resenting and being mov'd at the Accusation we in some sort acquitted our selves of the Fault though we confess it in Effect we condemn it in outward appearance May it not also be that this reproach seems to imply Cowardize and meanness of Courage of which can there be a more manifest sign than to eat a Man 's own Words What to lye against a Man's own Knowledge Lying is a base unworthy Vice a Vice that one of the Ancients pourtrays in the most odious colours when he says that it is to manifest a contempt of God and withall a fear of Men. It is not possible more excellently to represent the Horror Baseness and Irregularity of it for what can a man imagine more hateful and contemptible than to be a Coward towards Men and Valiant against his Maker Our Intelligence being by no other way to be convey'd to one another but by speaking who falsifies that betrays publick Society 'T is the only way by which we communicate our Thoughts and Wills 't is the Interpreter of the Soul and if that deceive us we no longer know nor have no farther tye upon one another If that deceive us it breaks all our Correspondence and dissolves all the tyes of Government Certain Nations of the new discover'd Indies no matter for naming them being they are no more for by a wonderful and unheard of Example the Desolation of that Conquest has extended to the utter abolition of Names and the ancient knowledge of Places offer'd to their Gods Humane Blood but only such as was drawn from the Tongue and Ears to expiate for the Sin of Lying as well heard as pronounc'd The good Fellow of Greece was wont to say that Children were amus'd with Toyes and Men with Words As to the diverse usage of our giving the Lye and the Laws of Honour in that Case and the alterations they have receiv'd I shall refer saying what I know of them to another time and shall learn if I can in the mean time at what time the Custom took beginning of so exactly weighing and measuring Words and of making our Honours so interested in them for it is easie to judge that it was not anciently amongst the Greeks and Romans and I have often thought it strange to see them rail at and give one another the Lye without any farther Quarrel Their Laws of Duty steer'd some other course than ours Caesar is sometimes call'd Thief and sometimes Drunkard to his Teeth We see the liberty of Invectives they practis'd upon one another I mean the greatest Chiefs of War of both Nations where words are only reveng'd with words and never proceed to any farther Quarrel CHAP. XIX Of Liberty of Conscience T Is usual to see good Intentions if carried on without Moderation push men on to very vicious Effects In this Dispute which has at this time engag'd France in a Civil War the better and the soundest Cause no doubt is that which maintains the ancient Religion and Government of the Kingdom Nevertheless amongst the good men of that Party for I do not speak of those that only make a pretence either to execute their own particular Revenges or to gratifie their Avarice or to pursue the Favour of Princes but of those who engage in the quarrel out of true Zeal to Religion and a vertuous Affection to maintain the Peace and Government of their Country of these I say we see many whom Passion transports beyond the bounds of Reason and sometimes inspires them with Counsels that are unjust and violent and moreover inconsiderate and rash It is true that in those first times when our Religion began to gain Authority with the Laws Zeal armed many against all sorts of Pagan Books by which the learned suffer'd an exceeding great loss A disorder that I conceive did more prejudice to Letters than all the Flames of the Barbarians Of this Cornelius Tacitus is a very good Testimony for though the Emperour Tacitus his Kinsman had by express Order furnish'd all the Libraries in the World with it nevertheless one entire Copy could not escape the curious examination of those who desir'd to abolish it for only five or six idle Clauses that were contrary to our belief They had also the trick easily to lend undue Praises to all the Emperours who did any thing for us and universally to condemn all the Actions of those who were our Adversaries as is evidently manifest in the Emperour Julian surnamed the Apostate who was in truth a very great and a rare Man a Man in whose Soul Philosophy was imprinted in the best Characters by which he profess'd to govern all his Actions and in truth there is no sort of Virtue of which he has not left behind him very notable examples In Chastity of which the whole course of his Life has given manifest Proof we read the same of him that was said of Alexander and Scipio that being in the Flower of his age for he was slain by the Parthians at one and thirty of a great many very beautiful Captives he would not so much as look upon one As to his Justice he took himself the Pains to hear the Parties and although he would out of Curiosity enquire what Religion they were of nevertheless the hatred he had to ours never gave any counterpoise to the Balance He made himself several good Laws and cut off a great part of the Subsidies and Taxes impos'd and levied by his Predecessors We have two good Historians who were eye Witnesses of his Actions one of which Marcellinus in several Places of his History sharply reproves an Edict of his whereby he interdicted all Christian Rhetoricians and Grammarians to keep School or to teach and says he could wish that Act of his had been buried in Silence It is very likely that had he done any more severe things against us he so affectionate as he was to our party would not have pass'd it over in silence He was indeed sharp against us but yet no cruel Enemy for our own People tell this Story of him that one day walking about the City of Chalcedon Maris Bishop of the Place was so bold as to tell him that he was impious and an Enemy to Christ at which say they therein affecting a philosophical Patience he was no further mov'd than to reply Go Wretch and lament the loss of thy Eyes to which the Bishop reply'd again I thank Jesus Christ for taking away my sight that I may not see thy impudent Face So it is that this Action of his savours nothing of the Cruelty that he is said to have exercis'd towards us He was says Eutropius my other Witness an Enemy to Christianity but without putting his Hand to Blood And to return to his Justice there is nothing in that whereof he can be accus'd the severity excepted he practis'd in the beginning of his Reign against those who had follow'd the Party of Constantius his Predecessor As to
taking Cognizance of the good Office order'd a certain Measure of Corn for the Dog 's daily Sustenance at the Publick Charge and the Priest's to take care in it Plutarch delivers this Story for a most certain truth and that hapned in the Age wherein he liv'd As to Gratitude for I doubt we had need bring this word into a little greater repute this one example which Appion reports himself to have been an Eye-witness of shall suffice One day says he that at Rome they entertain'd the people with the pleasure of the fighting of several strange Beasts and principally of Lyons of an unusual size there was one amongst the rest who by his furious Deportment by the strength and largeness of his Limbs and by his loud and dreadful Roaring attracted the Eyes of all the Spectators Amongst other Slaves that were presented to the people in this Combat of Beasts there was one Androdus of Dacia belonging to a Roman Lord of Consular Dignity This Lyon having seen him at distance first made a sudden stop as it were in a wondring posture and then softly approached nearer in a gentle and peaceable manner as if it were to enter into acquaintance with him This being done and being now assured of what he sought for he began to wag his Tail as Dogs do when they flatter their Masters and to kiss and lick the Hands and Thighs of the poor Wretch who was besides himself and almost dead with fear Androdus being by this kindness of the Lyon a little come to himself and having taken so much heart as to consider and know him it was a singular Pleasure to see the Joy and Caresses that passed betwixt them At which the people breaking into loud Acclamations of Joy the Emperour caus'd the Slave to be call'd to know from him the cause of so strange an Event who thereupon told him a new and a very strange Story My Master said he being Proconsul in Africk I was constrained by his Severity and cruel Usage being daily beaten to steal from him and to run away And to hide my self securely from a person of so great Authority in the Province I thought it my best way to fly to the Solitudes Sands and uninhabitable parts of that Country resolv'd that in case the means of supporting Life should chance to fail me to make some shift or other to kill my self The Sun being excessively hot at Noon and the Heat intolerable I accidentally found a private and almost inaccessible Cave and went into it Soon after there came in to me this Lyon with one Foot wounded and bloody complaining and groaning with the Pain he indur'd At his coming I was exceedingly afraid but he having espied me hid in a corner of his Den came gently to me holding out and shewing me his wounded Foot as if he demanded my assistance in his distress I then drew out a great Splinter he had got there and growing a little more familiar with him squeezing the Wound thrust out the Dirt and Gravel was got into it wiped and cleansed it the best I could He finding himself something better and much easied of his Pain laid him down to repose and presently fell asleep with his Foot in my hand From that time forward he and I lived together in this Cave three whole years upon one and the same Diet for of the Beasts that he kill'd in hunting he always brought me the best pieces which I roasted in the Sun for want of Fire and so eat it At last growing weary of this wild and brutish Life the Lyon being one day gone abroad to hunt for our ordinary Provision I escaped from thence and the third day after was taken by the Souldiers who brought me from Africk to this City to my Master who presently condemn'd me to dye and to be thus expos'd to the wild Beasts Now by what I see I perceive that this Lyon was also taken soon after who would now have recompensed me for the Benefit and Cure that he receiv'd at my hands This is the Story that Androdus told the Emperour which he also conveyed from hand to hand to the people Wherefore at the general Request he was absolved from his Sentence and set at liberty and the Lyon was by order of the people presented to him We afterwards saw says Appion Androdus leading this Lyon in nothing but a small Leash from Tavern to Tavern at Rome and receiving what Money every body would give him the Lyon being so gentle as to suffer himself to be covered with the Flowers that the People threw upon him every one that met him saying There goes the Lyon that entertain'd the Man there goes the Man that cur'd the Lyon We oft lament the loss of the Beasts we love and so do they the loss of us Post bellator equus positis insignibus Aethon It lacrymans guttisque humectat grandibus ora The Triumph more to Grace Aethon his Horse of War came next in place Who of his Trappings stript shew'd such regret That with large Tears his hairy Cheeks were wet As some Nations have their Wives in Common and some others have every one his own Is not the same evident amongst Beasts and Marriages better kept than ours As to the Society and Confederation they make amongst themselves to league themselves together and to give one another mutual Assistance Is it not manifest that Oxen Hogs and other Animals at the Cry of any of their Kind that we offend all the Heard run to his Ayde and embody for his Defence The Fish Scarus when he has swallowed the Anglers Hook his Fellows all crowd about him and gnaw the Line in peices and if by chance one be got into the Leap or Whele the others present him their Tayls on the out side which he holding fast with his Teeth they after that manner disengage and draw him out Mullets when one of their Companions is engaged cross the Line over their back and with a Fin they have there indented like a Saw cut and saw it asunder As to the particular Offices that we receive from one another for the Service of Life there are several like Examples amongst them 'T is said that the Whale never moves that she has not always before her a little Fish like the See-Gudgion for this reason call'd the Guide-Fish whom the Whale Follows suffering himself to be led and turn'd with as great Facility as the Stern guides the Ship In Recompence of which Service also whereas all other things whether Beast or Vessel that enters into the dreadful Gulf of this Monsters Mouth is immediately lost and swallowed up this little Fish retires into it in great Security and there sleeps during which the Whale never stirs But so soon as ever it goes out he immediately follows and if by accident he loses the sight of his little Guide he goes wandring here and there and strikes his Sides against the Rocks like a Ship
lustrari debeat agna Now if a Friend does not deny his Trust But does th' old Purse restore with all it's rust 'T is a prodigious Faith that ought in Gold Amongst the Thuscan Annals be enroll'd And a crown'd Lamb should sacrificed be To such an exemplary Integrity And never was time or place wherein Princes might propose to themselves more certain Rewards for their Virtue and Justice The first that shall make it his business to get himself into favour and esteem by those ways I am much deceiv'd if he do not and by the best Title outstrip his Concurrents Force and Violence can do something but not always all We see Merchants Country Justices and Artizans go cheek by joul with the best Gentry in Valour and Military Knowledge They perform honourable Actions both in publick Engagements and private Quarrels they fight Duels and defend Towns in our present Wars A Prince stifles his Renown in this crowd Let him shine bright in Humanity Truth Loyalty Temperance and especially in Justice marks rare unknown and exil'd 't is by no other means but by the sole good-will of the People that he can do his business and no other Qualities can attract their good-will like those as being of greatest Utility to them Nil est tam populare quà m bonitas Nothing is so popular as goodness By this proportion I had been great and rare as I find my self now a Pigmee and popular by the proportion of some past Ages wherein if other better Qualities did not concur it was ordinary and common to see a Man moderate in his Revenges gentle in resenting Injuries in absence religious of his Word neither double nor too supple nor accomodating his Faith to the will of others or the turns of Times I would rather see all Affairs go to wrack and ruine than falsifie my Faith to secure them For as to this Virtue of Dissimulation which is now in so great request I mortally hate it and of all Vices find none that does evidence so much baseness and meanness of Spirit 'T is a cowardly and servile Humour to hide and disguise a man's self under a Vizor and not to dare to shew himself what he is By that our followers are train'd up to Treachery Being brought up to speak what is not true they make no Conscience of a Lye A generous Heart ought not to belye its own Thoughts but will make it self seen within all there is good or at least manly Aristotle reputes it the Office of Magnanimity openly and profess'dly to love and hate to judge and speak with all freedom and not to value the approbation or dislike of others in comparison of Truth Apollonius said it was for Slaves to lye and for Free-men to speak truth 'T is the chief and fundamental part of Vertue we must love it for it self He that speaks truth because he is oblig'd so to do and because he serves and that is not afraid to lye when it signifies nothing to any body is not sufficiently true My Soul naturally abominates Lying and hates the thought of it I have an inward bashfulness and a sharp remorse if sometimes a Lye escape me as sometimes it does being surpriz'd by Occasions that allow me no Premeditation A Man must not always tell all for that were folly but what a man says should be what he thinks otherwise 't is knavery I do not know what advantage men pretend to by eternally counterfeiting and dissembling if not never to be believ'd when they speak the truth This may once or twice pass upon men but to profess concealing their Thoughts and to brag as some of our Princes have done that they would burn their Shirts if they knew their true Intentions which was a saying of the Ancient Metellus of Macedon and that who knows not how to dissemble knows not how to Rule is to give warning to all who have any thing to do with them that all they say is nothing but Lying and Deceit Quo quis versutior callidior est hoc invisior suspectior detracta opinione probitatis By how much any one is more subtle and cunning by so much is he hated and suspected the Opinion of his Integrity being lost and gone It were a great simplicity in any one to lay any stress either on the Countenance or word of a man that has past on a Resolution to be always another thing without than he is within as Tiberius did and I cannot conceive what Interest such can have in the Conversation with men seeing they produce nothing that is current and true Whoever is disloyal to Truth is the same to Falshood also Those of our time who have considered in the establishment of the duty of a Prince the good of his Affairs only and have preferr'd that to the care of his Faith and Conscience might say something to a Prince whose Affairs Fortune had put into such a posture that he might for ever Establish them by only once breaking his Word but it will not go so they often buy in the same Market they make more than once Peace and enter into more than one Treaty in their lives Gain tempts them to the first breach of Faith and almost always presents it self as in all other ill Acts Sacrileges Murthers Rebellions Treasons as always undertaken for some kind of Advantage But this first Gain has infinite mischievous Consequences throws this Prince out of all Correspondence and Negotiation by this Example of Infidelity Soliman of the Ottoman Race a Race not very sollicitous of keeping their Words or Articles when in my Infancy he made his Army land at Otranto being inform'd that Mercurino de Gratinare and the Inhabitants of Castro were detain'd Prisoners after having surrendred the Place contrary to the Articles of their Capitulation sent order to have them set at Liberty saying That having other great Enterprizes in hand in those Parts the disloyalty though it carried a shew of present Utility would for the future bring on him a disrepute and diffidence of infinite prejudice Now for my part I had rather be troublesome and indiscreet than a Flatterer and a Dissembler I confess that there may be some mixture of Pride and Obstinacy in keeping my self so upright and open as I do without any Consideration of others and methinks I am a little too free where I ought least to be so and that I grow hot by the opposition of Respect and it may be also that I suffer my self to follow the Propension of my own Nature for want of Art using the same liberty of Speech and Countenance towards great Persons that I bring with me from my own House I am sensible how much it declines towards Incivility and Indiscretion but besides that I am so bred I have not a Wit supple enough to evade a sudden Question and to escape by some Evasion nor to feign a Truth nor Memory enough to retain it so feign'd nor truly assurance
the same of his one of the best Proofs I have that mine are so is the small esteem I have of my self for had they not been very well assur'd they would easily have suffer'd themselves to have been deceiv'd by the peculiar Affection I have to my self as one that place it almost wholly in my self and do not let much run by All that others distribute amongst an infinite number of Friends and Acquaintance to their Glory and Grandeur I dedicate to the repose of my own mind and to my self That which escapes thence is not properly by my direction Mihi nempe valere vivere doctus To love my self I very well can tell So as to live content and to be well Now I find my Opinions very bold and constant in condemning my own Imperfection and to say the truth 't is a Subject upon which I exercise my Judgment as much as upon any other The World looks always opposite I turn my sight inwards there fix and employ it Every one looks before him I look into my self I have no other business but my self I am eternally meditating upon my self controul and taste my self other mens Thoughts are ever wand'ring abroad if they set themselves to thinking they are still going forward Nemo in sese tentat descendere No man attempts to dive into himself for my part I circulate in my self and this free Humour of not over easily subjecting my Belief I owe principally to my self for the strongest and most general Imaginations I have are those that as a man may say were born with me they are natural and entirely my own I produc'd them crude and simple with a strong and bold Production but a little troubled and imperfect I have since establish'd and fortified them with the Authority of others and the sound Examples of the Ancients whom I have found of the same Judgment they have given me faster hold and a more manifest Fruition and Possession of that I had before embrac'd the Reputation that every one pretends to of vivacity and promptness of Wit I speak in Regularity the Glory they pretend to from a brave and honourable Action or some particular Excellency I claim from order correspondence and tranquillity of Opinions and Manners Omnino si quidquam est decorum nihil est profecto magis quà m aequabilitas universae Vitae tum singularum actionum quam conservare non possis si aliorum naturam imitans omittas tuam If any thing be entirely decent nothing certainly can be more than an equability in the whole Life and in every particular Action of it which thou can'st not possibly observe and keep if imitating other mens Natures thou layest aside thy own Here then you see to what degree I find my self guilty of this first part that I said was in the Vice of Presumption As to the second which consists in not having a sufficient esteem for others I know not whether or no I can so well excuse my self but whatever comes on 't I am resolv'd to speak the Truth And whether peradventure it be that the continual frequentation I have had with the Humors of the Antients and the Idea of those great Souls of past Ages put me out of taste both with others and my self or that in truth the Age we live in does produce but very indifferent things yet so it is that I see nothing worthy of any great admiration Neither indeed have I so great an intimacy with many Men as is requisite to make a right Judgment of them and those with whom my Condition makes me the most frequent are for the most part Men that have little care of the culture of the Soul but that look upon Honour as the sum of all blessings and Valour as the height of all Perfection What I see that is handsome in others I very readily commend and highly esteem nay I often say more in their Commendation than I think they really deserve and give my self so far leave to lye for I cannot invent a false Subject My Testimony is never wanting to my Friends in what I conceive deserves Praise and where a foot is due I am willing to give them a foot and a half but to attribute to them Qualities that they have not I cannot do it nor openly defend their Imperfections Nay I frankly and ingeniously give my very Enemies their due Testimony of Honour My Affection alters my Judgment does not and I never confound my Animosity with other Circumstances that are foreign to it and am so jealous of the libertyof my Judgment that I can very hardly part with it for any Passion whatever I do my self a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a Lye This commendable and generous Custom is observ'd of the Persian Nation that they spoke of their mortal Enemies and with whom they were at deadly Wars as honourably and justly as their Virtues did deserve I know Men enough that have several fine Parts one Wit another Courage another Address another Conscience another Language one one Science another another but a generally great Man and that has all these brave Parts together or any one of them to such a degree of Excellence that we should admire him or compare him with those we honour of times past my Fortune never brought me acquainted with and the greatest I ever knew I mean for the natural parts of the Soul was Stephen Boetius his was a full Soul indeed and that had every way a beautiful aspect a Soul of the old stamp and that had produc'd great Effects had Fortune been so pleas'd having added much to those great natural Parts by learning and study But how it comes to pass I know not and yet it is certainly so there is as much vanity and weakness of Judgment in those who profess the greatest Abilities who take upon them learned Callings and bookish Employments as in any other sort of Men whatever either because more is requir'd and expected from them and that common defects are inexcusable in them or because the Opinion they have of their own Learning makes them more bold to expose and lay themselves too open by which they lose and betray themselves As an Artificer more betrays his want of Skill in a rich Matter he has in hand if he disgrace the Work by ill handling and contrary to the Rules requir'd than in a Matter of less value and Men are more displeas'd at a Disproportion in a Statue of Gold than in one of Alabaster so do these when they exhibit things that in themselves and in their place would be good for they make use of them without discretion honouring their Memories at the expence of their Understandings and making themselves ridiculous to honour Cicero Galen Vlpian and St. Hierom. I willingly fall again into the Discourse of the Vanity of our Education the end of which is not to render us good and wise but learned and
of the danger I was in Tunc animis opus Aenea tunc pectore firmo Then then Aeneas there was need Of an undaunted hear indeed I still insisted upon the Truce being willing they should only have the gain of what they had already taken from me which also was not be despis'd without promise of any other Ransom After two or three hours that we had been in this place and that they had mounted me upon a pitiful Jade that was not likely to run from them and committed me to the guard of fifteen or twenty Harquebuzers and dispers'd my Servants to others having given order that they should carry us away Prisoners several ways and being already got some two or three Musket-shot from the place Jam praece Pollucis jam Castoris implorâ—ta Whilst I implor'd Castor and Pollux aid behold a sudden and unexpected alteration I saw the Chief amongst them return to me with gentler Language making search amongst the Troopers for my squander'd Goods and causing as many as could be recover'd to be restor'd to me even to my Cashet but the best present they made me was my Liberty for the rest did not much concern me in those dayes The true cause of so sudden a change and of this more mature deliberation without any apparent impulse and of so miraculous a repentance in such a time in a complotted and deliberated Enterprize and become just by usance for at the first dash I plainly confess'd to them of what Party I was and whither I was going in earnest I do not yet rightly apprehend The most eminent amongst them who pull'd off his Vizor and told me his name then several times told me over and over again that I was oblig'd for my deliverance to my Countenance and the liberty and boldness of my Speech that rendred me unworthy of such a misadventure and demanded assurance from me of the like courtesie 'T is like that the Divine bounty would make use of this vain Instrument for my preservation and moreover defended me the next day from other and worse Ambushes which even these had given me warning of The last of these two Gentlemen is yet living to give an account of the story the first was kill'd not long ago If my Face did not answer for me if men did not read in my Eyes and in my Voice the innocency of my Intention I had not liv'd so long without quarrels and without giving offence with the indiscreet liberty I take right or wrong to say whatever comes at my Tongues end and to judge so rashly of things This way may with reason appear uncivil and ill adapted to our way of Conversation but I have never met with any who have judg'd it outragious or malicious or that took offence at my liberty if he had it from my own mouth Repeated words have another kind of sound and sense neither do I hate any Person whatever and am so slow to offend that I cannot do it even upon the account of Reason it self And when occasion has invited me to sentence Criminals I have rather chose to fail in point of Justice than to do it Vt magis peccari nolim quam satis animi ad vindicandâ— peccata habeam So that I had rather men should not offend than that I should have the heart to condemn them Aristotle 't is said was reproach'd for having been too merciful to a wicked man I was indeed said he merciful to the man but not to his wickedness Ordinary Judgments exasperate themselves to Punishment by the horror of the Fact Even this cools mine The horrour of the first Murther makes me fear a second and the deformity of the first Cruelty makes me abhor all imitation of it That may be apply'd to me who am but a Knave of Clubs which was said of Charillus King of Sparta he cannot be good being he is not evil to the wicked Or thus for Plutarch delivers it both these wayes as he does a thousand other things variously and contrary to one another He must needs be good because he is so even to the wicked Even as in lawful actions I do not care to employ my self when for such as are displeas'd at it so to say the truth in unlawful things I do not make conscience enough of employing my self when for such as are willing CHAP. XIII Of Experience THere is no desire more natural than that of Knowledge We try all ways that can lead us to it where Reason is wanting we therein employ Experience Per varios usus artem experientia fecit Exemplo monstrante viam By several proofs Experience Art has made Example being guide which is a means much more weak and cheap But Truth is so great a thing that we ought not to disdain any Mediation that will guide us to it Reason has so many forms that we know not to which to take Experience has no fewer The Consequence we will draw from the conference of Events is unsure by reason they are always unlike There is no quality so universal in this Image of things as diversity and variety Both the Greeks the Latins and we for the most express Example of similitude have pitch'd upon that of Eggs. And yet there have been men particularly one at Delphos who could distinguish marks of difference amongst Eggs so well that he never mistook one for another And having many Hens could tell which had laid it Dissimilitude intrudes it self of it self in our works no Art can arrive at a perfect Similitude Neither Perozet nor any other Card-maker can so carefully polish and blanch the backs of his Cards that some Gamesters will not distinguish them by seeing them only shuffled by another Resemblance does not so much make one as difference makes another Nature has oblig'd her self to make nothing other that was not unlike And yet I am not much pleas'd with his Opinion who thought by the multitude of Laws to curb the Authority of Judges in cutting them out the Cantels He was not aware that there is as much liberty and stretch in the Interpretation of Laws as in their fashion and they but fool themselves who think to lessen and stop our debates by summoning us to the express words of the Bible Forasmuch as humane Wit does not find the Field less spacious wherein to controvert the sence of mother than to deliver his own and as if there were less animosity and tartness in glossing than Invention We see how much he was deceiv'd for we have more Laws iâ— France than in all the rest of the World besides and more than would be necessary for the Government of all the Worlds of Epicurus Vt olim Flagitiis sic nunc Legibus laboramus so that as formerly we were sick of Wickedness we are now sick of the Laws and yet we have left so much to the debate and decision of our Judges that there never was so full and uncontroul'd a Liberty
Vessel in Portugal those Fumes are reputed delicate and is the Bevâ—rage of Princes In fine every Nation has several Customs and Usances that are not only unknown but savage and miraculous to some others What should we do with those People who admit of no Testimonies if not printed who believe not men if not in a Book nor truth if not of competent Age We dignifie our fopperies when we commit them to the Press 'T is of great deal more weight to him you speak of to say I have seen such a thing than if you only say I have heard such a thing But I who no more disbelieve a man's Mouth than his Pen and who know that men write as indiscreetly as they speak and that esteem this Age as much as one that 's past do as soon quote a Friend of my Acquaintance as Aulus Gellius or Macrobius and what I have seen as what they have writ And as 't is held of Virtue that it is not greater for having continu'd longer so do I hold of Truth that for being older it is not wiser I often say that it is meer folly that makes us run after strange and scholastick Examples their fertility is the same now that it was in the time of Homer and Plato But is it not that we derive more honour from the quotation than from the truth of the Discourse As if it were to borrow our proof from the Shops of Vascasan or of Plantin than of what is to be seen in our own Village Or else indeed that we have not the wit to cull out and make useful what we see before us and judge of it lively enough to draw it into Example For if we say that we want authority to procure faith to our testimony we speak from the purpose forasmuch as in my opinion of the most ordinary common and known things could we but find out their light the greatest miracles of Nature might be form'd and the most wonderful Examples especially upon the subject of humane actions Now upon the Subject I am speaking of setting aside the Examples I have gathered from Books and what Aristotle says of Andron the Argian that he travell'd over the arid Sands of Lybia without drinking a Gentleman who has very well behav'd himself in several Employments said in a place where I was that he had rid from Madrid to Lisbon in the heat of Summer without any Drink at all He is very healthful and vigorous for his Age and has nothing extraordinary in the usance of his Life but this to live sometimes two or three months nay a whole year without drinking He is sometimes a thirst but he lets it pass over and holds it is an Appetite which easily goes off of it self and drinks more out of humour than either for need or pleasure Here is another Example 'T is not long ago that I found one of the Learned'st men in France among those of the greatest Fortunes studying in a corner of a Hall that they had separated for him with Tapestry and about him a rabble of his Servants that you may be sure were rude and loud enough He told me and Seneca almost says the same of himself he made an advantage of this noise as if beaten with this rattle he so much the better recollected and retir'd himself into himself for Contemplation and that this tempest of Voices repercuss'd his thoughts within himself Being at Padua he had his Study so long scituated in the rattle of Coaches and the Tumult of the publick place that he not only form'd himself to the contempt but even to the use of noise for the service of his Studies Socrates answer'd Alcibiades who being astonish'd at his Patience ask'd him how he could endure the perpetual scolding of his Wife Why said he as those do who are accustom'd to the ordinary noise of wheels to draw Water I am quite otherwise I have a tender Head and easily discompos'd when 't is bent upon any thing the least buzzing of a Fly tears it into pieces Seneca in his youth having by the Example of Sextius put on a positive resolution of eating nothing but what died of it self pass'd over a whole year in this Diet and as he said with pleasure and only left it off that he might not be suspected of taking up this Rule from some new Religion by which it was prescrib'd But he took up withall from the Precepts of Attalus a custom not to lye any more upon any sort of bedding that yielded under a man's weight but even to his old age made use of such as would not yield to any pressure What the usance of his time made him account Authority that of ours makes us look upon as Effeminacy and Ease Do but observe the difference betwixt the way of living of my Laborers and that of mine the Indies have nothing more remote both from my Force and Method I know very well that I have pick'd up Boys from begging to serve me who soon after have quitted both my Kitchin and Livery only that they might return to their former course of Life and found one afterwards gathering Mussels out of the Sink for his Dinner whom I could neither by Intreaties nor Threats reclaim from the sweetness he found in Indigence Beggars have their Magnificences and Delights as well as the Rich and 't is said their Dignities and Politicks These are the Effects of Custom she can mould us not only into what form she pleases and yet the Sages say we ought to apply our selves to the best which she will soon make easie to us but also to change and variation which is the most noble and most usefull of all she makes us perfect in The best of my bodily perfection is that I am flexible and very little obstinate I have Inclinations more proper and ordinary and more agreeable than others but I am diverted from them with very little ado and easily slip into a contrary course A young man ought to cross his own Rules to awake his Vigour and to keep it from growing faint and rusty And there is no course of Life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by Rule and Discipline Ad primum lapidem vectari complacet hora Sumitur ex libro si prurit frictus ocelli Angulus inspecta genesi collyria quaerit If he but of a mile a walk would take He for the hour consults his Almanack If he but rub the corner of his eye He chooses Salve by his Nativity He shall oft throw himself even into Excesses if he will take my advice otherwise the least Debauch will ruine him He will render himself uneasie and disagreeable in conversation The worst quality in a well bred man is delicacy and an obligation to a certain particular way and it is particular if not pliable and supple It is a kind of reproach not to be able or not to dare to do what we see others do before us
absolv'd of his Duty even though he had out-liv'd the other but the King of England wilfully and premeditately breaking his Faith was no more to be excus'd for deferring the Execution of his Infidelity till after his Death than Herodotus his Mason who having inviolably during the time of his Life kept the Secret of the Treasure of the King of Egypt his Master at his Death discover'd it to his Children I have taken notice of several in my time who convinc'd by their Consciences of unjustly detaining the Goods of another have endeavour'd to make amends by their Will and after their Decease but they had as good do nothing and delude themselves both in taking so much time in so pressing an Affair and also in going about to repair an Injury with so little Demonstration of Resentment and Concern They owe over and above something of their own and by how much their Payment is more strict and incommodious to themselves by so much is their Restitution more perfect just and meritorious for Penitency requires Penance but they yet do worse than these who reserve the Declaration of a mortal Animosity against their Neighbour to the last Gasp having conceal'd it all the time of their Lives before wherein they declare to have little regard of their own Honour whilst they irritate the Party offended against their Memory and less to their Conscience not having the Power even out of Respect to Death it self to make their Malice dye with them but extending the Life of their Hatred even beyond their own Unjust Judges who defer Judgment to a time wherein they can have no Knowledge of the Cause For my part I shall take Care if I can that my Death discover nothing that my Life has not first openly manifested and publickly declar'd CHAP. VIII Of Idleness AS we see some Grounds that have long lain idle and untill'd when grown rank and fertile by rest to abound with and spend their Vertue in the Product of innumerable sorts of Weeds and wild Herbs that are unprofitable and of no wholsome use and that to make them perform their true Office we are to cultivate and prepare them for such Seeds as are proper for our Service And as we see Women that without the Knowledge of Men do sometimes of themselves bring forth inanimate and formless Lumps of Flesh but that to cause a natural and perfect Generation they are to be husbanded with another kind of Seed even so it is with Wits which if not applyed to some certain Study that may fix and restrain them run into a thousand Extravagancies and are eternally roving here and there in the inextricable Labyrinth of restless Imagination Sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis Sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine Lunae Omnia per-volitat latè loca jamque sub auras Erigitur summique ferit laquearia tecti Like as the quivering Reflection Of Fountain Waters when the Morning Sun Darts on the Bason or the Moon 's pale Beam Gives Light and Colour to the captive Stream Whips with fantastick motion round the place And Walls and Roof strikes with its trembling Rays In which wild and irregular Agitation there is no Folly nor idle Fancy they do not light upon velut aegri somnia vanae Finguntur species Like sick mens Dreams that from a troubled Brain Phantasms create ridiculous and vain The Soul that has no establish'd Limit to circumscribe it loses it self as the Epigrammatist says Quisquis ubique habitat maxime nusquam habitat He that lives every where does no where live When I lately retir'd my self to my own House with a Resolution as much as possibly I could to avoid all manner of Concern in Affairs and to spend in privacy and repose the little remainder of time I have to Live I fancy'd I could not more oblige my mind than to suffer it at full leisure to entertain and divert it self which I also now hop'd it might the better be entrusted to do as being by Time and Observation become more settled and mature but I find variam semper dant otia mentem Even in the most retir'd Estate Leisure it self does various Thoughts create that quite contrary it is like a Horse that has broke from his Rider who voluntarily runs into a much more violent Career than any Horseman would put him to and creates me so many Chimaera's and fantastick Monsters one upon another without Order or Design that the better at leisure to contemplate their Strangeness and Absurdity I have begun to commit them to Writing hoping in time to make them asham'd of themselves CHAP. IX Of Lyers THere is not a Man living whom it would so little become to speak of Memory as my self for I have none at all and do not think that the World has again another so treacherous as mine My other Faculties are all very ordinary and mean but in this I think my self very singular and to such a Degree of Excellence that besides the Inconvenience I suffer by it which merits something I deserve methinks to be famous for it and to have more than a common Reputation though in truth the necessary 〈◊〉 of Memory consider'd Plato had Reason when he call'd it a great and powerful Goddess In my Country when they would decipher a Man that has no Sence they say such a one has no Memory and when I complain of mine they seem not to believe I am in earnest and presently reprove me as tho I accus'd my self for a Fool not discerning the Difference betwixt Memory and Understanding wherein they are very wide of my Intention and do me Wrong Experience rather daily shewing us on the contrary that a strong Memory is commonly coupled with infirm Judgment and they do me moreover who am so perfect in nothing as the good Friend at the same time a greater Wrong in this that they make the same Words which accuse my Infirmity represent me for an ingrateful Person wherein they bring my Integrity and good Nature into Question upon the account of my Memory and from a natural Imperfection unjustly derive a defect of Conscience He has forgot says one this Request or that Promise he no more remembers his Friends he has forgot to say or do or to conceal such and such a thing for my sake And truly I am apt enough to forget many things but to neglect any thing my Friend has given me in charge I never do it And it should be enough methinks that I feel the Misery and Inconvenience of it without branding me with Malice a Vice so much a Stranger and so contrary to my Nature However I derive these Comforts from my Infirmity first that it is an Evil from which principally I have found reason to correct a worse that would easily enough have grown upon me namely Ambition this Defect being intolerable in those who take upon them the Negotiations of the World an Employment of the greatest Honour
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
Bodies they made answer That nothing in the World should hire them to do it but having also tryed to persuade the Indians to leave their barbarous Custom and after the Greek manner to burn the Bodies of their Fathers they conceiv'd a much greater horrour at the motion Every one does the same for as much as Use veils from us the true Aspect of things Nil adeo magnum nec tam mirabile quicquam Principio quod non minuant mirarier omnes Paulatim Nothing at first so great so strange appears Which by degrees Use in succeeding Years Renders not more familiar Taking upon me once to justifie something in use amongst us and that was receiv'd with absolute Authority for a great many Leagues round about us and not content as men commonly do to establish it only by force of Law and Example but enquiring still farther into its Original I found the foundation so weak that I who made it my business to confirm others was very near being dissatisfy'd my self 'T is by this Receipt that Plato undertakes to cure this unnatural and preposterous Loves of his Time which he esteems of sovereign Vertue namely That the publick Opinion condemns them That the Poets and all other sorts of Writers relate horrible Stories of them A Recipe by vertue of which the most beautiful Daughters no more allure their Fathers Lust nor Brothers of the finest Shape and Fashion their Sisters desire The very Fables of Thyestes Oedipus and Macareus having with the Harmony of their Song infus'd this wholsome Opinion and Belief into the tender Brains of Infants Chastity is in truth a great and shining Vertue and of which the Utility is sufficiently known but to govern and prevail with it according to Nature is as hard as 't is easie to do it according to Custom and the Laws and Precepts of sober Practice The original and fundamental Reasons are of very obscure and difficult search and our Masters either lightly pass them over or not daring so much as to touch them precipitate themselves into the Liberty and Protection of Custom such as will not suffer themselves to be withdrawn from this original Source do yet commit a greater Error and submit themselves to wild and beastly Opinions witness Chrysippus who in so many of his Writings has strew'd the little Account he made of incestuous Conjunctions committed with how near Relations soever Whoever would disengage himself from this violent Prejudice of Custom would find several things receiv'd with absolute and undoubting Opinion that have no other Support than the hoary Head and rivell'd Face of ancient Use and things being referr'd to the Decision of Truth and Reason he will find his Judgment convinc'd and overthrown and yet restor'd to a much more sure Estate For Example I shall ask him what can be more strange than to see a People oblig'd to obey and pay a Reverence to Laws they never understood and to be bound in all their Affairs both of private and publick Concern as Marriages Donations Wills Sales and Purchases to Rules they cannot possibly know being neither writ nor publish'd in their own Language and of which they are of Necessity to purchase both the Interpretation and the Use Not according to the ingenious Opinion of Socrates who counsell'd his King to make the Trafficks and Negotiations of his Subjects free frank and of Profit to them and their Quarrels and Debates burdensome and tart and loaden with heavy Impositions and Penalties but by a prodigious Opinion to make sale of Reason it self and to allow the Law a course of Traffick I think my self oblig'd to Fortune that as our Historians report it was a Gascon Gentleman a Country-man of mine who first oppos'd Charlemain when he attempted to impose upon us Latine and Imperial Laws What can be more severe or unjust than to see a Nation where by lawful Custom the Office of a Judge is to bought and sold where Judgments are paid for with ready Money and where Justice may legally be denied to him that has not wherewithall to pay a Merchandize in so great Repute as in a Government to serve a fourth Estate of wrangling Lawyers to add to the three ancient ones of the Church Nobility and People which fourth Estate having the Laws in their hands and sovereign Power over Mens Lives and Fortunes make another separate Body of Nobility from whence it comes to pass that there are double Laws those of Honour and those of Justice in many things positively opposite to one another the Nobles as rigorously condemning a Lye taken as the other do a Lye reveng'd By the Law of Arms he shall be degraded from all Nobility and Honour who puts up an Affront and by the Civil Law he who vindicates his Reputation by Revenge incurs a Capital Punishment who applies himself to the Law for Reparation of an Offence done to his Honour disgraces himself and who does not is censur'd and punish'd by the Law Yet of these two so different things both of them referring to one Head the one has the Charge of Peace the other of War those have the Profit these the Honour those the Wisdom these the Vertue those the Word these the Action those Justice these Valour those Reason these Force those the long Robe these the short divided betwixt them For what concerns indifferent things as Cloaths who would debauch them from their true and real use which is the Bodies Service and Convenience and upon which their original Grace and Decency depend for the most fantastick in my Opinion that can be imagin'd I will instance amongst others our flat Caps that long Tail of Velvet that hangs down from our Womens Heads and that lascivious and abominable model of a Member we cannot in Modesty so much as name which nevertheless we shamefully strut withall in publick These Considerations notwithstanding will not prevail upon any understanding Man to decline the common Mode but on the contrary methinks all singular and particular Fashions are rather marks of Folly and vain Affection than of sound Reason and that a wise man ought within to withdraw and retire his Soul from the Crowd and there keep it at Liberty and in Power to judge freely of things but as to this outward Garb and Appearance absolutely to follow and conform himself to the Fashion of the Time Publick Society has nothing to do with our Thoughts but the rest as our Actions our Labours our Fortunes and our Lives we are to lend and abandon them to the common Opinion and Publick Service as did that good and great Socrates who refus'd to preserve his Life by a Disobedience to the Magistrate though a very wicked and unjust one for it is the Rule of Rules and the general Law of Laws that every one observe those of the Place wherein he lives 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Countries Customs to observe Is decent and does Praise deserve Besides it is a very great doubt whether any
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
Precipice and so wholly cut off from the rest of the Work that by the six first words I found my self flying into the other World and from thence discover'd the Vale from whence I came so deep and low that I had never since the Heart to descend into it any more If I should set out my Discourses with such rich Spoils as these the Plagiary would be too manifest in his own Defects and I should too much discover the imperfection of my own Writing To reprehend the fault in others that I am guilty of my self appears to me no more unreasonable than to condemn as I often do those of others in my self They are to be every where reprov'd and ought to have no Sanctuary allow'd them I know very well how imprudently I my self at every turn attempt to equal my self to my thefts and to make my style go hand in hand with them not without a temerarious hopes of deceiving the eyes of my Reader from discerning the difference but withall it is as much by the benefit of my Application that I hope to do it as by that of my Invention or any Force of my own Besides I do not offer to contend with the whole Body of these Champions nor hand to hand to any one of them 't is only by slights and little light attempts that I engage them I do not grapple with them but try their strength only and never engage so far as I make a shew to do and if I could hold them in play I were a brave Fellow for I never attaque them but where they are most sinewy and strong To cover a man's self as I have seen some do with another man's Arms so as not to discover so much as their fingers ends to carry on a Design as it is not hard for a Man that has any thing of a Scholar in him in an ordinary Subject to do under old Inventions patcht up here and there with his own Trumpery and then to endeavour to conceal the theft and to make it pass for his own is first injustice and meanness of Spirit in whoever do it who having nothing in them of their own fit to procure them a Reputation endeavour to do it by attempting to impose things upon the World in their own Name which they have really no manner of title to and then a ridiculous Folly to content themselves with acquiring the ignorant approbation of the Vulgar by such a pitiful Cheat at the price at the same time of discovering their insufficiency to men of Understanding who will soon smell out and trace them in those borrow'd Allegories and from whom alone they are to expect a legitimate Applause For my own part there is nothing I would not sooner do than that neither have I said so much of others but to get a better Opportunity to excuse my self neither in this do I in the least glance at the Composers of Canto's who declare themselves for such of which sort of Writers I have in my time known many very ingenious and have their Rhapsodies in very great Esteem and particularly one under the Name of Capilulus besides the Ancients These are really Men of Wit and that make it appear they are so both by that and other ways of Writing as for Example Lipsius in that learned and laborious Contexture of his Politicks But be it how it will and how inconsiderable soever these Essays of mine may be I will ingeniously confess I never intended to conceal them no more than my old bald grizled Picture before them where the Graver has not presented you with a perfect Face but the Resemblance of mine And these also are but my own particular Opinions and Fancies and I deliver them for no other but only what I my self believe and not for what is really to be believ'd Neither have I any other end in this Writing but only to discover my self who also shall peradventure be another thing to morrow if I chance to meet any Book or Friend to convince me in the mean time I have no Authority to be believ'd neither do I desire it being too conscious of my own inerudition to be able to instruct others A Friend of mine then having read the precedent Chapter the other day told me that I should a little longer have insisted upon the Education of Children and farther have extended my Discourse upon so necessary a point which how fit I am to do let my Friends flatter me if they please I have in the mean time no such Opinion of my own Talent as to promise my self any very good success from my endeavour but Madam if I had any sufficiency in this Subject I could not possibly better employ it than to present my best Instructions to the little Gentleman that threatens you shortly with a happy Birth for you are too generous to begin otherwise than with a male for having had so great a hand in the treaty of your Marriage I have a certain particular right and interest in the greatness and prosperity of the Issue that shall spring from it besides that your having had the best of my Services so long in possession does sufficiently oblige me to desire the Honour and Advantage of all wherein you shall be concerned But in truth all I understand as to that particular is only this that the greatest and most important difficulty of Humane Science is the Education of Children For as in Agriculture the Husbandry that is to precede Planting as also planting it self is certain plain easie and very well known but after that which is planted comes to take root to spread and shoot up there is a great deal more to be done more Art to be us'd more care to be taken and much more difficulty to cultivate and bring them to Perfection so it is with Men it is no hard matter to get Children but after they are born then begins the Trouble Sollicitude and Care vertuously to train Principle and bring them up The Symptoms of their Inclinations in that young and tender Age are so obscure and the Promises so uncertain and fallacious that it is very hard to establish any solid Judgment or Conjecture upon them As Simon for Example and Themistocles and a thousand others who have very much deceiv'd the little Expectation the World had of them Cubs of Bears and Bitches Puppies do truly and indeed discover their natural Inclination but Men so soon as ever grown up immediately applying themselves to certain Habits engaging themselves in certain Opinions and conforming themselves to particular Laws and Customs do easily alter or at least disguise their true and real Disposition And yet it is hard to force the Propension of Nature whence it comes to pass that for not having chosen the right Course a Man often takes very great Pains and consumes a good part of his Age in training up Children to things for which by their natural Aversion they are totally unfit In this
Difficulty nevertheless I am clearly of Opinion that they ought to be elemented in the best and most advantageous Studies without taking too much notice of or being too superstitious in those light Prognosticks they give of themselves in their tender Years to which Plato in his Republick gives methinks too much Authority But Madam Science is doubtless a very great Ornament and a thing of marvellous use especially in Persons rais'd to that degree of Fortune you are and in truth in Persons of mean and low Condition cannot perform its true and genuine Office being naturally more prompt to assist in the Conduct of War in the Government of Armies and Provinces and in negotiating the Leagues and Friendships of Princes and foreign Nations than in forming a Syllogism in Logick in pleading a Process in Law or in prescribing a Dose of Pills in Physick Wherefore Madam believing you will not omit this so necessary Embelishment in the Education of your Posterity who your self have tasted the Fruits of it and of a Learned Extraction for we yet have the Writings of the ancient Counts of Foix from whom my Lord your Husband and your self are both of you descended and Monsieur de Candale your Uncle does every day oblige the World with others which will extend the knowledge of this Quality in your Family so many succeeding Ages I will upon this occasion presume to acquaint your Ladiship with one particular Fancy of my own contrary to the common Method which also is all I am able to contribute to your Service in this Affair The charge of the Tutor or Governour you shall provide for your Son upon the choice of whom depends the whole Success of his Education has several other great and considerable Parts and Duties requir'd in so important a Trust besides that of which I am about to speak which however I shall not mention as being unable to add any thing of moment to the common Rules that every one who is qualified for a Governour is perfect in and also in this wherein I take upon me to advise he may follow it so far only as it shall appear rational and conducing to the end at which he does aim and intend For a Boy of Quality then who pretends to Letters not upon the account of Profit for so mean an Object as that is unworthy of the grace and favour of the Muses and moreover in that a man directs his Service to and professes to depend upon others nor so much for outward ornament as for his own proper and peculiar use and to furnish and enrich himself within having rather a Desire to go out an accomplish'd Cavalier and a fine Gentleman than a mere Scholar and a Learned Man for such a one I say I would also have his Friends sollicitous to find him out a Tutor who has rather an Elegant than a Learned Head and both if such a Person can be found but however to prefer his Manners and his Judgment before his Reading and that this Man should pursue the Exercise of his Charge after a new method 'T is the Custom of School-masters to be eternally thundring in their Pupils Ears as they were pouring into a Funnel whilst their Business is only to repeat what the other have said before Now I would have a Tutor to correct this Error and that at the very first he should according to the Capacity he has to deal with put it to the Test permitting his Pupil himself to taste and relish things and of himself to choose and discern them sometimes opening the way to him and sometimes making him to break the Ice himself that is I would not have him alone to invent and speak but that he should also hear his Pupil speak in turn Socrates and since him Arcesilaus made first their Scholars speak and then they spoke to them Obest plerumque iis qui dicere volunt authoritas eorum qui docent The Authority of those who teach is very oft an impediment to those who desire to learn It is good to make him like a young Horse trot before him that he may judge of his going and how much he is to abate of his own Speed to accommodate himself to the Vigour and Capacity of the other For want of which due proportion we spoil all which also to know how to adjust and to keep within an exact and due measure is one of the hardest things I know and an effect of a judicious and well-temper'd Soul to know how to condescend to his Puerile Motions and to govern and direct them I walk firmer and more secure up Hill than down and such as according to our common way of Teaching undertake with one and the same Lesson and the same measure of direction to instruct several Boyes of so differing and unequal Capacities are infinitely mistaken in their Method and at this rate 't is no wonder if in a multitude of Scholars there are not found above two or three who bring away any good account of their Time and Discipline Let the Master not only examine him about the Grammatical Construction of the bare words of his Lesson but of the sense and meaning of them and let him judge of the Profit he has made not by the testimony of his Memory but by that of his Understanding Let him make him put what he hath learn'd into an hundred several Forms and accommodate it to so many several Subjects to see if he yet rightly comprehend it and have made it his own taking instruction by his progress from the Institutions of Plato 'T is a sign of Crudity and Indigestion to vomit up what we eat in the same condition it was swallow'd down and the Stomach has not perform'd its office unless it have altered the form and condition of what was committed to it to concoct so our minds work only upon trust being bound and compell'd to follow the Appetite of anothers Fancy enslav'd and captivated under the Authority of another's Instruction we have been so subjected to the Tramel that we have no free nor natural Pace of our own our own Vigour and Liberty is extinct and gone Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt They are ever in Wardship and never left to their own Tuition I was privately at Pisa carried to see a very honest man but so great an Aristotelian that his most usual Thesis was That the Touch-stone and Square of all solid Imagination and of the Truth was an absolute conformity to Aristotle's Doctrine and that all besides was nothing but Inanity and Chimaera for that he had seen all and said all A Position that for having been a little too injuriously and malitiously interpreted brought him first into and afterwards long kept him in great trouble in the Inquisition at Rome Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift every thing he reads and lodge nothing in his Fancy upon simple Authority and upon trust Aristotle's Principles will then be no more Principles to him
things that have been very finely said have been lost and thrown away at the lower end of the Table Let him examine every Mans Talent a Peasant a Bricklayer or a Passenger a Man may learn something from every one of these in their several Capacities and something will be pick'd out of their Discourse whereof some use may be made at one time or another nay even the Folly and Impertinence of others will contribute to his Instruction By observing the Graces and Fashions of all he sees he will create to himself an Emulation of the good and a contempt of the bad Let an honest curiosity be suggested to his Fancy of being inquisitive after every thing and whatever there is of singular and rare near the Place where he shall reside let him go and see it a fine House a delicate Fountain an eminent Man the Place where a Battel has been anciently fought and the Passages of Caesar and Charlemain Quae Tellus sit lenta gelu quae putris ab aestu Ventus in Italiam quis bene vela ferat What Countries to the Bear objected lye What with the Dog-Star Heats are parch'd and dry And what Wind fairest serves for Italy Let him enquire into the Manners Revenues and Alliances of Princes things in themselves very pleasant to learn and very useful to know In this Conversing with Men I mean and principally those who only live in the Records of History he shall by reading those Books converse with those great and heroick Souls of former and better Ages 'T is an idle and vain Study I confess to those who make it so by doing it after a negligent manner but to those who do it with care and Observation 't is a study of inestimable Fruit and value and the only one as Plato reports the Lacedemonians reserv'd to themselves What profit shall he not reap as to the Business of Men by reading the Lives of Plutarch But withall let my Governour remember to what end his Instructions are principally directed and that he do not so much imprint in his Pupils Memory the date of the Ruine of Carthage as the Manners of Hannibal and Scipio nor so much where Marcellus dy'd as why it was unworthy of his Duty that he dy'd there That he do not teach him so much the Narative part as the Business of History The reading of which in my Opinion is a thing that of all others we apply our selves unto with the most differing and uncertain Measures I have read an hundred things in Livie that another has not or not taken notice of at least and Plutarch has read an hundred more there than ever I could find or then peradventure that Author ever Writ To some it is meerly a Grammar Study to others the very Anatomy of Philosophy by which the most secret and abstruse parts of our humane Nature are penetrated into There are in Plutarch many long Discourses very worthy to be carefully read and observ'd for he is in my Opinion of all other the greatest Master in that kind of Writing but withall there are a thousand others which he has only touch'd and glanc'd upon where he only points with his Finger to direct us which way we may go if we will and contents himself sometimes with giving only one brisk hit in the nicest Article of the Question from whence we are to grope out the rest as for Example where he says That the Inhabitants of Asia came to be Vassals to one only for not having been able to pronounce one Syllable which is No. Which Saying of his gave perhaps matter and occasion to Boetius to write his Voluntary Servitude Even this but to see him pick out a light Action in a man's Life or a Word that does not seem to be of any such Importance is it self a whole Discourse 'T is to our Prejudice that men of Understanding should so immoderately affect Brevity no doubt but their Reputation is the better by it but in the mean time we are the worse Plutarch had rather we should applaud his Judgment than commend his Knowledge and had rather leave us with an Appetite to read more than glutted with that we have already read He knew very well that a Man may say too much even upon the best Subjects and that Alexandrides did justly reproach him who made very elegant but too long Speeches to the Ephori when he said O Stranger thou speakest the things thou oughtest to speak but not after the manner that thou should'st speak them Such as have lean and spare Bodies stuff themselves out with Cloaths so they who are defective in Matter endeavour to make amends with Words Humane Understanding is marvellously enlightned by daily Conversation with men for we are otherwise of our selves so stupid as to have our Sight limited to the length of our own Noses One asking Socrates of what Country he was he did not make Answer of Athens but of the World he whose Imagination is better levell'd could carry further embrac'd the whole World for his Country and extended his Society and Friendship to all Mankind not as we do who look no further than our Feet When the Vines of our Village are nip'd with the Frost the Parish Priest presently concludes that the Indignation of God is gone out against all Humane Race and that the Cannibals have already got the Pip. Who is it that seeing the bloody Havock of these Civil Wars of ours does not cry out That the Machine of the World is near Dissolution and that the Day of Judgment is at hand without considering that many worse Revolutions have been seen and that in the mean time People are very merry in a thousand other Parts of the Earth for all this For my Part considering the License and Impunity that always attend such Commotions I admire they are so moderate and that there is no more Mischief done To him that feels the Hail-stones patter about his Ears the whole Hemisphear appears to be in Storm and Tempest like the ridiculous Savoyard who said very gravely That if that simple King of France could have manag'd his Fortune as he should have done he might in time have come to have been Steward of the Houshold to the Duke his Master the Fellow could not in his shallow Imagination conceive that there could be any thing greater than a Duke of Savoy And in truth we are all of us insensibly in this Error an Error of a very great Train and very pernicious Consequence But whoever shall represent to his Fancy as in a Picture that great Image of our Mother Nature pourtrayed in her full Majesty and Lustre whoever in her Face shall read so general and so constant a Variety whoever shall observe himself in that Figure and not himself but a whole Kingdom no bigger than the least Touch or Prick of a Pencil in comparison of the whole that man alone is able to value things according to their true
one Natural and the other Febrifick as there are in ours When I consider the Impression that our River of Dordoigne has made in my time on the right Bank of its descent and that in Twenty Years it has gain'd so much and undermin'd the Foundations of so many Houses I perceive it to be an extraordinary Agitation for had it always follow'd this Course or were hereafter to do it the prospect of the World would be totally chang'd But Rivers alter their Course sometimes beating against the one side and sometimes the other and sometimes quietly keeping the Channel I do not speak of sudden Inundations the causes of which every Body understands In Medoc by the Sea-shore the Sieur d' Arsac my Brother sees an Estate he had there Buried under the Sands which the Sea Vomits before it where the tops of some Houses are yet to be seen and where his Rents and Revenues are converted into pitiful Barren Pasturage The Inhabitants of which place affirm That of late Years the Sea has driven so vehemently upon them that they have lost above Four Leagues of Land These Sands are her Harbingers And we now see great heaps of moving Sand that march half a League before her The other Testimony from Antiquity to which some would apply this discovery of the new World is in Aristotle at least if that little Book of unheard of Miracles be his He there tells us That certain Carthaginians having crost the Atlantick Sea without the Streight of Gibralter and Sailed a very long time discover'd at last a great and fruitful Island all cover'd over with Wood and Water'd with several broad and deep Rivers far remote from all firm Land and that they and others after them allur'd by the gratitude and fertility of the Soil went thither with their Wives and Children and began to Plant a Colony But the Senate of Carthage visibly perceiving their People by little and little to grow thin Issu'd out an express Prohibition That no one upon pain of Death should Transport themselves thither and also drove out these new Inhabitants fearing 't is said lest in process of time they should so multiply as to supplant them themselves and Ruine their State But this Relation of Aristotles does no more agree with our new found Lands than the other This Man that I have is a plain ignorant Fellow and therefore the more likely to tell Truth For your better bred sort of Men are much more Curious in their Observation 't is true and discover a great deal more but then they gloss upon it and to give the greater weight to what they deliver and allure your Belief they cannot forbear a little to alter the Story they never represent things to you simply as they are but rather as they appear'd to them or as they would have them appear to you and to gain the reputation of Men of Judgment and the better to induce your Faith are willing to help out the Business with something more than is really true of their own Invention Now in this Case we should either have a Man of Irreproachable Veracity or so Simple that he has not wherewithal to Contrive and to give a Colour of Truth to False Relations and that can have no Ends in Forging an Untruth Such a one is mine and besides the little suspicion the Man lies under he has divers times shew'd me several Sea-men and Merchants that at the same time went the same Voyage I shall therefore content my self with his Information without enquiring what the Cosmographers say to the Business We should have Maps to trace out to us the particular places where they have been but for having had this advantage over us to have seen the Holy Land they would have the priviledg forsooth to tell us Stories of all the other parts of the World besides I would have every one Write what he knows and as much as he knows but no more and that not in this only but in all other Subjects For such a Person may have some particular Knowledg and Experience of the nature of such a River or such a Fountain that as to other things knows no more than what every Body does and yet to keep a clutter with this little Pittance of his will undertake to Write the whole Body of Physicks A Vice from whence great Inconveniences derive their Original Now to return to my Subject I find that there is nothing Barbarous and Savage in this Nation by any thing that I can gather excepting That every one gives the Title of Barbarity to every thing that is not in use in his own Country As indeed we have no other level of Truth and Reason than the Example and Idea of the Opinions and Customs of the place wherein we Live There is always the true Religion there the perfect Government and the most exact and accomplish'd Usance of all things They are Savages at the same rate that we say Fruits are wild which Nature produces of her self and by her own ordinary progress whereas in truth we ought rather to call those wild whose Natures we have chang'd by our Artifice and diverted from the common Order In those the Genuine most useful and natural Vertues and Properties are Vigorous and Spritely which we have help'd to Degenerate in these by accomodating them to the pleasure of our own Corrupted Palate And yet for all this our Taste confesses a flavor and delicacy excellent even to Emulation of the best of ours in several Fruits those Countries abound with without Art or Culture neither is it reasonable that Art should gain the Preheminence of our great and powerful Mother Nature We have so express'd her with the additional Ornaments and Graces we have added to the Beauty and Riches of her own Works by our Inventions that we have almost Smother'd and Choak'd her and yet in other places where she shines in her own purity and proper lustre she strangely baffles and disgraces all our vain and frivolous Attempts Et veniunt hedetae sponte suae melius Surgit in solis formosior arbutus antris Et volucres nulla dulcius arte canunt The Ivie best spontaneously does thrive Th'Arbutus best in shady Caves does live And Birds in their wild Notes their Throats do streach With greater Art than Art it self can teach Our utmost endeavours cannot arrive at so much as to imitate the Nest of the least of Birds its Contexture Quaintness and Convenience Not so much as the Web of a Contemptible Spider All things says Plato are produc'd either by Nature by Fortune or by Art the greatest and most beautiful by the one or the other of the former the least and the most imperfect by the last These Nations then seem to me to be so far Barbarous as having receiv'd but very little form and fashion from Art and Humane Invention and consequently not much remote from their Original Simplicity The Laws of Nature however govern them still
no effect of Vertue to have stronger Arms and Legs 't is a Dead and Corporeal quality to be Active 't is an Exploit of Fortune to make our Enemy stumble or to dazle him with the light of the Sun 't is a trick of Science and Art and that may happen in a mean base Fellow to be a good Fencer The Estimate and Valour of a Man consist in the Heart and in the Will there his true Honour Lives Valour is Stability not of Legs and Arms but of the Courage and the Soul it does not lie in the Valour of our Horse or our Arms but in our own He that falls obstinate in his Courage Si succiderit de genu pugnat If his Legs fail him Fight upon his Knees He who for any danger of apparent Death abates nothing of his assurance who Dying does yet dart at his Enemy a fierce and disdainful Look is overcome not by us but by Fortune he is Kill'd not Conquer'd the most Valiant and sometimes the most Unfortunate There are also Defeats Triumphant to Emulation of Victories Neither durst those Four Sister-Victories the fairest the Sun ever beheld of Salamis Platea Mycall and Sycyly ever oppose all their united Glories to the single Glory of the Discomfiture of King Leonidas and his Army at the Pass of Thermopyle Whoever ran with a more glorious Desire and greater Ambition to the winning than the Captain Ischolas to the certain loss of a Battel Who could have found out a more subtle Invention to secure his safety than he did to assure his Ruine He was set to defend a certain Pass of Peloponesus against the Arcadians which considering the nature of the place and the inequality of Forces finding it utterly impossible for him to do and concluding that all who were presented to the Enemy must certainly be left upon the place and on the other side reputing it unworthy of his own Vertue and Magnanimity and of the Lacedemonian name to fail in any part of his Duty he chose a mean betwixt these two Extreams after this manner The Youngest and most Active of his Men he would preserve for the Service and Defence of their Country and therefore sent them back and with the rest whose loss would be of less consideration he resolv'd to make good the Pass and with the death of them to make the Enemy Buy their Entry as dear as possibly he could as it also fell out for being presently Environ'd on all sides by the Arcadians after having made a great Slaughter of the Enemy he and his were all cut in pieces Is there any Trophy dedicated to the Conquerours which is not much more due to these who were overcome The part that true Conquering is to play lies in the Encounter not in the coming off and the Honour of Vertue consists in Fighting not in Subduing But to return to my Story these Prisoners are so far from discovering the least Weakness for all the Terrors can be represented to them that on the contrary during the two or three Months that they are kept they always appear with a chearful Countenance importune their Masters to make haste to bring them to the Test Defie Rail at them and Reproach them with Cowardize and the number of Battels they have lost against those of their Country I have a Song made by one of these Prisoners wherein he bids them come all and Dine upon him and welcome for they shall withal Eat their own Fathers and Grandfathers whose Flesh has serv'd to feed and nourish him These Muscles says he this Flesh and these Veins are your own Poor silly Souls as you are you little think that the substance of your Ancestors Limbs is here yet but mind as you Eat and you will find in it the Taste of your own Flesh In which Song there is to be observ'd an Invention that does nothing relish of the Barbarian Those that paint these People Dying after this manner represent the Prisoner spitting in the faces of his Executioners and making at them a wry Mouth And 't is most certain that to the very last gasp they never cease to Brave and Defie them both in Word and Gesture In plain truth these Men are very Savage in comparison of us and of necessity they must either be absolutely so or else we are Savager for there is a vast difference betwixt their Manners and ours The Men there have several Wives and so much the greater number by how much they have the greater Reputation and Valour and it is one very remarkable Vertue their Women have that the same Endeavour our Wives have to hinder and divert us from the Friendship and Familiarity of other Women those employ to promote their Husbands Desires and to procure them many Spouses for being above all things sollicitous of their Husbands Honour 't is their chiefest care to seek out and to bring in the most Companions they can forasmuch as it is a Testimony of their Husbands Vertue I know most of ours will cry out that 't is Monstrous whereas in truth it is not so but a truly Matrimonical Vertue though of the highest form In the Bible Sarah Leah and Rachel gave the most Beautiful of their Maids to their Husbands Livia preferred the Passion of Augustus to her own interest and the Wife of King Dejotarus of Stratonica did not only give up a fair young Maid that serv'd her to her Husbands Embraces but moreover carefully brought up the Children he had by her and assisted them in the Succession to their Fathers Crown And that it may not be suppos'd that all this is done by a simple and servile Observation to their common Practice or by any Authoritative Impression of their Ancient Custom without Judgment or Examination and for having a Soul so stupid that it cannot contrive what else to do I must here give you some touches of their sufficiency in point of Understanding besides what I repeated to you before which was one of their Songs of War I have another and a Love-Song that begins thus Stay Adder stay that by thy Pattern my Sister may draw the Fashion and work of a Noble Wreath that I may present to my Beloved by which means thy Beauty and the excellent Order of thy Scales shall for ever be preferr'd before all other Serpents Wherein the first Couplet Stay Adder c. makes the Burthen of the Song Now I have converst enough with Poetry to judg thus much that not only there is nothing of Barbarous in this Invention But moreover that it is perfectly Anacreontick to which their Language is soft of a pleasing Accent and something bordering upon the Greek Terminations Three of these People not foreseeing how dear their knowledg of the Corruptions of this part of the World would one Day cost their Happiness and Repose and that the effect of this Commerce would be their Ruine as I presuppose it is in a very fair way Miserable Men to suffer
themselves to be deluded with desire of Novelty and to have left the Serenity of their own Heaven to come so far to gaze at ours came to Roane at the time that the late King Charles the Ninth was there where the King himself talk'd to them a good while and they were made to see our Fashions our Pomp and the form of a great City after which some one ask'd their opinion and would know of them what of all the things they had seen they found most to be admired To which they made Answer Three things of which I have forgot the Third and am troubled at it but Two I yet remember They said that in the first place they thought it very strange that so many tall Men wearing Beards strong and well Arm'd who were about the King 't is like they meant the Swiss of the Guard should submit to Obey a Child and that they did not choose out one amongst themselves to Command Secondly they have a way of speaking in their Language to call Men the half of one another that they had Observ'd that there were amongst us Men full and cramm'd with all manner of Conveniences whilst in the mean time their halves were Begging at their Doors Lean and half starv'd with Hunger and Poverty and thought it strange that these Necessitous halves were able to suffer so great an Inequality and Injustice and that they did not take the others by the Throats or set Fire to their Houses I talk'd to one of them a great while together but I had so ill an Interpreter and that was so perplex'd by his own Ignorance to apprehend my meaning that I could get nothing out of him of any moment Asking him what advantage he reapt from the Superiority he had amongst his own People for he was a Captain and our Marriners call'd him King he told me to March in the Head of them to War and demanding of him further how many Men he had to follow him He shew'd me a space of Ground to signifie as many as could March in such a compass which might be Four or Five Thousand Men and putting the question to him whether or no his Authority expir'd with the War He told me this remain'd that when he went to Visit the Village of his dependance they plain'd him Paths through the thick of their Woods through which he might pass at his ease All this does not sound very ill and the last was not much amiss for they wear no Breeches CHAP. XXXI That a Man is soberly to judg of Divine Ordinances THings unknown are the principal and true subject of Imposture forasmuch as in the first place their very Strangeness lends them Credit and moreover by not being subjected to our ordinary Discourse they deprive us of the means to question and dispute them For which reason says Plato it is much more easie to satisfie the hearers when speaking of the Nature of the Gods than of the Nature of Men because the Ignorance of the Auditory affords a fair and large Career and all manner of Liberty in the handling of profane and abstruce things and then it comes to pass that nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know nor any People so confident as those who entertain us with Fabulous Stories such as your Alchymists Judicial Astrologers Fortune-tellers and Physicians Id genus omne to which I could willingly if I durst join a sort of People that take upon them to Interpret and Controul the Designs of God himself making no question of finding out the cause of every Accident and to pry into the secrets of the Divine Will there to discover the Incomprehensible Motives of his Works And although the variety and the continual discordance of Events throw them from Corner to Corner and toss them from East to West yet do they still persist in their vain Inquisition and with the same Pencil to Paint Black and White In a Nation of the Indies there is this commendable Custom that when any thing befalls them amiss in any Rencounter or Battel they Publickly ask Pardon of the Sun who is their God as having committed an unjust Action always imputing their Good or Evil Fortune to the Divine Justice and to that submitting their own Judgment and Reason 'T is enough for a Christian to believe that all things come from God to receive them with acknowledgment of his divine and instructable Wisdom and also thankfully to accept and receive them with what Face soever they may present themselves But I do not approve of what I see in use that is to seek to continue and support our Religion by the Prosperity of our Enterprizes Our Belief has other Foundation enough without going about to Authorize it by Events For the People accustomed to such Arguments as these and so proper to their own Taste it is to be fear'd lest when they fail of Success they should also stagger in their Faith As in the War wherein we are now Engag'd upon the account of Religion those who had the better in the Business of Rochelabeille making great Brags of that success as an infallible approbation of their Cause when they came afterwards to excuse their Misfortunes of Jarnac and Moncontour 't was by saying they were Fatherly Scourges and Corrections if they have not a People wholely at their Mercy they make it manifestly enough to appear what it is to take two sorts of Grist out of the same Sack and with the same Mouth to blow Hot and Cold. It were better to possess the Vulgar with the solid and real Foundations of Truth 'T was a brave Naval-Battel that was gain'd a few Months since against the Turks under the Command of Don John of Austria but it has also pleas'd God at other times to let us see as great Victories at our own Expence In fine 't is a hard matter to reduce Divine things to our Ballance without waste and losing a great deal of the weight And who would take upon him to give a reason that Arius and his Pope Leo the principal Heads of the Arian Heresie should Die at several times of so like and strange Deaths for being withdrawn from the Disputation by the Griping in the Guts they both of them suddenly gave up the Ghost upon the Stool and would aggravate this Divine Vengeance by the Circumstance of the place might as well add the Death of Heliogabalus who was also Slain in a House of Office But what Ireneus was involv'd in the same Fortune God being pleas'd to shew us that the Good have something else to hope for and the Wicked something else to fear than the Fortunes or Misfortunes of this World He manages and applies them according to his own secret Will and Pleasure and deprives us of the means foolishly to make our own profit And those People both abuse themselves and us who will pretend to dive into these Mysteries by the strength of Humane Reason They never give one
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
those of Persia. What a World of people do we see in the Wars betwixt the Turks and the Greeks rather embrace a cruel death than to uncircumcise themselves to admit of Baptism An example of which no sort of Religion is incapable The Kings of Castile having Banisht the Jews out of their Dominions John King of Portugal in consideration of eight Crowns a Head sold them a retirement into his for a certain limited time upon condition that the time perfixt coming to expire they should be gone and he to furnish them with Shipping to transport them into Affrick The limited day came which once laps'd they were given to understand that such as were afterwards found in the Kingdom should remain Slaves Vessels were very slenderly provided and those who embarkt in them were rudely and villanously used by the Seamen who besides other indignities kept them cruising upon the Sea one while forwards and another backwards till they had spent all their provisions and were constrain'd to buy of them at so dear rates and so long withal that they set them not on Shoar till they were all stript to the very Shirts The news of this inhumane usage being brought to those who remained behind the greater part of them resolved upon Slavery and some made a shew of changing Religion Emanuel the successor for of John being come to the Crown first set them at liberty and afterwards altering his mind order'd them to depart his Country assigning three Ports for their passage Hoping says the Bishop Osorius no contemptible Latin Historian of these later times that the favour of the liberty he had given them having fail'd of convertâ—ng them to Christianity yet the difficulty of committing themselves to the mercy of the Mariners and of abandoning a Country they were now habituated to and were grown very rich in to go and expose themselves in strange and unknown Regions would certainly do it But finding himself deceiv'd in his expectation and that they were all resolved upon the Voyage he cut-off two of the three Ports he had promised them to the end that the length and incommodity of the passage might reduce some or that he might have opportunity by crouding them all into one place the more conveniently to execute what he had designed which was to force all the Children under fourteen years of Age from the Arms of their Fathers and Mothers to transport them from their sight and conversation into a place where they might be instructed and brought up in our Religion He says that this produc'd a most horrid Spectacle The natural affection betwixt the Parents and their Children and moreover their Zeal to their ancient Belief contending against this violent Decree Fathers and Mothers were commonly seen making themselves away and by a yet much more Rigorous Example precipitating out of Love and Compassion their young Children into Wells and Pits to avoid the Severity of this Law As to the remainder of them the time that had been prefix'd being expir'd for want of means to transport them they again return'd into Slavery Some also turn'd Christians upon whose Faith as also that of their Posterity even to this Day which is a Hundred Years since few Portuguese can yet relie or believe them to be real Converts though Custom and length of time are much more powerful Counsellors in such Changes than all other Constraints whatever In the Town of Castlenau-Darry Fifty Hereticks Albegeois at one time suffer'd themselves to be Burnt alive in one Fire rather than they would renounce their Opinions Quoties non modo ductores nostri dit Cicero sed universi etiam exercitus ad non dubiam mortem concurrerunt How oft have not only our Leaders but whole Armies run to a certain and apparent Death I have seen an intimate Friend of mine run headlong upon Death with a real affection and that was rooted in his heart by divers plausible Arguments which he would never permit me to dispossess him of upon the first Honourable occasion that offer'd it self to him to precipitate himself into it without any manner of visible reason with an obstinate and ardent desire of Dying We have several Examples of our own times of those even so much as to little Children who for fear of a Whipping or some such little thing have dispatch'd themselves And what shall we not fear says one of the Ancients to that purpose if we dread that which Cowardize it self has chosen for its Refuge Should I here produce a tedious Catalogue of those of all Sexes and Conditions and of all sorts even in the most happy Ages who have either with great Constancy look'd Death in the Face or voluntarily sought it and sought it not only to avoid the Evils of this Life but some purely to avoid the Saciety of Living and others for the hope of a better Condition elsewhere I should never have done Nay the Number is so infinite that in truth I should have a better Bargain on 't to reckon up those who have fear'd it This one therefore shall serve for all Pyrrho the Philosopher being one Day in a Boat in a very great Tempest shew'd to those he saw the most Affrighted about him and encourag'd them by the Example of a Hog that was there nothing at all concern'd at the Storm Shall we then dare to say that this advantage of Reason of which we so much Boast and upon the account of which we think our selves Masters and Emperours over the rest of the Creatures was given us for a Torment To what end serves the Knowledg of things if it renders us more Unmanly If we lose the Tranquility and Repose we should enjoy without it And if it put us into a worse Condition than Pyrrho's Hog Shall we employ the Understanding that was conferr'd upon us for our greatest Good to our own Ruine Setting our selves against the design of Nature and the universal Order of things which intend that every one should make use of the Faculties Members and Means he has to his own best Advantage But it may peradventure be Objected against me Your Rule is true enough as to what concerns Death But what will you say of Necessity What will you moreover say of Pain that Aristippus Hieronimus and almost all the Wise Men have reputed the worst of Evils And those who have deny'd it by word of Mouth did however confess it in Effects Possidonius being extreamly Tormented with a sharp and painful Disease Pompeius came to Visit him excusing himself that he had taken so unseasonable a time to come to hear him discourse of Philosophy God forbid said Possidonius to him again that Pain should ever have the power to hinder me from talking and thereupon fell imediately upon a discourse of the Contempt of Pain But in the mean time his own Infirmity was playing its part and plagu'd him to the purpose to which he Cry'd out thou may'st work thy Will Pain and Torment me with all
not daign to stoop to take it up which he said in reference to the great and painful Duty incumbent upon a good King Doubtless it can be no easie task to Rule others when we find it so hard a matter to Govern our selves And as to the thing Dominion that seems so sweet and charming the frailty of Humane Wisdom and the difficulty of choice in things that are new and doubtful to us consider'd I am very much of opinion that it is much more pleasant to follow than to lead and that it is a great settlement and satisfaction of Mind to have only one Path to walk in and to have none to answer for but a Man's self Vt satius multo jam sit parere quietum Quam regere imperio res velle So that 't is better Calmly to Obey Than in the Storms of State to Rule and Sway. To which we may add that saying of Cyrus That no Man was fit to Rule but he who in his own Worth was of greater Value than all those he was to Govern But King Hiero in Xenophon says further That in the Fruition even of Pleasure it self they are in a worse condition than private Men forasmuch as the opportunities and facility they have of commanding those things at Will takes off from the Delight Pinguis amor nimiumque potens in taedia nobis Vertitur Stomacho dulcis ut esca necet Too Potent Love in Loathing never ends As highest Sawce the Stomach most offends Can we think that the Singing-Boys of the Quire take any great delight in their own Musick The Saciety does rather render it troublesome and tedious to them Feasts Balls Masquerades and Tiltings delight such as but rarely see and desire to be at such Solemnities But having been frequent at such Entertainments the relish of them grows flat and insipid Nay Women the greatest Temptation do not so much delight those who make a common practice of the sport He who will not give himself leisure to be Thirsty can never find the true pleasure of Drinking Farces and Tumbling Tricks are pleasant to the Spectators but a pain to those by whom they are perform'd And that this is effectually so we see that Princes divert themselves sometimes in disguising their Quality a while to depose themselves and to stoop to the poor and ordinary way of Living of the meanest of their People Plerumque gratae Principibus vires Mundaeque parvo sublare pauperum Coenae sine aulaeis ostro Solicitum explicuere frontem Even Princes with Variety tempted are Which makes them oft feed on clean homely Fare In a poor Hut laying aside the State Purple and Pomp which should on Grandeur wait In such a Solitude to smooth the Frown Forc'd by the weighty Pressure of a Crown Nothing is so distastful and disappointing as Abundance What Appetite would not be baffled to see Three Hundred Women at his Mercy as the Grand Seigneor has in his Seraglio And What Fruition of Pleasure or Taste of Recreation did he of his Ancestors reserve to himself who never went a Hawking without Seven Thousand Falconers And besides all this I Fancy that this Lustre of Grandeur brings with it no little disturbance and uneasiness upon the Enjoyment of the most tempting pleasures they are too conspicuous and lie too open to every ones view Neither do I know to what end a man should any more require them to conceal their Errors since what is only reputed indiscretion in us they know very well the people in them brand with the names of Tyranny and contempt of the Laws and besides their proclivity to Vice are apt to censure that it is a heightning to pleasure to them to Insult over the Laws and to trample upon Publick Ordinances Plato indeed in his Gorgeas defines a Tyrant to be one who in a City has Licence to do whatever his own Will leads him to And by reason of this Impunity the Overtacting and Publication of their Vices does oft-times more Mischief than the Vice it self Every one fears to be pry'd into and discover'd in their Evil Courses but Princes are even to their very Gestures Looks and Thoughts the People conceiving they have right and title to Censure and be Judges of them Besides that the Blemishes of the Great naturally appear greater by reason of the Eminency and Lustre of the place where they are seated and that a Mole or a Wart appears greater in them than the greatest Deformity in others And this is the reason why the Poets feign the Amours of Jupiter to be perform'd in the disguises of so many borrowed shapes that amongst the many Amorous Practices they lay to his charge there is only one as I remember where he appears in his own Majesty and Grandeur But let us return to Hiero who complains of the Inconveniences he found in his Royalty in that he could not look abroad and Travel the World at liberty being as it were a Prisoner to the Bounds and Limits of his own Dominion And that in all his Actions he was evermore surrounded with an importunate Crowd And in truth to see our Kings set all alone at Table environed with so many People prating about them and so many strangers staring upon them as they always are I have often been mov'd rather to pity than to envy their condition King Alphonsus was wont to say that in this Asses were in a better condition than Kings their Masters permitting them to feed at their own ease and pleasure a favour that Kings cannot obtain of their Servants And it would never sink into my fancy that it could be of any great benefit to the Life of a Man of Sense to have Twenty People prating about him when he is at Stool or that the Services of a Man of Ten Thousand Livers a Year or that has taken Casal or defended Siena should be either more commodious or more acceptable to him than those of a good Groom of the Chamber that understands his place The Advantages of Soveraignty are but Imaginary upon the matter Every degree of Fortune has in it some Image of Principality Caesar calls all the Lords of France having Free-Franchise within their own Demeans Roylets and in truth the Name of Sire excepted they go pretty far towards Kingship for do but look into the Provinces remote from Court as Brittany for example take notice of the Attendance the Vassals the Officers the Employments Service Ceremony and State of a Lord that Lives retir'd from Court is constant to his own House and that has been bred up amongst his own Tenants and Servants and observe withal the flight of his Imagination there is nothing more Royal He hears talk of his Master once a Year as of a King of Persia or Peru without taking any further notice of him than some remote Kindred his Secretary keeps in some Musty Record And to speak the truth our Laws are easie enough so easie that a
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
of another who advising the Emperour Theodosius and told him that Disputes did not so much Rock the Schisms of the Church a sleep as it Rous'd and Animated Heresies That therefore all Contentions and Logical Disputations were to be avoided and Men absolutely to Acquiess in the Prescriptions and Formulas of Faith Establish'd by the Ancients And the Emperour Androricus having over-heard some great Men at high words in his Pallace with Lapodius about a Point of ours of great Importance gave them so severe a Check as to threaten to cause them to be thrown into the River if they did not desist The very Women and Children now adays take upon them to Document the Oldest and most Experienc'd Men about the Ecclesiastical Laws Whereas the first of those of Plato forbids them to enquire so much as into the Civil Laws which were to stand instead of Divine Ordinances And allowing the Old Men to confer amongst themselves or with the Magistrate about those things he adds provided it be not in the presence of Young or Profane Persons A Bishop has left in Writing that at the other end of the World there is an Isle by the Ancients call'd Dioscorides abundantly Fertile in all sorts of Trees and Fruits and of an exceeding Healthful Air The Inhabitants of which are Christians having Churches and Altars only adorn'd with Crucifixes without any other Images great Observers of Fasts and Feasts Exact payers of their Tyths to the Priests and so Chast that none of them is permitted to have to do with more than one Woman in his Life As to the rest so content with their condition that environed with the Sea they know nothing of Navigation and so simple that they understand not one Syllable of the Religion they profess and wherein they are so Devout A thing incredible to such as do not know that the Pagans who are so Zealous Idolaters know nothing more of their Gods than their bare Names and their Statues The Ancient beginning of Menalippus a Tragedy of Euripedes ran thus Jupiter for that Name alone Of what thou art to me is known I have also known in my time some Men's Writings found fault with for being purely Humane and Philosophical without any mixture of Divinity and yet whoever should on the contrary say that Divine Doctrine as Queen and Regent of the rest better and with greater Decency keeps her State apart What she ought to be Soveraign throughout not Subsidiary and Suffragan And that peradventure Grammatical Rhetorical and Logical Examples may elsewhere be more suitably chosen as also the Arguments for the Stage and Publick Entertainments than from so Sacred a matter That Divine Reasons are consider'd with greater Veneration and Attention when by themselves and in their own proper Stile than when mixt with and adapted to Humane Discourses That it is a fault much more often observ'd that the Divines Write too Humanely than that the Humanists Write not Theologically enough Philosophy says St. Chrysostome has long been Banish'd the Holy Schools as an Hand-maid altogether useless and thought unworthy to peep so much as in passing by the Door into the Sacrifice of the Divine Doctrine And that the Humane way of speaking is of a much lower form and ought not to serve her self with the Dignity and Majesty of Divine Eloquence I say whoever on the contrary should Object all this would not be without reason on his side Let who will Verbis Indisciplinatis talk of Fortune Destiny Accident Good and Evil Hap and other such like Phrases according to his own Humour I for my part propose Fancies meerly Humane and meerly my own and that simply as Humane Fancies and separately consider'd not as determin'd by any Arrest from Heaven or incapable of Doubt or Dispute Matter of Opinion not matter of Faith Things which I discourse of according to my own Capacity not what I believe according to God which also I do after a Laical not Clerical and yet always after a very Religious manner And it were as Rational to affirm that an Edict enjoining all People but such as are Publick Professors of Divinity to be very reserv'd in Writing of Religion would carry with it a very good colour of Utility and Justice and me amongst the rest to hold my prating I have been told that even those who are not of our Church do nevertheless amongst themselves expressly forbid the Name of God to be us'd in common Discourse Not so much as by way of Interjection Exclamation Assertion of a Truth or Comparison and I think them in the right And upon what occasion soever we call upon God to accompany and assist us it ought always to be done with the greatest Reverence and Devotion There is as I remember a passage in Xenophon where he tells us that we ought so much the more seldome to call upon God by how much it is hard to compose our Souls to such a degree of Calmness Penitency and Devotion as it ought to be in at such time otherwise our Prayers are not only vain and fruitless but Vicious in themselves Forgive us we say our Trespasses as we forgive them that Trespass against us What do we mean by this Petition but that we present him a Soul free from all Rancour and Revenge And yet we make nothing of Imvoking God's Assistance in our Vices and inviting him into our unjust Designs Quae nisi seductis nequeas committere divis Which only to the Gods apart Thou hast the Impudence t' impart The Covetous Man Prays for the conservation of his superfluous and peradventure ill got Riches the Ambitious for Victory and the Conduct of his Fortune the Thief calls God to his Assistance to deliver him from the Dangers and Difficulties that obstruct his Wicked Designs Or returns him thanks for the Facility he has met with in Robbing a poor Peasant At the Door of the House they are going to Storm or break into by force of a Petarre they fall to Prayers for success having their Instruction and Hopes full of Cruelty Avarice and Lust. Hoc ipsum quo tu Jovis aurem impellere tentas Dic agedum Staio proh Jupiter o bone clamet Jupiter at sese non clamet Jupiter ipse The Prayers with which thou dost assault Jove's Ear Repeat to Staius whom thou soon wilt hear O Jupiter good Jupiter Exclaim But Jupiter Exclaims not Marguarette Queen of Navarre tells of a Young Prince whom though she does not name is easily enough by his great Quality to be known who going upon an Amorous Assignation to Lie with an Advocates Wife of Paris his way thither being through a Church he never pass'd that Holy place going to or returning from this Godly Exercise but he always Kneel'd down to Pray wherein he would employ the Divine Favour his Soul being full of such Vertuous Meditations I leave others to judg which nevertheless she instances for a Testimony of singular Devotion But it is by this proof
and share whilst he keeps his Keys in his Bosom much more carefully than his Eyes Whilst he hugs himself with the Frugality of the pitiful pittance of a wretched and niggardly Table every thing goes to wrack and ruin in every Corner of his House in play drink all sorts of profusion making sports in their Junkets with his vain Anger and fruitless Parsimony Every one is a Centinel against him and if by accident any wretched Fellow that serves him is of another humour and will not joyn with the rest he is presently rendred suspected to him a Bait that old Age very easily bites at of its self How oft has this Gentleman boasted to me in how great awe he kept his Family and how exact an Obedience and Reverence they paid him How clearly did this man see into his own Affairs Ille solus nescit omnia I do not know any one that can muster more Parts both natural and acquir'd proper to maintain such a dominion than he yet he is faln from it like a Child For this reason it is that I have pickt out Him amongst several others that I know of the same humour for the greatest Example It were matter sufficient for a Question in the Schools Whether he is better thus or otherwise In his Presence all submit to and bow before him and give so much way to his vanity that no body ever resists him he has his belly full of Cringe and all postures of Fear Submission and Respect Does he turn away a Servant he packs up his bundle and is gone but 't is no further than just out of his sight the Pace of old Age is so slow and the Sence is so weak and troubled that he will live and do his old Office in the same House a year together without being perceiv'd And after a fit interval of time Letters are pretended to come a great way off from I know not where very humble suppliant and full of promises of amendment by vertue of which he is again receiv'd into favour Does Monsieur make any Bargain or send away any Dispatch that does not please 't is supprest and Causes now afterward forg'd to excuse the want of Execution in the one or Answer in the other No strange Letters being first brought to him he never sees any but those that shall seem fit for his knowledge If by accident they fall first into his own hand being us'd to trust some body to read them to him he reads extempore what he thinks fit and very often makes such a one ask him pardon who abuses and rails at him in his Letter Finally he sees nothing but by an Image prepar'd and design'd before-hand and the most satisfactory they can invent not to rouze and awake his ill Humour and Choler I have seen enow differing Forms of Oeconomy long constant and of like effect Women especially the perverse and elder sort are evermore addicted to cross their Husbands They lay hold with both hands on all occasions to contradict and oppose them and the first excuse serves for a plenary Justification I have seen who has grosly purloynd from her Husband that as she told her Confessor she might distribute the more liberal Alms Let who will trust to that Religious Dispensation No management of Affairs seems to them of sufficient Dignity if proceeding from the Husband's assent they must usurp either by Insolence or Cunning and always injuriously or else it has not the Grace of Authority they desire When as in the case I am speaking of 't is against a poor Old man and for the Children than they make use of this Title to serve their Passion with Glory and as in a common Servitude easily monopolize against his Government and Dominion If they be Males grown up and flourishing they presently corrupt either by force or favour both Steward Receivers and all the Rout. Such as have neither Wife nor Son do not so easily fall into this misfortune but withal more cruelly and undeservingly Cato the elder in his time said So many Servants so many Enemies Consider then whether according to the vast difference betwixt the purity of the Age he liv'd in and the corruption of this of ours he does not seem to advertise us that Wife Son and Servant so many Enemies to us 'T is well for old Age that it is always accompanied with Stupidity Ignorance and a facility of being deceiv'd for should we see how we are us'd and would not acquiesce what would become of us especially in such an Age as this where the very Judges who are to determine are usually partial to the young in any Cause that comes before them In case that the discovery of this Cheat escape me I cannot at least fail to discern that I am very fit to be cheated and can a man ever enough speak the value of a Friend in comparison with these civil tyes The very Image of it which I see so pure and uncorrupted in Beasts how religiously do I respect it If others deceive me yet do I not at least deceive my self in thinking I am able to defend me from them or in cudgeling my Brains to make my self so I protect my self from such Treasons in my own Bosom not by an unquiet and tumultuary Curiosity but rather by Mirth and Resolution When I hear talk of any ones Condition I never trouble my self to think of him I presently turn my Eyes upon my self to see in what condition I am what ever concerns another relates to me The Accident that has befaln him gives me Caution rouzes me to turn my Defence that way We every day and every hour say things of another that we might more properly say of our selves could we but revert our Observation to our own Concerns as well as extend it to others And several Authors have in this manner prejudic'd their own Cause by running headlong upon those they attack and darting those Shafts against their Enemies that are more properly and with greater advantage to be return'd upon them The last Mareschal de Monlue having lost his Son who was slain at the Isle of Madera in truth a very brave Gentleman and of great expectation did to me amongst his other Regrets very much insist upon what a Sorrow and Heart-breaking it was that he had never made himself familiar and acquainted with him and by that humour of Fatherly Gravity and Sowrness to have lost the opportunity of having an insight into and of well knowing his Son as also of letting him know the extream affection he had for him and the worthy opinion he had of his Vertue That poor Boy said he never saw in me other than a stern and disdainful Countenance and is gone in a belief that I neither knew how to love nor esteem him according to his desert For whom did I reserve the discovery of that singular Affection I had for him in my Soul Was it not he himself who ought to have
and Error only and as to its own Weakness does frankly acknowledge and confess it It thinks it gives a just Interpretation according to the Appearances by its Conceptions presented to it but they are weak and imperfect Most of the Fables of Aesop have in them several Senses and Meanings of which the Mythologists chose some one that quadrates well to the Fable but for the most part 't is but the first Face that presents it self and is Superficial only There yet remain others more lively essential and profound into which they have not been able to penetrate and just so do I. But to pursue the business of this Essay I have always thought that in Poesie Virgil Lucretius Catullus and Horace do many degrees excel the rest and signally Virgil in his Georgicks which I look upon for the most accomplished piece of Poetry and in comparison of which a Man may easily discern that there are some places in his Aeneids to which the Author would have given a little more of the File had he had leisure and the fith Book of his Aeneids seems to me the most perfect I also love Lucan and willingly read him not so much for his Style as for his own Worth and the Truth and Solidity of his Opinions and Judgments As for Terence I find the Queintness and Eloquencies of the Latin Tongue so admirable lively to represent our Manners and the Movements of the Soul that our Actions throw me at every turn upon him and cannot read him so oft that I do not still discover some new Grace and Beauty Such as liv'd near Virgil's time were scandalized that some should compare him with Lucretius I am I confess of Opinion that the Comparison is in truth very unequal a Belief that nevertheless I have much ado to assure my self in when I meet with some excellent Passages in Lucretius But if they were so angry at this Comparison what would they have said of the Brutish and Barbarous Stupidity of those who at this Hour compare him with Ariosto Or would not Ariosto himself say O Seclum insipiens infacetum I think the Ancients had more reason to be angry with those who compared Plautus with Terence than Lucretius with Virgil. It makes much for the Estimation and Preference of Terence that the Father of the Roman Eloquence has him so often in his Mouth and the Sentence that the best Judge of Roman Poets has pass'd upon the other I have often observed that those of our times who take upon them to write Comedies in imitation of the Italians who are happy enough in that way of Writing take in three or four Arguments of those of Plautus or Terence to make one of theirs and crowd five or six of Boccace his Novels into one single Comedy And that which makes them so load themselves with Matter is the Diffidence they have of being able to support themselves with their own Strength They must find out something to lean to and having not of their own wherewith to entertain the Audience bring in the Story to supply the defect of Language It is quite otherwise with my Author the Elegancy and Perfection of his way of Speaking makes us lose the Appetite of his Plot. His fine Expression Elegancy and Queintness is every where Taking He is so pleasant throughout Liquidus puroque simillimus amni Liquid and like a Crystal running Stream And does so possess the Soul with his Graces that we forget those of his Fable This very Consideration carries me further I observe that the best and most ancient Poets have avoided the Affectation and hunting after not only of fantastick Spanish and Petrarchick Elevations but even the softest and most gentle Touches which are the only Ornaments of succeeding Poesie And yet there is no good Judgment that will condemn this in the Ancients and that does not incomparably more admire the equal Politeness and that perpetual Sweetness and flourishing Beauty that appears in Catullus his Epigrams than all the Stings with which Martial arms the Tails of his This is by the same Reason that I gave before and as Martial says of himself Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit in cujus locum materia successerat These first without being mov'd or making themselves angry make themselves sufficiently felt they have matter enough of Laughter throughout they need not tickle themselves The others have need of Foreign Assistance as they have the less Wit they must have the more Body they mount on Horseback because they are not able to stand on their own Legs As in our Balls those mean Fellows that teach to dance not being able to represent the Presence and Decency of our Nobleness are fain to supply it with dangerous Leaps and other strange Motions and fantastick Tricks And the Ladies are less put to it in Dances where there are several Coupees Changes and quick Motions of Body than in some other of a more solemn kind where they are only to move a natural Pace and to represent their ordinary Grace and Presence And as I have also seen good Tumblers when in their own Every-day-Cloaths and with the same Face they always wear give us all the pleasure of their Art when their Apprentices not yet arrived to such a pitch of Perfection are fain to meal their Faces put themselves into ridiculous Disguises and make a hundred Mimick Faces to prepare us for Laughter This Conception of mine is no where more demonstrable than in comparing the Aeneid with Orlando Furioso of which we see the first by Dint of Wing flying in a brave and lofty Place and always following his Point the latter fluttering and hopping from Tale to Tale as from Branch to Branch not daring to trust his Wings but in very short Flights and pearching at every turn lest his Breath and Force should fail Excursusque breves tentat These then as to this sort of Subjects are the Authors that best please me As to what concerns my other Reading that mixes a little more Profit with the Pleasure and from whence I learn how to marshal my Opinions and Qualities the Books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch since translated into French and Seneca Both of which have this great convenience suited to my Humour that the Knowledge I there seek is discoursed in loose pieces that do not engage me in any great trouble of reading long of which I am impatient Such are the Opusculums of the first and the Epistles of the latter which are also the best and most profiting of all their Writings 'T is no great attempt to take one of them in hand and I give over at pleasure for they have no sequele or dependance upon one another These Authors for the most part concur in useful and true Opinions And there is this Parallel betwixt them That Fortune brought them into the World about the same Age They were both Tutors to two Roman
Emperours Both sought out from foreign Countries Both Rich and both Great Men. Their Instruction is the Cream of Phylosophy and deliver'd after a plain and pertinent manner Plutarch is more uniform and constant Seneca more various and waving The last toil'd set himself and bent his whole Force to fortifie Vertue against Frailty Fear and Vitious Appetites The other seems more to slight their Power and to disdain to alter his Pace and to stand upon his Guard Plutarch's Opinions are Platonick sweet and accommodated to Civil Society Those of the other are Stoical and Epicurean more remote from the common Usance but in my Opinion more especially proper and more firm Seneca seems to lean a little to the Tyranny of the Emperours of his time and only seems for I take it for granted that he speak against his Judgment when he condemns the Generous Action of those who assassinated Caesar. Plutarch is frank throughout Seneca abounds with brisk Touches and Sallies Plutarch with things that heats and moves you more this contents and pays you better This guides us the other pushes us on As to Cicero those of his Works that are most useful to my Design are they that treat of Phylosophy especially Moral But boldly to confess the truth his way of Writing and that of all other Long-winded Authors appears to me very tedious For his Prefaces Definitions Divisions and Etimologies take up the greatest part of his Work Whatever there is of Life and Marrow is smother'd and lost in the Preparation When I have spent an hour in reading him which is a great deal for me and recollect what I have thence extracted of Juice and Substance for the most part I find nothing but Wind for he is not yet come to the Arguments that serve to his purpose and the Reasons that should properly help to loose the Knot I would untye For me who only desire to become more Wise not more Learned or Eloquent these Logical or Aristotelian Dispositions of Parts are of no use I would have a Man begin with the main Proposition and that wherein the force of the Argument lies I know well enough what Death and Pleasure are let no Man give himself the trouble to anatomize them to me I look for good and solid Reasons at the first dash to instruct me how to stand the Shock and resist them to which purpose neither Grammatical Subtilties nor the queint Contexture of Words and Argumentations are of any use at all I am for Discourses that gives the first Charge into the Heart of the Doubt his languish about his Subjects and delay our Expectation Those are proper for the Schools for the Bar and for the Pulpit where we have leisure to nod and may awake a quarter of an hour after time enough to find again the Thread of the Discourse It is necessary to speak after this manner to Judges whom a Man has a Design Right or Wrong to encline to favour his Cause to Children and Common-people to whom a Man must say all he can and try what effects his Eloquence can produce I would not have an Author make it his business to render me attentive Or that he should cry out fifty times Oyez as the Clerks and Heralds do The Romans in their Religious Exercises began with Hoc age As we in ours do with Sursum corda which are so many words lost to me I come thither already fully prepared from my Chamber I need no Allurement no Invitation no Sauce I eat the Meat Raw so that instead of whetting my Appetite by these Preparatives they tire and pall it Will the License of the time excuse the Sacrilegious Boldness to censure the Dialogisms of Plato himself for as dull and heavy as the other before nam'd whilst he too much stifles his Matter And to lament so much time lost by a Man who had so many better things to say in so many long and needless Preliminary Interlocutions My Ignorance will better excuse me in that I understand not Greek so well as to discern the Beauty of his Language I would generally chuse Books that use Sciences not such as only lead to them The two first and Pliny and their like have nothing of this Hoc age they will have to do with Men already instructed or if they have 't is a substantial Hoc age and that has a Body by it self I also delight in reading his Epistles ad Atticum not only because they contain a great deal of History and the Affairs of his time but much more because I therein discover much of his own private Humour For I have a singular curiosity as I have said elsewhere to pry into the Souls and the Natural and True Judgments of the Authors with whom I converse A Man may indeed judge of their Parts but not of their Manners nor of themselves by the Writings they expose upon the Theatre of the World I have a thousand times lamented the loss of the Treatise Brutus writ upon Vertue for it is best Learning the Theorie of those who best know the Practick But seeing the thing preached and the Preacher are different things I would as willingly see Brutus in Plutarch as in a Book of his own I would rather chuse to be certainly inform'd of the Conference he had in his Tent with some particular Friend of his the night before a Battle than of the Harangue he made the next day to his Army and of what he did in his Closset and his Chamber than what he did in the Publick Place and in the Senate As to Cicero I am of the common Opinion that Learning excepted he had no great Natural Parts He was a good Citizen of an affable Nature as all fat heavy Men such as he was usually are But given to ease and had a mighty share of Vanity and Ambition Neither do I know how to excuse him for thinking his Poetry fit to be publish't 'T is no great Imperfection to make ill Verses but it is an Imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthy his Verses were of the Glory of his Name For what concerns his Eloquence that is totally out of comparison and I believe it will never be equal'd The younger Cicero who resembled his Father in nothing but in Name whilst commanding in Asia had several Strangers one day at his Table and amongst the rest Caestius seated at the lower end as Men often intrude to the open Tables of the Great Cicero ask't one of the Waiters who that Man was who presently told him his Name But he as one that had his Thoughts taken up with something else and that had forgot the Answer made him asking three or four times over and over again the same Question the Fellow to deliver himself from so many Questions and to make him know him by some particular Circumstance 'T is that Caestius said he of whom it was told you that he makes no great Account of your Fathers
himself something mis-reported a Mistake occasioned either by reason he could not have his Eye in all parts of his Army at once and had given Credit to some particular Person who had not deliver'd him a very true Account or else for not having had too perfect notice given him by his Lieutenants of what they had done in his Absence By which we may see whether the Inquisition after Truth be not very delicate when a Man cannot believe the Report of a Battle from the Knowledge of him who there commanded nor from the Soldiers who were engaged in it unless after the Method of a Judiciary Information the Witnesses be confronted and the Challenges received upon the Proof of the Punctillio's of every Accident In good earnest the Knowledge we have of our own private Affairs is much more obscure But that has been sufficiently handled by Bodin and according to my own Sentiment A little to relieve the weakness of my Memory so extream that it has hapned to me more than once to take Books again into my hand for new and unseen that I had carefully read over a few Years before and scribled with my Notes I have taken a Custom of late to fix at the end of every Book that is of those I never intended to read again the Time when I made an end on 't and the Judgment I had made of it to the end that that might at least represent to me the Air and general Idea I had conceiv'd of the Author in reading it and I will here transcribe some of those Annotations I writ this some ten Years ago in my Guicciardin of what Language soever my Books speak to me in I always speak to them in my own He is a diligent Historiographer and from whom in my Opinion a Man may learn the truth of the Affairs of his time as exactly as from any other in the most of which he was himself also a personal Actor and in honourable Command 'T is not to be imagined that he should have disguised any thing either upon the account of Hatred Favour or Vanity of which the liberal Censures he passes upon the Great Ones and particularly those by whom he was advanced and employed in Commands of great Trust and Honour as Pope Clement the Seventh give ample Testimony As to that part which he thinks himself the best at namely his Digressions and Discourses he has indeed very good ones and enrich'd with fine Expressions but he is too fond of them for to leave nothing unsaid having a Subject so plain ample and almost infinite he degenerates into Pedantry and relishes a little of the Scholasting Prattle I have also observed this in him That of so many Souls and so many Effects so many Motives and so many Counsels as he judges of he never attributes any one to Vertue Religion or Conscience as if all those were utterly extinct in the World And of all the Actions how brave in outward shew soever they appear in themselves he always throws the Cause and Motive upon some vicious Occasion or some prospect of Profit It is impossible to imagine but that amongst such an infinite number of Actions as he makes mention of there must be some one produced by the way of Reason No Corruption could so universally have infected Men that some one would not have escaped the Contagion Which makes me suspect that his own Taste was vicious from whence it might happen that he judged other Men by himself In my Philip de Comines there is this written You will here find the Language sweet and delightful of a native Simplicity the Narration pure and wherein the Veracity of the Author does evidently shine free from Vanity when speaking of himself and from Affection or Envy when speaking of others His Discourses and Exhortations more accompanied with Zeal and Truth than with any exquisite Sufficiency and throughout with Authority and Gravity which speak him a Man of Extraction and nourished up in great Affairs Upon the Memoirs of Monsieur du Bellay I find this 'T is always pleasant to read things writ by those that have experimented how they ought to be carried on but withal it cannot be denyed but there is a manifest Decadence in these two Lords from the freedom and liberty of Writing that shines in the ancient Historians Such as the Sire de Jovin-ville a Domestick to St. Louis Eginard Chancellor to Charlemain and of latter date in Philip de Commines This here is rather an Apology for King Francis against the Emperor Charles the Fifth than a History I will not believe that they have falsified any thing as to Matter of Fact but they make a common practice of wresting the Judgment of Events very often contrary to Reason to our advantage and of omitting whatsoever is nice to be handled in the Life of their Master witness the Relation of Messieurs de Montmorency and de Brion which were here omitted nay so much as the very name of Madam d'Estampes is not here to to be found Secret Actions an Historian may conceal but to pass over in silence what all the World knows and things that have drawn after them publick Consequences is an inexcusable defect In fine Whoever has a mind to have a perfect Knowledge of King Francis amd the Revolutions of his Reign let him seek it elsewhere if my Advice may prevail The only profit a Man can reap from hence is from the particular Narrative of Battles and other Exploits of War wherein these Gentlemen were personally engaged some Words and private Actions of the Princes of their time and the Practices and Negotiations carried on by the Seigneur de Langcay where indeed there are every where things worthy to be known and Discourses above the vulgar Strain CHAP. XI Of Cruelty I Fancy Vertue to be something else and something more noble than good Nature and the meer Propension to Goodness that we are born into the World withall Well dispos'd and well descended Souls pursue indeed the same Methods and represent the same Face that Vertue it self does But the word Vertue imports I know not what more great and active than meerly for a Man to suffer himself by a happy Disposition to be gently and quietly drawn to the Rule of Reason He who by a natural Sweetness and Facility should despise Injuries receiv'd would doubtless do a very great and a very laudable thing but he who provoked and nettled to the Quick by an Offence should fortifie himself with the Arms of Reason against the furious Appetite of Revenge and after a great Conflict master his own Passion would doubtless do a great deal more The first would do well and the latter vertuously one Action might be called Bounty and the other Vertue for methinks the very name of Vertue presupposes Difficulty and Contention and 't is for this reason perhaps that we call God Good Mighty Liberal and Just but we do not give
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
in my Father's Company he presented him at his departure with a Book Intituled Theologia naturalis sive Liber Creaturarum Magistri Raimondi de Sebonde And being that the Italian and Spanish Tongues were familiar to my Father and that this Book is writ in Spanish sustian'd with Latin Terminations he hoped that with little help he might be able to understand it and therefore recommended it to him for a very useful piece and proper for the time wherein he gave it to him which was then when the Novel Doctrines of Martin Luther began to be in vogue and in many places to stagger our ancient Belief Wherein he was very well adviz'd wisely in his own Reason foreseeing that the beginning of this Distemper would easily run into an Execrable Atheism for the Vulgar not having the Faculty of judging of things themselves suffering themselves to be carried away by appearance after having once been inspir'd with the Boldness to despise and controul those Opinions they had before had in extreamest Reverence such as those wherein their Salvation is concern'd and that some of the Articles of their Religion were brought into Doubt and Dispute they afterwards throw all other parts of their Belief into the same uncertainty they having in them no other Authority or Foundation than the other they had already discompos'd and shake of all the Impressions they had received from the Authority of the Laws or the Reverence of Ancient Custom as a Tyrannical Yoak Nam cupidè inculcatur nimis antè metutum For with most Eagerness they spurn the Law By which they were before most kept in awe Resolving to admit nothing for the future to which they had not first interpos'd their own Decrees and given their particular Consent It hapned that my Father a little before his death having accidentally found this Book under a heap of other neglected Papers commanded me to translate it for him into French It is good to translate such Authors as that where is little but the matter it self to express but such wherein the Ornament of a Language and Elegancy of Style is the main Endeavour are dangerous to attempt especially when a Man is to turn them into a weaker Idiom It was a strange and a new Undertaking for me but having by chance at that time little else to do and not being able to resist the Command of the best Father that ever was I did it as well as I could and he was so well pleased with it as to order'd it to be Printed which also after his death was perform'd I found the Imagination of this Author exceeding fine the Contexture of his Work well follow'd and his Design full of Piety and because many People take a delight to read it and particularly the Ladies to whom we owe the most Service I have often been ready to assist them to clear the Book of two principal Objections His Design is hardy and bold for he undertakes by Humane and Natural Reasons to establish and make good against the Atheists all the Articles of Christian Religion wherein to speak the truth he is so firm and so successful that I do not think it possible to do better upon that Subject and do believe that he has been equalled by none This Work seeming to me to be too beautiful and too rich for an Author whose Name is so little known and of whom all that we know is that he was a Spaniard who professed Physick at Tholouse about two hundred Years ago I enquired of Adrian Turnebus who knew all things what he thought of that Book who made Answer That he thought it was some Abstract drawn from St. Thomas of Aquin for that in truth his Wit full of infinite Learning and absolute Subtilty was only capable of those Thoughts So it is that whoever was the Author and Inventor and 't is not reasonable without greater occasion to deprive Sebonde of that Title he was a Man of great Sufficiency and most admirable Parts The first thing they reprehend in his Work is That Christians are too blame to repose their Belief upon Humane Reasons which is only conceiv'd by Faith and the particular Inspiration of Divine Grace In which Objection there appears to be something of Zeal to Piety and therefore we are to endeavour to satisfie those who put it forth with the greater Mildness and Respect This were a Task more proper for a Man well read in Divinity than for me who know nothing of it nevertheless I conceive that in a thing so divine so high and so far transcending all Humane Intelligence as this Truth with which it has pleased the Bounty of Almighty God to enlighten us it is very necessary that he should moreover lend us his Assistance after a very extraordinary Method of Favour to conceive and imprint it in our Understandings and do not believe that Meanes purely humane are in any sort capable of doing it for if they were so many rare and excellent Souls and so abundantly furnish'd with natural Force in former Ages had not faild by their Reason to arrive at this Knowledge 'T is Faith alone that livelily and certainly comprehends the deep Mysteries of our Religion but withall I do not say that it is not a brave and a very laudable Attempt to accommodate the Natural and Humane Utensils that God has endow'd us with to the Service of our Faith It is not to be doubted but that it the most noble use we can put them to and that there is not a design in a Christian-Man more noble than to make it the Aim and End of all his Thoughts and Studies to extend and amplifie the truth of his Belief We do not satisfie our selves with serving God with our Souls and Understanding only we moreover owe and render him a Corporal Reverence and apply our Limbs Motions and external Things to do him Honour we must here do the same and accompany our Faith with all the Reason we have but always with this Reservation not to fancy that it is upon us that it depends nor that our Arguments and Endeavours can arrive at so supernatural and divine a Knowledge If it enter not into us by an extraordinary Infusion if it only enter not only by Arguments of Reason but moreover by Human Ways it is not in us in its true Dignity and Splendor and yet I am afraid we only have it by this way If we laid hold upon God by the Mediation of a lively Faith if we laid hold upon God by him and not by us if we had a Divine Basis and Foundation Human Accidents would not have the power to shake us as they do our Fortress were not to render to so weak a Battery the Love of Novelty the Constraint of Princes the Success of one Party and the rash and fortuitous Change of our Opinions would not have the power to stagger and alter our Belief We should not then leave it to the Mercy
would go equal in our Affections with Riches Pleasures Glory and our Friends The best of us is not so much afraid to injure him as he is afraid to injure his Neighbour his Kinsman or his Master Is there any so weak Understanding that having on one side the Object of one of our vicious Pleasures and on the other in equal knowledge and perswasion the State of an Immortal Glory will dispute for the first against the other And yet we oftimes renounce this out of pure Contempt For what lust tempts us to blaspheme if not peradventure the very desire to offend The Philosopher Antisthenes as the Priest was initiating him in the Mysteries of Orpheus telling him that those who profest themselves of that Religion were certain to receive Perfect and Eternal Felicities after Death if thou believest that answered he Why doest not thou dye thy self Diogenes more rudely according to his manner and more remote from our purpose to the Preist that in like manner preached to him to become of his Religion that he might obtain the Happiness of the other World What said he Thou wouldest have me believe that Agesilaus and Epaminondas who were so Great Men shall be miserable and that thou who art but a Calf and canst do nothing to purpose shalt be happy because thou art a Priest Did we receive these great Promises of Eternal Beatitude with the same Reverence and Respect that we do a Philosophical Lecture we should not have Death in so great Horror Non jam se moriens dissolvi conquereretur Sed magis ire foras vestémque relinquere ut anguis Gauderet praelonga senex aut cornua Cervus We should not then dying repine to be Dissolv'd but rather step out chearfully From our Old Hut and with the Snake be glad To cast the Old uneasie slough we had Or with th' Old Stag rejoyce to be now clear From the large Head too pondrous grown to bear I desire to be dissolv'd we should say and to be with Jesus Christ. The force of Plato's Arguments concerning the Immortality of the Soul sent some of his Disciples to untimely Graves that they might the sooner enjoy the things he had made them hope for All which is a most evident sign that we only receive our Religion after our own fashion by our own hands and no otherwise than other Religions are receiv'd Either we are come into the Country where it is in Practice or we bear a Reverence to the Antiquity of it or to the Authority of the Men who have maintained it or fear the Menaces it fulminates against Miscreants or are allur'd by its Promises These Considerations ought 't is true to be applyed to our Belief but as Subsidiaries only for they are Human Obligations Another Religion other Witnesses the like Promises and Threats might by the same way imprint a quite contrary Belief We are Christians by the same Title that we are Perigordins and Germans And what Plato says that there are few Men so obstinate in their Atheism that a pressing Danger will not reduce to an Acknowledgment of the Divine Power does not concern a true Christian 't is for Mortal and Human Religions to be received by Human Recommendation What kind of Faith can we expect that should be that Cowardize and want of Courage does establish in us A pleasant Faith that does not believe what it believes but for want of Courage to believe it Can a vicious Passion such as Inconstancy and Astonishment cause any regular Product in our Souls They are confident in their own Judgment says he That what is said of Hell and future Torments is all feign'd But an Occasion of making the Experiment presenting it self that Old Age or Diseases bring them to the Brink of the Grave the Terrour of Death by the Horror of that future Condition inspires them with a new Belief And by reason that such Impressions render them timorous he forbids in his Laws all such threatning Doctrines and all Perswasion that any thing of ill can befall a Man from the Gods excepting for his great good when they happen to him and for a Medicinal effect They say of Bion that infected with the Atheisms of Theodorus he had long had Religious Men in great scorn and contempt but that Death surprising him he gave himself up to the most extream Superstition as if the Gods withdrew and return'd according to the Necessities of Bion. Plato and his Examples would conclude that we are brought to a Belief of God either by reason or by force Atheism being a Proposition as unnatural and monstruous so difficult also and very hard to sink into Human Understanding how arrogant and irregular soever there are enow seen out of Vanity and Pride to be the Author of extraordinary and reforming Opinions have outwardly affected the Profession who if they are such Fools have nevertheless not had the power to plant them in their own Conscience Yet will they not fail to lift up their Hands towards Heaven if you give them a good thrust with a Sword into the Bosom and when Fear or Sickness has abated and supprest the licentious Fury of this giddy Humour they will easily reunite and very discreetly suffer themselves to be reconciled to the Publick Faith and Examples A Doctrine seriously disgested is one thing and those superficial Impressions another which springing from the Disorder of an unhing'd Understanding float at random and great uncertainty in the Fancy Miserable and senseless Men who strive to be worse than they can The Error of Paganism and the Ignorance of our Sacred Truth let this great Soul but great only in Human Greatness fall yet into this other Mistake that Children and Old Men were most susceptible of Religion as if it sprung and deriv'd its Reputation from our Weakness The Knot that ought to bind the Judgment and the Will that ought to restrain the Soul and joyn it to the Creator must be a Knot that derives the Foldings and Strength not from our Considerations from our Reasons and Passions but from a Divine and Supernatural Constraint having but one Form one Face and one Lustre which is the Authority of God and his Divine Grace Now the Heart and Soul being governed and commanded by Faith 't is but reason that they should muster all their other Faculties for as much as they are able to perform to the Service and Assistance of their Design Neither is it to be imagined that all this Machin has not some Marks imprinted upon it by the Hand of the mighty Architect and that there is not in the thing of this World some Image that in some measure resembles the Workman who has built and form'd them He has in his stupendious Works left the Character of his Divinity and 't is our own Weakness only that hinders us we cannot discern it 'T is what he himself is pleased to tell us that he manifests his invisible Operations to us by
have King Lysimachus his Dog Hyracan his Master being dead lay upon his Bed obstinately refusing either to eat or drink and the day that his Body was burnt he took a run and leap'd into the Fire where he was consum'd As also did the Dog of one Pyrrhus for he would not stir from off his Masters Bed from the time that he died and when they carried him away let himself be carried with him and at last leap'd into the Pile where they burnt his Master's Body There are certain Inclinations of Affection which sometimes spring in us without the consultation of Reason and by a fortuitous Temerity which others call Sympathy Of which Beasts are as capable as we We see Horses take such an Acquaintance with one another that we have much ado to make them eat or travail when separated We observe them to fancy a particular Colour in those of their own kind and where they meet it run to it with great Joy and Demonstrations of Good Will and have a dislike and hatred for some other Colour Animals have choice as well as we in their Amours and cull out their Mistresses neither are they exempt from our Jealousies and implacable Malice Desires are either natural and necessary as to eat and drink or natural and not necessary as the coupling with Females or neither natural nor necessary Of which last sort are almost all the Desires of Men They are all superfluous and artificial For 't is not to believed how little will satisfie Nature how little she has left us to desire Our Ragous and Kickshaws are not of her Ordinary The Stoicks say that a Man may live of an Olive a day Our delicacy in our Wines is no part of her Instruction nor the over-acting the Ceremonies of Love neque illa Magno prognatum deposcit Consule cunnum These irregular Desires that the Ignorance of Good and a false Opinion have infus'd into us are so many as they almost exclude all the Natural no otherwise than if there were so great a number of Strangers in a City as to thrust out the Natural Inhabitants or usurping upon their Ancient Rights and Priviledges should extinguish their Authority and introduce new Laws and Customs of their own Animals are much more regular than we and keep themselves with greater moderation within the limits Nature has prescrib'd but yet not so exactly that they have not an Analogy with our Debauches And as there have been known furious Desires that have hurried Men to the love of Beasts so there has been examples of Beasts that have fallen in love with us and caught with monstrous Affection betwixt different kinds Witness the Elephant who was rival to Aristophanes the Grammarian in the love of a young Herbwench in the City of Alexandrin who was nothing behind him in all the Offices of a very passionate Suitor For going through the Market where they sould Fruit he would take some in his Trunck and carry them to her He would as much as possible keep her always in his sight and would sometimes put his Trunck under her Hankerchief into her Bosom to feel her Breasts They tell also of a Dragon in love with a Maid and of a Goose enamor'd of a Child of a Ram that was Servant to the Minstrelless Glaucia and we see with our own eyes Baboons furiously in love with Women We see also certain Male Animals that are fond of the Males of their own kind Oppianus and others give us some examples of the Reverence that Beasts have to their Kindred in their Copulations but experience often shews us the contrary nec habetur turpe juvencae Ferre patrem tergo Fit equo sua filia conjux Quasque creavit init pecudes caper Ipsaque cujus Semine concepta est ex illo concepit ales The Heifer thinks it not a shame to take Her curled Sire upon her willing Back The Horse his Daughter leaps Goats scruple not T' encrease the Heard by those they have begot And Birds of all sorts do in common live And by the Seed they were conceiv'd conceive And for malicious Subtilty can there be a more pregnant example than in the Philosopher Thales's Mule Who foarding a River loaden with Salt and by accident stumbling there so that the Sacks he carried were all wet perceiving that by the melting of the Salt his Burthen was something lighter he never failed so oft as he came to any River to lye down with his Load till his Master discovering the Knavery order'd that he should be loaden with Wool wherein finding himself mistaken he ceas'd to practise that Device There are several that very lively represent the true Image of our Avarice for we see them infinitely solicitous to catch all they can and hide it with exceeding great Care though they never make any use of it at all As to Thrift they surpass us not only in the foresight and laying up and saving for the time to come but they have moreover a great deal of the Science necessary thereto The Ants bring abroad into the Sun their Grain and Seeds to air refresh and dry them when they perceive them to mould and grow musty lest they should decay and rot But the caution and prevention they use in gnawing their Grains of Wheat surpass all Imagination of Human Prudence For by reason that the Wheat does not always continue sound and dry but grows soft thaws and dissolves as if it were steept in Milk whilst hasting to Germination for fear lest it should shoot and lose the Nature and Property of a Magazine for their subsistence they nibble of the end by which it should shoot and sprit As to what concerns War which is the greatest and most magnificent of Human Actions I would very fain know whether we would serve for an Argument of some Prerogative or on the contrary for a Testimony of our Weakness and imperfection as in truth the Science of undoing and killing one another and of ruining and destroying our own kind has nothing in it so tempting as to make it be coveted by Beasts who have it not quando leoni Fortior eripuit vitam Leo quo nemore unquam Expiravit aper majoris dentibus Apris who ever yet beheld A weaker Lyon by a stronger kill'd Or in what Forrest was it ever known That a small Boar dy'd by a mighty one Yet are they not universally exempt Witness the furious Encounters of Bees and the Enterprizes of the Princes of the contrary Armies saepè duobus Regibus incessit magno discordia motu Continuoque animos vulgi trepidantia bello Corda licet longè praesciscere Betwixt two Kings strange Animosities With great Commotion often do arise When streight the Vulgar sort are heard from far Sounding their little Trumpets to the War I never read this Divine Observation but that methinks I there see Human Folly and Vanity represented in their true and lively Colours For these Preparations for
Policy so great so admirable and so long flourishing in Vertue and Happiness without any Institution or Practice of Letters ought certainly to be of very great weight Such as return from the new World discover'd by the Spaniards in our Fathers days can testifie to us how much more honestly and regularly those Nations live without Magistrate and without Law than ours do where there are more Officers and Laws than there are of other sorts of Men and Business Dicittatorie di libelli D'esamine di carte di procure Hanno le mani il seno gran fastalli Di chiose di consigli di letture Percui le faculta de poverelli Non seno mai ne le citta sicure Hanno dietro dinanzi d'ambi i lati Notai procuratori advocati Her Lap was full of Writs and of Citations Of process of Actions and Arrest Of Bills of Answers and of Replications In Courts of Delegates and of Requests To grieve the simple sort with great Vexations She had resorting to her as her Guests Attending on her Circuits and her Journeys Scriv'ners and Clerks and Lawyers and Attorneys It was what a Roman Senator said of the later Ages that their Predecessors Breath stunk of Garlick but their Stomachs were perfum'd with a good Conscience And that on the contrary those of his time were all sweet Odour without but stunk within of all sorts of Vices that is to say as I interpret it that they abounded with Learning and Eloquence but were very defective in moral Honesty Incivility Ignorance Simplicity and Roughness are the Natural Companions of Innocency Curiosity Subtlety and Knowledge bring Malice in their Train Humility Fear Obedience and Affability which are the principal things that support and maintain Human Society require an empty and docile Soul and little presuming upon it self Christians have a particular Knowledge how Natural and Original an evil Curiosity is in Man The Thirst of Knowledge and the Desire to become more Wise was the first ruin of Human-kind and the way by which he precipitated himself into Eternal Damnation Pride was his ruin and corruption ' is Pride that diverts from the Common Path and makes him embrace Novelties and rather chuse to be Head of a Troop lost and wandring in the Path of Error to be Regent and a Teacher of Lyes than to be a Disciple in the School of Truth suffering himself to be led and guided by the hand of another in the right and beaten Road. 'T is peradventure the meaning of this old Greek saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Superstition follows Pride and obeys it as if it were a Father O Presumption how much doest thou hinder us After that Socrates was told That the God of Wisdom had attributed to him the Title of a Sage he was astonished at it and searching and examining himself throughout could find no Foundation for this Divine Sentence He knew others as just temperate valiant and learned as himself And more eloquent more handsom and more profitable to their Country than he At last he concluded that he was not distinguished from others nor wise but only because he did not think himself so And that his God consider'd the Opinion of Knowledge and Wisdom as a singular Brutality in Man and that his best Doctrine was the Doctrine of Ignorance and Simplicity the best Wisdom The Sacred Word declares those Miserable who have an Opinion of themselves Dust and Ashes says it to such What hast thou wherein to Glorifie thy self And in another place God has made Man like unto a Shadow of whom who can judge when by the removing of the Light it shall be vanished Man is a thing of nothing whose Force is so far from being able to comprehend the Divine Height That of the Works of our Creator those best bear his Mark and are with better Title his which we the least understand To meet with an incredible thing is an Occasion to Christians to believe and it is so much the more according to reason by how much it is against Human Reason If it were according to reason it would be no more a singular thing Melius scitur Deus nesciendo says St. Austin God is better known by not knowing And Tacitus Sanctius est ac reverentius de actis Deorum credere quà m scire It is more Holy and Reverend to believe the Works of God than to know them And Plato thinks there is something of Impiety in it to require too curiously into God the World and first Causes of things Atque illum quidem parentem hujus Viversitatis invenire difficile Et quum jam inveneris indicare in vulgus nefas says Cicero To find out the Parent of the World is very hard And when found out to reveal him to the Vulgar is Sin We pronounce indeed Power Truth and Justice which are words that signifie some great thing but that thing we neither see nor conceive at all We say that God fears that God is angry and that God loves Immortalia mortali sermone notantes Giving to things immortal mortal Names Which are all Agitations and Emotions that cannot be in God according to our Form nor we imagine it according to his it only belongs to God to know himself and to interpret his own Works and he does it in our Language improperly to stoop and descend to who grovel upon the Earth How can Prudence which is the Choice betwixt Good and Evil be properly attributed to him whom no Evil can touch How the Reason and Intelligence which we make use of by obscure to arrive at apparent things Seeing that nothing is obscure to him And Justice which distributes to every one what appertains to him a thing begot by the Society and Community of Men how is that in God How Temperance Which is the Moderation of Corporal Pleasures that have no place in the Divinity Fortitude to support Pain Labour and Dangers as little appertains to him as the rest these three things having no access to him For which reason Aristotle holds him equally exempt from Vertue and Vice Neque gratia neque ira teneri potest quod quae talia essent imbecilla essent omnia He can neither be affected with Favour nor Indignation because both those are the effects of Frailty The Participation we have in the knowledge of Truth such as it is is not acquir'd by our own â—orce God has sufficiently given us to understand that by the Witness he has chosen out of the common people simple and ignorant Men that he has been pleased to employ to instruct us in his admirable Secrets Our Faith is not of our own acquiring 't is purely the Gift of an others Bounty 'T is not by Meditation or by Vertue of our own Understanding that we have acquir'd our Religion but by Foreign Authority and Command wherein the Imbecillity of our Judgment does more assist us
than the Force and our Blindness more than our Clearness of Sight 'T is more by the Meditation of our Ignorance than our Knowledge that we know any thing of the Divine Wisdom 'T is no wonder if our Natural and Earthly parts cannot conceive that Supernatural and heavenly Knowledge Let us bring nothing of our own but Obedience and Subjection For as it is written I will destroy the Wisdom of the Wise and will bring to nothing the Vnderstanding of the Prudent Where is the Wise Where is this Scribe Where is the Disputer of this World Hath not God made Foolish the Wisdom of this World For after that in the Wisdom of God the World knew not God it pleased God by the Foolishness of preaching to save them that believe Finally should I examine whether it be in the power of Man to find out that which he seeks and if that Quest wherein he has busied himself so many Ages has inrich'd him with any new Force or any solid Truth I believe he will confess if he speaks from his Conscience that all he has got by so long an Inquisition is only to have learn'd to know his own Weakness We have only by a long Study confirm'd and verified the Natural Ignorance we were in before The same has fallen out to Men truly Wise which befalls Ears of Corn they shoot and raise their heads high and pert whilst empty but when full and swell'd with Grain in Maturity begin to flag and droop So Men having tryed and sounded all things and not having found that Mass of Knowledge and Provision of so many various things nothing massy and firm and nothing but Vanity have quitted their Presumption and acknowledged their Natural Condition 'T is that Velleius reproaches Cotta withal and Cicero that they learned of Philo they had learned nothing Pherecydes one of the seven Sages writing to Thales upon his Death-bed I have said he given order to my people after my enterment to carry my Writings to thee If they please thee and the other Sages publish if not suppress them They contain no certainty with which I my self am satisfied Neither do I pretend to know the truth or to attain unto it I more open than discover things The wisest Man that ever was being asked what he knew made answer He knew this that he knew nothing By which he verified what has been said that the greatest part of what we know is the least of what we do not know that is to say that even what we think we know is but a peice and a very little one of our Ignorance We know things in Dreams says Plato and are ignorant of them in Truth Omnes penè Veteres nihil cognosci nihil percipi nihil sciri posse dixerunt Angustos sensus imbecilles animos brevia curricula vitae Almost all the Ancients have declared that there is nothing to be known nothing to be understood The Senses are too weak Mens Minds too weak and the little course of Life too short And of Cicero himself who stood indebted to his Learning for all he was worth Valerius says that he began to disrelish Letters in his old Age. And when most incumbent upon his Studies it was with great Independency upon any one Party following what he thought probable now in one Sect and then in another evermore wavering under the Doubts of the Academy Dicendum est sed ita ut nihil affirmem quaeram omnia dubitans plerumque mihi diffidens I am to speak but so as to affirm nothing I shall enquire into all things but for the most part in doubt and distrust of myself I should have too fair a Game should I consider Man in his common way of Living and in Gross And might do it however by his own Rule who judges Truth not by Weight but by the number of Votes Let us let the People alone Qui vigilans stert it Mortua cui vita est propè jam atque videnti Who waking snore whose life is but a Dream Who only living and awake do seem who neither feel nor judg and let most of their natural Faculties lye idle I will take man in his highest Station Let us consider him in that little number of men excellent and cull'd out from the rest who having been endowed with a remarkable and particular natural Force have moreover hardned and whetted it by Care Study and Art and raised it to the highest Pitch of Wisdom to which it can possibly arrive They have adjusted their Souls to all Sences and all Biasses have propt and supported them with all foreign Helps proper for them and enrich'd and adorn'd them with all they could borrow for their Advantage both within and without the World Those are they that are plac'd in the utmost and most supreme height to which human Nature can attain They have regulated the World with Polities and Laws They have instructed it with Arts and Sciences and do yet instruct it by the Example of their admirable Manners I shall make account of none but such men as these and only make use of their Testimony and Experience Let us examine how far they have proceeded and on what they repos'd their surest hold The Maladies and Defects that we shall find amongst these men the world may boldly declare to be purely their own Whoever goes in search of any thing must come to this either to say that he has found it out or that it is not to be found out or that he is yet upon the Quest. All Philosophy is divided into these three Kinds All her Design is to seek out Truth Knowledg and Certainty The Peripateticks Epicureans Stoicks and others have thought they have found it These have established the Sciences and have treated of them as of certain Knowledges Clitomachus Carneades and the Academicks have despaired in their Quest and concluded that Truth could not be conceiv'd by our Understandings The result of these are Weakness and human Ignorance This Sect has had the most and most noble Followers Pyrrho and other Scepticks whose Doctrines were held by many of the Ancients taken from Homer the seven Sages Archilocus Euripides Zeno Democritus and Xenophones say that they are yet upon the Search of Truth These conclude that the other who think they have found it out are infinitely deceiv'd and that it is too daring a Vanity in the second sort to determine that human Reason is not able to attain unto it For this establishing a Standard of our Power to know and judg the Difficulty of things is a great and extream Knowledg of which they doubt whether or no man can be capable Nil sciri quisquis putat id quoque nescit An sciri possit quo se nil scire fatetur He that says nothing can be known o'rethrows His own Opinion for he nothing knows So knows not that The Ignorance that knows itself judges and condemns itself is not an absolute
Vsuram nobis largiuntur tanquam cornicibus diu mansuros aiunt animos semper negant They give us a long Life as also they do to Crows they say our Soul shall continue long but that it shall continue always they deny Who give to Souls a Life after this but finite The most universal and receiv'd Fancy and that continues down to our Times is that of which they make Pythagoras the Author not that he was the original Inventor but because it receiv'd a great deal of Weight and Repute by the Authority of his Approbation is that Souls at their departure out of us did nothing but shift from one Body to another from a Lyon to a Horse from a Horse to a King continually travailing at this rate from Habitation to Habitation And he himself said that he remembred he had been Aethalides since that Euphorbus and afterwards Hermotimus and finally from Pyrrhus was past into Pythagoras having a Memory of himself of two hundred and six Years And some have added that these very Souls sometimes remount to Heaven and come down again O pater à nne aliquas ad Coelum hinc ire putandum est Sublimes animas iterúmque ad tarda reverti Corpora quae lucis miseris tam dira cupido Is it to be believ'd that some sublime And high-flown Souls should hence from Heaven climb And thence return t'immure themselves in slow And heavy Prisons of dull Flesh below Origen makes them eternally to go and come from a better to a worse Estate The Opinion that Varro makes mention of is that after four hundred and forty Years Revolution they should be re-united to their first Bodies Chrysippus held that that would happen after a certain space of time unknown and unlimited Plato who professes to have embraced this Belief from Pindar and the ancient Poets thinks they are to undergo infinite Vicissitudes of Mutation for which the Soul is prepar'd having neither Punishment nor reward in the other World but what is Temporal as its Life here is but Temporal concludes that it has a singular Knowledg of the Affairs of Heaven of Hell of the World through all which it has past repast and made stay in several Voyages fit matters for her Memory Observe her Progress elsewhere the Soul that has liv'd well is reunited to the Star to which it is assign'd That removes into a Woman and if it do not there reform is again removed into a Beast of Condition suitable to its vicious Manners and shall see no end of its punishments till it be returned to its natural Constitution and that it has by the force of Reason purg'd it self from those gross stupid and elementary Qualities it was polluted with But I will not omit the Objection the Epicureans make against this Transmigration from one Body to another and 't is a pleasant one They ask what Expedient would be found out if the number of the dying should chance to be greater than that of those who are coming into the World For the Souls turned out of their old Habitation would scuffle and croud which should first get Possession of this new Lodging And they further demand how they should pass away their time whilst waiting till a new Quarter were made ready for them Or on the contrary if more Animals should be born than dye the Body they say would be but in an ill Condition whilst in expectation of a Soul to be infused into it and it would fall out that some Bodies would dye before they had been alive Denique connubia adveneris partúsque ferarum Esse animas praesto deridiculum esse videtur Et spectare immortales mortalia membra Innumero numero certaréque praeproperanter Inter se quae prima potissimáque insinuetur It seems ridiculous that Souls should be Always attending on Beast's Venery And being immortal mortal Bodies shou'd Covet to have and in vast numbers crowd Strive and contend with heat and eagerness Which should the first and most desir'd possess Others have arrested the Soul in the Body of the Deceased with it to animate Serpents Worms and other Beasts which are said to be bred out of the Corruption of our Members and even out of our Ashes Others divide them into two parts the one mortal and the other immortal Others make it Corporeal and nevertheless Immortal Some make it Immortal without Science or Knowledg And there are even of us our selves who have believed that Devils were made of the Souls of the Damned as Plutarch thinks that Gods we made of those that were saved For there are few things which that Author is so positive in as he is in this maintaining elsewhere a doubtful and ambiguous way of Expression We are to hold says he and steadfastly to believe that the Souls of Virtuous Men both according to Nature and the divine Justice become Saints and from Saints Demy-Gods and from Demy-Gods after they are perfectly as in Sacrifices of Purgation cleansed and purified being delivered from all Passibility and all Mortality they become not by any civil Decree but in real Truth and according to all probability of Reason entire and perfect Gods in receiving a most happy and glorious End But who desires to see him him I say who is the most sober and moderate of the whole Gang of Philosophers lay about him with greater Boldness and relate his Miracles upon this Subject I refer him to his Treatise of the Moon and his Daemon of Socrates where he may as evidently as in any other place whatever satisfy himself and affirm that the Mysteries of Philosophy have many strange things in common with those of Poesy human Understanding losing it self in attempting to sound and search all things to the Bottom Even as we tired and worn out with a long course of Life return to Infancy and Dotage See here the fine and certain Instructions which we extract from human Knowledg concerning the Soul Neither is there less Temerity in what they teach us touching our corporal Parts Let us choose out one or two Examples for otherwise we should lose our selves in this vast and troubled Ocean of Medicinal Errors Let us first know whether at least they agree about the Matter whereof Men produce one another For as to their first Production it is no wonder if in a thing so high and so long since past human Understanding finds it self puzzled and perplexed Archelaus the Physitian whose Disciple and Favourite Socrates was according to Aristoxenus said that both Men and Beasts were made of a lacteous Slime exprest by the Heat of the Earth Pythagoras says that our Seed is the Foam or Cream of our better Blood Plato that it is the Distillation of the Marrow of the Back-bone and raises his Argument from this that that part is first sensible of being weary of the Work Alcmeon that it is part of the Substance of the Brain and that it is so says he it causes weakness of the Eyes in those
apparence of likelihood which makes them rather take the Left hand than the Right augments it Multiply this Ounce of Verisimilitude that turns the Scales to a hundred to a thousand Ounces it will happen in the end that the Ballance will it self end the Controversie and determine one Choice and intire Truth But why do they suffer themselves to incline to and be sway'd by Verisimilitude if they know not the Truth How should they know the Similitude of that whereof they do not know the Essence Either we can absolutely judge or absolutely we cannot If our intellectual and sensible Faculties are without Foot or Foundation if they only hull and drive 't is to no purpose that we suffer our Judgments to be carried away with any thing of their Operation what apparence soever they may seem to present us And the surest and most happy Seat of our Understanding would be that where it kept it self temperate upright and inflexible without tottering or without agitation Inter visa vera aut falsa ad animi assensum nihil interest Amongst things that seem whether true or false it signifies nothing to the assent of the mind That things do not lodge in us in their Form and Essence and do not there make their entry by their own Force and Authority we sufficiently see Because if it were so we should receive them after the same manner Wine would have the same relish with the sick as with the healthful He who has his Finger chapt or benum'd would find the same hardness in Wood or Iron that he handles that another does Strange Subjects then surrender themselves to our Mercy and are seated in us as we please Now if on our part we did receive any thing without alteration if Human Grasp were capable and strong enough to seize on Truth by our own means being common to all Men this Truth would be convey'd from hand to hand from one to another and at least there would be some one thing to be found in the World amongst so many as there are that would be believ'd by Men with an universal Consent But this that there is no one Proposition that is not debated and controverted amongst us or that may not be makes it very manifest that our Natural Judgment does not very clearly discern what it imbraces For my Judgment cannot make my Companions approve of what it approves Which is a sign that I seiz'd it by some other means than by a Natural Power that is in me and in all other Men. Let us lay aside this infinite Confusion of Opinions which we see even amongst the Philosophers themselves and this perpetual and universal Dispute about the knowledge of things For this is truly presuppos'd that Men I mean the most knowing the best born and of the best parts are not agreed about any one thing Not that Heaven is over our heads For they that doubt of every thing do also doubt of that and they who deny that we are able to comprehend any thing say that we have not comprehended that the Heaven is over our heads and these two Opinions are without comparison the stronger in number Besides this infinite Diversity and Division through the Trouble that our Judgment gives our selves and the Incertainty that every one is sensible of in himself 't is easie to perceive that its Seat is very unstable and unsecure How variously do we judge of things How often do we alter our Opinions What I hold and believe to day I hold and believe with my whole Belief All my Instruments and Engines seize and take hold of this Opinion and become responsible to me for it at least as much as in them lyes I could not imbrace nor conserve any Truth with greater confidence and assurance than I do this I am wholly and intirely possess'd with it But has it not befallen me not only once but a thousand times every day to have imbrac'd some other thing with all the same Instruments and in the same condition which I have since judg'd to be false A Man must at least become wise at his own expence If I have often found my self betrayed under this colour if my Touch prove ordinarily false and my Ballance unequal and unjust what assurance can I now have more than at other times Is it not stupidity and madness to suffer my self to be so often deceiv'd by my Guide Nevertheless let Fortune remove and shift us five hundred times from place ro place let her do nothing but incessantly empty and fill into our Belief as into a Vessel other and other Opinions yet still the present and the last is the certain and infallible For this we must abandon Goods Honour Life Health and all posterior res illa reperta Perdit immutat sensus ad pristina quaeque The last thing we find out is always best And makes us to disrelish all the rest Whatever is preach'd to us and whatever we learn we should still remember that it is Man that gives and Man that receives 't is a mortal Hand that presents it to us 't is a mortal Hand that accepts it The things that come to us from Heaven have the sole Right and Authority of Persuasion the sole mark of Truth Which also we do not see with our own Eyes nor receive by our own means That Great and Sacred Image could not abide in so wretched a Habitation if God for this end did not prepare it if God did not by his particular and supernatural Grace and Favour fortifie and reform it At least our frail and defective condition ought to make us comport our selves with more reservedness and moderation in our Innovations and Change We ought to remember that whatever we receive into the Understanding we often receive things that are false and that it is by the same Instruments that so often gives themselves the Lie and are so oft deceiv'd Now it is no wonder they should so often contradict themselves being so easie to be turn'd and sway'd by very light Occurrences It is certain that our Apprehensions our Judgment and the Faculties of the Soul in general suffer according to the Movements and Alterations of the Body which Alterations are continual Are not our Wits more spritely our Memories more prompt and quick and our Meditations more lively in Health than in Sickness Do not Joy and Gayety make us receive Subjects that present themselves to our Souls quite otherwise that Care and Melancholy Do you believe that Catellus his Verses or those of Sappho please an old doting Miser as they do a vigorous and amorous Young-man Cleomenes the Son of Anaxandridas being sick his Friends reproach'd him that he had Humours and Whimsies that were new and unaccustom'd I believe it said he neither am I the same Man now as when I am in health Being now another thing my Opinions and Fancies are also other than they were before In our Courts of Justice this word which is
to the sound the Rudder crook'd in the Water and strait when out and such like contrary apparences as are found in Subjects argued from thence that all Subjects had in themselves the Causes of these Apparences and that there was some bitterness in the Wine which had some sympathy with the sick man's Taste and the Rudder some bending Quality sympathizing with him that looks upon it in the Water And so of all the rest which is to say that all is in all things and consequently nothing in any one for where all is there is nothing This Opinion put me in mind of the Experience we have that there is no sence nor aspect of any thing whether bitter or sweet strait or crooked that humane Wit does not find out in the Writings he undertakes to tumble over Into the cleanest purest and most perfect Speaking that can possibly be how many Lyes and Falsities have we suggested What Heresie has not there found Ground and Testimony sufficient to make it self embrac'd and defended 'T is for this that the Authors of such Errors will never depart from proof of the Testimony of the interpretation of Words A Person of Dignity who would prove to me by Authority the search of the Philosophers Stone wherein he was over head and ears ingag'd alledg'd to me at last five or six Passages in the Bible upon which he said he first founded his attempt for the discharge of his Conscience for he is a Divine and in truth the Invention was not only pleasant but moreover very well accomodated to the Defence of this fine Science By this way the Reputation of divining Fables is acquir'd There is no Fortune-teller if he have this Authority but if a Man will take the Pains to tumble and toss and narrowly to peep into all the folds and glosses of his Words he may make him like the Sibils say what he will There are so many ways of Interpretation that it will be hard but that either obliquely or in a direct Line an ingenious Wit will find out in every Subject some Air that will serve for his Purpose Therefore there is a cloudy and ambiguous Stile in this so frequent and antient use let the Author but make himself Master of that he may attract and busie Posterity about his Predictions which not only his own Parts but the accidental Favour of the Matter it self may as much or more assist him to obtain That as to the rest he express himself after a foolish or a subtle manner whether obscurely or contradictorily 't is no matter a number of Wits shaking and sifting him will bring out a great many several Forms either according to his meaning or collateral or contrary to it which will all redound to his Honour He will see himself enrich'd by the means of his Disciples like the Regents of Colledges by their Pupils yearly Presents This is it which has given Reputation to many things of no worth at all that has brought several Writings in Vogue and given them the Fame of containing all sorts of Matter can be desir'd one and the same thing receiving a thousand and a thousand Images and various Considerations nay even as many as we please Is it possible that Homer could design to say all that we make him and that he design'd so many and so various Figures as that the Divines Law-givers Captains Philosophers and all sorts of Men who treat of Sciences how variously and oppositely soever should indifferently quote him and support their Arguments by his Authority as the Sovereign Lord and Master of all Offices Works and Artizans and Councellor General of all Enterprizes Whoever has had occasion for Oracles and Predictions has there found sufficient to serve his turn 'T is a Wonder how many and how admirable Concurrences an intelligent Person and a particular Friend of mine has there found out in Favour of our Religion and cannot easily be put out of the Conceit that it was Homer's Design and yet he is as well acquainted with this Author as any Man whatever of his Time And what he has found out in Favour of ours very many anciently have found in Favour of theirs Do but observe how Plato is tumbled and tost every one ennobling his own Opinions by applying him to himself make him take what side they please They draw him in and engage him in all the new Opinions the World receives and make him according to the different course of things differ from himself every one makes him according to his own Sense the Manners and Customs lawful in his Age because they are unlawful in ours and all this with Vivacity and Power according to the force and spriteliness of the Wit of the Interpreter From the same Foundation that Heraclitus and this Sentence of his had That all things had in them those forms that we discern'd Democritus drew a quite contrary conclusion namely That Subjects had nothing at all in them of what we there find and that forasmuch as Honey is sweet to one and bitter to another he thence argued that it was neither sweet nor bitter The Pyrrhonians would say that they knew not whether it is sweet or bitter or neither the one or the other or both for those always gain the highest point of Dubitation The Cyrenaicks held that nothing was perceptible from without and that that only was perceptible that internally touch'd us as Grief and Pleasure acknowledging neither Sound nor Colour but certain Affections only that we receive from them and that mans Judgment had no other Seat Protagoras believ'd that what seem'd to every one was true to every one The Epicureans lodg'd all Judgment in the Senses and in the Knowledge of things and in Pleasure Plato would have the Judgment of Truth and Truth it self deriv'd from Opinions and the Senses to appertain to the Wit and Cogitation This Discourse put me upon the Consideration of the Senses in which lies the greatest Foundation and Proof of our Ignorance Whatsoever is known is doubtless known by the Faculty of the knower for seeing the Judgment proceeds from the Operation of him that judges 't is Reason that this Operation performs it by his means and will not by the constraint of another as it would happen if we knew things by the Power and according to the Law of their Essence Now all Knowledge is convey'd to us by the Senses they are our Masters via qua munita fidei Proxima fert humanum in pectus templaque mentis It is the surest Path that Faith can find By which to enter humane Heart and Mind Science begins by them and is resolved into them After all we should know no more than a Stone if we did not know that there is Sound Odour Light Taste Measure Weight Softness Hardness Sharpness Colour Smoothness Breadth and Depth These are the Platform and Principles of all the Structure of all our Knowledge And according to some Science is
really is is no Reason and 't is not enough that he dies in this posture unless he did purposely put himself into it for this effect It most commonly falls out in most men that they set a good Face upon the Matter and speak with great Indifferency to acquire Reputation which they hope afterward living to enjoy Of all that I have seen dye Fortune has dispos'd their Countenances and no design of theirs and even of those who in ancient times have made away themselves there is much to be consider'd whether it were a sudden or a lingring Death That cruel Roman Emperour would say of his Prisoners That he would make them feel Death and if any one kill'd himself in Prison That Fellow has made an escape from me he would say he would spin out Death and make it felt by Torments Vidimus toto quamvis in Corpore caeso Nil animae lethale datum moremque nefandae Durum saevitiae percunctis parcere morti And in tormented Bodies we have seen Amongst those Wounds none that have mortal been Inhumane Method of dire Cruelty That means to kill yet will not let men dye In plain truth it is no such great Matter for a Man in Health and in a temperate state of Mind to resolve to kill himself it is very easie to give ill signâ— before one comes to the push insomuch that Heliogabalus the most effeminate Man in the World amongst his most sensual Pleasures could forecast to make himself dye delicately when he should be forc'd thereto And that his Death might not give the lye to the rest of his Life had purposely built a sumptuous Tower the Front and Base whereof was cover'd and lay'd with Planks enrich'd with Gold and precious Stones thence to precipitate himself and also caus'd Cords twisted with Gold and Crimson Silk to be made wherewith to strangle himself and a Sword with the blade of Gold to be hammer'd out to fall upon and kept Poyson in Vessels of Emerald and Topaze wherewith to poyson himself according as he should like to choose one of these ways of dying Impiger fortis virtute coacta By a forc'd Valour resolute and brave Yet for so much as concerns this Person the effeminacy of his Preparations makes it more likely that he would have thought better on 't had he been put to the test But in those who with greater Resolution have determin'd to dispatch themselves we must examine whether it were with one blow which took away the leisure of feeling the Effect for it is to be question'd whether perceiving Life by little and little to steal away the sentiment of the Bodâ—â— mixing it self with that of the Soul and the means of repenting being offer'd whether I say Constancy and Obstinacy in so dangerous a will is to be found In the Civil Wars of Caesar Lucius Domittus being taken in Prussia and thereupon poysoning himself afterward repented It has hapned in our time that a certain Person being resolv'd to dye and not having gone deep enough at the first thrust the sensibility of the Flesh opposing his Arm gave himself three or four Wounds more but could never prevail upon himself to thrust home Whilst Plantius Sylvanus was upon his Tryal Virgulantia his Grand Mother sent him a Poignard with which not being able to kill himself he made his Servants to cut his Veins Albucilla in Tiberius his Time having to kill himself struck with too much tenderness gave his Adversaries Oportunity to imprison and put him to Death their own way and that great Leader Demosthenes after his Rout in Sicily did the same and C. Fimbria having struck himself too weakly intreated his Servant to dispatch him and to kill him out On the contrary Ostorius who could not make use of his own Arm disdain'd to employ that of his Servant to any other use but only to hold the Poignard straight and firm and running his Breast full drive against it thrust himself through 'T is in truth a morsel that is to be swallow'd without chewing unless a man be throughly resolv'd and yet Adrian the Emperour made his Physiâ—ian mark and incircle in his Pap the mortal place wherein he was to stab to him he had given order to kill him For this reason it was that Caesar being ask'd what Death he thought to be the most desir'd made Answer The least premeditated and the shortest If Caesar dar'd to say it it is no Cowardize in me to believe it A short Death says Pliny is the sovereign good hap of humane Life They do not much care to discover it No one can say that he is resolv'd for Death who fears to trifle with it and that cannot undergo it with his Eyes open They that we see in exemplary Punishments run to their Death hasten and press their Execution do it not out of Resolution but they will not give themselves leisure to consider it it does not trouble them to be dead but to dye Emori nolo sed me esse mortuum nihili aestimo I would not dye but care not to be dead 'T is a degree of Constancy to which I have experimented that I can arrive to do like those who plunge themselves into Dangers as into the Sea with their Eyes shut There is nothing in my Opinion more illustrious in the Life of Socrates than that he had thirty whole days wherein to ruminate upon the Sentence of his Death to have digested it all that time with a most assured hope without care and without alteration and with Words and Actions rather careless and indifferent than any way stirr'd or discompos'd by the weight of such a Thought That Pomponius Atticus to whom Cicero writes so oft being sick caus'd Agrippa his Son-in-law and two or three more of his Friends to be call'd to him and told them That having found all means practis'd upon him for his Recovery to be in vain and that all he did to prolong his Life did also prolong and augment his Pain he was resolved to put an end both to the one and the other desiring them to approve of his Deliberation or at least not to lose their labour in endeavouring to disswade him Now having chosen to destroy himself by Abstinence his Disease was accidentally so cur'd and the Remedy that he had made use of wherewith to kill himself restor'd him to his perfect Health His Physicians and Friends rejoycing at so happy an Event and coming to congratulate him found themselves very much deceiv'd it being impossible for them to make him alter his Purpose he telling them that he must one day dye and that being now so far on his way he would save himself the labour of beginning again another time This Man having discover'd Death at leisure was not only not discourag'd at the approach of it but provokes it for being satisfied that he had engag'd in the Combat he consider'd it as a piece of Bravery and that he
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
multi quique laventes I seldom do Reherse and when I do 'T is to my Friends and with Reluctance too Not before every one and every where We have too many that Rehersers are In publick Bath and open Markets too I do not here form a Statue to erect in the most eminent Place of a City in a Church or any publick Place Non equidem hoc studio bullatis ut mihi nugis Pagina turgescat Secreti loquimur I study not to make my Pages swell With mighty trifles secret things I tell 't is for some corner of a Library or to entertain a Neighbour a Kinsman or a Friend that has a mind to renew his Acquaintance and Familiarity with this Image I have made of my self Others have been encourag'd to speak of themselves because they found the Subject worthy and rich I on the contrary am the bolder by reason the Subject is so poor and steril that I cannot be suspected of Ostentation I judge freely of the Actions of others I give little of my own to judge of because they are nothing I do not find so much good in my self as to tell it without blushing What contentment would it be to me to hear any one thus relate to me the Manners Faces Countenances the ordinary Words and Fortunes of my Ancestors how attentively should I listen to it In earnest it would be ill Nature to despise so much as the Pictures of our Friends and Predecessors the fashion of their Cloths and Arms. I preserve my Father's Writing his Seal and one peculiar Sword of his and have not thrown long Staves he us'd to carry in his hand out of my Closet Paterna vestis annulus tanto charior est posteris quanto erga parentes major affectus A Father's Garment and Ring is by so much dearer to his Posterity as they had the greater affection towards them If my Posterity nevertheless shall be of another mind I shall be reveng'd on them for they cannot care less for me than I shall then do for them All the Traffick that I have in this with the Publick is that I borrow those Utensils of their Writing which are more easie and most at hand and in Recompence shall peradventure keep a pound of Butter in the Market from melting in the Sun Ne toga cordyllis ne penula desit olivis Et laxas scombris saepe dabo tunicas I 'll furnish Plaice and Olives with a Coat And cover Mackarel when the Sun shines hot And though no body should read me have I lost my time in entertaining my self so many idle hours in so pleasing and useful Thoughts In moulding this Figure upon my self I have been so oft constrain'd to temper and compose my self in a right posture that the Copy is truly taken and has in some sort form'd it self But painting for others I represent my self in a better colouring than my own natural Complexion I have no more made my Book than my Book has made me 'T is a Book consubstantial with the Author of a peculiar Design a Member of my Life and whose Business is not design'd for others as that of all other Books is In giving my self so continual and so exact an account of my self have I lost my time For they who sometimes cursorily survey themselves only do not so strictly examine themselves nor penetrate so deep as he who makes it his Business his Study and his whole Employment who intends a lasting Record with all his Fidelity and with all his Force The most delicious Pleasures do so digest themselves within that they avoid leaving any trace of themselves and avoid the sight not only of the People but of any particular Man How oft has this Meditation diverted me from troublesome Thoughts and all that are frivolous should be reputed so Nature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining our selves alone and oft calls us to it to teach us that we owe our selves in part to Society but chiefly and mostly to our selves That I may habituate my Fancy even to meditate in some Method and to some end and to keep it from losing it self and roving at random 't is but to give it a Body and to Book all the little Thoughts that present themselves to it I give ear to my Whimsies because I am to record them It oft falls out that being displeas'd at some Actions that Civility and Reason will not permit me openly to reprove do I here disgorge my self without design of publick Instruction And also these Poetical Lashes Zon sus l' aeil zon sur le groin Zon sur le dos du sagoin A Jerk over the Eye over the Snowt Let Sagoin be jerk'd throughout imprint themselves better upon Paper than upon the most sensible Flesh. What if I listen to Books a little more attentively than ordinary since I watch if I can purloin any thing that may adorn or support my own I have not at all studied to make a Book but I have in some sort studied because I had made it if it be studying to scratch and pinch now one Author and then another either by the head or foot not with any design to steal Opinions from them but to assist second and fortifie those I already have embrac'd But who shall we believe in the report he makes of himself in so corrupt an Age considering there are so few if any at all whom we can believe when speaking of others where there is less interest to lye The first thing that is done in order to the corruption of Manners is banishing of Truth for as Pindar says to be sincerely true is the beginning of a great Virtue and the first Article that Plato requires in the Governour of his Republick The truth of these dayes is not that which really is but what every man persuades himself or that he is made to believe as we generally give the name of Money not only to pieces of the just alloy but even to the false also if they are current and will pass Our Nation has long been reproach'd with this Vice for Salvianus Massiliensis who liv'd in the time of the Emperour Valentinian sayes that lying and forswearing themselves is not a Vice in the French but a way of speaking He that would enhaunce upon this Testimony might say that it is now a Virtue in them Men form and fashion themselves to it as to an Excercise of Honour for Dissimulation is one of the most notable Qualities of this Age. I have often consider'd whence this Custom that we so religiously observe should spring of being more highly offended with the reproach of a Vice so familiar to us than any other and that it should be the highest injury can in Words be done us to reproach us with a Lye and upon Examination find that it is natural to defend the part that is most open and lies expos'd to the greatest Danger It seems as if by
grave and temperate than of the wanton Ipsa faelicitas se nisi temperat premit Even Felicity unless it moderate it self oppresseth Delight chews and grinds us according to the old Greek Verse which says that the Gods sell us all the Goods they give us that is to say that they give us nothing Pure and Perfect and that we do not purchace them but at the price of some evil Labour and Pleasure very unlike in Nature associate nevertheless by I know not what natural Conjunction Socrates says that some God try'd to mix in one mass and to confound Pain and Pleasure but not being able to do it he unbethought him at least to couple them by the Tail Metrodorus said that in Sorrow there is some mixture of Pleasure I know not whether or no he intended any thing else by that saying but for my part I am of Opinion that there is design consent and complacency in giving a Man's self up to Melancholy I say that besides Ambition which may also have a stroke in the Business there is some shadow of Delight and Delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of Melancholy Are there not some Complexions that feed upon it est quaedam flere voluptas A certain kind of Pleasure 't is to weep And one Attalus in Seneca says that the Memory of our lost Friends is as grateful to us as bitterness in Wine too old is to the Palat Minister veteris puer falerni Ingere mi calices amariores Thou Boy that fill'st the old Falernian Wine The bitt'rest pour into the Boul that 's mine and as Apples that have a sweet tartness Nature discovers this confusion to us Painters hold that the same Motions and screwings of the Face that serve for weeping serve for laughter too and indeed before the one or the other be finish'd do but observe the Painters manner of handling and you will be in doubt to which of the two the design does tend And the extremity of Laughter does at last bring Tears Nullum sine auctora mente malum est No evil is without its Compensation When I imagine man abounding with all the pleasure and conveniences that are to be desir'd let us put the case that all his Members were always seiz'd with a pleasure like that of Generation in its most excessive height I feel him melting under the weight of his delight and see him utterly unable to support so pure so continual and so universal a pleasure Indeed he is running away whilst he is there and naturally makes haste to escape as from a place where he cannot stand firm and where he is afraid of sinking When I the most strictly and religiously confess my self I find that the best Vertue I have has in it some tincture of Vice and am afraid that Plato in his purest Vertue I who am as sincere and perfect a lover of Vertue of that stamp as any other whatever if he had list'ned and laid his ear close to himself and he did so he would have heard some jarring sound of Humane mixture but faint and remote and only to be perceiv'd by himself Man is wholly and throughout but patch and motly Even the Laws of Justice themselves cannot subsist without mixture of Injustice insomuch that Plato says they undertake to cut off the Hydra's head who pretend to clear the Law of all inconvenience Omne magnum exemplum habet aliquid ex iniquo quod contra singulos utilitate publica rependitur Every great example has in it some mixture of Injustice which recompences the wrong done to particular men by the publick utility says Tacitus It is likewise true that for the usage of Life and the service of publick Commerce there may be some excesses in the purity and perspicacity of our minds that penetrating light has in it too much of subtilty and curiosity we must a little stupifie and blunt and abate them to render them more obedient to example and practice and a little veil and obscure them the better to proportion them to this dark and earthly Life And yet common and less speculative Souls are found to be more proper and more successful in the management of Affairs and the elevated and exquisite Opinions of Philosophy more unfit for business This sharp vivacity of Soul and the supple and restless volubility attending it disturb our Negotiations We are to manage humane Enterprizes more superficially and rudely and leave a great part to Fortune It is not necessary to examine Affairs with so much subtlety and so deep a man loses himself in the consideration of so many contrary lustres and so many various forms Voluntatibus res inter se pugnantes obtorpuerant animi Whilst they consider'd of things so indifferent in themselves they were astonish'd and knew not what to do 'T is what the Ancients say of Simonides that by reason his imagination suggested to him upon the question King Hiero had put to him to answer which he had had many days to meditate in several witty and subtile considerations whilst he doubted which was the most likely he totally despair'd of the truth Who dives into and in his inquisition comprehends all circumstances and consequences hinders his election a little Engine well handled is sufficient for executions of less or greater weight and moment The best Husbands are those who can worst give account how they are so and the greatest Talkers for the most part do nothing to purpose I know one of this sort of men and a most excellent director in all sorts of good husbandry who has miserably let an hundred thousand Livers yearly Revenue slip through his hands I know another who says that he is able to give better advice than any of his Counsel and there is not in the world a fairer shew of a Soul and of great understanding than he has nevertheless when he comes to the test his Servants find him quite another thing not to make any further mention of his misfortune CHAP. XXI Against Idleness THe Emperour Vespasian being sick of the Disease whereof he died did not for all that neglect to enquire after the Estate of the Empire and even in bed continually dispatcht very many Affairs of great consequence for which being reprov'd by his Physician as a thing prejudicial to his health An Emperour said he must dye standing A fine saying in my Opinion and worthy a great Prince The Emperour Adrian since made use of the same Words and Kings should be often put in mind of it to make them know that the great Office confer'd upon them of the command of so many men is not an Employment of ease and that there is nothing can so justly disgust a Subject and make him unwilling to expose himself to Labour and Danger for the Service of his Prince than to see him in the mean time devoted to his Ease and unmanly Delights and to be sollicitous of
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
there they are lam'd and spoil'd with blows whilst our Justice takes no Cognizance of it as if these maims and dislocations were not executed upon Members of our Common-wealth Gratum est quod patriae civem populoque dedisti Si facis ut Patriae sit idoneus utilis agris Vtilis bellorum pacis rebus agendis It is a Gift most acceptable when Thou to thy Country giv'st a Citizen Provided thou hast had the knack of it To make him for his Countries Service fit Useful t' assist the Earth in her increase And useful in Affairs of War and Peace There is no Passion that so much transports men from their right Judgments as Anger No one would demurr upon punishing a Judge with Death who should condemn a Criminal upon the account of his own Choler why then should Fathers and Pedants be any more allow'd to whip and chastise Children in their Anger 'T is then no longer Correction but Revenge Chastisement is instead of Physick to Children and should we suffer a Physician who should be animated against and enrag'd at his Patient We our selves to do well should never lay a Hand upon our Servants whilst our Anger lasts whilst the Pulse beats and that we feel an Emotion in our selves let us defer the Business things will indeed appear otherwise to us when we are calm and cool 'T is then Passion that commands 't is then Passion that speaks and not we Faults seen through Passion are magnified and appear much greater to us than they really are as Bodies do being seen through a Mist. Who is hungry uses Meat but he that will make use of Correction should have no appetite neither of Hunger or Thirst to it And moreover Chastisements that are inflicted with weight and discretion are much better receiv'd and with greater benefit by him who suffers Otherwise he will not think himself justly condemn'd by a man transported with anger and fury and will alledge his Master's excessive Passion his inflam'd Countenance his unwonted Oaths his Emotion and precipitous Rashness for his own justification Ora tument ira nigrescunt sanguine venae Lumina Gorgonio saevius igne micant Their Faces swell and Veins grow black with ire And their Eyes sparkle with Gorgonian Fire Suetonius reports that Caius Rabirius having been condemn'd by Caesar the thing that most prevail'd upon the People to whom he had appeal'd to determine the Cause in his favour was the animosity and vehemency that Caesar had manifested in that Sentence Saying is one thing and Doing is another we are distinctly to consider the Sermon and the Preacher These men took a pretty Business in hand who in our Times have attempted to shake the Truth of our Church by the Vices of her Ministers she extracts her Testimony elsewhere 'T is a foolish way of Arguing and that would throw all things into confusion A man whose Manners are good may have false Opinions and wicked men may preach Truth nay though he believe it not himself 'T is doubtless a fine Harmony when doing and saying go together and I will not deny but that Saying when the Actions follow are of greater Authority and Efficacy as Eudamidas said hearing a Philosopher talk of Military Affairs These things are finely said but he that speaks them is not to be believed for his Ears have never been used to the sound of the Trumpet And Cleomenes hearing an Orator declaming upon Valour burst out into Laughter at which the other being angry I should said he to him do the same if it were a Swallow that spoke of this subject but if it were an Eagle I should willingly hear him I perceive methinks in the Writing of the Ancients that he who speaks what he thinks strikes much more home than he that only dissembles Hear but Cicero speak of the love of Liberty Hear Brutus speak of it his very writings sound that this man would purchace it at the price of his Life Let Cicero the Father of Eloquence treat of the contempt of Death and let Seneca do the same the first does languishingly drawl it out so that you perceive he would make you resolve upon a thing on which he is not resolv'd himself He inspires you not with Courage for he himself has none the other animates and enflames you I never read Author even of those who treat of Virtue and of Actions that I do not curiously examine what a kind of man he was himself For the Ephori at Sparta seeing a dissolute Fellow propose a wholesome advice to the People commanded him to hold his peace and intreated a virtuous man to attribute to himself the Invention and to propose it Plutarch's Writings if well understood sufficiently speak their Author and so that I think I know him even into his Soul and yet I could wish that we had some fuller account of his Life and am thus far wandred from my Subject upon the account of the Obligation I have to Aulus Gellius for having left us in Writing this Story of his Manners that brings me back to my Subject of Anger A Slave of his a vicious ill condition'd Fellow but that had had the Precepts of Philosophy often ringing in his Ears having for some Offence of his been stript by Plutarch's Command whilst he was whipping mutter'd at first that it was without cause and that he had done nothing to deserve it but at last falling in good earnest to exclaim against and to rail at his Master he reproach'd him that he was no Philosopher as he had boasted himself to be that he had often heard him say it was indecent to be angry nay had writ a Book to that purpose and that the causing him to be so cruelly beaten in the height of his Rage totally gave the Lye to all his Writings To which Plutarch calmly and coldly answer'd How Ruffian said he By what dost thou judge that I am now angry does either my Face my Colour or my Voice give any manifestation of my being mov'd I do not think my Eyes look fierce that my Countenance appears troubled or that my Voice is dreadful am I red do I foam does any Word escape my Lips I ought to repent Do I start Do I tremble with Fury For those I tell thee are the true signs of Anger And so turning to the Fellow that was whipping him Ply on thy Work said he whilst this Gentleman and I dispute This is the Story Archytas Tarentinus returning from a War wherein he had been Captain General found all things in his House in very great disorder and his Lands quite out of Tillage through the ill Husbandry of his Receiver whom having caus'd to be call'd to him Go said he if I were not in Anger I would soundly drubb your sides Plato likewise being highly offended with one of his Slaves gave Speusippus order to chastize him excusing himself from doing it because he was in Anger And Carillus a Lacedemonian
certainly a little defective in Prudence What! if his Deformity serv'd afterwards to make others guilty of the Sin of Hatred or Contempt or of Envy at the Glory of so commendable an Action or of Calumny interpreting this Humour a mad Ambition Is there any Form from whence Vice cannot if it will extract occasion to exercise it self one way or another It had been more just and also more noble to have made of these Gifts of God a Subject of regularity and exemplary Virtue They who retire themselves from the common Offices from that infinite number of Vice and manifest Rules that fetter a man of exact honesty in the Civil Life are in my opinion very discreet what peculiar sharpness of Constraint soever they impose upon themselves in so doing 'T is in some sort a kind of dying to avoid the Pain of living well They may have another reward but the reward of the difficulty I fancy they can never have nor that in uneasiness there can be any thing beyond keeping himself upright in the waves of the World truly and exactly performing all parts of his Duty 'T is peradventure more easie to live clean from the whole Sex than to maintain a man's self exactly in all points in the Society of a Wife And a man may more incuriously slip into want than abundance duly dispenc'd Custom carried on according to Reason has in it more of sharpness than abstinence Moderation is a Virtue that has more work than Sufferance The well living of Scipio has a thousand fashions that of Diogenes but one This as much excells the ordinary Lives in Innocency as the most accomplish'd excell them in utility and force CHAP. XXXIV Observation of the means to carry on a War according to Julius Caesar. 'T IS said of many great Leaders that they have had certain Books in particular esteem as Alexander the Great Homer Scipio Affricanus Xenophon Marcus Brutus Polibius Charles the Fifth Philip de Commines and 't is said that in our times Machiavel is elsewhere in Repute but the late Mareschal Strossy who took Caesar for his Man doubtless made the best choice being that that Book in truth ought to be the Breviary of every great Souldier as being the true and most excellent Pattern of all Military Art And moreover God knows with what Grace and Beauty he has embellish'd that rich Matter with so pure delicate and perfect Expression that in my Opinion there are no Writings in the World comparable to his as to that I will set down some rare and particular Passages of his Wars that remain in my memory His Army being in some Consternation upon the Rumour that was spread of the great Forces that King Juba was leading against him instead of abating the Apprehension which his Souldiers had conceived at the News and of lessening the Forces of the Enemy having call'd them all together to encourage and reassure them he took a quite contrary way to what we are us'd to do for he told them that they needed no more to trouble themselves with enquiring after the Enmies Forces for that he was certainly inform'd thereof and then told them of a number much surpassing both the truth and the report that was rumour'd in his Army following the advice of Cyrus in Xenophon forasmuch as the imposture is not of so great importance to find an Enemy weaker than we expected than to find him really very strong after having been made to believe that he was weak It was always his use to accustom his Souldiers simply to obey without taking upon them to controul or so much as to speak of their Captains designs which he never communicated to them but upon the point of Execution and took a delight if they discover'd any thing of what he intended immediately to change his Orders to deceive them and to that purpose would often when he had assign'd his Quarters in a place pass forward and lengthen his days march especially if it was foul Weather The Swisse in the beginning of his Wars in Gaul having sent to him to demand a free passage over the Roman Territories though resolv'd to hinder them by force he nevertheless spoke kindly to the Messengers and took some respite to return an Answer to make use of that time for the calling his Army together These silly People did not know how good a Husband he was of his time for he does often repeat that it is the best part of a Captain to know how to make use of Occasions and his diligence in his Exploits are in truth unheard of and incredible If he was not very conscientious in taking advantage of an Enemy under colour of a Treaty of Agreement he was as little in this that he requir'd no other Virtue in a Souldier but Valour only and seldom punish'd any other Faults but Mutiny and Disobedience He would oft after his Victories turn them loose to all sorts of Licence dispensing them for some time from the Rules of Military Discipline saying withall that he had Souldiers so well train'd up that powder'd and perfum'd they would run furiously to the fight In truth he lov'd to have them richly arm'd and made them wear engraved gilded and damask'd Arms to the end that the care of saving their Arms might engage them to a more obstinate defence Speaking to them he call'd them by the name of Fellow-Souldiers which we yet use which his Successor Augustus reform'd supposing he had only done it upon Necessity and to cajole those who only follow'd him as Volunters Rheni mihi Caesar in undis Dux erat hic socius facinus quos inquinat aequat Great Caesar who my Gen'ral did appear Upon the Banks of Rhine's my Fellow here For wickedness where it once hold does take All men whom it defiles does equal make but that this carriage was too mean and low for the Dignity of an Emperour and General of an Army and therefore brought up the custom of calling them Souldiers only With this Courtesie Caesar mixt great Severity to keep them in awe The ninth Legion having mutin'd near to Placentia he ignominiously casheer'd them though Pompey was then yet on foot and receiv'd them not again to Grace till after many Supplications He quieted them more by Authority and Boldness than by gentle ways In that place where he speaks of his Passage over the Rhine towards Germany he says that thinking it unworthy of the Honour of Roman People to waft over his Army in Vessels he built a Bridge that they might pass over dry foot There it was that he built that wonderful Bridg of which he gives so particular a Description for he no where so willingly insists upon his own Actions as in representing to us the subtlety of his Inventions in such kind of things I have also observ'd this that he set a great value upon his Exhortations to the Souldiers before the fight for where he would shew that he was either
moreover with exceeding Joy Wherefore my dearest said he do not dishonour it with thy Tears that it may not seem as if thou lov'st thy self more than my Reputation Moderate thy Grief and comfort thy self in the knowledge thou hast had of me and my Actions leading the remainder of thy Life in the same virtuous manner thou hast hitherto done To which Paulina having a little recover'd her Spirits and warm'd her Magnanimity with the heat of a most generous Affection reply'd No Seneca said she I am not a Woman to suffer you to go alone in such a Necessity I will not have you think that the virtuous Examples of your Life have not yet taught me how to dye and when can I ever better or more decently do it or more to my own desire than with you and therefore assure your self I will go along with you Seneca then taking this noble and generous Resolution of his Wife exceeding kindly at her hands and also willing to free himself from the fear of leaving her expos'd to the Mercy and Cruelty of his Enemies after his Death I have Paulina said he sufficiently instructed thee in what would serve thee happily to live but thou more covet'st I see the Honour of dying in truth I will not grudge it thee the Constancy and Resolution in our common end are the same but the Beauty and Glory of thy part is much greater Which being said the Chirurgeons at the same time open the Veins of both their Arms but being those of Seneca were more shrunk up as well with Age as Abstinence made his Blood to flow too slowly he moreover commanded them to open the Veins of his Thighs and lest the Torments he endur'd might entenerate his Wives Heart and also to free himself from the Affliction of seeing her in so sad a Condition after having taken a very affectionate leave of her he intreated she would suffer them to carry her into her Chamber which they accordingly did but all these Incisions being not yet enough to make him dye he commanded Statius Anneus his Physician to give him a draught of Poison which had not much better Effect for by Reason of the weakness and coldness of his Limbs it could not arrive at his Heart Wherefore they were forc'd to superadd a very hot Bath and then feeling his end approach whilst he had Breath he continued excellent Discourses upon the Subject of his present Condition which the Secretaries writ down so long as they could hear his Voice and his last Words were long after in high Honour and Esteem amongst Men and it was a great loss to us that they were not reserv'd down to our times Then feeling the last pangs of Death with the bloody Water of the Bath he bath'd his Head saying This Water I dedicate to Jupiter the Deliverer Nero being presently advertis'd of all this fearing lest the Death of Paulina who was one of the best descended Ladies of Rome and against whom he had no particular unkindness should turn to his reproach he sent back Orders in all haste to bind up her Wounds which her Attendants without his knowledge had done before she being already half dead and without all manner of Sence Thus though she liv'd contrary to her own design it was very honourably and according to her own Virtue her pale Complexion ever after manifesting how much Life was run from her Veins These are my three very true Stories which I find as diverting and as Tragick as any of those we make of our own Heads wherewith to entertain the common People and I wonder that they who are addicted to such Relations do not rather cull out ten thousand very fine Stories which are to be found in very good Authours that would save them the trouble of Invention and be more useful and diverting And who would make a Collection of them would need to add nothing of his own but the Connexion only as it were the soder of another Metal and might by this means embody a great many true Events of all sorts disposing and diversifying of them according as the Beauty of the Work should require after the same manner almost as Ovid has made up his Metamorphosis of the infinite number of various Fables In these last couple this is moreover worthy of Consideration that Paulina voluntarily offer'd to lose her Life for the love of her Husband and that her Husband had formerly also forbore dying for the love of her There is no just counterpoise in this exchange as to us but according to his Stoical Humour I presume he thought he had done as much for her in prolonging his Life upon her account as if he had died for her In one of his Letters to Lucilius after he has given him to understand that being seiz'd with an Ague in Rome he presently took Coach to go to a House he had in the Country contrary to his Wives Opinion who would by all means persuade him to stay and that he had told her that the Ague he was seis'd with was not a Fever of the Body but the Place it follows thus She let me go says he with giving me a strict charge of my Health Now I who know that her Life is involv'd in mine begin to make much of my self that I may preserve her And I lose the priviledge my Age has given me of being more constant and resolute in many things when I call to mind that in this old Fellow there is a young Lady who is interested in his Health And since I cannot persuade her to love me more courageously she makes me more sollicitously love my self for we must allow something to honest Affections and sometimes though occasions importune us to the contrary we must call back Life even though it be with Torment we must hold the Soul fast in our Teeth since the Rule of Living amongst good men is not so long as they please but as long as they ought He that loves not his Wife and his Friend so well as to prolong his Life for them but will obstinately dye is too delicate and too effeminate the Soul must impose this upon it self when the utility of our Friends does so require we must sometimes lend our selves to our Friends and when we would dye for our selves must break that Resolution for them 'T is a Testimony of Grandeur of Courage to return to Life for the Consideration of another as many excellent Persons have done and 't is a mark of singular good nature to preserve old Age of which the greatest convenience is the indifferency of its duration and a more stout and disdainful use of Life when a man perceives that this Office is pleasing agreeable and useful to some Person by whom we are very much belov'd And a man reaps by it a very pleasing Reward for what can be more delightful than to be so dear to his Wife as upon her account he shall become dearer to himself Thus
whole habitable Earth and in half a Life to have attain'd to the utmost of what humane Nature can do so that you cannot imagine his duration just and the continuation of his increase in Virtue and Fortune even to a due maturity of Age but that you must withall imagine something more than man To have made so many Royal Branches to spring from his Souldiers leaving the World at his death divided amongst four Successors who were no better than Captains of his Army whose Posterity have so long continued and maintain'd that vast possession so many excellent Vertues as he was master of Justice Temperance Liberality Truth in his word Love towards his own and Humanity towards those he overcame for his manners in general seem in truth incapable of any manner of reproach though some particular and extraordinary Actions of his may peradventure fall under censure But it is impossible to carry on so great things as he did with the strict Rules of Justice such as he are to be judg'd in gross by the main end of their Actions The ruin of Thebes the murther of Menander and of Ephestion's Physician the massacre of so many Persian Prisoners at once of a Troop of Indian Souldiers not without prejudice to his word and of the Cosseyans so much as to the very Children are indeed Sallies that are not well to be excus'd For as to Clytus the fault was more than recompenc'd in his Repentance and that very action as much as any other whatever manifests the sweetness of his nature a nature most excellently form'd to goodness and it was ingeniously said of him that he had his Vertues by Nature and his Vices by Chance As to his being a little given to bragging and a little too impatient of hearing himself ill spoken of and as to those Mangers Arms and Bits he caus'd to be strew'd in the Indies all those little Vanities methinks may very well be allow'd to his Youth and the prodigious prosperity of his fortune And who will consider withall his so many Military vertues his Diligence Foresight Patience Discipline Subtilty Magnanimity Resolution and good Fortune wherein though we had not had the Authority of Hannibal to assure us he was the first of men the admirable beauty and symmetry of his Person even to a miracle his majestick Port and awful Deportment in a Face so young so ruddy and so radiant Qualis ubi Oceani perfusus Lucifer unda Quem Venus ante alios astrorum diligit ignes Extulit os sacrum coelo tenebrasque resolvit Such the Day-star does from the Ocean rise Above all Lights grateful to Venus's eyes When he from Heaven darts his sacred light And dissipates the sullen shades of Night the excellency of his Knowledge and Capacity the duration and grandeur of his Glory pure clean without spot or envy and that long after his Death it was a religious belief that his very Medals brought good fortune to all that carried them about them and that more Kings and Princes have writ his Acts than other Historians have written the Acts of any other King or Prince whatever and that to this very day the Mahometans who despise all other Histories admit of and honour his alone by a special Priviledge whoever I say will seriously consider these particulars will confess that all these things put together I had reason to prefer him before Caesar himself who alone could make me doubtful in my choice and it cannot be deny'd but that there was more of his own in his Exploits and more of Fortune in those of Alexander They were in many things equal and peradventure Caesar had the advantage in some particular qualities They were two Fires or two Torrents to over-run the World by several ways Et velut immissi diversis partibus ignes Arentem in sylvam virgulta sonantia lauro Aut ubi decursu rapido de montibus altis Dant sonitum spumosi amnes in aequora currunt Quisque suum populatus iter And like to Fires in several parts apply'd To a dry Grove of crackling Lawrel's side Or like the Cataracts of foaming Rills That tumble headlong from the highest hills To hasten to the Ocean even so They bear all down before them where they go But though Caesar's ambition had been more moderate it would still he so unhappy having the ruin of his Country and the universal mischief to the World for its abominable object that all things rak'd together and put into the Balance I must needs incline to Alexander's side The third in my opinion and the most excellent of all is Epaminondas Of glory he has not near so much as the other two which also is but a part of the substance of the thing of Valour and Resolution not of that sort which is push'd on by Ambition but of that which Wisdom and Reason can raise in a regular Soul he had all that could be imagin'd Of this Vertue of his he has in my thoughts given as ample proof as either Alexander himself or Caesar for although his Expeditions were neither so frequent and so renown'd they were yet if duely consider'd in all their circumstances as important as bravely fought and carry'd with them as manifest testimony of Valour and military Conduct as those of any whatever The Greeks have done him the honour without contradiction to pronounce him the greatest man of their Nation and to be the first of Greece is easily to be the first of the World As to his Knowledge we have this ancient judgment of him That never any man knew so much and spake so little as he For he was of the Pythagorean Sect. But when he did speak never any man spake better an excellent Orator and of powerful insinuation But as to his Manners and Conscience he has infinitely surpass'd all men that ever undertook the management of Affairs for in this one thing which ought chiefly to be consider'd that alone truly denotes us for what we are and that alone I counter-balance with all the rest put together he comes not short of any Philosopher whatever not even of Socrates himself Innocency in this man is a quality peculiar sovereign constant uniform and incorruptible compar'd to which it appears in Alexander subject to something else above it uncertain variable effeminate and accidental Antiquity has judg'd that in thorowly sifting all the other great Captains there is found in every one some peculiar quality that illustrates his Name In this man only there is a full and equal vertue throughout that leaves nothing to be wish'd for in him whether in private or publick Employment whether in Peace or War whether gloriously to live or dye I do not know any Form or Fortune of Man that I so much honour and love 'T is true that I look upon his obstinate Poverty as it is set out by his best Friends a little too scrupulous and nice And this is the only action tho high in it self
mind as that of Epaminondas therein to mix sweetness and the facility of the gentlest Manners and purest Innocency And whereas one told the Mammertines that Statues were of no resistance against armed men and another told the Tribune of the People that the time of Justice and War were distinct things and a third said that the noise of Arms deaft the voice of the Law This man in all this rattle was not deaf to that of Civility and meer Courtesie Had he not borrow'd from his Enemies the custom of sacrificing to the Muses when he went to War that they might by their sweetness and gayety soften his Martial and unrelenting Fury Let us not fear by the example of so great a Master to believe that there is something unlawful even against an Enemy and that the common Concern ought not to require all things of all against private Interest Manente memoria etiam in dissidio publicorum faederum privati juris nulla potentia vires Praestandi ne quid peccet amicus habet And no pow'r upon Earth can e're dispence Treachery to a Friend without Offence and that all things are not lawful to an honest man for the Service of his Prince the Laws or the general Quarrel Non enim patria praestat omnibus officiis ipsi conducit pios habere Cives in Parentes 'T is an Instruction proper for the time wherein we live we need not harden our Courages with these Arms of Steel 't is enough that our Souldiers are inur'd to them 't is enough to dip our Pens in Ink without dipping them in Blood If it be grandeur of Courage and the effect of a rare and singular Virtue to contemn Friendship private Obligations a mans Word and relation for the common good and Obedience to the Magistrate 't is certainly sufficient to excuse us that 't is a Grandeur that could have no place in the Grandeur of Epaminondas his Courage I abominate those mad Exhortations of this other inrag'd and discompos'd Soul Dum tela micant non vos piâ—tatis imago Vlla nec adversa conspecti fronte parentes Commoveant vultus gladio turbate verendos When Sword 's are drawn let no remains of Love Friendship or Piety Compassion move But boldly wound the venerable Face Of your own Fathers if oppos'd in place Let us deprive wicked bloody and treacherous Natures of such a pretence of Reason let us set aside this guilty and extravagant Justice and stick to more humane imitations How great things can Time and Example do In an encounter of the Civil War against Cinna one of Pompeys Souldiers having unawares kill'd his Brother who was of the contrary Party he immediately for shame and sorrow kill'd himself and some years after in another Civil War of the same People demanded a Reward of his Office for having kill'd his Brother A Man proves but ill the Honour and Beauty of an Action by its Utility and Men very ill conclude that every one is oblig'd and it becomes every one to do it if it be of Utility Omnia non pariter rerum omnibus apta All things are not alike for all Men fit Let us choose what is more necessary and profitable for humane Society it will be Marriage and yet the Councel of the Saints find the contrary much better excluding the most honourable vocation of Men as we design those Horses for Stallions of which we have the least Esteem CHAP. II. Of Repentance OThers form Man I only report him and represent a particular one ill fashion'd enough and whom if I had to model a new I should certainly make him something else than what he is but that 's past recalling Now though the Features of my Picture alter and change 't is not however unlike The World eternally turns round all things therein are incessantly moving the Earth the Rocks of Caucasus and the Pyramids of Egypt both by the publick motion and their own Even Constancy it self is no other but a slower and more languishing Motion I cannot fix my Object 't is always tottering and reeling by a natural Giddiness I take it as it is at the instant I consider of it I do not paint its Being I paint its Passage not a passing from one Age to another or as the People say from seven to seven Years but from Day to Day from Minute to Minute I must accommodate my History to the Hour I may presently change not only by Fortune but also by Intention 'T is a counterpart of various and changeable Accidents and irresolute Imaginations and as it falls out sometimes contrary whether it be that I am then another self or that I take Subjects by other Circumstances and considerations so it is that I may peradventure contradict but as Demades said I never contradict the Truth Could my Soul once take footing I would not Essay but resolve but it is always learning and making tryal I propose a Life mean and without luster 'T is all one All moral Philosophy may as well be apply'd to a private Life as to one of the greatest Employment Every man carries the entire form of human Condition Authors communicate themselves to the People by some especial Work I the first of any by my universal Being as Michael de Montaigne not as a Grammarian a Poet or a Lawyer If the World find fault that I speak of my self I find fault that they do not so much as think of themselves But is it reason that being so particular in my way and manner of living and of so little Use I should pretend to recommend my self to the publick knowledge And is it also reason that I should introduce into the World where Art and Handling have so much credit and authority crude and simple effects of Nature and of a weak Nature to boot Is it not to build a Wall without Stone or Brick or some such thing to write Books without Learning The fancies of Musick are carried on by Art mine by Chance I have this at least according to Discipline that never any man treated of a Subject he better understood and knew than what I have undertaken and that in this I am the most understanding Man alive Secondly that never any man penetrated farther into his matter nor better and more distinctly sifted the Parts and Consequences of it nor ever more exactly and fully arriv'd at the end he propos'd to himself To finish it I need bring nothing but fidelity to the Work and that is there and the most pure and sincere that is any where to be found I speak truth not so much as I would but as much as I dare and I dare a little the more as I grow older for methinks Custom allows to Age more liberty of prating and more indiscretion of talking of a man's self That cannot fall out here which I often see elsewhere that the Work and the Artificer contradict one another Has a man of so sober Conversation
again in that holy estate In brief we allure and flesh them by all sorts of ways We incessantly heat and stir up their Imagination and yet we find fault Let us confess the truth there is scarce one of us that does not more apprehend the shame that accrues to him by the Vices of his Wife than by his own and that is not more sollicitous a wonderful Charity of the Conscience of his virtuous Wife than of his own who had not rather commit Theft and Sacrilege and that his Wife was a Murtheress and a Heretick than that she should not be more chaste than her Husband An unjust estimate of Vices Both we and they are capable of a thousand Corruptions more prejudicial and unnatural than Lust But we weigh Vices not according to Nature but according to our Interest by which means they take so many unequal forms The austerity of our Decrees renders the propension of Women to this Vice more violent and vicious than its Condition will bear and engages it in Consequences worse than their Cause They will voluntarily offer to go to the Exchange to seek for Gain and to the War to get Reputation rather than in the midst of ease and delights to have to do with so difficult a Guard Do not they very well see that there is neither Merchant nor Souldier who will not leave his business to run after this other and so much as the Porter and Cobler toyl'd and tir'd out as they are with Labour and Hunger Num tu quae tenuit dives Achaemenes Aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes Permutare velis crine Licinniae Plenas aut arabum domos Dum fragrantia detorquet ad osculae Cervicem aut facili saevitia negat Quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi Interdum rapere occupet Wouldst thou for all that Achaemenes had Or all the Phrygian Wealth before thee laid Or Riches that in Arabs Houses are Change thy Licinnias golden Hair When she her neck to fragrant Kisses wries Or with a pretty Anger them denies What she would rather give than take by far And snatches them e're she 's aware I cannot tell whether the Exploits of Alexander and Caesar do really surpass the Resolution of a beautiful young Woman bred up after our fashion in the Light and Commerce of the World battered by so many contrary Examples and yet keeping her self intire in the midst of a thousand continual and powerful Sollicitations and Pursuits There is no doing more prickly than that not doing nor more active I find it more easie to carry a suit of Arms all the days of a mans Life than a Maiden-head and the Vow of Virginity of all others is the most noble as being the hardest to keep Diaboli Virtus in Lumbis est says St. Hierom. We have doubtless resign'd to the Ladies the most difficult and most vigorous of all humane endeavours and let us resign to them the Glory too This ought to encourage them to be obstinate in it 't is a brave thing for them to defie us and to spurn under foot that vain preheminence of Valour and Virtue that we pretend to have over them They will find if they do but observe it that they will not only be much more esteem'd for it but also much more belov'd A gallant Man does not give over his pursuit for being refus'd provided it be a refusal of Chastity and not of choice We may swear threaten and complain to much purpose we lye we love them the better there is no allurement like Modesty if it be not rude and uncivil 'T is stupidity and meanness to be obstinate against hatred and disdain but against a virtuous and constant Resolution mixt with an acknowledgement 't is the exercise of a noble and generous Soul They may acknowledge our Services to a certain degree and give us civilly to understand that they disdain us not For that Law that enjoyns them to abominate us because we adore them and to hate us because we love them is certainly very severe if but for the difficulty of it Why should they not give ear to our offers and demands so long as they are contain'd within the bounds of Modesty Wherefore should we fancy them to have other thoughts within and to be worse than they seem A Queen of our time ingeniously said that to refuse these Courtships is a Testimony of weakness in Women and a self accusation of Facility and that a Lady could not boast of her Chastity who was never tempted The Limits of Honour are not cut so short they may give themselves a little rein and dispence a little without forfeiting themselves there lies before the Frontier some space free indifferent and neuter he that has beaten and pursu'd her into her Fort is a strange fellow if he be not satisfied with his Fortune The price of the Conquest is consider'd by the difficulty Would you know what impression your Service and Merit have made in her Heart Judge of it by her Behaviour Some may grant more who do not grant so much The Obligation of a Benefit wholly relates to the good will of those who confer it the other coincident Circumstances are dumb dead and casual It costs her dearer to grant you that little than it would do her Companion to grant all If in any thing rarity give the estimation it ought especially in this Do not consider how little it is that is given but how few have it to give The value of Money alters according to the Coin and stamp of the Place Whatever the spite and indiscretion of some may make them say upon the excess of their Discontentment yet Virtue and Truth will in time recover all I have known some whose Reputation has for a great while suffer'd under slander who have after been restor'd to the Worlds universal Opinion meerly by their Constancy without care or artifice every one repents and gives himself the lye for what he has believ'd and said and from Maids a little suspected they have been afterward advanc'd to the first rank amongst the Ladies of Honour Some body told Plato that all the World spoke ill of him Let them talk said he I will live so as to make them change their Note Besides the fear of God and the price of so rare a Renown which ought to make them look to themselves the corruption of the Age we live in compells them to it and if I were as they there is nothing I would not rather do than intrust my Reputation in so dangerous hands In my time the Pleasure of telling a Pleasure little inferiour to that of doing was not permitted but to those who had some faithful and only Friend but now the ordinary Discourse and common Table-talk is nothing but boasts of Favours receiv'd and the secret Liberality of Ladies In earnest 't is too abject and too much meanness of Spirit to suffer such ingrateful indiscreet and giddy-headed People so to
other account or like some strong chin'd Groom for that only and in what degree of favour you are with them tibi si datur uni Quo lapide illa diem candidiore notet Whether thy Mistriss favour thee alone And mark thy day out with the whiter stone What if they eat your Bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination Te tenet absentes alios suspirat amores She kindly strains thee in her Arms but has Her thoughts the while fix'd in another place What have we not seen one in these days of ours that made use of this Act upon the account of a most horrid Revenge by that means to kill and poison as he did a beautiful Woman Such as know Italy will not think it strange if for this Subject I seek not elsewhere for Examples for that Nation may be call'd the Regent of the world in this They have generally more handsome and fewer ugly women than we but for rare and excelling Beauties we have as many as they I think the same of their Wits of those of the common sort they have many and evidently more Brutality is without comparison much rarer there but in singular Souls and those of the highest Form we are nothing indebted to them If I should carry on the comparison I might say as touching Valour that on the contrary it is to what it is with them common and natural with us but sometimes we see them possess'd to such a degree as surpasses the most steady and obstinate Examples we can produce The Marriages of that Country are defective in this Their Custom commonly imposes so rude and so slavish a Law upon the Women that the most remote Acquaintance with a Stranger rendred necessarily substantial and seeing that all comes to one account they have no hard choice to make And have they broken down the Fence We may safely presume they have Luxuria ipsis vinculis sicut fera bestia irritata deinde emissa Lust like a wild Beast being more enrag'd by being bound breaks from his Chains with greater wildness They must give them a little more Rein Vidi ego nuper equum contra sua Fraena tenacem Ore reluctanti fluminis ire modo I saw spite of his Bit a head-strong Colt Run with his Rider like a Thunder-bolt The desire of Company is allay'd by giving a little Liberty 'T is a good Custom we have in France that our Sons are receiv'd into the best Families there to be entertain'd and bred up Pages as in a School of Nobless And 't is look'd upon as a discourtesie and an affront to refuse a Gentleman I have taken notice for so many Families so many differing forms that the Ladies who have been strictest with their Maids have had no better luck than those who allow'd them a greater Liberty There should be Moderation in all things one must leave a great deal of their Conduct to their own Discretion for when all comes to all no Discipline can curb them throughout But it is true withall that she who comes off with flying Colours from a School of Liberty brings with her whereon to repose more Confidence than she who comes away sound from a severe and strict Education Our Fathers dress'd up their Daughters looks in Bashfulness and Fear we ours in Confidence and Assurance We understand nothing of the Matter We must leave it to the Sarmates that are not to lye with a Man till with their own hands they have first kill'd another in Battel For me who have no other title left me to these things but by the cares 't is sufficient if according to the Priviledge of my Age they retain me for one of their Counsel I do then advise them and us men too to Abstinence but if the Age we live in will not endure it at least Modesty and Discretion For as the Story of Aristippus says speaking to two young men who blush'd to see him go into a scandalous House the Vice is in not coming out not in going in Let her that has no care of her Conscience have yet some regard to her Reputation and tho' she be rotten within let her carry a fair outside at least I commend a Gradation and the deferring of time in bestowing of their Favours Plato declares that in all sorts of Love Facility and Promptness are forbidden the Defendant 'T is a sign of eagerness so rashly suddenly and hand over head wholly to surrender themselves which they ought to disguise with all the art they have In carrying themselves modestly and unwillingly in the granting their last Favours they much more allure our desires and hide their own Let them still fly before us even those who have most mind to be overtaken They better conquer us by flying as the Scythians do To say the truth according to the law that Nature has impos'd upon them it is not properly for them either to will or desire their part is to suffer obey and consent and for this it is that Nature has given them a perpetual Capacity which in us is but sometimes and incertain they are always fit for the encounter that they may be always ready when we are so Patinatae And whereas she has order'd that our Appetites shall be manifest by a prominent Demonstration she would have theirs to be hidden and conceal'd within and has furnish'd them with Parts improper for Ostentation and simply defensive Such Proceedings as this that follows must be left to the Amazonian Licence Alexander marching his Army thorough Hyrcania Thalestris Queen of the Amazons came with three hundred light Horse of her own Sex well mounted and arm'd having left the remainder of a very great Army that follow'd her behind the neighb'ring Mountains to give him a Visit where she publickly allow'd and in plain terms told him that the Fame of his Valour and Victories had brought her thither to see him and to make him an Offer of her Forces to assist him in the pursuit of his Enterprizes and that finding him so handsome young and vigorous she who was also perfect in all those qualities advis'd that they might lye together to the end that from the most valiant Woman of the World and the bravest man then living there might spring some great and wonderful Issue for the time to come Alexander return'd her thanks for all the rest but to give leisure for the accomplishment of her last demand he detain'd her thirteen days in that place which were spent in Royal Feasting and Jollity for the welcome of so noble a Princess We are almost throughout incompetent and unjust Judges of their Actions as they are of ours I confess the truth when it makes against me as well as when 't is on my side 'T is an abominable intemperance that pushes them on so often to change and that hinders them to limit their Affection to any one Person whatever as is evident in that Goddess to whom are attributed
the Subject is the Opinions are to me all one and I am as indifferent whether I get the better or the worse I can peaceably argue a whole day together if the Argument be carried on with order I do not so much require force and subtilty as method I mean the order which we every day observe in the wranglings of Shepherds and Apprentices but never amongst us If they start from their Subject 't is an incivility and yet we do it But their Tumult and Impatience never puts them out of their Theam Their Argument still continues its Course If they prevent and do not stay for one another they at least understand one another very well Any one answers too well for me if he answers what I say But when the Dispute is irregular and perplex'd I leave the thing and insist upon the form with Anger and Indiscretion and fall into a willful malicious and imperious way of Disputation of which I am afterwards asham'd 'T is impossible to deal honestly and fairly with a Fool. My Judgment is not only corrupted under the hand of so impetuous a Master but my Conscience also Our Disputes ought to be interdicted and punish'd as well as other verbal Crimes What Vice do they not raise and heap up being alwayes govern'd and commanded by Passion We first quarrel with their Reasons and then with the men We only learn to dispute that we may contradict and so every one contradicting and being contradicted it falls out that the fruit of Disputation is to lose and nullifie Truth and therefore it is that Plato in his Republick prohibits this Exercise to Fools and ill bred People To what end do you go about to inquire of him who knows nothing to purpose A man does no injury to the Subject when he leaves it to seek how he may defend it I do not mean by an Artificial and Scolastick way but by a natural one with a sound understanding What will it be in the end One flies to the East the other to the West they lose the principal and wander in the Crowd of Incidents After an hour of Tempest they know not what they seek one is low the other high and a third wide One catches at a word and a simile another is no longer sensible of what is said in Opposition to him and thinks of going on at his own rate not of answering you Another finding himself too weak to make good his rest fears all refuses all and at the very beginning confounds the Subject or in the very height of the dispute stops short and grows silent by a peevish ignorance affecting a proud contempt or by an unseasonable modesty shuns any further debate Provided that this strikes he cares not how much he lays himself open the other counts his Words and weighs them for Reasons Another only brawls and makes use of the Advantage of his Lungs Here 's one that learnedly concludes against himself and another that deafs you with Prefaces and senseless Digressions another falls into down-right railing and seeks a ridiculous quarrel to disengage himself from a Wit that presses too hard upon him And a last man sees nothing into the reason of the thing but draws a line of Circumvallation about you of Dialectick Clauses and the formulas of his Art Now who would not enter into distrust of Sciences and doubt whether he can reap from them any solid Fruit for the service of Life considering the use we put them to Nihil sanantibus literis Who has got Understanding by his Logick Where are all her fair Promises Nec ad melius vivendum nec ad commodius disserendum It neither makes a man live better nor dispute more commodiously Is there more noise or confusion in the scolding of Fish-Wives than in the publick disputes of men of this Profession I had rather my Son should learn in a Tap-house to speak than in the School to prate Take a Master of Arts conferr with him Why does he not make us sensible of this artificial Excellence Why does he not ravish Women and Ignorants as we are with Admiration at the steadiness of his Reasons and the Beauty of his Order Why does he not sway and perswade us to what he will Why does a man who has so great advantage in matter mix Railing Indiscretion and Fury in his Disputations Strip him of his Gown his Hood and his Latine let him batter our Ears with Aristotle who is wholly pure and wholly believ'd you will take him for one of us or worse Whilst they torment us with this Complication and Confusion of Words it fares with them methinks as with Juglers their Dexterity imposes upon our Senses but does not at all work upon our belief this Legerdemain excepted they perform nothing that is not very ordinary and mean For being the more learned they are never the less Fools I love and honour Knowledge as much as they that have it And in its true use 't is the most noble and the greatest Acquisition of men but in such as I speak of and the number of them is infinite who build their fundamental sufficiency and value upon it who appeal from their Understanding to their Memory sub aliena umbra latentes and who can do nothing but by Book I hate it if I may dare to say so worse than Stupidity it self In my Country and in my time Learning improves Fortunes enough but not Minds If it meet with those that are dull and heavy it overcharges and suffocates them leaving them a crude and undigested mass if airy and fine it purifies clarifies and subtilizes them even to Exinanition 'T is a thing of almost indifferent quality a very useful accession to a well born Soul but hurtful and pernicious to others or rather a thing of very pretious use that will not suffer it self to be purchas'd at an under rate In the hand of some 't is a Scepter in that of others a Fools Bawble But let us proceed What greater Victory can you expect than to make your Enemy see and know that he is not able to encounter you When you get the better of your Argument 't is Truth that wins when you get the Advantage of Fame and Method 't is then you that win I am of Opinion that in Plato and Xenophon Socrates disputes more in favour of Disputants than in favour of the Dispute and more to instruct Euthydemus and Protagoras in the knowledge of their Impertinence than in the Impertinence of their Art He takes hold of the first Subject like one that has a more profitable end than to explain it namely to clear the Understandings that he takes upon him to instruct and exercise To hunt after Truth is properly our business and we are inexcusable if we carry on the Chace impertinently and ill to fail of seizing it is another thing For we are born to inquire after Truth it belongs to a greater power to possess it It
is not as Democritus said hid in the bottom of the Deeps but rather elevated to an infinite height in the Divine knowledge The World is but a School of Inquisition It is not who shall carry the Ring but who shall run the best Courses He may as well play the fool who speaks true as he that speaks false for we are upon the manner not the matter of speaking 'T is my humour as much to regard the form as the substance and the Advocates as much as the Cause as Alcibiades order'd we should and every day pass away my time in reading Authors without any consideration of their Learning their Method is what I look after not their Subject how not what they write And just so do I hunt after the conversation of any eminent Wit not that he may teach me but that I may know him and that being acquainted if I think him worthy of imitation I may imitate him Every man may speak truly but methodically and prudently and fully is a talent that few men have The falsity also that proceeds from Ignorance does not offend me but the foppery of it I have broken off several Treaties that would have been of advantage to me by reason of the impertinence of those with whom I treated I am not mov'd once in a year at the faults of those over whom I have authority but upon the account of the ridiculous obstinacy of their Excuses we are every day going together by the ears They neither understand what is said nor why and answer accordingly which would make a man mad I never feel any hurt upon my Head but when 't is knock'd against another and more easily forgive the Vices of my Servants than their boldness importunity and folly Let them do less provided they understand what they do You live in hopes to warm their affection to your Service but there is nothing to be had or to be hop'd for from a stock But what if I take things otherwise than they are perhaps I do and therefore it is that I accuse my own impatience and hold in the first place that it is equally vicious both in him that is in the right and him that is in the wrong for 't is always a tyrannick soureness not to endure a form contrary to ones own and besides there cannot in truth be a greater more constant nor more irregular folly than to be mov'd and angry at the follies of the World for it principally makes us quarrel with our selves and the old Philosopher never wanted occasion for his tears whilst he consider'd himself Miso one of the seven Sages of a Timonian and Democritick humour being ask'd what he laught at being alone That I do laugh alone answer'd he How many ridiculous things in my own opinion do I say and answer every day that comes over my head and then how many more according to the opinion of others If I bite my own Lips what ought others to do In fine we must live amongst the living and let the River run under the Bridge without care or at least without our alteration To speak the truth why do we meet a man with a hulch back or any other deformity without being mov'd and cannot endure the encounter of a deform'd mind without being angry This vicious sourness relishes more of the Judge than the Crime Let us alwayes have this saying of Plato in our mouthes Do not I think things unsound because I am not sound my self Am I not my self in fault may not my observation reflect upon my self A wise and divine saying that lashes the most universal and common Error of mankind not only the Reproaches that we throw in the faces of one another but our Reasons also our Arguments and Controversies are reboundable upon us and we wound our selves with our own weapons Of which Antiquity has left me enow grave Examples It was ingeniously and home said by him who was the inventer of this Sentence Stercus cuique suum bene olet We see nothing behind us We mock our selves an hundred times a day when we deride our Neighbour and detest in others the Defects which are more manifest in us and admire them with a marvellous inadvertency and impudence It was but yesterday that I saw a man of understanding as pleasantly as justly scoffing at the folly of another who did nothing but torment every body with the Catalogue of his Genealogy and Alliances above half of them false for they are most apt to fall into such ridiculous Discourses whose Qualities are most dubious and least sure and yet would he have look'd into himself he would have discern'd himself to be no less intemperate and impertinent in extolling hiâ— Wifes Pedigree Oh importunate presumption with which the Wife sees her self arm'd by the hands of her own Husband Did he understand Latin we should say to him Age si haec non insanit satis sua sponte instiga If of her self she be not mad enough Faith urge her on unto the utmost proof I do not say that no man should accuse who is not clean himself for then no one would ever accuse because none is absolutely clean from the same sort of spot but I mean that our Judgment falling upon another whose name is then in question does not at the same time spare our selves but sentences us with an inward and severe authority 'T is an office of Charity that he who cannot reclaim himself from a Vice should nevertheless endeavour to remove it from another in whom peradventure it may not have so deep and so malignant a root Neither do I think it an answer to the purpose to tell him who reproves me for my fault that he himself is guilty of the same What by that The reproof is notwithstanding true and of very good use Had we a good Nose our own ordure would stink worse to us forasmuch as it is our own And Socrates is of opinion that whoever should find himself his Son and a stranger guilty of any violence and wrong ought to begin with himself to present himself first to the Sentence of Justice and implore to purge himself the assistance of the hand of the Executioner in the next place he should proceed to his Son and lastly to the Stranger If this Precept seem too severe he ought at least to present himself the first to the Punishment of his own Conscience The Senses are our proper and first Judges which perceive not things but by external Accidents and 't is no wonder if in all the parts of the Service of our Society there is so perpetual and universal a mixture of Ceremonies and superficial Apparences insomuch that the best and most effectual part of our Policies do therein consist 'T is still man with whom we have to do of whom the Condition is wonderfully Corporal Let those who of these late years would erect for us such a contemplative and immaterial an Exercise of Religion
to the necessities of occasions he fails in his attempt without trouble and afflictions ready and intire for a new Enterprize he alwayes marches with the Bridle in his hand In him who is drunk with this violent and tyrannick intention we discover by necessity much imprudence and injustice The impetuosity of his desire carries him away These are rash motions and if Fortune do not very much assist of very little fruit Philosophy will that in the revenge of injuries receiv'd we should strip our selves of Choler not that the Chastisement should be less but on the contrary that the Revenge may be the better and more heavily laid on which it conceives will be by this impetuosity hindred For Anger does not only trouble but of it self does also weary the arms of those who chastise This fire benumms and wasts their force As in precipitation festinatio tarda est Haste trips up its own heels fetters and stops it self Ipsa se velocitas implicat For example According to what I commonly see Avarice has no greater impediment than it self The more bent and vigorous it is the less it â—akes together and commonly sooner grows rich when disguis'd in a Vizor of Liberality A very honest Gentleman and a particular Friend of mine had like to have crack'd his brains by a too passionate attention and affection to the Affairs of a certain Prince his Master Which Master has thus set himself out to me that he foresees the weight of Accidents as well as another but that in those for which there is no remedy he presently resolves upon suffering in others having taken all the necessary precautions which by the vivacity of his understanding he can presently do he quietly expects what may follow And in truth I have accordingly seen him maintain a great indifferency and liberty of actions and serenity of countenance in very great and nice Affairs I find him much greater and of greater capacity in adverse than prosperous Fortune His Losses are to him more glorious than his Victories and his Mourning than his Tryumph Do but consider that even in vain and frivolous actions as at Chess Tennis and the like this eager and ardent engaging with an impetuous desire immediately throws the Mind and Members into indiscretion and disorder A man astonishes and hinders himself He that carries himself the most moderately both towards gain and loss has always his Wits about him The less peevish and passionate he is at play he plays much more advantageously and surely As to the rest we hinder the Minds seisure and hold in giving it so many things to seize upon Some things we are only to offer to it to tye it to others and with others to incorporate it It can feel and discern all things but ought to feed upon nothing but it self and should be instructed in what properly concerns it self that is properly of its own Being and Substance The Laws of Nature teach us what we are justly to have After the Sâ—ges have told us that no one is indigent according to Nature and that every one is so according to Opinion they very subtilly distinguish betwixt the desires that proceed from her and those that proceed from the disorder of our own fancy Those of which we can see the end are hers those that fly before us and of which we can see no end are our own The want of Goods is easily repair'd the poverty of the Soul is irreparable Nam si quod satis est homini id satis esse potesseâ— Hoc sat erat nunc quum hoc non est qui credimus porro Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse If what 's for man enough enough could be It were enough but being that we see Will not serve turn how can I e're believe That any Wealth my mind content can give Socrates seeing great quantity of Riches Jewels and Furniture of great value carried in pomp through the City How many things said he do I not desire Metrodorus liv'd on the weight of twelve ounces a day Epicurus upon less Metroclez slept in Winter abroad amongst Sheep in Summer in the Cloysters of Churches Sufficit ad id natura quod poscit Cleanthes liv'd by labour of his own hands and boasted that Cleanthes if he would could yet maintain another Cleanthes If that which Nature exactly and originally requires of us for the conservation of our Being be too little as in truth what it is and how good cheap Life may be maintain'd cannot be better made out than by this Consideration that it is so little that by its littleness escapes the gripe and shock of Fortune let us dispence our selves a little more let us yet call every one of our Habits and Conditions Nature let us tax and treat our selves by this measure let us stretch our appurtenances and accounts so far for so far I fancy we have some excuse Custom is a second Nature and no less powerful What is wanting to my Custom I reckon is wanting to me and I should be almost as well content that they took away my Life as cut me short in the way wherein I have so long liv'd I am no more in a Condition of any great change nor to put my self into a new and unwonted course not though never so much to my Advantage 't is past time for me to become other than what I am And as I should complain of any great good Adventure that should now befall me that it came not in time to be enjoy'd Quo mihi fortunae si non conceditur uti Might I have the Worlds Wealth I should refuse it What good will 't do me If I may not use it so should I complain of any inward acquest It were almost better never than so late to become an honest man and well read in living when a man has no longer to live I who am ready to make my exit out of the World would easily resign to any new comer who should desire it all the Prudence I have acquir'd in the Worlds Commerce After Meâ—â— comes Mustard I have no need of Goods of which I can make no use Of what use iâ— Knowledge to him that has lost his Head ' Tiâ— an Injury and Unkindness in Fortune to tender us Presents that will only inspire us with a just despite that we had them not in theiâ— due season Guide me no more I can no longer go Of so many parts as make up a perfect man Patience is the best Assign the paâ—â— of an excellent Treble to a Chorister that haâ— rotten Lungs and Eloquence to a Hermit exiled into the Desarts of Arabia There needâ— no Art to further a fall the end finds it 〈◊〉 of it self at the Conclusion of every Affair my World is at an end my Form expir'd I am totally past and am bound to authorise it anâ— to conform my Posterity to it I will here deâ—clare by way of Example that
and Means of things that never were and the World scuffles about a thousand Questions of which both the pro and the con are false Ita finitima sunt falsa veris ut praecipitem locum non debeat se sapiens committere False things are so like the true that a wise man should not trust himself upon the precipice Truth and Lies are faâ—'d alike their port taste and proceedings are the same and we look upon them with the same Eye I find that we are not only remiss in defending our selves from deceit but we seek and offer our selves to be gull'd we love to intangle our selves in Vanity as a thing conformable to our Being I have seen the birth of many Miracles of my time which although they were abortive yet have we not fail'd to fore-see what they would have come to had they liv'd their full Age. 'T is but finding the end of the Clue and a man may wind off as much as he will and there is a greater distance betwixt nothing and the least thing in the World than there is betwixt that and the greatest Now the first that are imbued with this beginning of Novelty when they set out their History find by oppositions they met with where the difficulty of perswasion lies and so caulk that place with some false piece Besides that Inâ—ita hominibus libidine alendi de industria rumores Men having a natural desire to nourish Reports we naturally make a conscience of restoring what has been lent us without some usury and access of our substance Particular Error first makes the publick Error and afterwards in turn the publick Error makes the particular one so all this vast Fabrick goes forming and confounding it self from hand to hand so that the remotest Testimony is better instructed than those that are nearest and the last inform'd better perswaded than the first 'T is a natural progress For whoever believes any thing thinks it a work of Charity to persuade another into the same opinion Which the better to do he will make no difficulty of adding as much of his own Invention as he conceives necessary to encounter the resistance or want of Conception he meets with in others I my self who make a great conscience of lying and am not very sollicitous of giving credit and authority to what I say do yet find that in the Arguments I have in hand being heated with the opposition of another or by the proper heat of my own narration I swell and puff up my subject by Voice Motion Vigour and force of Words and moreover by Extention and Amplification not without some prejudice to the naked truth but I do it conditionally withall that to the first who brings me to my self and who asks me the plain and naked truth I presently surrender my Passion and deliver it to him without Exaggeration without Emphasis or any Farding of my own A quick and earnest way of Speaking as mine is is apt to run into Hyperbole There is nothing to which meâ— commonly are more inclin'd than to give way to their own Opinions Where the ordinary means fail us we add Command Force and Fire and Sword 'T is ill luck to be at that pass that the best touch of Truth must be the multitude of Believers in a crowd where the number of fools so much exceeds the wise Quasi vero quidquam sit tam valde quam nil sapere vulgare Sanitatis patrocinium est insanientium turba As if any thing were so common as Ignorance The multitude of Fools is a protection to the Wise. 'T is hard to resolve a man's Judgment against the common Opinions The first perswasion taken from the very Subject it self possesses the simple and from that it diffuses it self to the wise under the authority of the number and antiquity of the Witnesses For my part what I should not believe from one I should not believe from a hundred and one and do not judge Opinions by the years 'T is not long since one of our Princes in whom the Gout had spoil'd an excellent Nature and spritely Disposition suffer'd himself to be so farr perswaded with the report was made of the wonderful Operations of a certain Priest that by words and gestures cur'd all sorts of Diseases as to go a long Journey to seek him out and by the force of his Apprehension for some time so perswaded and lay'd his Legs asleep as to obtain that service from them they had a long time forgot Had Fortune heap'd five or six such like Accidents it had been enough to have brought this Miracle into Nature There was after discover'd so much Simplicity and so little Art in the Architecture of such Operations that they were thought too contemtible to be punish'd as would be thought of most such things were they well examin'd Miramur ex intervallo fallentia We admire at distance things that deceive So does our sight oft represent to us strange Images at distance that vanish in approaching near Nunquam ad liquidum fama perducitur Fame is never brought to be clear 'T is to be wonder'd at from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes such famous impressions commonly proceed This it is that obstructs the information for whilst we seek out the Causes and the great and weighty ends worthy of so great a Name we lose the true ones They escape our sight by their littleness And in truth a prudent diligent and subtle Inquisition is requir'd in such searches indifferent and not prepossess'd To this very hour all these Miracles and strange Events have conceal'd themselves from me I have never seen greater Monster or Miracle in the World than my self a man grows familiar with all strange things by time and custom but the more I frequent and the better I know my self the more does my own deformity astonish me and the less I understand my self The principal right of advancing and producing such Accidents is reserv'd to Fortune Riding the other day through a Village about two leagues from my House I found the Place yet hot with the rumour of a Miracle lately hapned there wherewith the Neighbour-hood had been several Months amused and so that neighbouring Provinces began to take the Alarm and to run thither in great Companies of all sorts of People A young fellow of the Town had one night in sport counterfeited the Voice of a Spirit in his own House without any other design at present but only for sport but this having succeeded with him a little better than he expected to illustrate his Farce with more Actors he took a stupid silly Country Girl into the Scene and at last they were three of the same Age and Understanding and from domestick Lectures proceeded to publick Preachings hiding themselves under the Altar of the Church never speaking but by Night and forbidding any light to be brought words which tended to the Conversion of the World and Threats of the
Profit and Amendment he cannot stand the Liberty of a Friends Advice which has no other Power but to pinch his Ear the remainder of its effect being still in his own Hands Now there is no Condition of Men whatever who stand in so great need of true and free advertisement as they do They support the publick Life and are to satisfie the Opinion of so many Spectators that when men have us'd to conceal from them whatever should divert them from their own way they insensibly have found themselves involv'd in the hatred and detestation of their People sometimes upon so slight Occasions as they might have avoided without any prejudice even of their Pleasures themselves had they been advis'd and set right in time Their Favorites commonly have more regard to themselves than they have to their Master and indeed it stands them upon forasmuch as in truth most Offices of true friendships when apply'd to the Sovereign are under a rude and dangerous hazard so that therein there is great need not only of very great Affection and Freedom but of Courage too To conclude all this Hodg-podg which I scribble here is nothing but a Register of Essays of my own Life which for the internal soundness is exemplary enough to take instruction against the Hair but as to bodily health no man can furnish out more profitable Experience than I who present it pure and no way corrupted and chang'd by Art or Opinion Experience is properly upon its own Dung-hill in the Subject of Physick where Reason wholly gives it place Tyberius said that whoever had liv'd twenty years ought to be responsible to himself for all things that were hurtful or wholsome to him and know how to order himself without Physick And he might have learnt it of Socrates who advising his Disciples to be sollicitous of their Health as the chiefest study added that it was hard if a man of Sense having a care of his Exercises and Diet did not better know than any Physician what was good or ill for him And also Physick does profess always to have Experience for the touch of its Operations And Plato had reason to say that to be a right Physician it would be necessary that he who would take it upon him should first himself have pass'd through all the Diseases he will pretend to cure and thorough all the Accidents and Circumstances whereof he is to judge 'T is but Reason they should get the Pox if they will know how to cure it for my part I should put my self into such hands for the others but guide us like him who paints the Sea-Rocks and Ports upon his Cloth and there makes the Figure of a Ship to sail in all security and put him to 't in earnest he knows not at which end to begin They make such a Description of our Maladies as a Town-Crier does of a lost Horse or Dog such a Colour such a Height such an Ear but bring him to him and he knows him not for all that God grant that Physick may one day give me some good and visible relief namely when I shall cry out in good earnest Tandem efficaci do manus Scientiae The Arts that promise to keep our Bodies and Souls in Health promise a great deal but withall there is none that less keep their Promise And in our times those that make profession of these Arts amongst us less manifest the Effects than any other sort of men One may say of them at the most that they sell Medicinal Drugs but that they are Physicians a man cannot say I have liv'd long enough to be able to give an account of the Custom that has carried me so far And for whoever has a mind to read it as his Taster I give him this Essay wherein he will find some Articles as my Memory shall supply me with them I have no Custom that has not varied according to accidents but I only record those that I have been best acquainted with and that hitherto have had the greatest possession of me My form of Life is the same in Sickness that it is in Health the same Bed the same Houses the same Meat and the same Drink serve me in both Conditions alike I add nothing to them but the moderation of more or less according to my Strength and Appetite My Health is to maintain my wonted state without disturbance I see that sickness puts me off it on one side and if I will be rul'd by the Physicians they will put me off on the other so that by Fortune and by Art I am out of my way I believe nothing more certainly than this that I cannot be offended by the usage of things to which I have been so long accustom'd 'T is for Custom to give a form to a mans Life such as it best pleases she is all in all in that 'T is the Beverage of Circe that varies our Nature as she pleases best How many Nations and but three steps from us think the fear of the serene that so manifestly is hurtful to us a ridiculous fancy and our Water-men and Peasants despise it You make a German sick if you lay him upon a Quilt as you do an Italian if you lay him on a Feather-bed and a French-man without Curtains or Fire A Spanish Stomach cannot hold out to eat as we can nor ours to drink like the Swiss A German made me very merry at Augusta with disputing the inconvenience of our Hearths by the same Arguments which we commonly make use of in decrying their Stoves For to say the truth that smother'd heat and then the scent of that heated matter of which the Fire is compos'd very much offend such as are not us'd to them not me But as to the rest the Heat being always equal constant and universal without flame without smoke and without the wind that comes down our Chimnies they may many ways induce comparison with ours Why do we not imitate the Roman Architecture For they say that anciently Fires were not made in their Houses but on the outside and at the foot of them from whence the heat was convey'd to the whole Fabrick by Pipes contriv'd in the Wall which were drawn twining about the Rooms that were to be warm'd Which I have seen plainly describ'd somewhere in Seneca This Gentleman hearing me commend the Conveniences and Beauties of his City which truly deserves it began to lament me that I was to go away And the first inconvenience he alledg'd to me was the heaviness that the Chimneys elsewhere brought upon me He had heard some one make this Complaint and fixt it upon us being by Custom depriv'd of the means of perceiving it at home All heat that comes from the Fire makes me weak and dull and yet Evenus said that Fire was the best condiment of Life I rather chuse any other way of making my self warm We are afraid to drink our Wines when toward the bottom of the
But withal if it once comes in my sight 't is in vain to perswade me to forbear so that when I design to Fast I must be parted from those that eat Suppers and must have only so much given me as is required for a regular Collation for if I sit down to Table I forget my resolution When I order my Cook to alter the manner of dressing any Dish of Meat all my Family know what it means that my Stomach is out of order and that I shall scarce touch it I love to have all meats that will indure it very little boyl'd or roasted and love them mightily mortified and even to stinking in many Nothing but hardness generally offends me of any other quality I am as patient and indifferent as any man I have known So that contrary to the common humour even in Fish it oft happens that I find them both too fresh and too firm Not for want of Teeth which I ever had good even to Excellence and that Age does but now begin to threaten at this time of my Life I have ever been us'd every Morning to rub them with a Napkin and before and after Dinner God is favourable to those whom he makes to dye by degrees 't is the only benefit of old Age the last Death will be so much the less painful it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most I have one Tooth lately fall'n out without drawing and without pain it was the natural term of its duration Both that part of my Being and several others are already dead and others half dead of those that were most active and in highest esteem during my vigorous years so that I melt and steal away from my self What a folly would it be in my understanding to apprehend the height of this fall already so much advanc'd as if it were from the utmost Precipice I hope I shall not I in truth receive a principal Consolation in the meditations of my Death that it will be just and natural and that henceforward I cannot herein either require or hope from Destiny any other but unlawfull Favour Men make themselves believe that they have formerly had as greater Statures so longer Lives But they deceive themselves and Solon who was of those elder times does nevertheless limit the Duration of Life to threescore and ten years I who have so much and so universally ador'd this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a mean is best of ancient times and shall I who have concluded the most moderate measure the most perfect pretend to an immeasurable and prodigious old Age Whatever happens contrary to the Course of Nature may be troublesome but what comes according to her should always be acceptable and pleasant Omnia quae secundum Naturam fiunt sunt habenda in bonis All things that are done according to Nature are to be accounted good And so Plato likewise says that the Death which is occasion'd by Wounds and Diseases is violent but that which surprises us old Age conducting us to it is of all others the most easie and in some sort delicious Vitam adolescentibus vis aufert senibus maturitas Young men are taken away by force old men by Maturity Death mixes and confounds it self throughout with Life decay anticipates its Hour and Shoulders even into the course of our growing up I have Pictures of my self taken at five and twenty and five and thirty years of Age I compare them with that lately drawn how often is it no more me how much more is my present Image unlike the former than to that I shall go out of the World withall It is too much to abuse Nature to make her trot so far that she must be forc'd to leave us and abandon our Conduct our Eyes Teeth Legs and all the rest to the mercy of a foreign and begg'd assistance and to resign us into the hands of Art being weary of following us her self I am not very fond either of Sallets or Fruits except Melons My Father hated all sorts of Sawces and I love them all Eating too much hurts me but for the quality of what I eat I do not yet certainly know that any sort of Meat disagrees with my Stomach neither have I observed that either Full-moon or Decrease Spring or Autum are hurtfull to me We have in us motions that are inconstant and for which no reason can be given For Example I found Radishes first grateful to my Stomach since that nauseous and now at present grateful again In several other things likewise I find my Stomach and Appetite to vary after the same manner I have chang'd and chang'd again from White to Claret from Claret to White I am a great lover of Fish and consequently make my Fasts Feasts and my Feasts Fasts and believe what some People say that it is more easie of digestion than Flesh. As I make a Conscience of eating Flesh upon Fish-days so does my Taste make a Conscience of mixing Fish and Flesh the difference betwixt them seems to me to be too great so to do From my Youth I have us'd sometimes to be out of the way at Supper either to sharpen my Appetite against the next Morning for as Epicurus fasted and made lean Meals to accustom his Pleasure to make shift without abundance I on the contrary do it to prepare my Pleasure to make better and more chearful use of Abundance or else I fasted to preserve my Vigour for the service of some Action of Body or Mind for both the one and the other of those are cruelly dull'd in me by Repletion and above all things I hate that foolish coupling of so healthful and spritely a Goddess with that little belching God bloated with the fume of his Liquor or to cure my sick Stomach and for want of fit Company For I say as the same Epicurus did that a man is not so much to regard what he eats as with whom And commend Chilo that he would not engage himself to be at Perianders Feast till he first was inform'd who were to be the other Guests No Dish is so acceptable to me nor no Sawce so alluring as that which is extracted from Society I think it to be more wholesome to eat more liesurely and less and to eat ofter but I will have the value of Appetite and Hunger enhanc'd I should take no pleasure to be fed with three or four pittiful and stinted Repasts a day after a Physical manner Who will assure me that if I have a good Appetite in the morning I shall have the same at Supper But especially let us old Fellows take the first opportune time of eating and leave to Almanack-makers the hopes and Prognosticks The utmost fruit of my health is pleasure let us take hold of the present and known I avoid constancy in these Laws of Fasting Who will that one Form shall serve him let him evade the continuing of it We harden our selves