Essays of Michel de Montaigne Part 60

Our well-being is nothing but the not being ill. Which is the reason why that sect of philosophers, which sets the greatest value upon pleasure, has yet fixed it chiefly in unconsciousness of pain. To be freed from ill is the greatest good that man can hope for or desire; as Ennius says,--

Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali;

for that every tickling and sting which are in certain pleasures, and that seem to raise us above simple health and pa.s.siveness, that active, moving, and, I know not how, itching, and biting pleasure; even that very pleasure itself aims at nothing but insensibility as its mark. The appet.i.te that carries us headlong to women's embraces has no other end but only to cure the torment of our ardent and furious desires, and only requires to be glutted and laid at rest, and delivered from the fever.

And so of the rest. I say, then, that if simplicity conducts us to a state free from evil, she leads us to a very happy one according to our condition. And yet we are not to imagine it so stupid an insensibility as to be totally without sense; for Crantor had very good reason to controvert the insensibility of Epicurus, if founded so deep that the very first attack and birth of evils were not to be perceived: "I do not approve such an insensibility as is neither possible nor to be desired.

I am very well content not to be sick; but if I am, I would know that I am so; and if a caustic be applied, or incisions made in any part, I would feel them." In truth, whoever would take away the knowledge and sense of evil, would at the same time eradicate the sense of pleasure, and finally annihilate man himself: _Istud nihil dolere, non sine magna mercede contingit, immanitatis in animo, stuporis in corpore._ "An insensibility that is not to be purchased but at the price of inhumanity in the soul, and of stupidity of the body." Evil appertains to man of course. Neither is pain always to be avoided, nor pleasure always pursued.

'Tis a great advantage to the honour of ignorance that knowledge itself throws us into its arms, when she finds herself puzzled to fortify us against the weight of evil; she is constrained to come to this composition, to give us the reins, and permit us to fly into the lap of the other, and to shelter ourselves under her protection from the strokes and injuries of fortune. For what else is her meaning when she instructs us to divert our thoughts from the ills that press upon us, and entertain them with the meditation of pleasures past and gone; to comfort ourselves in present afflictions with the remembrance of fled delights, and to call to our succour a vanished satisfaction, to oppose it to the discomfort that lies heavy upon us? _Levationes aegritudinum in avocatione a cogitanda molestia, et revocation ad contemplandas voluptates, ponit_; "He directs us to alleviate our grief and pains by rejecting unpleasant thoughts, and recalling agreeable ideas;" if it be not that where her power fails she would supply it with policy, and make use of sleight of hand where force of limbs will not serve her turn? For not only to a philosopher, but to any man in his right wits, when he has upon him the thirst of a burning fever, what satisfaction can it be to him to remember the pleasure he took in drinking Greek wine a month ago?

It would rather only make matters worse to him:--

Che ricordarsi il ben doppia la noia.

"The thinking of pleasure doubles trouble."

Of the same stamp is this other counsel that philosophy gives, only to remember the happiness that is past, and to forget the misadventures we have undergone; as if we had the science of oblivion in our own power, and counsel, wherein we are yet no more to seek.

Suavis laborum est praeteritorum raemoria.

"Sweet is the memory of by-gone pain."

How does philosophy, that should arm me to contend with fortune, and steel my courage to trample all human adversities under foot, arrive to this degree of cowardice to make me hide my head at this rate, and save myself by these pitiful and ridiculous shifts? For the memory represents to us not what we choose, but what she pleases; nay, there is nothing that so much imprints any thing in our memory as a desire to forget it.

And 'tis a good way to retain and keep any thing safe in the soul to solicit her to lose it. And this is false: _Est situm in n.o.bis, ut et adversa quasi perpetua oblivione obruamus, et secunda jucunde et suaviter meminerimus;_ "it is in our power to bury, as it were, in a perpetual oblivion, all adverse accidents, and to retain a pleasant and delightful memory of our successes;" and this is true: _Memini etiam quo nolo; oblivisci non possum quo volo._ "I do also remember what I would not; but I cannot forget what I would." And whose counsel is this? His, _qui se unies sapiervtem profiteri sit ausus;_ "who alone durst profess himself a wise man."

Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnes Praestinxit stellas, exortus uti aethereus Sol.

"Who from mankind the prize of knowledge won, And put the stars out like the rising sun."

To empty and disfurnish the memory, is not this the true way to ignorance?

Iners malorum remedium ignorantia est.

"Ignorance is but a dull remedy for evils."

We find several other like precepts, whereby we are permitted to borrow frivolous appearances from the vulgar, where we find the strongest reason will not answer the purpose, provided they administer satisfaction and comfort Where they cannot cure the wound, they are content to palliate and benumb it I believe they will not deny this, that if they could add order and constancy in a state of life that could maintain itself in ease and pleasure by some debility of judgment, they would accept it:--

Potare, et spargere flores Incipiam, patiarque vel inconsultus haberi.

"Give me to drink, and, crown'd with flowers, despise The grave disgrace of being thought unwise."

There would be a great many philosophers of Lycas's mind this man, being otherwise of very regular manners, living quietly and contentedly in his family, and not failing in any office of his duty, either towards his own or strangers, and very carefully preserving himself from hurtful things, became, nevertheless, by some distemper in his brain, possessed with a conceit that he was perpetually in the theatre, a spectator of the finest sights and the best comedies in the world; and being cured by the physicians of his frenzy, was hardly prevented from endeavouring by suit to compel them to restore him again to his pleasing imagination:--

Pol I me occidistis, amici, Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas, Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error;

"By heaven! you've killed me, friends, outright, And not preserved me; since my dear delight And pleasing error, by my better sense Unhappily return'd, is banished hence;"

with a madness like that of Thrasylaus the son of Pythodorus, who made himself believe that all the ships that weighed anchor from the port of Piraeus, and that came into the haven, only made their voyages for his profit; congratulating them upon their successful navigation, and receiving them with the greatest joy; and when his brother Crito caused him to be restored to his better understanding, he infinitely regretted that sort of condition wherein he had lived with so much delight and free from all anxiety of mind. 'Tis according to the old Greek verse, that "there is a great deal of convenience in not being over-wise."

And Ecclesiastes, "In much wisdom there is much sorrow;" and "Who gets wisdom gets labour and trouble."

Even that to which philosophy consents in general, that last remedy which she applies to all sorts of necessities, to put an end to the life we are not able to endure. _Placet?--Pare. Non placet?--Quac.u.mque vis, exi. Pungit dolor?--Vel fodiat sane. Si nudus es, da jugulum; sin tectus armis Vulcaniis, id est fort.i.tudine, resiste;_ "Does it please?--Obey it. Not please?--Go where thou wilt. Does grief p.r.i.c.k thee,--nay, stab thee?--If thou art naked, present thy throat; if covered with the arms of Vulcan, that is, fort.i.tude, resist it." And this word, so used in the Greek festivals, _aut bibat, aut abeat,_ "either drink or go," which sounds better upon the tongue of a Gascon, who naturally changes the h into v, than on that of Cicero:--

Vivere si recte nescis, decede peritis.

Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti; Tempus abire tibi est, ne potum largius aequo Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius aetas.

"If to live well and right thou dost not know, Give way, and leave thy place to those that do.

Thou'st eaten, drunk, and play'd to thy content, 'Tis time to make thy parting compliment, Lest youth, more decent in their follies, scoff The nauseous scene, and hiss thee reeling off;"

What is it other than a confession of his impotency, and a sending back not only to ignorance, to be there in safety, but even to stupidity, insensibility, and nonent.i.ty?

Democritum postquam matura vetustas Admonuit memorem motus languescere mentis; Sponte sua letho caput obvius obtulit ipse.

"Soon as, through age, Democritus did find A manifest decadence in his mind, He thought he now surviv'd to his own wrong, And went to meet his death, that stay'd too long."

'Tis what Antisthenes said, "That a man should either make provision of sense to understand, or of a halter to hang himself;" and what Chrysippus alleged upon this saying of the poet Tyrtaeus:--

"Or to arrive at virtue or at death;"

and Crates said, "That love would be cured by hunger, if not by time; and whoever disliked these two remedies, by a rope." That s.e.xtius, of whom both Seneca and Plutarch speak with so high an encomium, having applied himself, all other things set aside, to the study of philosophy, resolved to throw himself into the sea, seeing the progress of his studies too tedious and slow. He ran to find death, since he could not overtake knowledge. These are the words of the law upon the subject: "If peradventure some great inconvenience happen, for which there is no remedy, the haven is near, and a man may save himself by swimming out of his body as out of a leaky skiff; for 'tis the fear of dying, and not the love of life, that ties the fool to his body."

As life renders itself by simplicity more pleasant, so more innocent and better, also it renders it as I was saying before: "The simple and ignorant," says St. Paul, "raise themselves up to heaven and take possession of it; and we, with all our knowledge, plunge ourselves into the infernal abyss." I am neither swayed by Valentinian, a professed enemy to all learning and letters, nor by Licinius, both Roman emperors, who called them the poison and pest of all political government; nor by Mahomet, who, as 'tis said, interdicted all manner of learning to his followers; but the example of the great Lycurgus, and his authority, with the reverence of the divine Lacedemonian policy, so great, so admirable, and so long flourishing in virtue and happiness, without any inst.i.tution or practice of letters, ought certainly to be of very great weight. Such as return from the new world discovered by the Spaniards in our fathers' days, testify 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 lawyers than there are of other sorts of men and business:--

Di cittatorie piene, e di libelli, D'esamine, e di carte di procure, Hanno le mani e il seno, e gran fastelli Di chioge, di consigli, et di letture: Per cui le faculta de* poverelli Non sono mai nelle citta sicure; Hanno dietro e dinanzi, e d'ambi i lati, Notai, procuratori, ed avvocati.

"Their bags were full of writs, and of citations, Of process, and of actions and arrests, Of bills, of answers, and of replications, In courts of delegates, and of requests, To grieve the simple sort with great vexations; They had resorting to them as their guests, Attending on their circuit, and their journeys, Scriv'ners, and clerks, and lawyers, and attorneys."