Essays of Michel de Montaigne Part 67

Furthermore, 'tis here with us, and not elsewhere, that the force and effects of the soul ought to be considered; all the rest of her perfections are vain and useless to her; 'tis by her present condition that all her immortality is to be rewarded and paid, and of the life of man only that she is to render an account It had been injustice to have stripped her of her means and powers; to have disarmed her in order, in the time of her captivity and imprisonment in the flesh, of her weakness and infirmity in the time wherein she was forced and compelled, to pa.s.s an infinite and perpetual sentence and condemnation, and to insist upon the consideration of so short a time, peradventure but an hour or two, or at the most but a century, which has no more proportion with infinity than an instant; in this momentary interval to ordain and definitively to determine of her whole being; it were an unreasonable disproportion, too, to a.s.sign an eternal recompense in consequence of so short a life.

Plato, to defend himself from this inconvenience, will have future payments limited to the term of a hundred years, relatively to human duration; and of us ourselves there are enough who have given them temporal limits. By this they judged that the generation of the soul followed the common condition of human things, as also her life, according to the opinion of Epicurus and Democritus, which has been the most received; in consequence of these fine appearances that they saw it bom, and that, according as the body grew more capable, they saw it increase in vigour as the other did; that its feebleness in infancy was very manifest, and in time its better strength and maturity, and after that its declension and old age, and at last its decrepitude:--

Gigni pariter c.u.m corpore, et una Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem.

"Souls with the bodies to be born we may Discern, with them t' increase, with them decay."

They perceived it to be capable of divers pa.s.sions, and agitated with divers painful motions, whence it fell into la.s.situde and uneasiness; capable of alteration and change, of cheerfulness, of stupidity and languor, and subject to diseases and injuries, as the stomach or the foot;

Mentem sanari, corpus ut aegrum, Ceraimus, et flecti medicina posse videmus;

"Sick minds, as well as bodies, we do see By Med'cine's virtue oft restored to be;"

dazzled and intoxicated with the fumes of wine, jostled from her seat by the vapours of a burning fever, laid asleep by the application of some medicaments, and roused by others,--

Corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est, Corporeis quoniam telis ictuque laborat;

"There must be of necessity, we find, A nature that's corporeal of the mind, Because we evidently see it smarts And wounded is with shafts the body darts;"

they saw it astonished and overthrown in all its faculties through the mere bite of a mad dog, and in that condition to have no stability of reason, no sufficiency, no virtue, no philosophical resolution, no resistance that could exempt it from the subjection of such accidents; the slaver of a contemptible cur shed upon the hand of Socrates, to shake all his wisdom and all his great and regulated imaginations, and so to annihilate them, ad that there remained no trace of his former knowledge,--

Vis.... animal Conturbatur, et.... divisa seorsum Disjectatur, eodem illo distracta veneno;

"The power of the soul's disturbed; and when That once is but sequestered from her, then By the same poison 'tis dispersed abroad;"

and this poison to find no more resistance in that great soul than in an infant of four years old; a poison sufficient to make all philosophy, if it were incarnate, become furious and mad; insomuch that Cato, who ever disdained death and fortune, could not endure the sight of a looking-gla.s.s, or of water, overwhelmed with horror and affright at the thought of falling, by the contagion of a mad dog, into the disease called by physicians hydrophobia:--

Vis morbi distracta per artus Turbat agens animam, spumantes aequore salso Ventorum ut validis fervesc.u.n.t viribus undae.

"Throughout the limbs diffused, the fierce disease Disturbs the soul, as in the briny seas, The foaming waves to swell and boil we see, Stirred by the wind's impetuosity."

Now, as to this particular, philosophy has sufficiently armed man to encounter all other accidents either with patience, or, if the search of that costs too dear, by an infallible defeat, in totally depriving himself of all sentiment; but these are expedients that are only of use to a soul being itself, and in its full power, capable of reason and deliberation; but not at all proper for this inconvenience, where, in a philosopher, the soul becomes the soul of a madman, troubled, overturned, and lost; which many occasions may produce, as a too vehement agitation that any violent pa.s.sion of the soul may beget in itself; or a wound in a certain part of the person, or vapours from the stomach, any of which may stupefy the understanding and turn the brain.

Morbis in corporis avius errat Saepe animus; dement.i.t enim, deliraque fatur; Interdumque gravi lethargo fertur in altum aeternumque soporem, oculis mi tuque cadenti:

"For when the body's sick, and ill at ease, The mind doth often share in the disease; Wonders, grows wild, and raves, and sometimes by A heavy and a stupid lethargy, Is overcome and cast into a deep, A most profound and everlasting sleep."

The philosophers, methinks, have not much touched this string, no more than another of equal importance; they have this dilemma continually in their mouths, to console our mortal condition: "The soul is either mortal or immortal; if mortal, it will suffer no pain; if immortal, it will change for the better."--They never touch the other branch, "What if she change for the worse?" and leave to the poets the menaces of future torments. But thereby they make themselves a good game. These are two omissions that I often meet with in their discourses. I return to the first.

This soul loses the use of the sovereign stoical good, so constant and so firm. Our fine human wisdom must here yield, and give up her arms. As to the rest, they also considered, by the vanity of human reason, that the mixture and a.s.sociation of two so contrary things as the mortal and the immortal, was unimaginable:--

Quippe etenim mortale aeterao jungere, et una Consentire putare, et fungi mutua posse, Desipere est. Quid enim diversius esse putandum est, Aut magis inter se disjunctum discrepitansque, Quam, mortale quod est, immortali atque perenni Junctum, in concilio, saevas tolerare procellas?

"The mortal and th' eternal, then, to blend, And think they can pursue one common end, Is madness: for what things more diff'rent are.

Distinct in nature, and disposed to jar?

How can it then be thought that these should bear, When thus conjoined, of harms an equal share?"

Moreover, they perceived the soul tending towards death as well as the body:--

Simul ovo fessa fatiscit:

"Fatigued together with the weight of years:"

which, according to Zeno, the image of sleep does sufficiently demonstrate to us; for he looks upon it "as a fainting and fall of the soul, as well as of the body:" _Contrahi animum et quasi labi putat atque decidere:_ and, what they perceived in some, that the soul maintained its force and vigour to the last gasp of life, they attributed to the variety of diseases, as it is observable in men at the last extremity, that some retain one sense, and some another; one the hearing, and another the smell, without any manner of defect or alteration; and that there is not so universal a deprivation that some parts do not remain vigorous and entire:--

Non alio pacto, quam si, pes c.u.m dolet aegri, In nullo caput interea sit forte dolore.

"So, often of the gout a man complains, Whose head is, at the same time, free from pains."

The sight of our judgment is, to truth, the same that the owl's eyes are to the splendour of the sun, says Aristotle. By what can we better convince him, than by so gross blindness in so apparent a light? For the contrary opinion of the immortality of the soul, which, Cicero says, was first introduced, according to the testimony of books at least, by Pherecydes

Syrius, in the time of King Tullus (though some attribute it to Thales, and others to others), 'tis the part of human science that is treated of with the greatest doubt and

reservation. The most positive dogmatists are fain, in this point princ.i.p.ally, to fly to the refuge of the Academy. No one doubts what Aristotle has established upon this subject, no more than all the ancients in general, who handle it with a wavering belief: _Rem gratissimam promittentium magis quam probantium:_ "A thing more acceptable in the promisors than the provers." He conceals himself in clouds of words of difficult, unintelligible sense, and has left to those of his sect as great a dispute about his judgment as about the matter itself.

Two things rendered this opinion plausible to them; one, that, without the immortality of souls, there would be nothing whereon to ground the vain hopes of glory, which is a consideration of wonderful

repute in the world; the other, that it is a very profitable impression, as Plato says, that vices, when they escape the discovery and cognizance of human justice, are still within the reach of the divine, which will pursue them even after the death of the guilty. Man is excessively solicitous to prolong his being, and has to the utmost of his power provided for it; there are monuments for the conservation of the body, and glory to preserve the name. He has employed all his wit and opinion to the rebuilding of himself, impatient of his fortune, and to prop himself by his inventions. The soul, by reason of its anxiety and impotence, being unable to stand by itself, wanders up and down to seek out consolations, hopes, and foundations, and alien circ.u.mstances, to which she adheres and fixes; and how light or fantastic soever invention delivers them to her, relies more willingly, and with greater a.s.surance, upon them than upon herself. But 'tis wonderful to observe how the most constant and obstinate maintainers of this just and clear persuasion of the immortality of the soul fall short, and how weak their arguments are, when they go about to prove it by human reason: _Somnia sunt non docentis, sed optantis:_ "They are dreams, not of the teacher, but wisher," says one of the ancients. By which testimony man may know that he owes the truth he himself finds out to fortune and accident; since that even then, when it is fallen into his hand, he has not wherewith to hold and maintain it, and that his reason has not force to make use of it. All things produced by our own meditation and understanding, whether true or false, are subject to incert.i.tude and controversy. 'Twas for the chastis.e.m.e.nt of our pride, and for the instruction of our miserable condition and incapacity, that G.o.d wrought the perplexity and confusion of the tower of Babel. Whatever we undertake without his a.s.sistance, whatever we see without the lamp of his grace, is but vanity and folly.

We corrupt the very essence of truth, which is uniform and constant, by our weakness, when fortune puts it into our possession. What course soever man takes of himself, G.o.d still permits it to come to the same confusion, the image whereof he so lively represents to us in the just chastis.e.m.e.nt wherewith he crushed Nimrod's presumption, and frustrated the vain attempt of his proud structure; _Perdam sapientiam sapientium, et prudentiam prudentium reprobabo._ "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." The diversity of idioms and tongues, with which he disturbed this work, what are they other than this infinite and perpetual alteration and discordance of opinions and reasons, which accompany and confound the vain building of human wisdom, and to very good effect too; for what would hold us, if we had but the least grain of knowledge? This saint has very much obliged me: _Ipsa veritatis occultatio ant humili-tatis exercitatio est, aut elationis attritio_ "The very concealment of the truth is either an exercise of humility or a quelling of presumption."

To what a pitch of presumption and insolence do we raise our blindness and folly!

But to return to my subject. It was truly very good reason that we should be beholden to G.o.d only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of so n.o.ble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beat.i.tude. Let us ingenuously confess that G.o.d alone has dictated it to us, and faith; for 'tis no lesson of nature and our own reason.

And whoever will inquire into his own being and power, both within and without, without this divine privilege; whoever shall consider man impartially, and without flattery, will see in him no efficacy or faculty that relishes of any thing but death and earth. The more we give and confess to owe and render to G.o.d, we do it with the greater Christianity. That which this Stoic philosopher says he holds from the fortuitous consent of the popular voice; had it not been better that he had held it from G.o.d? _c.u.m de animarum otemitate disserimus, non leve momentum apud nos habet consensus hominum aut timentium inferos, aut colentium. Utor hac publica persuasione._ "When we discourse of the immortality of souls, the consent of men that either fear or adore the infernal powers, is of no small advantage. I make use of this public persuasion." Now the weakness of human arguments upon this subject is particularly manifested by the fabulous circ.u.mstances they have superadded as consequences of this opinion, to find out of what condition this immortality of ours was. Let us omit the Stoics, (_usuram n.o.bis 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 received fancy, and that continues down to our times in various places, is that of which they make Pythagoras the author; not that he was the original inventor, but because it received a great deal of weight and repute by the authority of his approbation: "That souls, at their departure out of us, did nothing but shift from one body to another, from a lion to a horse, from a horse to a king, continually travelling at this rate from habitation to habitation;" and he himself said that he remembered he had been aetha-lides, since that Euphorbus, afterwards Hermotimus, and, finally, from Pyrrhus was pa.s.sed into Pythagoras; having a memory of himself of two hundred and six years. And some have added that these very souls sometimes mount up to heaven, and come down again:--

O pater, aime aliquas ad colum hinc ire putandum est Sublimes animas, iterumque ad tarda reverti Corpora? Quae lucis miseris tam dira cupido?

"O, father, is it then to be conceiv'd That any of these spirits, so sublime, Should hence to the celestial regions climb, And thence return to earth to rea.s.sume Their sluggish bodies rotting in a tomb?

For wretched life whence does such fondness come?"

Origen makes them eternally to go and come from a better to a worse estate. The opinion that Varro mentions is that, after four hundred and forty years' revolution, they should be reunited to their first bodies; Chrysippus held that this would happen after a certain s.p.a.ce of time unknown and unlimited. Plato, who professes to have embraced this belief from Pindar and the ancient poets, that we are to undergo infinite vicissitudes of mutation, for which the soul is prepared, 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 knowledge of the affairs of heaven, of h.e.l.l, of the world, through all which it has pa.s.sed, repa.s.sed, and made stay in several voyages, are matters for her memory. Observe her progress elsewhere: "The soul that has lived well is reunited to the stars to which it is a.s.signed; that which has lived ill 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 const.i.tution, and that it has, by the force of reason, purged itself 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; 'tis 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.