of admitting Men amongst them and moreover made use of their Serving-men to Rub and Anoint them Inguina succintus nigra tibi servus aluta Stat quoties calidis nuda foveris aquis … … They all Powdered themselves with a certain Powder to moderate their Sweats The Ancient Gaules says Sidonius Apollinaris wore their Hair long before and the hinder part of the Head cut short a Fashion that begins to be reviv'd in this Vicious and Effeminate Age. The Romans us'd to pay the Watermen their Fare at their first stepping into the Boat which we never do till after Landing Dum as exigitur dum mula ligatur Tota abit hora. Whilst the Fare's paying and the Mule is ti'd A whole Hours time at least away doth slide The Women us'd to lie on that side the Bed next the Wall And for that reason they call'd Caesar Spondam Regis Nicomedis one of the greatest Blemishes in his Life and that gave occasion to his Souldiers to sing to his Face Gallias Caesar subegit Nicomedes Caesarem Caesar the Gaules subdu'd 't is true But Nicomedes Caesar did subdue Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit Gallias Nicomedes non triumphat qui subegit Caesarem See Caesar Triumphs now for Conqu'ring Gaule For Conqui'ring him King Nicomede at all No Triumph has They took Breath in their Drinking and dash'd their Wine Quis puer ocius Restinguet ardentis falerni Pecula praetereunte lympha What pretty Boy 's at leisure to come in And cool the heat of the Falernian Wine With the clear gliding Stream And the Roguish Looks and Gestures of our Lacquey's was also in use amongst them O Jane a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit Nec manus auriculas imitata est mobilis albas Nec linguae quantum sitiet canis Apula tantum O Janus who both ways a Spy dost wear So that no Scoffer though behind thee dare Make a Stork's-bill Ass-ears or far more long Than thirsty panting Curs shoot out his Tongue The Argian and Roman Ladies always Mourn'd in White as ours did formerly here and should do still were I to Govern in this point But there are whole Books of this Argument CHAP. L. Of Democritus and Heraclitus THe Judgment is an utensil proper for all subjects and will have an Oar in every thing which is the reason that in these Essays I take hold of all occasions Where though it happen to be a subject I do not very well understand I try however sounding it at a distance and finding it too deep for my stature I keep me on the firm shoar and this knowledge that a Man can proceed no further is one effect of its Vertue even in the most inconsidering sort of men One while in an idle and frivolous subject I try to find out matter whereof to compose a body and then to prop and support it Another while I employ it in a noble subject one that has been tost and tumbled by a thousand hands wherein a Man can hardly possibly introduce any thing of his own the way being so beaten on every side that he must of necessity walk in the steps of another In such a case 't is the work of the judgment to take the way that seems best and of a thousand paths to determine that this or that was the best chosen I leave the choice of my arguments to Fortune and take that the first presents me they are all alike to me I never design to go through any of them for I never see all of any thing Neither do they who so largely promise to shew it others Of a hundred Members and Faces that every thing has I take one one while to look it over only another while to ripple up the Skin and sometimes to pinch it to the Bones I give a stab not so wide but as deep as I can and am for the most part tempted to take it in hand by some absolute gracefulness I discover in it Did I know my self less I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom and to be deceiv'd in my own inability but sprinkling here one word and there another Patterns cut from several Pieces and scatter'd without design and without engaging my self too far I am not responsible for them or oblig'd to keep close to my subject without varying at my own liberty and pleasure and giving up my self to doubt and incertainty and to my own governing Method Ignorance All Motion discovers us The very same Soul of Caesar that made it self so Conspicuous in Marshalling and Commanding the Battle of Pharsalia was also seen as Solicitous and Busie in the softer Affairs of Love A Man makes a Judgment of a Horse not only by seeing his Menage in his Airs but by his very walk nay and by seeing him stand in the Stable Amongst the Functions of the Soul there are some of a lower and meaner Form who does not see her in those Inferiour Offices as well as those of Nobler Note never fully discover her and peradventure she is best discover'd where she moves her own natural pace The Winds of Passions take most hold of her in her highest flights and the rather by reason that she wholely applys her self to and exercises her whole Vertue upon every particular subject and never handles more than one thing at a time and that not according to it but according to her self Things in respect to themselves have peradventure their Weight Measures and Conditions but when we once take them into us the Soul forms them as she pleases Death is Terrible to Cicero Coveted by Cato and Indifferent to Socrates Health Conscience Authority Knowledg Riches Beauty and their contraries do all strip themselves at their entring into us and receive a new Robe and of another
Fashion from every distinct Soul and of what Colour Brown Bright Green Dark and Quality Sharp Sweet Deep or Superficial as best pleases them for they are not yet agreed upon any common Standard of Forms Rules or Proceedings every one is a Queen in her own Dominions Let us therefore no more excuse our selves upon the External Qualities of things it belongs to us to give our selves an account of them Our good or ill has no other dependance but on our selves 'T is there that our Offerings and our Vows are due and not to Fortune She has no power over our Manners on the contrary they draw and make her follow in their Train and cast her in their own Mould Why should not I Censure Alexander Roaring and Drinking at the prodigious rate he sometimes us'd to do Or if he plaid at Chess what string of his Soul was not touch'd by this Idle and Childish Game I hate and avoid it because it is not Play enough that it is too grave and serious a Diversion and I am asham'd to lay out as much Thought and Study upon that as would serve to much better uses He did not more pump his Brains about his Glorious Expedition into the Indies and another that I will not name took not more pains to unravel a passage upon which depends the safety of all Mankind To what a degree then does this ridiculous Diversion molest the Soul when all her Faculties shall be summon'd together upon this Trivial Account And how fair an oportunity she herein gives every one to know and to make a right Judgment of himself I do not more throughly sift my self in any other posture than this What Passion are we exempted from in this insignificant Game Anger Spite Malice Impatience and a vehement desire of getting the better in a concern wherein it were more excusable to be Ambitious of being overcome For to be Eminent and to excel above the common rate in frivolous things is nothing graceful in a Man of Quality and Honour What I say in this Example may be said in all others Every Particle every Employment of Man does Exalt or Accuse him equally with any other Democritus and Heraclitus were two Philosophers of which the first finding Humane Condition Ridiculous and Vain never appear'd abroad but with a Jeering and Laughing Countenance Whereas Heraclitus Commiserating that Condition of ours appear'd always with a Sorrowful Look and Tears in his Eyes Alter Ridebat quoties a limine moverat unum Protuleratque pedem flebat contrarius alter One always when he o're his Threshold stept Laugh'd at the World the other always Wept I am clearly for the first Humour not because it is more pleasant to Laugh than to Weep but because it is Ruder and expresses more Contempt than the other because I think we can never be sufficiently despis'd to our desert Compassion and Bewailing seem to imploy some Esteem of and Value for the thing Bemoan'd whereas the things we Laugh at are by that exprest to be of no Moment or Repute I do not think that we are so Unhappy as we are Vain or have in us so much Malice as Folly we are not so full of Mischief as Inanity Nor so Miserable as we are Vile and Mean And therefore Diogenes who past away his time in rowling himself in his Tub and made nothing of the Great Alexander esteeming us no better than Flies or Bladders puft up with Wind was a sharper and more penetrating and consequently in my opinion a juster Judg than Timon Sir-nam'd the Man-Hater for what a Man hates he lays to Heart This last was an Enemy to all Mankind did positively desire our Ruin and avoided our Conversation as dangerous proceeding from Wicked and Deprav'd Natures The other valued us so little that we could neither trouble nor infect him by our Contagion and left us to Herd with one another not out of Fear but Contempt of our Society Concluding us as incapable of doing good as ill Of the same strain was Statilius his Answer when Brutus Courted him into the Conspiracy against Caesar He was satisfied that the Enterprize was Just but he did not think Mankind so considerable as to deserve a Wise Man's Concern According to the Doctrine of Hegesias who said That a Wise Man ought to do nothing but for himself forasmuch as he only was worthy of it And to the saying of Theodorus That it was not reasonable a Wise Man should hazard himself for his Country and endanger Wisdom for a company of Fools Our Condition is as Ridiculous as Risible CHAP. LI. Of the Vanity of Words A Rhetorician of times past said That to make little things appear great was his profession This is a Shooe-maker who can make a great Shooe for a little Foot They would in Sparta have sent such a Fellow to be Whip'd for making profession of a lying and deceitful Art And I fancy that Archidamus who was King of that Country was a little surpriz'd at the Answer of Thucydides when enquiring of him which was the better Wrestler Pericles or he he reply'd that it was hard to affirm for when I have thrown him said he he always perswades the Spectators that he had no fall and carries away the Prize They who Paint Pounce and Plaister up the Ruins of Women filling up their Wrinckles and Deformities are less to blame because it is no great matter whether we see them in their Natural Complexions or no whereas these make it their business to deceive not our sight only but our Judgments and to Adulterate and Corrupt the very Essence of things The Republicks that have maintain'd themselves in a Regular and well Modell'd Government such as those of Lacedemon and Creet had Orators in no very great Esteem Aristo did wisely define Rhetorick to be a Science to perswade the People Socrates and Plato an Art to Flatter and Deceive And those who deny it in the general description verifie it throughout in their Precepts The Mahometans will not suffer their Children to be Instructed in it as being useless and the Athenians perceiving of how pernicious Consequence the Practice of it was it being in their City of universal Esteem order'd the principal part which is to move Affections with their Exordiums and Perorations to be taken away 'T is an Engine invented to manage and govern a disorderly and tumultuous Rabble and that never is made use of but like Physick to the Sick in the Paroxisms of a discompos'd Estate In those where the Vulgar or the ignorant or both together have been all powerful and able to give the Law as in those of Athens Rodes and Rome and where the Publick Affairs have been in a continual Tempest of Commotion to such places have the Orators always repair'd And in truth we shall find few persons in those Republicks who have push'd their Fortunes to any great degree of Eminence without the assistance of Elocution Pompey Caesar Crassus Lucullus
him the Attribute of Vertuous being that all his Operations are natural and without Endeavour It has been the Opinion of many Philosophers not only Stoicks but Epicureans that it is not enough to have the Soul seated in a good place of a good temper and well disposed to Vertue It is not enough to have our Resolutions fixed above all the power of Fortune but that we are moreover to seek occasions wherein to put it to the proof We are to covet Pain Necessity and Contempt to contend with them and to keep the Soul in Breath Multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita 'T is one of the Reasons why Epaminondas who was yet of a third Sect refused the Riches Fortune presented to him by very lawful means because said he I am to contend with Poverty In which Extream he maintain'd himself to the last Socrates put himself methinks upon a rude Tryal keeping for his Exercise a confounded scolding Wife which was fighting at Sharp Metellus having of all the Senators alone attempted by the power of Vertue to withstand the Violence of Saturninus Tribune of the People at Rome who would by all means cause an unjust Law to pass in favour of the Commons and by so doing having incurr'd the Capital Penalties that Saturninus had established against the Dissenters entertain'd those who in this Extremity led him to Execution with words to this effect That it was a thing too easie and too base to do ill and that to do well where there was no danger was a common thing but that to do well where there was danger was the proper Office of a Man of Vertue These words of Metellus do very clearly represent to us what I would make out viz. That Vertue refuses Facility for a Companion and that that easie smooth and descending Way by which the regular Steps of a sweet Disposition of Nature are conducted is not that of a true Vertue She requires a rough and stormy Passage she will have either Exotick Difficulties to wrestle with like that of Metellus by means whereof Fortune delights to interrupt the Speed of her Carreer or internal Difficulties that the inordinate Appetites and Imperfections of our Condition introduce to disturb her I am come thus far at my ease but here it comes into my head that the Soul of Socrates the most perfect that ever came to my knowledge should by this Rule be of very little Recommendation for I cannot conceive in that Person any the least Motion of a vicious Inclination I cannot imagine there could be any Difficulty or Constraint in the Course of his Vertue I know his Reason to be so powerful and soveraign over him that she would never have suffered a vicious Appetite so much as to spring in him To a Vertue so elevated as his I have nothing to oppose Methinks I see him march with a victorious and triumphant pace in Pomp and at his Ease without Opposition or Disturbance If Vertue cannot shine bright but by the Conflict of contrary Appetites shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the Assistance of Vice and that it is from her that she derives her Reputation and Honour What then also would become of that brave and generous Epicurean Pleasure which makes account that it nourishes Vertue tenderly in her Lap and there makes it play and wanton giving it for Toys to play withal Shame Fevers Poverty Death and Torments If I presuppose that a perfect Vertue manifests it self in Contending in patient enduring of Pain and undergoing the uttermost extremity of the Gout without being moved in her Seat if I give her Austerity and Difficulty for her necessary Objects what will become of a Vertue elevated to such a degree as not only to despise Pain but moreover to rejoyce in it and to be tickled with the Daggers of a sharp Cholick such as the Epicureans have established and of which many of them by their Actions have given most manifest Proofs As have several others who I find to have surpassed in effects even the very Rules of their own Discipline Witness the younger Cato when I see him dye and tearing out his own Bowels I am not satisfied simply to believe that he had then his Soul totally exempt from all Troubles and Horrour I cannot think that he only maintained himself in the Steadiness that the Stoical Rules prescribed him Temperate without Emotion and imperturb'd There was methinks something in the Vertue of this Man too spritely and youthful to stop there I do believe that without doubt he felt a pleasure and delight in so noble an Action and was more pleased in it than in any other of his Life Sic abiit è vita ut causam moriendi nactum se esse gauderet I believe so far that I question whether he would have been content to have been deprived of the occasion of so brave an Execution And if the Sincerity that made him embrace the publick Concern more than his own withheld me not I should easily fall into an Opinion that he thought himself obliged to Fortune for having put his Vertue upon so brave a Tryal and for having favoured that Thief in treading under foot the ancient Liberty of his Country Methinks I read in this Action I know not what Exaltation in his Soul and an extraordinary and manly Emotion of Pleasure when he looked upon the Generosity and Height of his Enterprise Deliberata morte ferocior Not stimulated with any hope of Glory as the popular and effeminate Judgments of some have concluded for that Consideration has been too mean and low to possess so generous so haughty and so obstinate a Heart as his but for the very beauty of the thing in it self which he who had the handling of the Springs discern'd more clearly and in its Perfection than we are able to do Philosophy has obliged me in determining that so brave an Action had been indecently placed in any other Life than that of Cato and that it only appertain'd to His to end so Notwithstanding and according to Reason he commanded his Son and the Senators that accompanied him to take another Course in their Affairs Catoni quum incredibilem natura tribuisset gravitatem â—ámque ipse perpetua constantia roboravisset sempérque in proposito consilio permansisset moriendum potius quà m Tyranni vultus aspiciendus erat Nature having endued Cato with an incredible Gravity which he had also fortified with a perpetual Constancy without ever flagging in his Resolution he must of necessity rather dye than see the face of the Tyrant Every Death ought to hold proportion with the Life before it We do not become others for dying I always interpret the Death by the Life preceding and if any one tell me of a Death strong and constant in appearance annexed to a feeble Life I conclude it produced by some feeble Cause and suitable to the Life before The Easiness then of