to distribute some thing to those who have ministered to us. Now, Marcellinus was open-hearted and liberal; he caused money to be bestowed on his servants and consoled them. For all else, there was no need either of iron or blood; he undertook to depart from this life, not to flee from it; not to escape death, but to experience it. And, to give himself time. to deal with it, he refused all nourishment; and on the third day after, having had himself bathed in warm water, he failed little by little, and not without some pleasure, as he said. In truth, they who have had these faintnesses that come from weakness say that they feel no suffering in them, indeed, rather some pleasure, as of a passage into sleep and rest. We see in these examples deaths studied and weighed. But to the end that Cato alone might furnish the perfect pattern of courage, it seems that his kind fate weakened the hand with which he dealt himself the blow, so that he might have opportunity to meet death face to face, and embrace it, his courage strengthening instead of weakening in danger. And if it had been for me to represent him in his most superb attitude, it would have been when, all covered with blood, he tore out his entrails, rather than with sword in hand, as did the statuaries of his time.2 For that second murder was much more savage than the first. CHAPTER XIV HOW OUR MIND IS HINDERED BY ITSELF THIS Essay opens with the presentation of the sophism known as "Buridan's Ass," which was a sort of example that was made use of for a very long time in the Schools. Buridan was one of the most renowned philosophers of the fourteenth century, but what exactly his ass originally was, is uncertain; it may possibly in his own day have been connected either with the Pons Asinorum of the logicians, or with some other ancient quibble. Bayle, one of the most competent authorities, declares that he could never find any one who could explain it. His guesses about it are founded on the belief that has long prevailed, that 1 See Seneca, Epistle 77.5-9. 2 See Plutarch, Life of Cato of Utica; Seneca, De Providentia, II. "Buridan's Ass" represented precisely the state of mind described by Montaigne "a mind exactly balanced between two similar desires." The way in which Montaigne extricates us from the difficulty begs the question with delightful and characteristic common sense; but how annoying his so cutting the knot must have been to Pascal, who revenged himself by calling his reference, a few lines farther on, to the squaring of the circle, "ignorant"! I T is an amusing fancy to imagine a mind exactly balanced between two similar desires. For it is indubitable that it will never make a choice, because comparison and selection imply inequality of value; and if we were placed between the bottle and the ham, with equal appetite for drink and food, there would be, doubtless, no help save to die of thirst and hunger. To be prepared for this mishap, the Stoics, when they are asked whence comes, in our soul, the choosing between two not differing things, and what the reason is that, from a large number of crowns, we take one rather than another, all being alike and there being nothing about them which inclines us to preference, make answer that this movement of the soul is out of the ordinary and is irregular, coming to us from an external, accidental, and fortuitous impulsion.1 It might rather be said, it seems to me, that nothing presents itself to us in which there is not some difference, however slight it may be; and that, either to the sight or to the touch, there is always something additional which attracts us, although it be imperceptibly. In like manner, if we imagine a pack-thread equally strong throughout, it is more than impossible 2 that it should break; for where would you have the fracture 3 begin? and to break everywhere at the same moment, that is not conceivable. If one joined to all this the geometrical propositions which, by the infallibility of their demonstrations, prove the contained to be greater than the container, the centre as great as its circumference, and which find two lines constantly approaching each other and never able to meet, and the philosopher's stone, and the squaring of the circle, wherein reasoning and fact are so opposed, one might 1 See Plutarch, Contradictions of the Stoics. perchance derive therefrom some arguments to support that bold saying of Pliny: Solum certum nihil esse certi, et homine nihil miserius aut superbius.1 CHAPTER XV THAT DESIRE IS INCREASED IN US BY DIFFICULTY THIS is one of the Essays which even a familiar reader of Montaigne would find it difficult to give a résumé of, from memory; and perhaps a safe inference from this is that it is one of the least important. There is one interesting passage in it, the last two pages - autobiographical — added in 1595. The rest is fifteen years or more older in date. It keeps very close to the outline of its title; and the subject, an interesting one from the psychological point of view, is but little so when considered only superficially and anecdotically. HERE is no statement which has not its opposite, says the wisest party of philosophers. I was recently ruminating this other notable saying, which one of the ancients brings forward as a reason for contempt of life: No good thing can bring us pleasure, if it be not one for whose loss we are prepared:3 (c) in æquo est dolor amissæ rei, et timor amittendæ;* (a) meaning to prove thereby that the possession of life can not be truly pleasurable to us if we are in fear of losing its enjoyments. It might, however, be said, on the other hand, that we clasp and embrace this good thing so much the more closely and with the more affection, as we see it to be less assured, and fear that it may be taken from us. For it is clearly to be perto be 1 The sole certainty is that nothing is certain, and nothing more miserable or more proud than man. Pliny, Nat. Hist., II, 7. In 1580 to 1588, this sentence is translated thus: qu'il n'est certain que l'incertitude, et rien plus miserable et plus fier que l'homme. In its Latin form, it was inscribed on the beams of Montaigne's library. 2 The Pyrrhonians. See Sextus Empiricus, Hypot., I, 6. 3 See Seneca, Epistle 4.6. ♦ Equal in pain are the loss of a thing and the fear of losing it.—Idem, Epistle 98.6. ceived that, as fire is sharper from the presence of cold, so our will is sharpened by contention, — (b) Si nunquam Danaën habuisset ahenea turris, Non esset Danaë de Jove facta parens,1 (a) and that there is nothing so naturally opposed to our enjoyment as the satiety that comes from ease, and nothing that so intensifies our enjoyment as rarity and difficulty. Omnium rerum voluptas ipso quo debet fugare periculo crescit.2 satiatur amor, nisi gaudia torquent.3 Galla, nega; Pour tenir l'amour en haleine, Licurgue ordonna que les mariez de Lacedemone ne se pourroient pratiquer qu'à la desrobée, et que ce seroit pareille honte de les rencontrer couchés ensemble, qu'avecques d'autres. La difficulté des assignations, le dangier des surprises, la honte du lendemain,— et languor, et silentium, Et latere petitus imo spiritus,5. c'est ce qui donne pointe à la sauce. (c) Combien de jeus tres lascivement plaisans naissent de l'honneste et vergongneuse maniere de parler des ouvrages de l'amour! (a) La volupté mesme cerche à s'irriter par la douleur. Elle est bien plus sucrée quand elle cuit et quand elle escorche. La courtisane Flora disoit n'avoir jamais couché avecques Pompeius, qu'elle ne luy eut faict porter les marques de ses morsures." Quod petiere premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem Et stimuli subsunt, qui instigant lædere id ipsum, 1 If Danaë had not been shut up in a brazen tower, she would not have been made a mother by Jove. - Ovid, Amores, II, 19.27. 2 Peril increases in all things the very pleasure that we ought to avoid. Seneca, De Beneficiis, VII, 9. 3 Galla, deny me; love is cloyed unless joys torment. - Martial, This is the same everywhere; difficulty gives value to things. (b) They of the March of Ancona make their vows more readily to Saint-Jacques,1 and they of Galicia to Our Lady of Loretto; at Liége they make very much of the Baths of Lucca, and in Tuscany of those of Aspa;2 there are scarcely any Romans to be seen in the fencing-school at Rome, which is full of Frenchmen. The great Cato, like ourselves, found that he did not care for his wife so long as she was his, and desired her when she belonged to another.3 (c) J'ay chassé au haras un vieux cheval duquel, à la sentur des jumens, on ne pouvoit venir à bout. La facilité l'a incontinant saoulé envers les sienes; mais, envers les estrangeres et la premiere qui passe le long de son pastis, il revient à ses importuns hannissemens et à ses chaleurs furieuses comme devant. (a) Our appetite disdains and passes by what is at its hand, to run after what it has not: Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat." To forbid us any thing is to give us a desire for it: (b) nisi tu servare puellam Incipis, incipiet desinere esse mea.5 (a) To give it to us completely is to create in us contempt for it. Want and abundance meet with like mishap; Tibi quod superest, mihi quod desit, dolet." 1 That is, to Saint James of Compostella, in Galicia. 2 Spa, near Liége. "What Montaigne says here with regard to the transaction of Cato's wife, Marcia, becoming, with his consent, the wife of Hortensius, and his receiving her later again as his own wife, would seem to be merely a personal opinion. Plutarch in his Life of Cato says nothing to suggest this view. Cæsar, in his attack on Cato, accused him of this being a matter of avarice."- Grace Norton, Le Plutarque de Montaigne, p. 127. 4 It neglects what is at hand, and would seize what escapes from it. Horace, Satires, I, 2.108. 5 Unless you begin to guard your mistress, she will begin to cease to be mine. Ovid, Amores, II, 19.47. • What is too much troubles you, what is lacking troubles me. Terence, Phormio, I, 3.10. The original text is, Aliis quia desit quod amant ægre est, Tibi quod superest, dolet. |