Essays...................................................................................................................................................................1

Michel de Montaigne...............................................................................................................................1

II. OF THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN........................................................................................10

REASON...............................................................................................................................................28

IV. OF CANNIBALS...........................................................................................................................30

V. OF WARHORSES, OR DESTRIERS. ..........................................................................................36

VI. OF DEMOCRITUS AND HERACLITUS. ....................................................................................41

VII. OF AGE. ........................................................................................................................................42

VIII. OF DRUNKENNESS..................................................................................................................44

IX. OF GLORY....................................................................................................................................49

X. OF PRESUMPTION. .......................................................................................................................55

XI. THAT WE TASTE NOTHING PURE. ..........................................................................................71

XII. OF THUMBS................................................................................................................................73

XIII. OF THE RESEMBLANCE OF CHILDREN TO THEIR FATHERS........................................74

XIV. OF REPENTANCE.....................................................................................................................88

XV. UPON SOME VERSES OF VIRGIL...........................................................................................95

XVI. OF COACHES. ..........................................................................................................................126

XVII. THAT TO STUDY PHILOSOPHY IS TO LEARN TO DIE ..................................................136

XVIII. OF VANITY...........................................................................................................................145

XIX. OF PHYSIOGNOMY. ...............................................................................................................174

XX. OF THE FORCE OF IMAGINATION. ......................................................................................188

XXI. OF EXPERIENCE. ....................................................................................................................194

HE seems to have had a right and true apprehension of the power of custom, who first invented the story of a

countrywoman who, having accustomed herself to play with and carry, a young calf in her arms, and daily

continuing to do so as it grew up, obtained this by custom, that, when grown to be a great ox, she was still

able to bear it. For, in truth, custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, by little and little, slily

and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the

benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which

we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes. We see her, at every turn, forcing

and violating the rules of nature: "Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister." I refer to her Plato's cave in

his Republic, and the physicians, who so often submit the reasons of their art to her authority; as the story of

that king, who by custom brought his stomach to that pass, as to live by poison, and the maid that Albertus

reports to have lived upon spiders. In that new world of the Indies, there were found great nations, and in very

differing climates, who were of the same diet, made provision of them, and fed them for their tables; as also,

they did grasshoppers, mice, lizards, and bats; and in a time of scarcity of such delicacies, a toad was sold for

six crowns, all which they cook, and dish up with several sauces. There were also others found, to whom our

diet, and the flesh we eat, were venomous and mortal. "Consuetudinis magna vis est: pernoctant venatores in

nive: in montibus uri se patiuutur: pugiles coestibus contusi, ne ingemiscunt quidem."

These strange examples will not appear so strange if we consider what we have ordinary experience of, how

much custom stupefies our senses. We need not go to what is reported of the people about the cataracts of the

Nile; and what philosophers believe of the music of the spheres, that the bodies of those circles being solid

and smooth, and coming to touch and rub upon one another, cannot fail of creating a marvelous harmony, the

changes and cadences of which cause the revolutions and dances of the stars; but that the hearing sense of all

creatures here below, being universally, like that of the Egyptians, deafened, and stupefied with the continual

noise, cannot, how great soever, perceive it. Smiths, millers, pewterers, forgemen and armorers could never

be able to live in the perpetual noise of their own trades, did it strike their ears with the same violence that it

My perfumed doublet gratifies my own smelling at first; but after I have worn it three days together, 'tis only

pleasing to the bystanders. This is yet more strange, that custom, notwithstanding long intermissions and

intervals, should yet have the power to unite and establish the effect of its impressions upon our senses, as is

manifest in such as live near unto steeples and the frequent noise of the bells. I myself lie at home in a tower,

where every morning and evening a very great bell rings out the Ave Maria: the noise shakes my very tower,

and at first seemed insupportable to me; but I am so used to it, that I hear it without any manner of offense,

Plato reprehending a boy for playing at nuts, "Thou reprovest me," says the boy, "for a very little thing."

"Custom," replied Plato, "is no little thing." I find that our greatest vices derive their first propensity from our

most tender infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers are mightily pleased

to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise

fathers there are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit, when they hear a son

miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great

sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some malicious treachery and deceit.

Yet these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and

afterward shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by custom. And it is a very dangerous

mistake to excuse these vile inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of the subject; it is

nature that speaks, whose declaration is then more sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is

more weak and young; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor depend upon the difference

between crowns and pins; but I rather hold it more just to conclude thus: why should he not cozen in crowns

since he does it in pins, than as they do, who say they only play for pins, they would not do it if it were for

money? Children should carefully be instructed to abhor vices for their own contexture; and the natural

deformity of those vices ought so to be represented to them, that they may not only avoid them in their

actions, but especially so to abominate them in their hearts, that the very thought, should be hateful to them,

I know very well, for what concerns myself, that from having been brought up in my childhood to a plain and

straightforward way of dealing, and from having had an aversion to all manner of juggling and foul play in

my childish sports and recreations (and, indeed, it is to be noted, that the plays of children are not performed

in play, but are to be judged in them as their most serious actions), there is no game so small wherein from

my own bosom naturally, and without study or endeavor, I have not an extreme aversion for deceit. I shuffle

and cut and make as much clatter with the cards, and keep as strict account for farthings, as it were for double

pistoles; when winning or losing against my wife and daughter, 'tis indifferent to me, as when I play in good

earnest with others, for round sums. At all times, and in all places, my own eyes are sufficient to look to my

fingers; I am not so narrowly watched by any other, neither is there any I have more respect to.

I saw the other day, at my own house, a little fellow, a native of Nantes, born without arms, who has so well

taught his feet to perform the services his hands should have done him, that truly these have half forgotten

their natural office; and, indeed, the fellow calls them his hands; with them he cuts anything, charges and

discharges a pistol, threads a needle, sews, writes, puts off his hat, combs his head, plays at cards and dice,

and all this with as much dexterity as any other could do who had more, and more proper, limbs to assist him.

The money I gave him for he gains his living by showing these feats he took in his foot, as we do in our

hand. I have seen another who, being yet a boy, flourished a twohanded sword, and, if I may so say, handled

a halberd with the mere motions of his neck and shoulders for want of hands; tossed them into air, and caught

them again, darted a dagger, and cracked a whip as well as any coachman in France.

But the effects of custom are much more manifest in the strange impressions she imprints in our minds,

where she meets with less resistance. What has she not the power to impose upon our judgements and

beliefs? Is there any so fantastic opinion (omitting the gross impostures of religions, with which we see so

many great nations, and so many understanding men, so strangely besotted; for this being beyond the reach of

human reason, any error is more excusable in such as are not endued, through the divine bounty, with an

extraordinary illumination from above), but, of other opinions, are there any so extravagant, that she has not

planted and established for laws in those parts of the world upon which she has been pleased to exercise her

power? And therefore that ancient exclamation was exceeding just: "Non pudet physicum, id est

speculatorem venatoremque naturae, ab animis consuetudine imbutis quaerere testimonium veritatis?"

I do believe, that no so absurd or ridiculous fancy can enter into human imagination, that does not meet with

some example of public practice, and that, consequently, our reason does not ground and back up. There are

people, among whom it is the fashion to turn their backs upon him they salute, and never look upon the man

they intend to honor. There is a place, where, whenever the king spits, the greatest ladies of his court put out

their hands to receive it; and another nation, where the most eminent persons about him stoop to take up his

A French gentleman was always wont to blow his nose with his fingers (a thing very much against our

fashion), and he justifying himself for so doing, and he was a man famous for pleasant repartees, he asked

me, what privilege this filthy excrement had, that we must carry about us a fine handkerchief to receive it,

and, which was more, afterward to lap it carefully up and carry it all day about in our pockets, which, he said,

could not but be much more nauseous and offensive, than to see it thrown away, as we did all other

evacuations. I found that what he said was not altogether without reason, and by being frequently in his

company, that slovenly action of his was at last grown familiar to me; which nevertheless we make a face at,

when we hear it reported of another country. Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature,

and not according to the essence of nature: the continually being accustomed to anything, blinds the eye of

our judgment. Barbarians are no more a wonder to us, than we are to them; nor with any more reason, as

every one would confess if after having traveled over those remote examples, men could settle themselves to

reflect upon, and rightly to confer them with their own. Human reason is a tincture almost equally infused

into all our opinions and manners, of what form soever they are; infinite in matter, infinite in diversity. But I

There are peoples, where, his wife and children excepted, no one speaks to the king but through a tube. In one

and the same nation, the virgins discover those parts that modesty should persuade them to hide, and the

married women carefully cover and conceal them. To which, this custom, in another place, has some relation,

where chastity, but in marriage, is of no esteem, for unmarried women may prostitute themselves to as many

as they please, and being got with child, may lawfully take physic, in the sight of every one, to destroy their

fruit. And, in another place, if a tradesman marry, all of the same condition, who are invited to the wedding,

lie with the bride before him; and the greater number of them there is, the greater is her honor, and the

opinion of her ability and strength: if an officer marry, 'tis the same, the same with a laborer, or one of mean

condition, but then, it belongs to the lord of the place to perform that office; and yet a severe loyalty during

marriage is afterward strictly enjoined. There are places where brothels of young men are kept for the

pleasure of women; where the wives go to war as well as the husbands, and not only share in the dangers of

battle, but, moreover, in the honors of command. Others, where they wear rings not only through their noses,

lips, cheeks, and on their toes, but also weighty gimmals of gold thrust through their paps and buttocks;

where, in eating, they wipe their fingers upon their thighs, genitories, and the soles of their feet: where

children are excluded, and brothers and nephews only inherit; and elsewhere, nephews only, saving in the

succession of the prince: where, for the regulation of community in goods and estates, observed in the

country, certain sovereign magistrates have committed to them the universal charge and overseeing of the

agriculture, and distribution of the fruits, according to the necessity of every one: where they lament the death

of children, and feast at the decease of old men; where they lie ten or twelve in a bed, men and their wives

together: where women, whose husbands come to violent ends, may marry again, and others not: where the

condition women is looked upon with such contempt, that they kill all the native females, and buy wives of

their neighbors to supply their use; where husbands may repudiate their wives without showing any cause,

but wives cannot part from their husbands, for what cause soever; where husbands may sell their wives in

case of sterility; where they boil the bodies of their dead, and afterward pound them to a pulp, which they mix

with their wine, and drink it; where the most coveted sepulture is to be eaten with dogs, and elsewhere by

birds; where they believe the souls of the blessed live in all manner of liberty, in delightful fields, furnished

with all sorts of delicacies, and that it is these souls, repeating the words we utter, which we call echo; where

they fight in the water, and shoot their arrows with the most mortal aim, swimming; where, for a sign of

subjection, they lift up their shoulders, and hang down their heads; where they put off their shoes when they

enter the king's palace; where the eunuchs, who take charge of the sacred women, have, moreover, their lips

and noses cut off, that they may not be loved; where the priests put out their own eyes, to be better acquainted

with their demons, and the better to receive their oracles; where every one makes to himself a deity of what

he likes best; the hunter of a lion or a fox, the fisher of some fish; idols of every human action or passion; in

which place, the sun, the moon, and the earth are the principal deities, and the form of taking an oath is, to

touch the earth, looking up to heaven; where both flesh and fish is eaten raw; where the greatest oath they

take is, to swear by the name of some dead person of reputation, laying their hand upon his tomb; where the

new year's gift the king sends every year to the princes, his vassals, is fire, which being brought, all the old

fire is put out, and the neighboring people are bound to fetch the new, every one for themselves, upon pain of

high treason; where, when the king, to betake himself wholly to devotion, retires from his administration

(which often falls out), his next successor is obliged to do the same, and the right of the kingdom devolves to

the third in succession; where the vary the form of government, according to the seeming necessity of affairs;

depose the king when they think good, substituting certain elders to govern in his stead, and sometimes

transferring it into the hands of the commonalty; where men and women are both circumcised and also

baptized; where the soldier, who in one or several engagements, has been so fortunate as to present seven of

the enemies' heads to the king, is made noble: where they live in that rare and unsociable opinion of the

mortality of the soul; where the women are delivered without pain or fear: where the women wear copper

leggings upon both legs, and if a louse bite them, are bound in magnanimity to bite them again, and dare not

marry, till first they have made their king a tender of their virginity, if he please to accept it: where the

ordinary way of salutation is by putting a finger down to the earth, and then pointing it up toward heaven:

where men carry burdens upon their heads, and women on their shoulders; where the women make water

standing, and the men squatting: where they send their blood in token of friendship, and offer incense to the

men they would honor, like gods: where, not only to the fourth, but in any other remote degree, kindred are

not permitted to marry: where the children are four years at nurse, and often twelve; in which place, also, it is

accounted mortal to give the child suck the first day after it is born: where the correction of the male children

is peculiarly designed to the fathers, and to the mothers of the girls; the punishment being to hang them by

the heels in the smoke: where they circumcise the women: where they eat all sorts of herbs, without other

scruple than of the badness of the smell: where all things are open the finest houses, furnished in the richest

manner, without doors, windows, trunks, or chests to lock, a thief being there punished double what they are

in other places: where they crack lice with their teeth like monkeys, and abhor to see them killed with one's

nails: where in all their lives they neither cut their hair nor pare their nails; and, in another place, pare those of

the right hand only, letting the left grow for ornament and bravery: where they suffer the hair on the right side

to grow as long as it will, and shave the other; and in the neighboring provinces, some let their hair grow long

before, and some behind, shaving close the rest: where parents let out their children, and husbands their

wives, to their guests to hire: where a man may get his own mother with child and fathers make use of their

own daughters or sons, without scandal: where at their solemn feasts they interchangeably lend their children

to one another, without any consideration of nearness of blood. In one place, men feed upon human flesh; in

another, 'tis reputed a pious office for a man to kill his father at a certain age; elsewhere, the fathers dispose

of their children, while yet in their mothers' wombs, some to be preserved and carefully brought up, and

others to be abandoned or made away. Elsewhere the old husbands lend their wives to young men; and in

another place they are in common, without offense; in one place particularly, the women take it for a mark of

honor to have as many gay fringed tassels at the bottom of their garment, as they have lain with several men.

Moreover, has not custom made a republic of women separately by themselves? has it not put arms into their

hands, and made them raise armies and fight battles? And does she not, by her own precept, instruct the most

ignorant vulgar, and make them perfect in things which all the philosophy in the world could never beat into

the heads of the wisest men? For we know entire nations, where death was not only despised, but entertained

with the greatest triumph; where children of seven years old suffered themselves to be whipped to death,

without changing countenance; where riches were in such contempt, that the meanest citizen would not have

deigned to stoop to take up a purse of crowns. And we know regions, very fruitful in all manner of

provisions, where, notwithstanding, the most ordinary diet, and that they are most pleased with, is only bread,

cresses, and water. Did not custom, moreover, work that miracle in Chios that, in seven hundred years, it was

never known that ever maid or wife committed any act to the prejudice of her honor.

To conclude; there is nothing, in my opinion, that she does not, or may not do; and, therefore, with very good

reason it is, that Pindar calls her the queen, and empress of the world. He that was seen to beat his father, and

reproved for so doing, made answer, that it was the custom of their family: that, in like manner his father had

beaten his grandfather, his grandfather his greatgrandfather, "And this," says he, pointing to his son, "when

he comes to my age, shall beat me." And the father, whom the son dragged and hauled along the streets,

commanded him to stop at a certain door, for he himself, he said, had dragged his father no farther, that being

the utmost limit of the hereditary outrage the sons used to practice upon the fathers in their family. It is as

much by custom as infirmity, says Aristotle, that women tear their hair, bite their nails, and eats coals and

earth, and, more by custom than nature, that men abuse themselves with one another.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom; every one,

having an inward veneration for the opinions and manners approved and received among his own people,

cannot, without very great reluctance, depart from them, nor apply himself to them without applause. In times

past, when those of Crete would curse any one, they prayed the gods to engage him in some ill custom. But

the principal effect of its power is, so to seize and ensnare us, that it is hardly in us to disengage ourselves

from its gripe, or so to come to ourselves, as to consider of and to weigh the things it enjoins. To say the

truth, by reason that we suck it in with our milk, and that the face of the world presents itself in this posture to

our first sight, it seems as if we were born upon condition to follow on this track; and the common fancies

that we find in repute everywhere about us, and infused into our minds with the seed of our fathers, appear to

be the most universal and genuine: from whence it comes to pass, that whatever is off the hinges of custom, is

believed to be also off the hinges of reason; how unreasonably, for the most part, God knows.

If, as we who study ourselves, have learned to do, every one who hears a good sentence, would immediately

consider how it does any way touch his own private concern, every one would find that it was not so much a

good saying, as a severe lash to the ordinary stupidity of his own judgment; but men receive the precepts and

admonitions of truth, as directed to the common sort, and never to themselves; and instead of applying them

to their own manners, do only very ignorantly and unprofitably commit them to memory. But let us return to

Such people as have been bred up to liberty, and subject to no other dominion but the authority of their own

will, look upon all other form of government as monstrous and contrary to nature. Those who are inured to

monarchy do the same; and what opportunity soever fortune presents them with to change, even then, when

with the greatest difficulties they have disengaged themselves from one master, that was troublesome and

grievous to them, they presently run, with the same difficulties, to create another; being unable to take into

'Tis by the mediation of custom, that every one is content with the place where he is planted by nature; and

the Highlanders of Scotland no more pant after Touraine, than the Scythians after Thessaly. Darius asking

certain Greeks what they would take to assume the custom of the Indians, of eating the dead bodies of their

fathers (for that was their use, believing they could not give them a better, nor more noble sepulture, than to

bury them in their own bodies), they made answer, that nothing in the world should hire them to do it; but

having also tried to persuade the Indians to leave their custom, and, after the Greek manner, to burn the

bodies of their fathers, they conceived a still greater horror at the notion. Every one does the same, for use

Taking upon me once to justify something in use among us, and that was received 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 inquiring still farther into its origin, I found the foundation so weak, that I who made it

my business to confirm others, was very near being dissatisfied myself. 'Tis by this receipt that Plato

undertakes to cure the unnatural and preposterous loves of his time, as one which he esteems of sovereign

virtue; namely, that the public opinion condemns them; that the poets, and all other sorts of writers, relate

horrible stories of them; a recipe, by virtue of which the most beautiful daughters no more allure their father's

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, infused this wholesome opinion and belief into the

tender brains of children. Chastity is, in truth, a great and shining virtue, and of which the utility is

sufficiently known; but to treat of it, and to set it off in its true value, according to nature, is as hard as 'tis

easy to do so according to custom, laws, and precepts. The fundamental and universal reasons are of very

obscure and difficult research, 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, there puffing themselves out and

triumphing to their heart's content: such as will not suffer themselves to be withdrawn from this original

source, do yet commit a greater error, and subject themselves to wild opinions; witness Chrysippus who, in so

many of his writings, has strewed the little account he made of incestuous conjunctions, committed with how

Whoever would disengage himself from this violent prejudice of custom, would find several things received

with absolute and undoubting opinion, that have no other support than the hoary head and riveled face of

ancient usage. But the mask taken off, and things being referred to the decision of truth and reason, he will

find his judgment as it were altogether overthrown, and yet restored to a much more sure estate. For example,

I shall ask him, what can be more strange than to see a people obliged to obey laws they never understood;

bound in all their domestic affairs, as marriages, donations, wills, sales and purchases to rules they cannot

possibly know, being neither written nor published 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 Isocrates, who

counseled his king to make the traffics and negotiations of his subjects, free, frank, and of profit to them, and

their quarrels and disputes burdensome, and laden with heavy impositions and penalties; but, by a prodigious

opinion, to make sale of reason itself, and to give to laws a course of merchandise. I think myself obliged to

fortune that, as our historians report, it was a Gascon gentleman, a countryman of mine, who first opposed

What can be more savage, than to see a nation where, by lawful custom, the office of a judge is bought and

sold, where judgments are paid for with ready money, and where justice may legitimately be denied to him

that has not wherewithal to pay; a merchandise in so great repute, as in a government to create 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 own hands, and sovereign power over men's lives and fortunes, makes another body

separate from nobility: whence it comes to pass, that there are double laws, those of honor and those of

justice, in many things altogether opposite one to another; the nobles as rigorously condemning a lie taken, as

the other do a lie revenged: by the law of arms, he shall be degraded from all nobility and honor who puts up

with an affront; and by the civil law, he who vindicates his reputation by revenge incurs a capital punishment;

he who applies himself to the law for reparation of an offense none to his honor, disgraces himself; and he

who does not, is censured and punished 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 war; these have the profit, these the honor; those

the wisdom, these the virtue; those the word, these the action; those justice, these valor; those reason, these

For what concerns indifferent things, as clothes, who is there seeking to bring them back to their true use,

which is the body's service and convenience, and upon which their original grace and fitness depend; for the

most fantastic, in my opinion, that can be imagined, I will instance among others, our flat caps, that long tail

of velvet that hangs down from our women's heads, with its partycolored trappings; and that vain and futile

model of a member we cannot in modesty so much as name, which nevertheless we make show and parade of

in public. 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 affectation, 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 externals,

absolutely to follow and conform himself to the fashion of the time. Public society has nothing to do with our

thoughts, but the rest, as our actions, our labors, our fortunes, and our lives, we are to lend and abandon them

to its service, and to the common opinion; as did that good and great Socrates who refused to preserve his life

by a disobedience to the magistrate, though a very wicked and unjust one: for it is the rule of rules, the

general law of laws, that every one observe those of the place wherein he lives.

And now to another point. It is a very great doubt, whether any so manifest benefit can accrue from the

alteration of a law received, let it be what it will, as there is danger and inconvenience in altering it;

forasmuch as government is a structure composed of divers parts and members joined and united together,

with so strict connection, that it is impossible to stir so much as one brick or stone, but the whole body will be

sensible of it. The legislator of the Thurians ordained, that whosoever would go about either to abolish an old

law, or to establish a new, should present himself with a halter about his neck to the people to the end, that if

the innovation he would introduce should not be approved by every one, he might immediately be hanged;

and he of the Lacedaemonians employed his life, to obtain from his citizens a faithful promise, that none of

his laws should be violated. The Ephorus who so rudely cut the two strings that Phrynis had added to music,

never stood to examine whether that addition made better harmony, or that by its means the instrument was

more full and complete; it was enough for him to condemn the invention, that it was a novelty, and an

alteration of the old fashion. Which also is the meaning of the old rusty sword carried before the magistracy

For my own part, I have a great aversion from novelty, what face or what pretense soever it may carry along

with it, and have reason, having been an eyewitness of the great evils it has produced. For those for which for

so many years have lain so heavy upon us, it is not wholly accountable; but one may say, with color enough,

that it has accidentally produced and begotten the mischiefs and ruin that have since happened, both without

They who give the first shock to a state, are almost naturally the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of

public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first motor; he beats and disturbs the water for

another's net. The unity and contexture of this monarchy, of this grand edifice, having been ripped and torn in

her old age, by this thing called innovation, has since laid open a rent, and given sufficient admittance to such

injuries: the royal majesty with greater difficulty declines from the summit to the middle, then it falls and

tumbles headlong from the middle to the bottom. But if the inventors do the greater mischief, the imitators

are more vicious, to follow examples of which they have felt and punished both the horror and the offense.

And if there can be any degree of honor in illdoing, these last must yield to the others the glory of

contriving, and the courage of making the sorts of new disorders easily draw, from this primitive and

everflowing fountain, examples and precedents to trouble and discompose our government; we read in our

very laws, made for the remedy of this first evil, the beginning and pretenses of all sorts of wicked

enterprises; and that befals us, which Thucydides said of the civil wars of his time, that, in favor of public

vices, they gave them new and more plausible names for their excuse, sweetening and disguising their true

titles; which must be done, forsooth, to reform our conscience and belief: "honesta oratio est;" but the best

pretence for innovation is of very dangerous consequence: "adeo nihil motum ex antiquo probabile est." And

freely to speak my thoughts, it argues a strange selflove and great presumption to be so fond of one's own

opinions, that a public peace must be overthrown to establish them, and to introduce so many inevitable

mischiefs, and so dreadful a corruption of manners, as a civil war and the mutations of state consequent to it,

always bring in their train, and to introduce them, in a thing of so high concern, into the bowels of one's own

country. Can there be worse husbandry than to set up so many certain and knowing vices against errors that

are only contested and disputable? And are there any worse sorts of vices than those committed against a

man's own conscience, and the natural light of his own reason? The senate, upon the dispute between it and

the people about the administration of their religion, was bold enough to return this evasion for current pay:

"Ad deos id magis, quam ad se, pertinere: ipsos visuros, ne sacra sua polluantur;" according to what the

oracle answered to those of Delphos who, fearing to be invaded by the Persians, in the Median war, inquired

of Apollo, how they should dispose of the holy treasure of his temple; whether they should hide, or remove it

to some other place? He returned them answer, that they should stir nothing from thence, and only take care

The Christian religion has all the marks of the utmost utility and justice: but none more manifest than the

severe injunction it lays indifferently on all to yield absolute obedience to the civil magistrate, and to

maintain and defend the laws. Of which, what a wonderful example has the divine wisdom left us, that, to

establish the salvation of mankind, and to conduct His glorious victory over death and sin, would do it after

no other way, but at the mercy of our ordinary forms of justice, subjecting the progress and issue of so high

and so salutiferous an effect, to the blindness and injustice of our customs and observances; sacrificing the

innocent blood of so many of His elect, and so long a loss of so many years, to the maturing of this

inestimable fruit? There is a vast difference between the case of one who follows the forms and laws of his

country, and of another who will undertake to regulate and change them; of whom the first pleads simplicity,

obedience, and example for his excuse, who, whatever he shall do, it cannot be imputed to malice; 'tis at the

worst but misfortune: "Quis est enim, quem non moveat clarissimis monumentis testata consignataque

antiquisas?" besides what Isocrates says, that defect is nearer allied to moderation than excess: the other is a

much more ruffling gamester; for whosoever shall take upon him to choose and alter, usurps the authority of

judging, and should look well about him, and make it his business to discern clearly the defect of what he

This so vulgar consideration, is that which settled me in my station, and kept even my most extravagant and

ungoverned youth under the rein, so as not to burden my shoulders with so great a weight, as to render myself

responsible for a science of that importance, and in this to dare what in my better and more mature judgment I

durst not do in the most easy and indifferent things I had been instructed in, and wherein the temerity of

judging is of no consequence at all; it seeming to me very unjust to go about to subject public and established

customs and institutions to the weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy (for private reason

has but a private jurisdiction), and to attempt that upon the divine, which no government will endure a man

should do, upon the civil laws; with which, though human reason has much more commerce than with the

other, yet are they sovereignly judged by their own proper judges, and the extreme sufficiency serves only to

expound and set forth the law and custom received, and neither to wrest it, nor to introduce anything of

innovation. If, sometimes, the divine providence has gone beyond the rules to which it has necessarily bound

and obliged us men, it is not to give us any dispensation to do the same; those are master strokes of the divine

hand, which we are not to imitate, but to admire, and extraordinary examples, marks of express and particular

purposes, of the nature of miracles, presented before us for manifestations of its almightiness, equally above

both our rules and force, which it would be folly and impiety to attempt to represent and imitate; and that we

ought not to follow, but to contemplate with the greatest reverence: acts of his personage, and not for us.

Cotta very opportunely declares: "Quum de religione agitur, Ti. Coruncanium, P. Scipionem, P. Scaevolam

pontifices maximos, non Zenonem, aut Cleanthem, aut Chrysippum, sequor." God knows in the present

quarrel of our civil war, where there are a hundred articles to dash out and to put in, great and very

considerable, how many there are who can truly boast they have exactly and perfectly weighed and

understood the grounds and reasons of the one and the other party; 'tis a number, if they make any number,

that would be able to give us very little disturbance. But what becomes of all the rest, under what ensigns do

they march, in what quarter do they lie? Theirs have the same effect with other weak and illapplied

medicines; they have only set the humors they would purge more violently in work, stirred and exasperated

by the conflict, and left them still behind. The potion was too weak to purge, but strong enough to weaken us;

so that it does not work, but we keep it still in our bodies, and reap nothing from the operation but intestine

So it is, nevertheless, that Fortune, still reserving her authority in defiance of whatever we are able to do or

say, sometimes presents us with a necessity so urgent, that 'tis requisite the laws should a little yield and give

way; and when one opposes the increase of an innovation that thus intrudes itself by violence, to keep a man's

self in so doing in all places and in all things within bounds and rules against those who have the power, and

to whom all things are lawful that may any way serve to advance their design, who have no other law nor rule

but what serves best to their own purpose, 'tis a dangerous obligation and an intolerable inequality:

forasmuch as the ordinary discipline of a healthful state does not provide against these extraordinary

accidents; it presupposes a body that supports itself in its principal members and offices, and a common

consent to its obedience and observation. A legitimate proceeding is cold, heavy, and constrained, and not fit

to make head against a headstrong and unbridled proceeding. 'Tis known to be, to this day, cast in the dish of

those two great men, Octavius and Cato, in the two civil wars of Sylla and Caesar, that they would rather

suffer their country to undergo the last extremities, than relieve their fellowcitizens at the expense of its

laws, or be guilty of any innovation; for, in truth, in these last necessities, where there is no other remedy, it

would, peradventure, be more discreetly done to stoop and yield a little to receive the blow, than, by opposing

without possibility of doing good, to give occasion to violence to trample all under foot; and better to make

the laws do what they can when they cannot do what they would. After this manner did he who suspended

them for fourandtwenty hours, and he who, for once, shifted a day in the calendar, and that other who of

the month of June made a second of May. The Lacedaemonians themselves, who were so religious observers

of the laws of their country, being straitened by one of their own edicts, by which it was expressly forbidden

to choose the same man twice to be admiral; and on the other side, their affairs necessarily requiring that

Lysander should again take upon him that command, they made one Aratus admiral, 'tis true, but withal,

Lysander went superintendent of the navy; and, by the same subtlety, one of their ambassadors being sent to

the Athenians to obtain the revocation of some decree, and Pericles remonstrating to him, that it was

forbidden to take away the tablet wherein a law had once been engrossed, he advised him to turn it only; that

being not forbidden; and Plutarch commends Philopoemen, that being born to command, he knew how to do

it, not only according to the laws but also to overrule even the laws themselves, when the public necessity so

I never yet saw that father, but let his son be never so decrepit or deformed, would not, notwithstanding, own

him: not, nevertheless, if he were not totally besotted, and blinded with his paternal affection, that he did not

well enough discern his defects: but that with all defaults, he was still his. Just so, I see better than any other,

that all I write here are but the idle of a man that has only nibbled upon the outward crust of sciences in his

nonage, and only retained a general and formless image of them; who has got a little snatch of everything,

and nothing of the whole, a la Francoise. For I know, in general, that there is such a thing as physic, as

jurisprudence; four parts in mathematics, and, roughly, what all these aim and point at; and peradventure, I

yet know farther, what sciences in general pretend unto, in order to the service of our life: but to dive farther

than that, and to have cudgeled my brains in the study of Aristotle, the monarch of all modern learning, or

particularly addicted myself to any one science, I have done it; neither is there any one art of which I am able

to draw the first lineaments and dead color; insomuch that there is not a boy of the lowest form in a school,

that may not pretend to be wiser than I, who am not able to examine him in his first lesson, which, if I am at

any time forced upon, I am necessitated, in my own defense, to ask him, unaptly enough, some universal

questions, such as may serve to try his natural understanding; a lesson as strange and unknown to him, as his

I never seriously settled myself to the reading any book of solid learning but Plutarch and Seneca; and there,

like the Danaides, I eternally fill, and it as constantly runs out; something of which drops upon this paper, but

little or nothing stays with me. History is my particular game as to matter of reading, or else poetry, for which

I have particular kindness and esteem: for, as Cleanthes said, as the voice, forced through the narrow passage

of a trumpet, comes out more forcible and shrill; so, methinks, a sentence pressed within the harmony of

verse, darts out more briskly upon the understanding, and strikes my ear and apprehension with a smarter and

more pleasing effect. As to the natural parts I have, of which this is the essay, I find them to bow under the

burden; my fancy and judgment do but grope in the dark, tripping and stumbling in the way, and when I have

gone as far as I can, I am in no degree satisfied; I discover still a new and greater extent of land before me,

with a troubled and imperfect sight and wrapped up in clouds, that I am not able to penetrate. And taking

upon me to write indifferently of whatever comes into my head, and therein making use of nothing but my

own proper and natural means, if it befall me, as ofttimes it does, accidentally to meet in any good author, the

same heads and commonplaces upon which I have attempted to write (as I did but just now in Plutarch's

"Discourse of the Force of Imagination"), to see myself so weak and so forlorn, so heavy and so flat, in

comparison of those better writers, I at once pity or despise myself. Yet do I please myself with this, that my

opinions have often the honor and good fortune to jump with theirs, and that I go in the same path, though at

a very great distance, and can say, "Ah, that is so." I am farther satisfied to find, that I have a quality, which

every one is not blessed withal, which is, to discern the vast difference between them and me; and

notwithstanding all that, suffer my own inventions, low and feeble as they are, to run on in their career,

without mending or plastering up the defects that this comparison has laid open to my own view. And, in

plain truth, a man had need of a good strong back to keep pace with these people. The indiscreet scribblers of

our times, who among their laborious nothings, insert whole sections and pages out of ancient authors, with a

design, by that means, to illustrate their own writings, do quite contrary; for this infinite dissimilitude of

ornaments renders the complexion of their own compositions so sallow and deformed, that they lose much

The philosophers, Chrysippus and Epicurus, were in this of two quite contrary humors: the first not only in

his books mixed passages and sayings of other authors, but entire pieces, and, in one, the whole "Medea" of

Euripides; which gave Apollodorus occasion to say, that should a man pick out of his writings all that was

none of his, he would leave him nothing but blank paper: whereas the latter, quite contrary, in three hundred

I happened the other day upon this piece of fortune; I was reading a French book, where after I had a long

time run dreaming over a great many words, so dull, so insipid, so void of all wit or common sense, that

indeed they were only French words; after a long and tedious travel, I came at last to meet with a piece that

was lofty, rich, and elevated to the very clouds; of which, had I found either the declivity easy or the ascent

gradual, there had been some excuse; but it was so perpendicular a precipice, and so wholly cut off from the

rest of the work, that, by the six first words, I found myself flying into the other world, and thence discovered

the vale whence I came so deep and low, that I have never had since the heart to descend into it any more. If I

should set out one of my discourses with such rich spoils as these, it would but too evidently manifest the

imperfection of my own writing. To reprehend the fault in others that I am guilty of myself, appears to me no

more unreasonable, than to condemn, as I often do, those of others in myself: they are to be everywhere

reproved, and ought to have no sanctuary allowed them. I know very well how audaciously I myself, at every

turn, attempt to equal myself to my thefts, and to make my style go hand in hand with them, not without a

temerarious hope of deceiving the eyes of my reader from discerning the difference; but withal, 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 with any one of

them: 'tis only by flights 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 show to do. If I could hold them in play, I were a brave

fellow; for I never attack 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 armor, so as not to discover so much as his fingers' ends; to carry on a

design (as it is not hard for a man that has anything of a scholar in him, in an ordinary subject to do) under

old inventions, patched up here and there with his own trumpery, and then to endeavor to conceal the theft,

and to make it pass for his own, is first injustice and meanness of spirit in those who do it, who having

nothing in them of their own fit to procure them a reputation, endeavor to do it by attempting to impose

things upon the world in their own name, which they have no manner of title to; and, next, 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 degrading themselves in the eyes of men of understanding, who turn up their noses

at all this borrowed incrustation, yet whose praise alone is worth the having. 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 explain myself. Nor in this do I glance at the composers of centos, who declare themselves such; of which

sort of writers I have in my time known many very ingenious, and particularly one under the name of

Capilupus, 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 politics.

But, be it how it will, and how inconsiderable soever these essays of mine may be, I will say I never intended

to conceal them, no more than my old bald grizzled pate before them, where the painter has presented you not

with a perfect face, but with mine. For these are my own particular opinions and fancies, and I deliver them

as only what I myself believe, and not for what is to be believed by others. I have no other end in this writing,

but only to discover myself, who, also, shall, peradventure, be another thing tomorrow, if I chance to meet

any new instruction to change me. I have no authority to be believed, neither do I desire it, being too

A friend of mine, then, having read the preceding chapter, the other day told me, that I should a little farther

have extended my discourse on the education of children. Now, madame, 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, sufficiently obliges me to desire the honor 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 human science is the education of children. For as in agriculture, the husbandry that is

to precede planting, as also planting itself, is certain, plain, and well known; but after that which is planted

comes to life, there is a great deal more to be done, more art to be used, more care to be taken, and much

more difficulty to cultivate and bring it to perfection; so it is with men; it is no hard matter to get children; but

after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up.

The symptoms of their inclinations in that 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. Look at Cimon, for

example, and Themistocles, and a thousand others, who very much deceived the expectation men had of

them. Cubs of bears and puppies readily discover their natural inclination; but men, so soon as ever they are

grown up, applying themselves to certain habits, engaging themselves in certain opinions, and conforming

themselves to particular laws and customs, 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, we often take very great pains, and consume a good part of our time in training up children to things,

for which, by their natural constitution, 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 prognostics they give of themselves in their tender years,

Madame, science, is a very great ornament, and a thing of marvelous use, especially in persons raised to that

degree of fortune in which you are. And, in truth, in persons of mean and low condition, it cannot perform its

true and genuine office, being naturally more prompt to assist in the conduct of war, in the government of

peoples, in negotiating the leagues and friendships of princes and foreign nations, than in forming a syllogism

in logic, in pleading a process in law, or in prescribing a dose of pills in physic. Wherefore, madame,

believing you will not omit this so necessary feature in the education of your children, who yourself have

tasted its sweetness, and are of a learned extraction (for we yet have the writings of the ancient Counts of

Foix, from whom my lord, your husband, and yourself, are both of you descended, and Monsieur de Candale,

your uncle, every day obliges the world with others, which will extend the knowledge of this quality in your

family for so many succeeding ages), I will, upon this occasion, presume to acquaint your ladyship, with one

particular fancy of my own, contrary to the common method, which is all I am able to contribute to your

The charge of the tutor 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 required in so important a trust,

besides that of which I am about to speak: these, however, I shall not mention, as being unable to add

anything of moment to the common rules: and in this, wherein I take upon me to advise, he may follow it so

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 favor of the Muses, and moreover, in it a man directs his service to and depends

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 come out an accomplished cavalier than a mere scholar or

learned man; for such a one, I say, I would, also, have his friends solicitous to find him out a tutor, who has

rather a wellmade than a wellfilled head; seeking, indeed, both the one and the other, but rather of the two

to prefer manners and judgment to mere learning, and that this man should exercise his charge after a new

'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil's ears, as they were pouring into a

funnel, while the business of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said: 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 things, and of himself to discern and choose them, sometimes

opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving him to open it for 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 discere

volunt, auctoritas eorum, qui docent." 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 vigor 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 'tis the effect of a high and

welltempered soul to know how to condescend to such puerile motions and to govern and direct them. I

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 boys of differing and unequal capacities, are infinitely mistaken; and

'tis no wonder, if in a whole 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 about the sense and substance of them, and let him judge of

the profit he has made, not by the testimony of his memory, but by that of his life. Let him make him put

what he has learned into a hundred several forms, and accommodate it to so many several subjects, to see if

he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own, taking instruction of his progress by the pedagogic

institutions of Plato. 'Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the same condition it

was swallowed; the stomach has not performed its office unless it have altered the form and condition of

what was committed to it to concoct. Our minds work only upon trust, when bound and compelled to follow

the appetite of another's fancy, enslaved and captivated under the authority of another's instruction; we have

been so subjected to the trammel, that we have no free, nor natural pace of our own; our own vigor and

I was privately carried at Pisa to see a very honest man, but so great an Aristotelian, that his most usual thesis

was: "That the touchstone and square of all solid imagination, and of all truth, was an absolute conformity to

Aristotle's doctrine; and that all besides was nothing but inanity and chimera; for that he had seen all, and said

all." A position, that for having been a little too injuriously and broadly interpreted, brought him once and

Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift everything 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, than those of

Epicurus and the Stoics: let this. diversity of opinions be propounded to, and laid before him; he will himself

for, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his own reason, they will no more be theirs, but

become his own. Who follows another, follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is inquisitive after nothing. "Non

sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se vindicet." Let him at least, know that he knows. It will be necessary that he

imbibe their knowledge, not that he be corrupted with their precepts; and no matter if he forgot where he had

his learning, provided he know how to apply it to his own use. Truth and reason are common to every one,

and are no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them after: 'tis no more according to Plato,

than according to me, since both he and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull their several sweets

from this flower and that blossom, here and there where they find them, but themselves afterward make the

honey, which is all and purely their own, and no more thyme and marjoram: so the several fragments he

borrows from others, he will transform and shuffle together to compile a work that shall be absolutely his

own; that is to say, his judgment: his instruction, labor and study, tend to nothing else but to form that. He is

not obliged to discover whence he got the materials that have assisted him, but only to produce what he has

himself done with them. Men that live upon pillage and borrowing, expose their purchases and buildings to

every one's view: but do not proclaim how they came by the money. We do not see the fees and perquisites of

a gentleman of the long robe; but we see the alliances wherewith he fortifies himself and his family, and the

titles and honors he has obtained for him and his. No man divulges his revenue; or at least, which way it

comes in: but every one publishes his acquisitions. The advantages of our study are to become better and

more wise. 'Tis, says Epicharmus, the understanding that sees and hears, 'tis the understanding that improves

everything, that orders everything, and that acts, rules, and reigns: all other faculties are blind, and deaf, and

without soul. And certainly we render it timorous and servile, in not allowing it the liberty and privilege to do

anything of itself. Whoever asked his pupil what he thought of grammar or rhetoric, and of such and such a

sentence of Cicero? Our masters stick them, full feathered, in our memories, and there establish them like

oracles, of which the letters and syllables are of the substance of the thing. To know by rote, is no knowledge,

and signifies no more but only to retain what one has intrusted to our memory. That which a man rightly

knows and understands, he is the free disposer of at his own full liberty, without any regard to the author

from whence he had it or fumbling over the leaves of his book. A mere bookish learning is a poor, paltry

learning; it may serve for ornament, but there is yet no foundation for any superstructure to be built upon it,

according to the opinion of Plato, who says that constancy, faith, and sincerity, are the true philosophy, and

the other sciences, that are directed to other ends, mere adulterate paint. I could wish that Paluel or Pompey,

those two noted dancers of my time, could have taught us to cut capers, by only seeing them do it, without

stirring from our places, as these men pretend to inform the understanding, without ever setting it to work; or

that we could learn to ride, handle a pike, touch a lute, or sing, without the trouble of practice, as these

attempt to make us judge and speak well, without exercising us in judging or speaking. Now in this initiation

of our studies and in their progress, whatsoever presents itself before us is book sufficient; a roguish trick of a

page, a sottish mistake of a servant, a jest at the table, are so many new subjects.

And for this reason, conversation with men is of very great use and travel into foreign countries; not to bring

back (as most of our young monsieurs do) an account only of how many paces Santa Rotonda is in circuit; or

of the richness of Signora Livia's petticoats; or, as some others, how much Nero's face, in a statue in such an

old ruin, is longer and broader than that made for him on some medal; but to be able chiefly to give an

account of the humors, manners, customs and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we may whet

and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others. I would that a boy should be sent abroad very

young, and first, so as to kill two birds with one stone, into those neighboring nations whose language is most

differing from our own, and to which, if it be not formed betimes, the tongue will grow too stiff to bend.

And also 'tis the general opinion of all, that a child should not be brought up in his mother's lap. Mothers are

too tender, and their natural affection is apt to make the most discreet of them all so overfond, that they can

neither find in their hearts to give them due correction for the faults they commit, nor suffer them to be inured

to hardships and hazards, as they ought to be. They will not endure to see them return all dust and sweat from

their exercise, to drink cold drink when they are hot, nor see them mount an unruly horse, nor take a foil in

hand against a rude fencer, or so much as to discharge a carbine. And yet there is no remedy; whoever will

breed a boy to be good for anything when he comes to be a man, must by no means spare him when young,

It is not enough to fortify his soul: you are also to make his sinews strong; for the soul will be oppressed if

not assisted by the members, and would have too hard a task to discharge two offices alone. I know very well,

to my cost, how much mine groans under the burden, from being accommodated with a body so tender and

indisposed, as eternally leans and presses upon her; and often in my reading perceive that our masters, in their

writings, make examples pass for magnanimity and fortitude of mind, which really are rather toughness of

skin and hardness of bones; for I have seen men, women, and children, naturally born of so hard and

insensible a constitution of body, that a sound cudgeling has been less to them than a flirt with a finger would

have been to me, and that would neither cry out, wince, nor shrink, for a good swinging beating; and when

wrestlers counterfeit the philosophers in patience, 'tis rather strength of nerves than stoutness of heart. Now to

be inured to undergo labor, is to be accustomed to endure pain: "labor callum obducit dolori." A boy is to be

broken into the toil and roughness of exercise, so as to be trained up to the pain and suffering of dislocations,

cholics, cauteries, and even imprisonment and the rack itself; for he may come, by misfortune, to be reduced

to the worst of these, which (as this world goes) is sometimes inflicted on the good as well as the bad. As for

proof, in our present civil war whoever draws his sword against the laws, threatens the honestest men with

And, moreover, by living at home, the authority of this governor, which ought to be sovereign over the boy

he has received into his charge, is often checked and hindered by the presence of parents; to which may also

be added, that the respect the whole family pay him, as their master's son, and the knowledge he has of the

estate and greatness he is heir to, are, in my opinion, no small inconveniences in these tender years.

And yet, even in this conversing with men I spoke of but now, I have observed this vice, that instead of

gathering observations from others, we make it our whole business to lay ourselves upon them, and are more

concerned how to expose and set out our own commodities, than how to increase our stock by acquiring new.

Silence, therefore, and modesty are very advantageous qualities in conversation. One should, therefore, train

up this boy to be sparing and a husband of his knowledge when he has acquired it; and to forbear taking

exceptions at or reproving every idle saying or ridiculous story that is said or told in his presence; for it is a

very unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything that is not agreeable to our own palate. Let him be satisfied

with correcting himself, and not seem to condemn everything in another he would not do himself, nor dispute

it as against common customs. "Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia." Let him avoid these vain and uncivil

images of authority, this childish ambition of coveting to appear better bred and more accomplished, than he

really will, by such carriage, discover himself to be. And, as if opportunities of interrupting and reprehending

were not to be omitted, to desire thence to derive the reputation of something more than ordinary. For as it

becomes none but great poets to make use of the poetical license, so it is intolerable for any but men of great

and illustrious souls to assume privilege above the authority of custom; "si quid Socrates aut Aristippus

contra morem et consuetudinem fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur licere: magnis enim illi et divinis bonis hanc

licentiam assequebantur." Let him be instructed not to engage in discourse or dispute but with a champion

worthy of him, and, even there, not to make use of all the little subtleties that may seem pat for his purpose,

but only such arguments as may best serve him. Let him be taught to be curious in the election and choice of

his reasons, to abominate impertinence, and, consequently, to affect brevity; but, above all, let him be

lessoned to acquiesce and submit to truth so soon as ever he shall discover it, whether in his opponent's

argument, or upon better consideration of his own; for he shall never be preferred to the chair for a mere

clatter of words and syllogisms, and is no further engaged to any argument whatever, than as he shall in his

own judgment approve it: nor yet is arguing a trade, where the liberty of recantation and getting off upon

better thoughts, are to be sold for ready money: "neque, ut omnia, quae praescripta et imperata sint, defendat,

If his governor be of my humor, he will form his will to be a very good and loyal subject to his prince, very

affectionate to his person, and very stout in his quarrel; but withal he will cool in him the desire of having any

other tie to his service than public duty. Besides several other inconveniences that are inconsistent with the

liberty every honest man ought to have, a man's judgment, being bribed and prepossessed by these particular

obligations, is either blinded and less free to exercise its function, or is blemished with ingratitude and

indiscretion. A man that is purely a courtier, can neither have power nor will to speak or think otherwise than

favorably and well of a master, who, among so many millions of other subjects, has picked out him with his

own hand to nourish and advance; this favor, and the profit flowing from it, must needs, and not without

some show of reason, corrupt his freedom and dazzle him; and we commonly see these people speak in

another kind of phrase than is ordinarily spoken by others of the same nation, though what they say in that

Let his conscience and virtue be eminently manifest in his speaking, and have only reason for their guide.

Make him understand, that to acknowledge the error he shall discover in his own argument, though only

found out by himself, is an effect of judgment and sincerity, which are the principal things he is to seek after;

that obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in mean souls; that to revise and correct

himself, to forsake an unjust argument in the height and heat of dispute, are rare, great, and philosophical

qualities. Let him be advised; being in company, to have his eye and ear in every corner, for I find that the

places of greatest honor are commonly seized upon by men that have least in them, and that the greatest

fortunes are seldom accompanied with the ablest parts. I have been present when, while they at the upper end

of the chamber have only been commending the beauty of the arras, or the flavor of the wine, many things

that have been very finely said at the lower end of the table have been lost or thrown away. Let him examine

every man's talent; a peasant, a bricklayer, a passenger: one may learn something from every one of these in

their several capacities, and something will be picked 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 manners of all he sees, he will create to himself an emulation of the good, and a

Let an honest curiosity be suggested to his fancy of being inquisitive after everything; whatever there is

singular and rare near the place where he is, let him go and see it; a fine house, a noble fountain, an eminent

man, the place where a battle has been anciently fought, the passages of Caesar and Charlemagne:

Let him inquire into the manners, revenues and alliances of princes, things in themselves very pleasant to

In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those who only live in the records of history; he

shall, by reading those books, converse with the great and heroic souls of the best ages. 'Tis an idle and vain

study to those who make it by so doing it after a negligent manner, but to those who do it with care and

observation, 'tis a study of inestimable fruit and value; and the only study, as Plato reports, that the

Lacedaemonians reserved to themselves. What profit shall he not reap as to the business of men, by reading

the lives of Plutarch? But, withal, let my governor remember to what end his instructions are principally

directed, and that he do not so much imprint in his pupil's memory the date of the ruin of Carthage, as the

manners of Hannibal and Scipio; nor so much where Marcellus died, as why it was unworthy of his duty that

he died there. Let him not teach him so much the narrative parts of history as to judge them; the reading of

them, in my opinion, is a thing that of all others we apply ourselves unto with the most differing measure. I

have read a hundred things in Livy that another has not, or not taken notice of at least; and Plutarch has read a

hundred more there than ever I could find, or than, peradventure, that author ever wrote; to some it is merely

a grammar study, to others the very anatomy of philosophy, by which the most abstruse parts of our human

nature penetrate. There are in Plutarch many long discourses very worthy to be carefully read and observed,

for he is, in my opinion, of all others the greatest master in that kind of writing; but there are a thousand

others which he has only touched and glanced 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, 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 La Boetie to write his "Voluntary Servitude." Only to see

him pick out a light action in a man's life, or a mere word that does not seem to amount even to that, is itself a

whole discourse. 'Tis to our prejudice that men of understanding should so immoderately affect brevity; no

doubt their reputation is the better by it, but in the meantime 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 Alexandridas justly reproached him who made very good but too long speeches to the

Ephori, when he said: "Oh stranger! thou speakest the things thou shouldst speak, but not as thou shouldst

speak them." Such as have lean and spare bodies stuff themselves out with clothes; so they who are defective

Human understanding is marvelously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise,

compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and 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 was fuller and wider, embraced 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 my village are

nipped with the frost, my parish priest presently concludes, that the indignation of God is gone out against all

the human race, and that the cannibals have already got the pip. Who is it, that seeing the havoc 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 things have been seen, and that, in the meantime, 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 wonder they are so moderate, and that there is no more

mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones patter about his ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in

storm and tempest; like the ridiculous Savoyard, who said very gravely, that if that simple king of France

could have managed his fortune as he should have done, he might in time have come to have been steward of

the household to the duke his master: the fellow could not, in his shallow imagination, conceive that there

could be anything greater than a duke of Savoy. And, in truth, we are all of us, insensibly, in this error, an

error of a very great weight and very pernicious consequence. But whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in

a picture, that great image of our mother Nature, in her full majesty and luster, 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

This great world which some do yet multiply as several species under one genus, is the mirror wherein we are

to behold ourselves, to be able to know ourselves as we ought to do in the true bias. In short, I would have

this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most attention. So many humors, so many

sects, so many judgments, opinions, laws and customs, teach us to judge aright of our own, and inform our

understanding to discover its imperfection and natural infirmity, which is no trivial speculation. So many

mutations of states and kingdoms, and so many turns and revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise

enough to make no great wonder of our own. So many great names, so many famous victories and conquests

drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our hopes ridiculous of eternizing our names by the taking of

halfascore of light horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its ruin. The pride and

arrogance of so many foreign pomps and ceremonies, the tumorous majesty of so many courts and grandeurs,

accustom and fortify our sight without astonishment or winking to behold the lustre of our own; so many

millions of men, buried before us, encourage us not to fear to go seek such good company in the other world:

and so of all the rest. Pythagoras was wont to say, that our life resembles the great and populous assembly of

the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize; others

bring merchandise to sell for profit; there are, also, some (and those none of the worst sort) who pursue no

other advantage than only to look on, and consider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of

To examples may fitly be applied all the profitable discourses of philosophy, to which all human actions, as

to their best rule, ought to be especially directed: a scholar shall be taught to know

what it is to know, and what to be ignorant; what ought to be the end and design of study; what valor,

temperance and justice are; the difference between ambition and avarice, servitude and subjection, license

and liberty; by what token a man may know true and solid contentment; how far death, affliction, and

by what secret springs we move, and the reason of our various agitations and irresolutions: for, methinks, the

first doctrine with which one should season his understanding, ought to be that which regulates his manners

and his sense; that teaches him to know himself, and how both well to die and well to live. Among the liberal

sciences, let us begin with that which makes us free; not that they do not all serve in some measure to the

instruction and use of life, as all other things in some sort also do; but let us make choice of that which

directly and professedly serves to that end. If we are once able to restrain the offices of human life within

their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of the sciences in use are of no great use to us, and even

in those that are, that there are many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which we had better let alone,

and following Socrates' direction, limit the course of our studies to those things only where is a true and real

the knowledge of the stars and the motion of the eighth sphere, before their own.

Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, "To what purpose," said he, "should I trouble myself in searching out the

secrets of the stars, having death or slavery continually before my eyes?" for the kings of Persia were at that

time preparing to invade his country. Every one ought to say thus, "Being assaulted, as I am by ambition,

avarice, temerity, superstition, and having within so many other enemies of life, shall I go cudgel my brains

After having taught him what will make him more wise and good, you may then entertain him with the

elements of logic, physics, geometry, rhetoric, and the science which he shall then himself most incline to, his

judgment being beforehand formed and fit to choose, he will quickly make his own. The way of instructing

him ought to be sometimes by discourse, and sometimes by reading, sometimes his governor shall put the

author himself, which he shall think most proper for him, into his hands, and sometimes only the marrow and

substance of it; and if himself be not conversant enough in books to turn to all the fine discourses the books

contain for his purpose, there may some man of learning be joined to him, that upon every occasion shall

supply him with what he stands in need of, to furnish it to his pupil. And who can doubt, but that this way of

teaching is much more easy and natural than that of Gaza, in which the precepts are so intricate, and so harsh,

and the words so vain, lean, and insignificant, that there is no hold to be taken of them, nothing that quickens

and elevates the wit and fancy, whereas here the mind has what to feed upon and to digest. This fruit,

therefore, is not only without comparison, much more fair and beautiful; but will also be much more early

'Tis a thousand pities that matters should be at such a pass in this age of ours, that philosophy, even with men

of understanding, should be looked upon as a vain and fantastic name, a thing of no use, no value, either in

opinion or effect, of which I think those ergotisms and petty sophistries, by prepossessing the avenues to it,

are the cause. And people are much to blame to represent it to children for a thing of so difficult access, and

with such a frowning, grim, and formidable aspect. Who is it that has disguised it thus, with this false, pale,

and ghostly countenance? There is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, and I had like to have said, more

wanton. She preaches nothing but feasting and jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not

inhabit there. Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers set chatting

together, said to them, "Either I am much deceived, or by your cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are

engaged in no very deep discourse." To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied: "'Tis for such

as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of the verb Ballo be spelt with a double l or that hunt

after the derivation of the comparatives cheiron and beltion, and the superlatives cheiriston and beltiston, to

knit their brows while discoursing of their science, but as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and

The soul that lodges philosophy, ought to be of such a constitution of health, as to render the body in like

manner healthful too; she ought to make her tranquillity and satisfaction shine so as to appear without, and

her contentment ought to fashion the outward behavior to her own mold, and consequently to fortify it with a

graceful confidence, an active and joyous carriage, and a serene and contented countenance. The most

manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the

moon, always clear and serene. 'Tis Baroco and Baralipton that render their disciples so dirty and illfavored,

and not she; they do not so much as know her but by hearsay. What! It is she that calms and appeases the

storms and tempests of the soul, and who teaches famine and fevers to laugh and sing; and that, not by certain

imaginary epicycles, but by natural and manifest reasons. She has virtue for her end; which is not, as the

schoolmen say, situate upon the summit of a perpendicular, rugged, inaccessible precipice: such as have

approached her find her, quite on the contrary, to be seated in a fair, fruitful, and flourishing plain, from

whence she easily discovers all things below; to which place any one may, however, arrive, if he know but

the way, through shady, green, and sweetly flourishing avenues, by a pleasant, easy, and smooth descent, like

that of the celestial vault. 'Tis for not having frequented this supreme, this beautiful, triumphant, and amiable,

this equally delicious and courageous virtue, this so professed and implacable enemy to anxiety, sorrow, fear,

and constraint, who, having nature for her guide, has fortune and pleasure for her companions, that they have

gone, according to their own weak imaginations and created this ridiculous, this sorrowful, querulous,

despiteful, threatening, terrible image of it to themselves and others, and placed it upon a rock apart, among

But the governor that I would have, that is such a one as knows it to be his duty to possess his pupil with as

much or more affection than reverence to virtue, will be able to inform him, that the poets have evermore

accommodated themselves to the public humor, and make him sensible, that the gods have planted more toil

and sweat in the avenues of the cabinets of Venus than in those of Minerva. And when he shall once find him

begin to apprehend, and shall represent to him a Bradamante or an Angelica for a mistress, a natural, active,

generous, and not a viragoish, but a manly beauty, in comparison of a soft, delicate, artificial, simpering, and

affected form; the one in the habit of a heroic youth, wearing a glittering helmet, the other tricked up in curls

and ribbons like a wanton minx; he will then look upon his own affection as brave and masculine, when he

Such a tutor will make a pupil digest this new lesson, that the height and value of true virtue consists in the

facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent

as well as the subtle, may make it their own: it is by order, and not by force, that it is to be acquired. Socrates,

her first minion, is so averse to all manner of violence, as totally to throw it aside, to slip into the more

natural facility of her own progress: 'tis the nursing mother of all human pleasures, who in rendering them

just, renders them also pure and permanent; in moderating them, keeps them in breath and appetite; in

interdicting those which she herself refuses, whets our desire to those that she allows; and, like a kind and

liberal mother, abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, if not to lassitude: unless we mean

to say, that the regimen which stops the toper before he has drunk himself drunk, the glutton before he has

eaten to a surfeit, and the lecher before he has got the pox, is an enemy to pleasure. If the ordinary fortune

fail, she does without it, and forms another, wholly her own, not so fickle and unsteady as the other. She can

be rich, be potent and wise, and knows how to lie upon soft perfumed beds: she loves life, beauty, glory, and

health; but her proper and peculiar office is to know how to regulate the use of all these good things, and how

to lose them without concern: an office much more noble than troublesome, and without which the whole

course of life is unnatural, turbulent, and deformed, and there it is indeed, that men may justly represent those

If this pupil shall happen to be of so contrary a disposition, that he had rather hear a tale of a tub than the true

narrative of some noble expedition or some wise and learned discourse; who at the beat of drum, that excites

the youthful ardor of his companions, leaves that to follow another that calls to a morris or the bears; who

would not wish, and find it more delightful and more excellent, to return all dust and sweat victorious from a

battle, than from tennis or from a ball, with the prize of those exercises; I see no other remedy, but that he be

bound prentice in some good town to learn to make minced pies, though he were the son of a duke; according

to Plato's precept, that children are to be placed out and disposed of, not according to the wealth, qualities, or

condition of the father, but according to the faculties and the capacity of their own souls.

Since philosophy is that which instructs us to live and that infancy has there its lessons as well as other ages,

"Udum et molle lutum est; nunc, nunc properandus, et acri Fingendus sine fine rota."

They begin to teach us to live when we have almost done living. A hundred students have got the pox before

they have come to read Aristotle's lecture on temperance. Cicero said, that though he should live two men's

ages, he should never find leisure to study the lyric poets; and I find these sophisters yet more deplorably

unprofitable. The boy we would breed has a great deal less time to spare; he owes but the first fifteen or

sixteen years of his life to education; the remainder is due to action. Let us, therefore, employ that short time

in necessary instruction. Away with the thorny subtleties of dialectics, they are abuses, things by which our

lives can never be amended: take the plain philosophical discourses, learn how rightly to choose, and then

rightly to apply them; they are more easy to be understood than one of Bocaccio's novels; a child from nurse

is much more capable of them, than of learning to read or to write. Philosophy has discourses proper for

I am of Plutarch's mind, that Aristotle did not so much trouble his great disciple with the knack of forming

syllogisms, or with the elements of geometry, as with infusing into him good precepts concerning valor,

prowess, magnanimity, temperance, and the contempt of fear; and with this ammunition, sent him, while yet

a boy, with no more than thirty thousand foot, four thousand horse, and but fortytwo thousand crowns, to

subjugate the empire of the whole earth. For the other arts and sciences, he says, Alexander highly indeed

commended their excellence and charm, and had them in very great honor and esteem, but not ravished with

them to that degree, as to be tempted to affect the practice of them in his own person.

Epicurus, in the beginning of his letter to Meniceus, says, "That neither the youngest should refuse to

philosophize, nor the oldest grow weary of it." Who does otherwise, seems tacitly to imply, that either the

time of living happily is not yet come, or that it is already past. And yet, for all that, I would not have this

pupil of ours imprisoned and made a slave to his book; nor would I have him given up to the morosity and

melancholic humor of a sour, illnatured pedant; I would not have his spirit cowed and subdued, by applying

him to the rack, and tormenting him, as some do, fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and so make a packhorse

of him. Neither should I think it good, when, by reason of a solitary and melancholic complexion, he is

discovered to be overmuch addicted to his book, to nourish that humor in him; for that renders him unfit for

civil conversation, and diverts him from better employments. And how many have I seen in my time totally

brutified by an immoderate thirst after knowledge? Carneades was so besotted with it, that he would not find

time as so much as to comb his head or to pare his nails. Neither would I have his generous manners spoiled

and corrupted by the incivility and barbarism of those of another. The French wisdom was anciently turned

into proverb: "early, but of no continuance." And, in truth, we yet see, that nothing can be more ingenious

and pleasing than the children of France; but they ordinarily deceive the hope and expectation that have been

conceived of them; and grown up to be men, have nothing extraordinary or worth taking notice of: I have

heard men of good understanding say, these colleges of ours to which we send our young people (and of

But to our little monsieur, a closet, a garden, the table, his bed, solitude and company, morning and evening,

all hours shall be the same, and all places to him a study; for philosophy, who, as the formatrix of judgment

and manners, shall be his principal lesson, has that privilege to have a hand in everything. The orator

Isocrates, being at a feast entreated to speak of his art, all the company were satisfied with and commended

his answer: "It is not now a time," said he, "to do what I can do; and that which it is now time to do, I cannot

do." For to make orations and rhetorical disputes in a company met together to laugh and make good cheer,

had been very unseasonable and improper, and as much might have been said of all the other sciences. But as

to what concerns philosophy, that part of it at least that treats of man, and of his offices and duties, it has been

the common opinion of all wise men, that, out of respect to the sweetness of her conversation, she is ever to

be admitted in all sports and entertainments. And Plato, having invited her to his feast, we see after how

gentle and obliging a manner, accommodated both to time and place, she entertained the company, though in

By this method of instruction, my young pupil will be much more and better employed than his fellows of the

college are. But as the steps we take in walking to and fro in a gallery, though three times as many, do not tire

a man so much as those we employ in a formal journey, so our lesson, as it were accidentally occurring,

without any set obligation of time or place, and falling naturally into every action, will insensibly insinuate

itself. By which means our very exercises and recreations, running, wrestling, music, dancing, hunting,

riding, and fencing, will prove to be a good part of our study. I would have his outward fashion and mien, and

the disposition of his limbs, formed at the same time with his mind. 'Tis not a soul, 'tis not a body that we are

training up, but a man, and we ought not to divide him. And, as Plato says, we are not to fashion one without

the other, but make them draw together like two horses harnessed to a coach. By which saying of his, does he

not seem to allow more time for, and to take more care of, exercises for the body, and to hold that the mind,

As to the rest, this method of education ought to be carried on with a severe sweetness, quite contrary to the

practice of our pedants, who, instead of tempting and alluring children to letters by apt and gentle ways, do in

truth present nothing before them but rods and ferules, horror and cruelty. Away with this violence! away

with this compulsion! than which, I certainly believe nothing more dulls and degenerates a welldescended

nature. If you would have him apprehend shame and chastisement, do not harden him to them: inure him to

heat and cold, to wind and sun, and to dangers that he ought to despise; wean him from all effeminacy and

delicacy in clothes and lodging, eating and drinking; accustom him to everything, that he may not be a Sir

Paris, a carpetknight, but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young man. I have ever from a child to the age

wherein I now am, been of this opinion, and am still constant to it. But among other things, the strict

government of most of our colleges has evermore displeased me; peradventure, they might have erred less

perniciously on the indulgent side. 'Tis a real house of correction of imprisoned youth. They are made

debauched, by being punished before they are so. Do but come in when they are about their lesson, and you

shall hear nothing but the outcries of boys under execution, with the thundering noise of their pedagogues

drunk with fury. A very pretty way this, to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love their book, with a

furious countenance, and a rod in hand! A cursed and pernicious way of proceeding! Besides what Quintilian

has very well observed, that this imperious authority is often attended by very dangerous consequences, and

particularly our way of chastising. How much more decent would it be to see their classes strewed with green

leaves and fine flowers, than with the bloody stumps of birch and willows? Were it left to my ordering, I

should paint the school with the pictures of joy and gladness; Flora and the Graces, as the philosopher

Speusippus did his. Where their profit is, let them there have their pleasure too. Such viands as are proper and

wholesome for children, should be sweetened with sugar, and such as are dangerous to them, embittered with

gall. 'Tis marvelous to see how solicitous Plato is in his Laws concerning the gayety and diversion of the

youth of his city, and how much and often he enlarges upon their races, sports, songs, leaps, and dances: of

which, he says, that antiquity has given the ordering and patronage particularly to the gods themselves, to

Apollo, Minerva, and the Muses. He insists long upon, and is very particular in giving innumerable precepts

for exercises; but as to the lettered sciences, says very little, and only seems particularly to recommend poetry

All singularity in our manners and conditions is to be avoided as inconsistent with civil society. Who would

not be astonished at so strange a constitution as that of Demophoon, steward to Alexander the Great, who

sweated in the shade, and shivered in the sun? I have seen those who have run from the smell of a mellow

apple with greater precipitation than from a harquebus shot, others afraid of a mouse; others vomit at the sight

of cream; others ready to swoon at the making of a feather bed; Germanicus could neither endure the sight

nor the crowing of a cock. I will not deny, but that there may, peradventure, be some occult cause and natural

aversion in these cases; but, in my opinion, a man might conquer it, if he took it in time. Precept has in this

wrought so effectually upon me, though not without some pains on my part, I confess, that beer excepted, my

Young bodies are supple; one should, therefore, in that age bend and ply them to all fashions and customs:

and provided a man can contain the appetite and the will within their due limits, let a young man, in God's

name, be rendered fit for all nations and all companies, even to debauchery and excess, if need be; that is,

where he shall do it out of complacency to the customs of the place. Let him be able to do everything, but

love to do nothing but what is good. The philosophers themselves do not justify Callisthenes for forfeiting the

favor of his master Alexander the Great, by refusing to pledge him a cup of wine. Let him laugh, play, wench,

with his prince; nay, I would have him, even in his debauches, too hard for the rest of the company, and to

excel his companions in ability and vigor, and that he may not give over doing it, either through defect of

power or knowledge how to do it, but for want of will. "Multum interest, utrum peccare ali quis nolit, an

nesciat." I thought I passed a compliment upon a lord, as free from those excesses as any man in France, by

asking him before a great deal of very good company, how many times in his life he had been drunk in

Germany, in the time of his being there about his majesty's affairs; which he also took as it was intended, and

made answer. "Three times;" and withal, told us the whole story of his debauches. I know some, who for

want of this faculty, have found a great inconvenience in negotiating with that nation. I have often with great

admiration reflected upon the wonderful constitution of Alcibiades, who so easily could transform himself to

so various fashions without any prejudice to his health; one while outdoing the Persian pomp and luxury, and

another, the Lacedaemonian austerity and frugality; as reformed in Sparta, as voluptuous in Ionia.

These are my lessons, and he who puts them in practice shall reap more advantage than he who has had them

read to him only, and so only knows them. If you see him, you hear him; if you hear him, you see him. God

forbid, says one in Plato, that to philosophize were only to read a great many books, and to learn the arts.

"Hanc amplissimam omnium artium bene vivendi disciplinam, vita magis quam literis, persequuti sunt." Leo,

prince of the Phliasians, asking Heraclides Ponticus of what art or science he made profession; "I know," said

he, "neither art nor science, but I am a philosopher." One reproaching Diogenes, that, being ignorant, he

should pretend to philosophy: "I therefore," answered he, "pretend to it with so much the more reason."

Hegesias entreated that he would read a certain book to him: "You are pleasant," said he; "you choose those

figs that are true and natural, and not those that are painted; why do you not also choose exercises which are

The lad will not so much get his lesson by heart as he will practice it: he will repeat it in his actions. We shall

discover if there be prudence in his exercises, if there be sincerity and justice in his deportment, if there be

grace and judgment in his speaking; if there be constancy in his sickness; if there be modesty in his mirth,

temperance in his pleasures, order in his domestic economy, indifference in his palate, whether what he eats

or drinks be flesh or fish, wine or water. "Qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae

putet: quique obtemperet ipse sibi, et decretis pareat." The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our

doctrine. Zeuxidamus, to one who asked him, why the Lacedaemonians did not commit their constitutions of

chivalry to writing, and deliver them to their young men to read, made answer, that it was because they would

inure them to action, and not amuse them with words. With such a one, after fifteen or sixteen years' study,

compare one of our college Latinists, who has thrown away so much time in nothing but learning to speak.

The world is nothing but babble; and I hardly ever yet saw that man who did not rather prate too much, than

speak too little. And yet half of our age is embezzled this way: we are kept four or five years to learn words

only, and to tack them together into clauses; as many more to form them into a long discourse, divided into

four or five parts; and other five years, at least, to learn succinctly to mix and interweave them after a subtle

and intricate manner: let us leave all this to those who make a profession of it.

Going one day to Orleans, I met in the plain on this side Clery, two pedants traveling toward Bordeaux, about

fifty paces distant from one another; and a good way further behind them, I discovered a troop of horse, with

a gentleman at the head of them, who was the late Monsieur le Comte de la Rochefoucauld. One of my

people inquired of the foremost of these dominies, who that gentleman was that came after him; he, having

not seen the train that followed after, and thinking his companion was meant, pleasantly answered: "He is not

a gentleman, he is a grammarian, and I am a logician." Now we who, quite contrary, do not here pretend to

breed a grammarian or a logician, but a gentleman, let us leave them to throw away their time at their own

fancy: our business lies elsewhere. Let but our pupil be well furnished with things, words will follow but too

fast; he will pull them after him if they do not voluntarily follow. I have observed some to make excuses, that

they cannot express themselves, and pretend to have their fancies full of a great many very fine things, which

yet, for want of eloquence, they cannot utter; 'tis a mere shift, and nothing else. Will you know what I think

of it? I think they are nothing but shadows of some imperfect images and conceptions that they know not

what to make of within, nor consequently bring out: they do not yet themselves understand what they would

be at, and if you but observe how they haggle and stammer upon the point of parturition, you will soon

conclude, that their labor is not to delivery, but about conception, and that they are but licking their formless

embryo. For my part, I hold, and Socrates commands it, that whoever has in his mind a sprightly and clear

imagination, he will express it well enough in one kind of tongue or another, and, if he be dumb, by signs

And as another as poetically says in his prose, "Quum res animum occupavere, verba ambiunt:" and this

other, "Ipsoe res verbe rapiunt." He knows nothing of ablative, conjunctive, substantive, or grammar, no more

than his lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and yet these will give you a bellyful of talk, if you will hear

them, and peradventure shall trip as little in their language as the best masters of art in France. He knows no

rhetoric, nor how in a preface to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader; neither does he care to know

it. Indeed all this fine decoration of painting is easily effaced by the luster of a simple and blunt truth: these

fine flourishes serve only to amuse the vulgar of themselves incapable of more solid and nutritive diet, as

Aper very evidently demonstrates in Tacitus. The ambassadors of Samos, prepared with a long and elegant

oration, came to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, to incite him to a war against the tyrant Polycrates; who, after he

had heard their harangue with great gravity and patience, gave them this answer: "As to the exordium, I

remember it not, nor consequently the middle of your speech; and for what concerns your conclusion, I will

not do what you desire:" a very pretty answer this methinks, and a pack of learned orators most sweetly

graveled. And what did the other man say? The Athenians were to choose one of two architects for a very

great building they had designed; of these, first, a pert affected fellow, offered this service in a long

premeditated discourse upon the subject of the work in hand, and by his oratory inclined the voices of the

people in his favor; but the other in three words: "Oh, Athenians, what this man says, I will do." When Cicero

was in the height and heat of an eloquent harangue, many were struck with admiration; but Cato only

laughed, saying: "We have a pleasant consul." Let it go before, or come after, a good sentence or a thing well

said, is always in season; if it either suit well with what went before, nor has much coherence with what

follows after, it is good in itself. I am none of those who think that good rhyme makes a good poem. Let him

make short long, and long short if he will, 'tis no great matter; if there be invention, and that the wit and

judgment have well performed their offices, I will say, here's a good poet, but an ill rhymer.

he will never the more lose himself for that; the very pieces will be fine by themselves. Menander's answer

had this meaning, who being reproved by a friend, the time drawing on at which he had promised a comedy,

that he had not yet fallen in hand with it: "It is made, and ready," said he, "all but the verses." Having

contrived the subject, and disposed the scenes in his fancy, he took little care for the rest. Since Ronsard and

Du Bellay have given reputation to our French poesy, every little dabbler, for aught I see, swells his words as

high, and makes his cadences very near as harmonious as they. "Plus sonat, quam valet." For the vulgar, there

were never so many poetasters as now; but though they find it no hard matter to imitate their rhyme, they yet

fall infinitely short of imitating the rich descriptions of the one, and the delicate invention of the other of

But what will become of our young gentleman, if he be attacked with the sophistic subtlety of some

syllogism? "A Westphalia ham makes a man drink, drink quenches thirst; therefore, a Westphalia ham

quenches thirst." Why, let him laugh at it; it will be more discretion to do so, than to go about to answer it: or

let him borrow this pleasant evasion from Aristippus: "Why should I trouble myself to untie that, which,

bound as it is, gives me so much trouble?" One offering at this dialectic juggling against Cleanthes,

Chrysippus took him short, saying, "Reserve these baubles to play with children, and do not by such fooleries

divert the serious thoughts of a man of years." If these ridiculous subtleties, "contorta et aculeata

sophismata," as Cicero calls them, are designed to possess him with an untruth, they are dangerous; but if

they signify no more than only to make him laugh, I do not see why a man need to be fortified against them.

There are some so ridiculous, as to go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word: "Aut qui non verba

rebus aptant, sed res extrinsecus arcessunt, quibus verba conveniant." And as another says, "Qui alicujus

verbi decore placentis, vocentur ad id, quod non proposuerant scribere." I for my part rather bring in a fine

sentence by head and shoulder to fit my purpose, than divert my designs to hunt after a sentence. On the

contrary words are to serve, and to follow a man's purpose; and let Gascon come in play where French will

not do. I would have things so excelling, and so wholly possessing the imagination of him that hears, that he

should have something else to do, than to think of words. The way of speaking that I love, is natural and

plain, the same in writing as in speaking, and a sinewy and muscular way of expressing a man's self, short

rather hard than wearisome; free from affectation; irregular, incontinuous, and bold; where every piece makes

up an entire body; not like a pedant, a preacher, or a pleader, but rather a soldierlike style, as Suetonius calls

that of Julius Caesar; and yet I see no reason why he should call it so. I have ever been ready to imitate the

negligent garb, which is yet observable among the young men of our time, to wear my cloak on one shoulder,

my cap on one side, a stocking in disorder, which seems to express a kind of haughty disdain of these exotic

ornaments, and a contempt of the artificial; but I find this negligence of much better use in the form of

speaking. All affectation, particularly in the French gayety and freedom, is ungraceful in a courtier, and in a

monarchy every gentleman ought to be fashioned according to the court model; for which reason, an easy and

natural negligence does well. I no more like a web where the knots and seams are to be seen, than a fine

figure, so delicate, that a man may tell all the bones and veins. "Quae veritati operam dat oratio, incomposita

sit et simplex." "Quis accurate loquitur, nisi qui vult putide loqui?" That eloquence prejudices the subject it

would advance, that wholly attracts us to itself. And as in our outward habit, 'tis a ridiculous effeminacy to

distinguish ourselves by a particular and unusual garb or fashion; so in language, to study new phrases, and to

affect words that are not of current use, proceeds from a puerile and scholastic ambition. May I be bound to

speak no other language than what is spoken in the market places of Paris! Aristophanes the grammarian was

quite out, when he reprehended Epicurus for his plain way of delivering himself, and the design of his

oratory, which was only perspicuity of speech. The imitation of words, by its own facility, immediately

disperses itself through a whole people; but the imitation of inventing and fitly applying those words, is of a

slower progress. The generality of readers, for having found a like robe, very mistakenly imagine they have

the same body and inside too, whereas force and sinews are never to be borrowed; the gloss and outward

ornament, that is, words and elocution, may. Most of those I converse with, speak the same language I here

write; but whether they think the same thoughts I cannot say. The Athenians, says Plato, study fullness and

elegancy of speaking; the Lacedaemonians affect brevity, and those of Crete to aim more at the fecundity of

conception than the fertility of speech; and these are the best. Zeno used to say, that he had two sorts of

disciples, one that he called philologous, curious to learn things, and these were his favorites; the other,

logophilous, that cared for nothing but words. Not that fine speaking is not a very good and commendable

quality; but not so excellent and so necessary as some would make it; and I am scandalized that our whole

life should be spent in nothing else. I would first understand my own language, and that of my neighbors with

No doubt but Greek and Latin are very great ornaments, and of very great use, but we buy them too dear. I

will here discover one way, which has been experimented in my own person, by which they are to be had

better cheap, and such may make use of it as will. My late father having made the most precise inquiry that

any man could possibly make among men of the greatest learning and judgment, of an exact method of

education, was by them cautioned of this inconvenience then in use, and made to believe, that the tedious

time we applied to the learning of the tongues of them who had them for nothing, was the sole cause we

could not arrive to the grandeur of soul and perfection of knowledge, of the ancient Greeks and Romans. I do

not, however, believe that to be the only cause. However, the expedient my father found out for this was, that

in my infancy, and before I began to speak, he committed me to the care of a German, who since died a

famous physician in France, totally ignorant of our language, but very fluent, and a great critic in Latin. This

man, whom he had fetched out of his own country, and whom he entertained with a very great salary for this

only end, had me continually with him: to him there were also joined two others, of inferior learning, to

attend me, and to relieve him; who all of them spoke to me in no other language but Latin. As to the rest of

his family, it was an inviolable rule, that neither himself, nor my mother, man nor maid, should speak

anything in my company, but such Latin words as every one had learned only to gabble with me. It is not to

be imagined how great an advantage this proved to the whole family; my father and my mother by this means

learned Latin enough to understand it perfectly well, and to speak it to such a degree as was sufficient for any

necessary use; as also those of the servants did who were most frequently with me. In short, we Latined it at

such a rate, that it overflowed to all the neighboring villages, where there yet remain, that have established

themselves by custom, several Latin appellations of artisans and their tools. As for what concerns myself, I

was above six years of age before I understood either French or Perigordin, any more than Arabic; and

without art, book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or the expense of a tear, I had, by that time, learned to

speak as pure Latin as my master himself, for I had no means of mixing it up with any other. If, for example,

they were to give me a theme after the college fashion, they gave it to others in French, but to me they were

to give it in bad Latin, to turn it into that which was good. And Nicholas Grouchy, who wrote a book "De

Comitiis Romanorum," William Guerente, who wrote a comment upon Aristotle; George Buchanan, that

great Scotch poet; and Mark Antony Muret (whom both France and Italy have acknowledged for the best

orator of his time), my domestic tutors, have all of them often told me, that I had in my infancy, that language

so very fluent and ready, that they were afraid to enter into discourse with me. And particularly Buchanan,

whom I since saw attending the late Mareschal de Brissac, then told me, that he was about to write a treatise

of education, the example of which he intended to take from mine, for he was then tutor to that Count de

As to Greek, of which I have but a mere smattering, my father also designed to have it taught me by a devise,

but a new one, and by way of sport; tossing our declensions to and fro, after the manner of those who, by

certain games at tables and chess, learn geometry and arithmetic. For he, among other rules, had been advised

to make me relish science and duty by an unforced will, and of my own voluntary motion, and to educate my

soul in all liberty and delight, without any severity or constraint; which he was an observer of to such a

degree, even of superstition, if I may say so, that some being of opinion that it troubles and disturbs the brains

of children suddenly to wake them in the morning, and to snatch them violently and overhastily from sleep

(wherein they are much more profoundly involved than we), he caused me to be wakened by the sound of

some musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a musician for that purpose. By this example you may

judge of the rest, this alone being sufficient to recommend both the prudence and the affection of so good a

father, who is not to be blamed if he did not reap fruits answerable to so exquisite a culture. Of this, two

things were the cause: first, a sterile and improper soil; for, though I was of a strong and healthful

constitution, and of a disposition tolerably sweet and tractable, yet I was, withal, so heavy, idle, and

indisposed, that they could not rouse me from my sloth, not even to get me out to play. What I saw, I saw

clearly enough, and under this heavy complexion nourished a bold imagination, and opinions above my age. I

had a slow wit, that would go no faster than it was led; a tardy understanding, a languishing invention, and

above all, incredible defect of memory; so that, it is no wonder, if from all these nothing considerable could

be extracted. Secondly, like those, who, impatient of a long and steady cure, submit to all sorts of

prescriptions and recipes, good man being extremely timorous of any way failing in a thing he had so wholly

set his heart upon, suffered himself at last to be overruled by the common opinions; which always follow

their leader as a flight of cranes, and complying with the method of the time, having no more those persons

he had brought out of Italy, and who had given him the first model of education, about him, he sent me at six

years of age to the College of Guienne, at that time the best and most flourishing in France. And there it was

not possible to add anything to the care he had to provide me the most able tutors, with all other

circumstances of education, reserving also several particular rules contrary to the college practice; but so it

was, that with all these precautions it was a college still. My Latin immediately grew corrupt, of which also

by discontinuance I have since lost all manner of use; so that this new way of education served me to no other

end, than only at my first coming to prefer me to the first forms; for at thirteen years old, that I came out of

the college, I had run through my whole course (as they call it), and, in truth, without any manner of

The first thing that gave me any taste for books, was the pleasure I took in reading the fables of Ovid's

Metamorphoses, and with them I was so taken, that being but seven or eight years old, I would steal from all

other diversions to read them, both by reason that this was my own natural language, the easiest book that I

was acquainted with, and for the subject, the most accommodated to the capacity of my age: for, as for

Lancelot of the Lake, Amadis of Gaul, Huon of Bordeaux, and such trumpery, which children are most

delighted with, I had never so much as heard their names, no more than I yet know what they contain; so

exact was the discipline wherein I was brought up. But this was enough to make me neglect the other lessons

that were prescribed me; and here it was infinitely to my advantage, to have to do with an understanding

tutor, who very well knew discreetly to connive at this and other truantries of the same nature; for by this

means I ran through Virgil's Aeneid, and then Terence, and then Plautus, and then some Italian comedies,

allured by the sweetness of the subject; whereas had he been so foolish as to have taken me off this diversion,

I do really believe, I had brought nothing away from the college but a hatred of books, as almost all our

young gentlemen do. But he carried himself very discreetly in that business, seeming to take no notice, and

allowing me only such time as I could steal from my other regular studies, which whetted my appetite to

devour those books. For the chief things my father expected from their endeavors to whom he had delivered

me for education, were affability and good humor; and, to say the truth, my manners had no other vice but

sloth and want of mettle. The fear was not that I should do ill, but that I should do nothing; nobody

prognosticated that I should be wicked, but only useless; they foresaw idleness, but no malice; and I find it

falls out accordingly. The complaints I hear of myself are these: "He is idle, cold in the offices of friendship

and relation, and in those of the public, too particular, too disdainful." But the most injurious do not say,

"Why has he taken such a thing? Why has he not paid such a one?" but, "Why does he part with nothing?

Why does he not give?" And I should take it for a favor that men would expect from me no greater effects of

supererogation than these. But they are unjust to exact from me what I do not owe, far more rigorously than

they require from others that which they do owe. In condemning me to it, they efface the gratification of the

action, and deprive me of the gratitude that would be my due for it; whereas the active welldoing ought to

be of so much the greater value from my hands, by how much I have never been passive that way at all. I can

the more freely dispose of my fortune the more it is mine, and of myself the more I am my own.

Nevertheless, if I were good at setting out my own actions, I could, peradventure, very well repel these

reproaches, and could give some to understand, that they are not so much offended, that I do not enough, as

Yet for all this heavy disposition of mine, my mind, when retired into itself, was not altogether without strong

movements, solid and clear judgments about those objects it could comprehend, and could also, without any

helps, digest them; but, among other things, I do really believe, it had been totally impossible to have made it

to submit by violence and force. Shall I here acquaint you with one faculty of my youth? I had great

assurance of countenance, and flexibility of voice and gesture, in applying myself to any part I undertook to

I played the chief parts in the Latin tragedies of Buchanan, Guerente, and Muret, that were presented in our

college of Guienne with great dignity; now Andreas Goveanus, our principal, as in all other parts of his

charge, was, without comparison, the best of that employment in France; and I was looked upon as one of the

best actors. 'Tis an exercise that I do not disapprove in young people of condition; and I have since seen our

princes, after the example of some of the ancients, in person handsomely and commendably perform these

exercises; it was even allowed to persons of quality to make a profession of it in Greece. "Aristoni tragico

actori rem aperit: huic et genus et fortuna houesta erant: nec ars, quia nihil tale apud Graecos pudori est, ea

deformabat." Nay, I have always taxed those with impertinence who condemn these entertainments, and with

injustice those who refuse to admit such comedians as are worth seeing into our good towns, and grudge the

people that public diversion. Wellgoverned corporations take care to assemble their citizens, not only to the

solemn duties of devotion, but also to sports and spectacles. They find society and friendship augmented by

it; and, besides, can there possibly be allowed a more orderly and regular diversion than what is performed in

the sight of every one, and, very often, in the presence of the supreme magistrate himself? And I, for my part,

should think it reasonable, that the prince should sometimes gratify his people at his own expense, out of

paternal goodness and affection; and that in populous cities there should be theaters erected for such

To return to my subject, there is nothing like alluring the appetite and affections; otherwise you make nothing

but so many asses laden with books; by dint of the lash, you give them their pocketful learning to keep;

whereas, to do well, you should not only lodge it with them, but make them espouse it.

THE inconstancy and various motions of fortune may reasonably make us expect she would present us with

all sorts of faces. Can there be a more express act of justice than this? The Duke of Valentinois having

resolved to poison Adrian, Cardinal of Corneto, with whom Pope Alexander VI., his father and himself, were

to sup in the Vatican, he sent before a bottle of poisoned wine, and withal, strict order to the butler to keep it

very safe. The pope being come before his son, and calling for drink, the butler supposing this wine had not

been so strictly recommended to his care, but only upon the account of its excellency, presented it forthwith

to the pope, and the duke himself coming in presently after, and being confident they had not meddled with

his bottle, took also his cup; so that the father died immediately upon the spot, and the son, after having been

Sometimes she seems to play upon us, just in the nick of an affair: Monsieur d'Estree, at that time ensign to

Monsieur de Vendome, and Monsieur de Licques, lieutenant in the company of the Duc d'Ascot, being both

pretenders to the Sieur de Fouquerolles' sister, though of several parties (as it oft falls out among frontier

neighbors), the Sieur de Licques carried her; but on the same day he was married, and which was worse,

before he went to bed to his wife, the bridegroom having a mind to break a lance in honor of his new bride,

went out to skirmish near St. Omer, where the Sieur d'Estree, proving the stronger, took him prisoner, and the

to request him of courtesy, to deliver up his prisoner to her, as he accordingly did, the gentlemen of France

Does she not seem to be an artist here? Constantine the son of Helen, founded the empire of Constantinople,

and so many ages after, Constantine, the son of Helen, put an end to it. Sometimes she is pleased to emulate

our miracles: we are told, that King Clovis besieging Angouleme, the walls fell down of themselves by divine

favor: and Bouchet has it from some author, that King Robert having sat down before a city, and being stolen

away from the siege to go keep the feast of St. Aignan at Orleans, as he was in devotion at a certain part of

the mass, the walls of the beleaguered city, without any manner of violence, fell down with a sudden ruin.

But she did quite contrary in our Milan war; for Captain Rense laying siege for us to the city Arona, and

having carried a mine under a great part of the wall, the mine being sprung, the wall was lifted from its base,

but dropped down again nevertheless, whole and entire, and so exactly upon its foundation, that the besieged

Sometimes she plays the physician. Jason of Pheres being given over by the physicians, by reason of an

imposthume in his breast, having a mind to rid himself of his pain, by death at least, threw himself in a battle

desperately into the thickest of the enemy, where he was so fortunately wounded quite through the body, that

the imposthume broke and he was perfectly cured. Did she not also excel painter Protogenes in his art? who

having finished the picture of a dog quite tired and out of breath, in all the other parts excellently well to his

own liking, but not being able to express, as he would, the slaver and foam that should come out of its mouth,

vexed and angry at his work, he took his sponge, which by cleaning his pencils had imbibed several sorts of

colors, and threw it in a rage against the picture, with an attempt utterly to deface it; when fortune guiding the

sponge to hit just upon the mouth of the dog, it there performed what all his art was not able to do. Does she

not sometimes direct our counsels and correct them? Isabel, queen of England, having to sail from Zealand

unto her own kingdom, with an army, in favor of her son, against her husband, had been lost, had she come

into the port she intended, being there laid wait for by the enemy; but fortune, against her will, threw her into

another haven, where she landed in safety. And that man of old who, throwing a stone at a dog, hit and killed

Icetes had contracted with two soldiers to kill Timoleon at Adrana in Sicily. These villains took their time to

do it when he was assisting at a sacrifice, and thrusting into the crowd, as they were making signs to one

another, that now was a fit time to do their business, in steps a third, who with a sword takes one of them full

drive over the pate, lays him dead upon the place and runs away, which the other seeing, and concluding

himself discovered and lost, runs to the altar and begs for mercy, promising to discover the whole truth,

which as he was doing, and laying open the full conspiracy, behold the third man, who being apprehended,

was, as a murderer, thrust and hauled by the people through the press, toward Timoleon, and the other most

eminent persons of the assembly, before whom being brought, he cries out for pardon, pleading that he had

justly slain his father's murderer; which he, also, proving upon the spot, by sufficient witnesses, whom his

good fortune very opportunely supplied him withal, that his father was really killed in the city of the

Leontines, by that very man on whom he had taken his revenge, he was presently awarded ten Attic minae,

for having had the good fortune, by designing to revenge the death of his father, to preserve the life of the

common father of Sicily. Fortune, truly, in her conduct surpasses all the rules of human prudence.

But to conclude: is there not a direct application of her favor, bounty, and piety manifestly discovered in this

action? Ignatius the father and Ignatius the son, being proscribed by the triumvirs of Rome, resolved upon

this generous act of mutual kindness, to fall by the hands of one another, and by that means to frustrate and

defeat the cruelty of the tyrants; and accordingly, with their swords drawn, ran full drive upon one another,

where fortune so guided the points, that they made two equally mortal wounds, affording withal so much

honor to so brave a friendship, as to leave them just strength enough to draw out their bloody swords, that

they might have liberty to embrace one another in this dying condition, with so close and hearty an embrace,

that the executioners cut off both their heads at once, leaving the bodies still fast linked together in this noble

bond, and their wounds joined mouth to mouth, affectionately sucking in the last blood and remainder of the

When King Pyrrhus invaded Italy, having viewed and considered the order of the army the Romans sent out

to meet him: "I know not," said he, "what kind of barbarians," (for so the Greeks called all other nations)

"these may be; but the disposition of this army, that I see, has nothing of barbarism in it." As much said the

Greeks of that which Flaminius brought into their country; and Philip, beholding from an eminence the order

and distribution of the Roman camp formed in his kingdom by Publius Sulpicius Galba, spake to the same

effect. By which it appears how cautious men ought to be of taking things upon trust from vulgar opinion,

I long had a man in my house that lived ten or twelve years in the New World, discovered in these latter days,

and in that part of it where Villegaignon landed, which he called Antarctic France. This discovery of so vast a

country seems to be of very great consideration. I cannot be sure, that hereafter there may not be another, so

many wiser men than we having been deceived in this. I am afraid our eyes are bigger than our bellies, and

that we have more curiosity than capacity; for we grasp at all, but catch nothing but wind.

Plato brings in Solon, telling a story that be had heard from the priests of Sais in Egypt, that of old, and

before the Deluge, there was a great island called Atlantis, situate directly at the mouth of the Straits of

Gibraltar, which contained more countries than both Africa and Asia put together; and that the kings of that

country, who not only possessed that isle, but extended their dominion so far into the continent that they had

a country of Africa as far as Egypt, and extending in Europe to Tuscany, attempted to encroach even upon

Asia, and to subjugate all the nations that border upon the Mediterranean Sea, as far as the Black Sea; and to

that effect overran all Spain, the Gauls, and Italy, so far as to penetrate into Greece, where the Athenians

stopped them: but that sometime after, both the Athenians, and they and their island, were swallowed by the

It is very likely that this extreme irruption and inundation of water made wonderful changes and alterations in

the habitations of the earth, as 'tis said that the sea then divided Sicily from Italy

Cyprus from Syria, the isle of Negropont from the continent of Boeotia, and elsewhere united lands that

But there is no great appearance that this isle was this New World so lately discovered: for that almost

touched upon Spain, and it were an incredible effect of an inundation, to have tumbled back so prodigious a

mass, above twelve hundred leagues: besides that our modern navigators have already almost discovered it to

be no island, but terra firma, and continent with the East Indies on the one side, and with the lands under the

two poles on the other side; or, if it be separate from them, it is by so narrow a strait and channel, that it none

It should seem, that in this great body, there are two sorts of motions, the one natural, and the other febrific,

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 gained so much, and undermined the foundations of

so many houses, I perceive it to be an extraordinary agitation: for had it always followed this course, or were

hereafter to do it, the aspect of the world would be totally changed. 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 everybody understands. In Medoc, by the seashore, 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 domains are converted into pitiful

barren pasturage. The inhabitants of this 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, and occupy the land.

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 unheardof miracles be his. He there tells us, that certain

Carthaginians, having crossed the Atlantic Sea without the Straits of Gibraltar, and sailed a very long time,

discovered at last a great and fruitful island, all covered over with wood, and watered with several broad and

deep rivers; far remote from all terrafirma, and that they, and others after them, allured by the goodness and

fertility of the soil, went thither with their wives and children, and began to plant a colony. But the senate of

Carthage perceiving their people by little and little to diminish, issued out an express prohibition, that none,

upon pain of death, should transport themselves thither; and also drove out these new inhabitants; fearing, 'tis

said, lest in process of time they should so multiply as to supplant themselves and ruin their state. But this

This man that I had was 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, 'tis 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

appeared 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 color of truth to false relations, and who can

have no ends in forging an untruth. Such a one was mine; and besides, he has at divers times brought to me

several seamen and merchants who at the same time went the same voyage. I shall therefore content myself

with his information, without inquiring what the cosmographers say to the business. We should have

topographers 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 privilege, 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

knowledge and experience of the nature of such a river, or such a fountain, who, as to other things, knows no

more than what everybody does, and yet to keep a clutter with this little pittance of his, will undertake to

write the whole body of physics: a vice from which great inconveniences derive their original.

Now, to return to my subject, I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in this nation, by anything that

I can gather, excepting, that every one gives the title of barbarism to everything 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 perfect religion, there the perfect government,

there the most exact and accomplished usage of all things. They are savages at the same rate that we say fruit

are wild, which nature produces of herself and by her own ordinary progress; whereas in truth, we ought

rather to call those wild, whose natures we have changed by our artifice, and diverted from the common

order. In those, the genuine, most useful and natural virtues and properties are vigorous and sprightly, which

we have helped to degenerate in these, by accommodating 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 wherein those countries abound without art or culture. Neither is it reasonable that art should

gain the preeminence of our great and powerful mother nature. We have so surcharged 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 smothered her; yet in other places, where she shines in her own purity and proper luster,

Our utmost endeavors cannot arrive at so much as to imitate the nest of the least of birds, its contexture,

All things, says Plato, are produced 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 received but very little form and fashion

from art and human invention, and consequently to be not much remote from their original simplicity. The

laws of nature, however, govern them still, not as yet much vitiated with any mixture of ours: but 'tis in such

purity, that I am sometimes troubled we were not sooner acquainted with these people, and that they were not

discovered in those better times, when there were men much more able to judge of them than we are. I am

sorry that Lycurgus and Plato had no knowledge of them: for to my apprehension, what we now see in those

nations, does not only surpass all the pictures with which the poets have adorned the golden age, and all their

inventions in feigning a happy state of man, but, moreover, the fancy and even the wish and desire of

philosophy itself; so native and so pure a simplicity, as we by experience see to be in them, could never enter

into their imagination, nor could they ever believe that human society could have been maintained with so

little artifice and human patchwork. I should tell Plato, that it is a nation wherein there is no manner of traffic,

no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name of magistrate or political superiority; no use of

service, riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no dividends, no properties, no employments, but

those of leisure, no respect of kindred, but common, no clothing, no agriculture, no metal, no use of corn or

wine; the very words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, detraction, pardon, never

heard of. How much would he find his imaginary republic short of his perfection? "Viri a diis recentes."

As to the rest, they live in a country very pleasant and temperate, so that, as my witnesses inform me, 'tis rare

to hear of a sick person, and they moreover assure me, that they never saw any of the natives, either paralytic,

bleareyed, toothless, or crooked with age. The situation of their country is along the seashore, enclosed on

the other side toward the land, with great and high mountains, having about a hundred leagues in breadth

between. They have great store of fish and flesh, that have no resemblance to those of ours: which they eat

without any other cookery, than plain boiling, roasting and broiling. The first that rode a horse thither, though

in several other voyages he had contracted an acquaintance and familiarity with them, put them into so

terrible a fright, with his centaur appearance, that they killed him with their arrows before they could come to

discover who he was. Their buildings are very long, and of capacity to hold two or three hundred people,

made of the barks of tall trees, reared with one end upon the ground, and leaning to and supporting one

another, at the top, like some of our barns, of which the coverings hang down to the very ground, and serves

for the side walls. They have wood so hard, that they cut with it, and make their swords of it, and their grills

of it to broil their meat. Their beds are of cotton, hung swinging from the roof, like our easman's hammocks,

every man his own, for the wives lie apart from their husbands. They rise with the sun, and so soon as they

are up, eat for all day, for they have no more meals but that: they do not then drink, as Suidas reports of some

other people of the East that never drank at their meals; but drink very often all day after, and sometimes to a

rousing pitch. Their drink is made of a certain root, and is of the color of our claret, and they never drink it

but lukewarm. It will not keep above two or three days; it has a somewhat sharp, brisk taste, is nothing heady,

but very comfortable to the stomach; laxative to strangers, but a very pleasant beverage to such as are

accustomed to it. They make use, instead of bread, of a certain white compound, like Coriander comfits; I

have tasted of it; the taste is sweet and a little flat. The whole day is spent in dancing. Their young men go

ahunting after wild beasts with bows and arrows; one part of their women are employed in preparing their

drink the while, which is their chief employment. One of their old men, in the morning before they fall to

eating, preaches to the whole family, walking from the one end of the house to the other, and several times

repeating the same sentence, till he has finished the round, for their houses are at least a hundred yards long.

Valor toward their enemies and love toward their wives, are the two heads of his discourse, never failing in

the close, to put them in mind, that 'tis their wives who provide them their drink warm and well seasoned.

The fashion of their beds, ropes, swords, and of the wooden bracelets they tie about their wrists, when they go

to fight, and of the great canes, bored hollow at one end, by the sound of which they keep the cadence of their

dances, are to be seen in several places, and among others, at my house. They shave all over, and much more

neatly than we, without other razor than one of wood or stone. They believe in the immortality of the soul,

and that those who have merited well of the gods, are lodged in that part of heaven where the sun rises, and

They have I know not what kind of priests and prophets, who very rarely present themselves to the people,

having their abode in the mountains. At their arrival, there is a great feast, and solemn assembly of many

villages: each house, as I have described, makes a village, and they are about a French league distant from

one another. This prophet declaims to them in public, exhorting them to virtue and their duty: but all their

ethics are comprised in these two articles, resolution in war, and affection to their wives. He also prophesies

to them events to come, and the issues they are to expect from their enterprises, and prompts them to or

diverts them from war: but let him look to't; for if he fail in his divination, and anything happen otherwise

than he has foretold, he is cut into a thousand pieces, if he be caught, and condemned for a false prophet: for

Divination is a gift of God, and therefore to abuse it, ought to be a punishable imposture. Among the

Scythians, where their diviners failed in the promised effect, they were laid, bound hand and foot, upon carts

loaded with furze and bavins, and drawn by oxen, on which they were burned to death. Such as only meddle

with things subject to the conduct of human capacity, are excusable in doing the best they can: but those other

fellows that come to delude us with assurances of an extraordinary faculty, beyond our understanding, ought

they not to be punished, when they do not make good the effect of their promise, and for the temerity of their

They have continual war with the nations that live further within the mainland, beyond their mountains, to

which they go naked, and without other arms than their bows and wooden swords, fashioned at one end like

the heads of our javelins. The obstinacy of their battles is wonderful, and they never end without great

effusion of blood: for as to running away, they know not what it is. Every one for a trophy brings home the

head of an enemy he has killed, which he fixes over the door of his house. After having a long time treated

their prisoners very well, and given them all the regales they can think of, he to whom the prisoner belongs,

invites a great assembly of his friends. They being come, he ties a rope to one of the arms of the prisoner, of

which, at a distance, out of his reach, he holds the one end himself, and gives to the friend he loves best the

other arm to hold after the same manner; which being done, they two, in the presence of all the assembly,

despatch him with their swords. After that they roast him, eat him among them, and send some chops to their

absent friends. They do not do this, as some think, for nourishment, as the Scythians anciently did, but as a

representation of an extreme revenge; as will appear by this: that having observed the Portuguese, who were

in league with their enemies, to inflict another sort of death upon any of them they took prisoners, which was

to set them up to the girdle in the earth, to shoot at the remaining part till it was stuck full of arrows, and then

to hang them, they thought those people of the other world (as being men who had sown the knowledge of a

great many vices among their neighbors, and who were much greater masters in all sorts of mischief than

they) did not exercise this sort of revenge without a meaning, and that it must needs be more painful than

theirs, they began to leave their old way, and to follow this. I am not sorry that we should here take notice of

the barbarous horror of so cruel an action, but that, seeing so clearly into their faults, we should be so blind to

our own. I conceive there is more barbarity in eating a man alive, than when he is dead; in tearing a body

limb from limb by racks and torments, that is yet in perfect sense; in roasting it by degrees; in causing it to be

bitten and worried by dogs and swine (as we have not only read, but lately seen, not among inveterate and

mortal enemies, but among neighbors and fellowcitizens, and, which is worse, under color of piety and

Chrysippus and Zeno, the two heads of the Stoic sect, were of opinion that there was no hurt in making use of

our dead carcasses, in what way soever for our necessity, and in feeding upon them too; as our own ancestors,

who being besieged by Caesar in the city of Alexia, resolved to sustain the famine of the siege with the

bodies of their old men, women, and other persons who were incapable of bearing arms.

And the physicians make no bones of employing it to all sorts of use, either to apply it outwardly; or to give it

inwardly for the health of the patient. But there never was any opinion so irregular, as to excuse treachery,

disloyalty, tyranny, and cruelty, which are our familiar vices. We may then call these people barbarous, in

respect to the rules of reason: but not in respect to ourselves, who in all sorts of barbarity exceed them. Their

wars are throughout noble and generous, and carry as much excuse and fair pretense, as that human malady is

capable of; having with them no other foundation than the sole jealousy of valor. Their disputes are not for

the conquest of new lands, for these they already possess are so fruitful by nature, as to supply them without

labor or concern, with all things necessary, in such abundance that they have no need to enlarge their borders.

And they are moreover, happy in this, that they only covet so much as their natural necessities require: all

beyond that, is superfluous to them: men of the same age call one another generally brothers, those who are

younger, children; and the old men are fathers to all. These leave to their heirs in common the full possession

of goods, without any manner of division, or other title than what nature bestows upon her creatures, in

bringing them into the world. If their neighbors pass over the mountains to assault them, and obtain a victory,

all the victors gain by it is glory only, and the advantage of having proved themselves the better in valor and

virtue: for they never meddle with the goods of the conquered, but presently return into their own country,

where they have no want of anything necessary, nor of this greatest of all goods, to know happily how to

enjoy their condition and to be content. And those in turn do the same; they demand of their prisoners no

other ransom, than acknowledgment that they are overcome: but there is not one found in an age, who will

not rather choose to die than make such a confession, or either by word or look, recede from the entire

grandeur of an invincible courage. There is not a man among them who had not rather be killed and eaten,

than so much as to open his mouth to entreat he may not. They use them with all liberality and freedom, to

the end their lives may be so much the dearer to them; but frequently entertain them with menaces of their

approaching death, of the torments they are to suffer, of the preparations making in order to it, of the

mangling their limbs, and of the feast that is to be made, where their carcass is to be the only dish. All which

they do, to no other end, but only to extort some gentle or submissive word from them, or to frighten them so

as to make them run away, to obtain this advantage that they were terrified, and that their constancy was

shaken; and indeed, if rightly taken, it is in this point only that a true victory consists.

The Hungarians, a very warlike people, never pretend further than to reduce the enemy to their discretion; for

having forced this confession from them, they let them go without injury or ransom, excepting, at the most, to

make them engage their word never to bear arms against them again. We have sufficient advantages over our

enemies that are borrowed and not truly our own; it is the quality of a porter, and no effect of virtue, to have

stronger arms and legs; it is a dead and corporeal quality to set in array; 'tis a turn of fortune to make our

enemy stumble, or to dazzle him with the light of the sun; 'tis a trick of science and art, and that may happen

in a mean base fellow, to be a good fencer. The estimate and value of a man consist in the heart and in the

will: there his true honor lies. Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of the courage and the soul; it does

not lie in the goodness of our horse or our arms: but in our own. He that falls obstinate in his courage "Si

succiderit, de genu pugnat" he who, for any danger of imminent death, abates nothing of his assurance; who,

dying, yet darts at his enemy a fierce and disdainful look, is overcome not by us, but by fortune; he is killed,

not conquered; the most valiant are sometimes the most unfortunate. There are defeats more triumphant than

victories. Never could those four sister victories, the fairest the sun ever beheld, of Salamis, Plataea, Mycale,

and Sicily, venture to oppose all their united glories, to the single glory of the discomfiture of King Leonidas

and his men, at the pass of Thermopylae. Whoever ran with a more glorious desire and greater ambition, to

the winning, than Captain Iscolas to the certain loss of a battle? Who could have found out a more subtle

invention to secure his safety, than he did to assure his destruction? He was set to defend a certain pass of

Peloponnesus against the Arcadians, which, considering the nature of the place and the inequality of forces,

finding it utterly impossible for him to do, and seeing 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 virtue and

magnanimity and of the Lacedaemonian name to fail in any part of his duty, he chose a mean between these

two extremes after this manner; the youngest and most active of his men, he preserved for the service and

defense of their country, and sent them back; and with the rest, whose loss would be of less consideration, he

resolved 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 fell out, for being presently environed 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

conquerors, which was 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 honor of valor 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

that can be represented to them that, on the contrary, during the two or three months they are kept, they

always appear with a cheerful countenance; importune their masters to make haste to bring them to the test,

defy, rail at them, and reproach them with cowardice, and the number of battles 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 served 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; notice what you eat, and you will

find in it the taste of your own flesh:" in which song there is to be observed an invention that nothing relishes

of the barbarian. Those that paint these people dying after this manner, represent the prisoner spitting in the

faces of his executioners and making wry mouths at them. And 'tis most certain, that to the very last gasp,

they never cease to brave and defy them both in word and gesture. In plain truth, these men are very savage in

comparison of us; of necessity, they must either be absolutely so or else we are savages; for there is a vast

The men there have several wives, and so much the greater number, by how much they have the greater

reputation for valor. And it is one very remarkable feature in their marriages, that the same jealousy 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 solicitous of

their husbands' honor, 'tis their chiefest care to seek out, and to bring in the most companions they can,

forasmuch as it is a testimony of the husband's virtue. Most of our ladies will cry out, that 'tis monstrous;

whereas in truth, it is not so; but a truly matrimonial virtue, and of the highest form. In the Bible, Sarah, with

Leah and Rachel, the two wives of Jacob, gave the most beautiful of their handmaids to their husbands; Livia

preferred the passions of Augustus to her own interest; and the wife of King Deiotarus, Stratonice, did not

only give up a fair young maid that served her to her husband's embraces, but moreover carefully brought up

the children he had by her, and assisted them in the succession to their father's crown.

And that it may not be supposed, that all this is done by a simple and servile obligation to their common

practice, or by any authoritative impression of their ancient custom, without judgment or reasoning and from

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, a lovesong, that begins thus: "Stay, adder, stay, that by thy pattern my sister may draw

the fashion and work of a rich ribbon, that I may present to my beloved, by which means thy beauty and the

excellent order of thy scales shall forever be preferred before all other serpents." Wherein the first couplet,

"Stay, adder," etc., makes the burden of the song. Now I have conversed enough with poetry to judge thus

much: that not only, there is nothing of barbarous in this invention, but, moreover, that it is perfectly

Anacreontic. To which may be added, that their language is soft, of a pleasing accent, and something

Three of these people, not foreseeing how dear their knowledge of the corruptions of this part of the world

will one day cost their happiness and repose, and that the effect of this commerce will be their ruin, 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!) were at Rouen at the time

that the late King Charles IX. was there. The king himself talked 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 asked 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 forgotten 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 armed, who were about the king ('tis like they meant the Swiss of his guard) should submit to obey a

child, and that they did not rather choose out one among themselves to command. Secondly (they have a way

of speaking in their language, to call men the half of one another), that they had observed, that there were

among us men full and crammed with all manner of commodities, while, in the meantime, their halves were

begging at their doors, lean, and halfstarved with hunger and poverty; and they thought it strange that these

necessitous halves were able to suffer so great an inequality and injustice, and that they did not take the

I talked to one of them a great while together, but I had so ill an interpreter, and one who was so perplexed by

his own ignorance to apprehend my meaning, that I could get nothing out of him of any moment. Asking him,

what advantage he reaped from the superiority he had among his own people (for he was a captain, and our

mariners called him king), he told me: to march at the head of them to war. Demanding of him further, how

many men he had to follow him? he showed me a space of ground, to signify 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 expired with the war? he told me this remained: that when he went to visit the villages of his

dependence, they plained him paths through the thick of their woods, by which he might pass at his ease. All

this does not sound very ill, and the last was not at all amiss, for they wear no breeches.

I here have become a grammarian, I who never learned any language but by rote, and who do not yet know

adjectives, conjunction, or ablative. I think I have read that the Romans had a sort of horses, by them called

funales or dextrarios, which were either led horses, or horses laid on at several stages to be taken fresh upon

occasion, and thence it is that we call our horses of service destriers; and our romances commonly use the

phrase of adestrer for accompagner, to accompany. They also called those that were trained in such sort, that

running full speed, side by side, without bridle or saddle, the Roman gentlemen armed at all pieces, would

shift and throw ourselves from one to the other, desultorios equos. The Numidian menatarms had always a

led horse in one hand, besides that they rode upon, to change in the heat of battle: "quibus, desultorum in

modum, binos trahentibus, equos, interacerrimam saepe pugnam, in recentem equum, ex fesso, armatis

transultare mos erat: tanta velocitas ipsis, tamque docile equorum genus." There are many horses trained to

help their riders so as to run upon any one that appears with a drawn sword, to fall both with mouth and heels

upon any that front or oppose them: but it often happens that they do more harm to their friends than to their

enemies; and moreover, you cannot lose them from their hold, to reduce them again into order, when they are

once engaged and grappled, by which means you remain at the mercy of their quarrel. It happened very ill to

Artybius, general of the Persian army, fighting, man to man, with Onesilus, king of Salamis, to be mounted

upon a horse trained after this manner, it being the occasion of his death, the squire of Onesilus cleaving the

horse down with a scythe, between the shoulders as it was reared up upon his master. And what the Italians

report that in the battle of Fornova King Charles' horse, with kicks and plunges, disengaged his master from

the enemy that pressed upon him, without which he had been slain, sounds like a very great chance, if it be

true. The Mamalukes make their boast that they have the most ready horses of any cavalry in the world; that

by nature and custom they were taught to know and distinguish the enemy, and to fall foul upon him with

mouth and heels, according to a word or sign given; as also to gather up with their teeth darts and lances

scattered upon the field, and present them to their riders, on the word of command. 'Tis said, both of Caesar

and Pompey, that among their other excellent qualities they were both very good horsemen, and particularly

of Caesar, that in his youth, being mounted on the bare back, without saddle or bridle, he could make the

horse run, stop, and turn, and perform all its airs, with his hands behind him. As nature designed to make of

this person and of Alexander, two miracles of military art, so one would say she had done her utmost to arm

them after an extraordinary manner: for every one knows that Alexander's horse, Bucephalus, had a head

inclining to the shape of a bull; that he would suffer himself to be mounted and governed by none but his

master, and that he was so honored after his death as to have a city erected to his name. Caesar had also one

which had forefeet like those of a man, his hoofs being divided in the form of fingers, which likewise was not

to be ridden by any but Caesar himself, who after his death, dedicated his statue to the goddess Venus.

I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback, for it is the place where, whether well or sick, I find

myself most at ease. Plato recommends it for health, as also Pliny says it is good for the stomach and the

We read in Xenophon a law forbidding any one who was master of a horse to travel on foot. Trogus and

Justin say that the Parthians were wont to perform all offices and ceremonies, not only in war but also all

affairs whether public or private, make bargains, confer, entertain, take the air, and all on horseback; and that

the greatest distinction between freemen and slaves among them was that the one rode on horseback and the

There are several examples in the Roman history (and Suetonius more particularly observes it of Caesar) of

captains who, on pressing occasions, commanded their cavalry to alight, both by that means to take from

them all hopes of flight, as also for the advantage they hoped in this sort of fight. "Quo haud dubie superat

Romanus," says Livy. And so the first thing they did to prevent the mutinies and insurrections of nations of

late conquest was to take from them their arms and horses, and therefore it is that we so often meet in Caesar:

"arma proferri, jumenta produci, obsides dari jubet." The Grand Signior to this day suffers not a Christian or a

Our ancestors, and especially at the time they had war with the English, in all their greatest engagements and

pitched battles fought for the most part on foot, that they might have nothing but their own force, courage,

and constancy to trust to in a quarrel of so great concern as life and honor. You stake (whatever Chrysanthes

in Xenophon says to the contrary) your valor and your fortune upon that of your horse; his wounds or death

bring your person into the same danger; his fear or fury shall make you reputed rash or cowardly; if he have

an ill mouth, or will not answer to the spur, your honor must answer for it. And, therefore, I do not think it

strange that those battles were more firm and furious than those that are fought on horseback:

Their battles were much better disputed. Nowadays there are nothing but routs: "primus clamor atque impetus

rem decernit." And the means we choose to make use of in so great a hazard should be as much as possible at

our own command: wherefore I should advise to choose weapons of the shortest sort, and such of which we

are able to give the best account. A man may repose more confidence in a sword he holds in his hand than in

a bullet he discharges out of a pistol, wherein there must be a concurrence of several circumstances to make it

perform its office, the powder, the stone, and the wheel: if any of which fail it endangers your fortune. A man

But of that weapon I shall speak more fully when I come to compare the arms of the ancients with those of

modern use; only, by the way, the astonishment of the ear abated, which every one grows familiar with in a

short time, I look upon it as a weapon of very little execution, and hope we shall one day lay it aside. That

missile weapon which the Italians formerly made use of both with fire and by sling was much more terrible:

they called a certain kind of javelin, armed at the point with an iron three feet long, that it might pierce

through and through an armed man, Phalarica, which they sometimes in the field darted by hand, sometimes

from several sorts of engines for the defense of beleaguered places; the shaft being rolled round with flax,

wax, rosin, oil, and other combustible matter, took fire in its flight, and lighting upon the body of a man or his

target, took away all the use of arms and limbs. And yet, coming to close fight, I should think they would also

damage the assailant, and that the camp being as it were planted with these flaming truncheons, would

They had moreover, other devices which custom made them perfect in (which seem incredible to us who

have not seen them), by which they supplied the effects of our powder and shot. They darted their spears with

so great force as ofttimes to transfix two targets and two armed men at once, and pin them together. Neither

was the effect of their slings, less certain of execution or of shorter carriage:

"Saxis globosis... funda, mare apertum incessentes... coronas modici circuli, magno ex intervallo loci, assueti

These pieces of battery had not only the execution of but the thunder of our cannon also:

The Gauls, our kinsmen in Asia, abominated these treacherous missile arms, it being their use to fight, with

A pretty description of something very like a harquebusshot. The ten thousand Greeks in their long and

famous retreat met with a nation who very much galled them with great and strong bows, carrying arrows so

long, that, taking them up, one might return them back like a dart, and with them pierce a buckler and an

armed man through and through. The engines that Dionysius invented at Syracuse to shoot vast massy darts

and stones of a prodigious greatness, with so great impetuosity and at so great a distance, came very near to

But in this discourse of horses and horsemanship, we are not to forget the pleasant posture of one Maistre

Pierre Pol, a doctor of divinity, upon his mule, whom Monstrelet reports always to have ridden aside through

the streets of Paris like a woman. He says also, elsewhere, that the Gascons had terrible horses, that would

wheel in their full speed, which the French, Picards, Flemings and Brabanters looked upon as a miracle,

Caesar speaking of the Suabians: "in the charges they make on horseback," says he, "they often throw

themselves off to fight on foot, having taught their horses not to stir in the meantime from the place, to which

they presently run again upon occasion; and according to their custom, nothing is so unmanly and so base as

to use saddles or pads, and they despise such as make use of those conveniences: insomuch that, being but a

very few in number, they fear not to attack a great many." That which I have formerly wondered at, to see a

horse made to perform all his airs with a switch only and the reins upon his neck, was common with the

King Alphonso, he who first instituted the Order of the Band or Scarf in Spain, among other rules of the

order, gave them this, that they should never ride mule or mulet, upon penalty of a mark of silver; this I had

lately out of Guevara's Letters, whoever gave these the title of Golden Epistles, had another kind of opinion

of them than I have. The courtier says, that till his time it was a disgrace to a gentleman to ride on one of

these creatures: but the Abyssinians, on the contrary, the nearer they are to the person of Prester John, love to

Xenophon tells us, that the Assyrians were fain to keep their horses fettered in the stable, they were so fierce

and vicious; and that it required so much time to loose and harness them, that to avoid any disorder this

tedious preparation might bring upon them in case of surprise, they never sat down in their camp till it was

first well fortified with ditches and ramparts. His Cyrus, who was so great a master in all manner of horse

service, kept his horses to their due work, and never suffered them to have anything to eat till first they had

earned it by the sweat of some kind of exercise. The Scythians when in the field and in scarcity of provisions

used to let their horses' blood which they drank, and sustained themselves by that diet:

Those of Crete, being besieged by Metellus, were in so great necessity for drink that they were fain to quench

To show how much cheaper the Turkish armies support themselves than our European forces, 'tis said, that

besides the soldiers drink nothing but water and eat nothing but rice and salt flesh pulverized (of which every

one may easily carry about with him a month's provision) they know how to feed upon the blood of their

These newdiscovered people of the Indies when the Spaniards first landed among them, had so great an

opinion both of the men and horses, that they looked upon the first as gods and the other as animals ennobled

above their nature; insomuch that after they were subdued, coming to the men to sue for peace and pardon,

and to bring them gold and provisions, they failed not to offer of the same to the horses, with the same kind

of harangue to them they had made to the others: interpreting their neighing for a language of truce and

In the other Indies, to ride upon an elephant was the first and royal place of honor; the second to ride in a

coach with four horses; the third to ride upon a camel; and the last and least honor to be carried or drawn by

one horse only. Some one of our late writers tells us that he has been in countries in those parts, where they

Quintus Fabius Maximus Rutilianus, in a battle with the Samnites, seeing his horse, after three or four

charges, had failed of breaking into the enemy's battalion, took this course, to make them unbridle all their

horses and spur their hardest, so that having nothing to check their career, they might through weapons and

men open the way to his foot, who by that means gave them a bloody defeat. The same command was given

by Quintus Fulvius Flaccus against the Celtiberians: "Id quum majore vi equorum facietis, si effroenatos in

hostes equos immittis; quod saepe Romanos equites cum laude fecisse sua, memorioe proditum est...

detractisque fraenis, bis ultro citroque cum magna strage hostium, infractis omnibus hastis, transcurrerunt."

The duke of Muscovy was anciently obliged to pay this reverence to the Tartars, that when they sent an

embassy to him he went out to meet them on foot, and presented them with a goblet of mares' milk (a

beverage of greatest esteem among them), and if, in drinking, a drop fell by chance upon their horse's mane,

he was bound to lick it off with his tongue. The army that Bajazet had sent into Russia was overwhelmed

with so dreadful a tempest of snow, that to shelter and preserve themselves from the cold, many killed and

embowelled their horses, to creep into their bellies and enjoy the benefit of that vital heat. Bajazet, after that

furious battle wherein he was overthrown by Tamerlane, was in a hopeful way of securing his own person by

the fleetness of an Arabian mare he had under him, had he not been constrained to let her drink her fill at the

ford of a river in his way, which rendered her so heavy and indisposed, that he was afterward easily overtaken

by those that pursued him. They say indeed, that to let a horse stale takes him off his mettle, but, as to

Croesus, marching his army through certain waste lands near Sardis, met with an infinite number of serpents,

which the horses devoured with great appetite, and which Herodotus says was a prodigy of ominous portent

We call a horse cheval entire, that has his mane and ears entire, and no other will pass muster. The

Lacedaemonians, having defeated the Athenians in Sicily, returning triumphant from the victory into the city

of Syracuse, among other insolences, caused all the horses they had taken to be shorn and led in triumph.

Alexander fought with a nation called Dahae, whose discipline it was to march two and two together armed

on one horse, to the war; and being in fight one of them alighted, and so they fought on horseback and on

I do not think that for graceful riding any nation in the world excels the French. A good horseman, according

to our way of speaking, seems rather to have respect to the courage of the man than address in riding. Of all

that ever I saw, the most knowing in that art, who had the best seat and the best method in breaking horses,

I have seen a man ride with both his feet upon the saddle, take off his saddle, and at his return take it up again

and replace it, riding all the while full speed; having galloped over a cap, make at it very good shots

backward with his bow; take up anything from the ground, setting one foot on the ground and the other in the

There has been seen in my time at Constantinople two men upon one horse, who, in the height of its speed,

would throw themselves off and into the saddle again by turn; and one who bridled and saddled his horse

with nothing but his teeth; another who between two horses, one foot upon one saddle and the other upon the

other, carrying another man upon his shoulders, would ride full career, the other standing bolt upright upon

him and making very good shots with his bow; several who would ride full speed with their heels upward,

and their heads upon the saddle between several scimitars, with the points upward, fixed in the harness. When

I was a boy, the prince of Sulmona, riding a rough horse at Naples to all his airs, held reals under his knees

THE judgment is an utensil proper for all subjects, and will have an oar in everything: which is the reason,

that in these essays I take hold of all occasions where, though it happen to be a subject I do not very well

understand, I try however, sounding it at a distance, and finding it too deep for my stature, I keep me on the

shore; and this knowledge that a man can proceed no further, is one effect of its virtue, yea, one of those of

which it is most proud. One while in an idle and frivolous subject, I try to find out matter whereof to compose

a body, and then to prop and support it; another while, I employ it in a noble subject, one that has been tossed

and tumbled by a thousand hands, wherein a man can scarce possibly introduce anything of his own, the way

being so beaten on every side that he must of necessity walk in the steps of another: in such a case, 'tis the

work of the judgment to take the way that seems best, and of a thousand paths, to determine that this or that is

the best. I leave the choice of my arguments to fortune, and take that she first presents to me; they are all

alike to me, I never design to go through any of them; for I never see all of anything: neither do they who so

largely promise to show it to others. Of a hundred members and faces that everything has, I take one, one

while to look it over only, another while to ripple up the skin, and sometimes to pinch it to the bones: I give a

stab, not so wide but as deep as I can, and am for the most part tempted to take it in hand by some new light I

discover in it. Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom,

and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from

several pieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for

them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up

All motion discovers us: the very same soul of Caesar, that made itself so conspicuous in marshaling and

commanding the battle of Pharsalia, was also seen as solicitous and busy in the softer affairs of love and

leisure. A man makes a judgment of a horse, not only by seeing him when he is showing off his paces, but by

Among the functions of the soul, there are some of a lower and meaner form; he who does not see her in

those inferior offices as well as in those of nobler note, never fully discovers her; and, peradventure, she is

best shown where she moves her simpler pace. The winds of passions take most hold of her in her highest

flights; and the rather by reason that she wholly applies herself to, and exercises her whole virtue upon, every

particular subject, and never handles more than one thing at a time, and that not according to it, but according

to herself. Things in respect to themselves have, peradventure, their weight, measures and conditions; but

when we once take them into us, the soul forms them as she pleases. Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by

Cato, indifferent to Socrates. Health, conscience, authority, knowledge, riches, beauty, and their contraries,

all strip themselves at their entering into us, and receive a new robe, and of another fashion, from the soul;

and of what color, brown, bright, green, dark, and of what quality, sharp, sweet, deep, or superficial, as best

pleases each of them, for they are not 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 ourselves upon the external

qualities of things; it belongs to us to give ourselves an account of them. Our good or ill has no other

dependence but on ourselves. 'Tis 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 mold. Why should not I judge of Alexander at table, ranting and drinking at the prodigious rate he

sometimes used to do? Or, if he played at chess? what string of his soul was not touched 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 ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it as would serve to much better uses. He did

not more pump his brains about his glorious expedition into the Indies, nor than another in unraveling a

passage upon which depends the safety of mankind. To what a degree does this ridiculous diversion molest

the soul, when all her faculties are summoned together upon this trivial account! and how fair an opportunity

she herein gives every one to know and to make a right judgment of himself? I do not more thoroughly sift

myself in any other posture than this: what passion are we exempted from in it? 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, to excel above the common rate in frivolous things, nowise

befits a man of honor. What I say in this example may be said in all others. Every particle, every employment

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding human condition ridiculous and

vain, never appeared abroad but with a jeering and laughing countenance; whereas Heraclitus commiserating

that same condition of ours, appeared always with a sorrowful look, and tears in his eyes:

I am clearly for the first humor: not because it is more pleasant to laugh than to weep, but because it

expresses more contempt and condemnation than the other, and I think we can never be despised according to

our full desert. Compassion and bewailing seem to imply some esteem of and value for the thing bemoaned;

whereas the things we laugh at are by that expressed to be of no moment. 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 passed away his time in rolling himself

in his tub, and made nothing of the great Alexander esteeming us no better than flies, or bladders puffed up

with wind, was a sharper and more penetrating, and, consequently in my opinion, a juster judge than Timon,

surnamed the Manhater; for what a man hates he lays to heart. This last was an enemy to all mankind, who

passionately desired our ruin, and avoided our conversation as dangerous, proceeding from wicked and

depraved natures: the other valued us so little that we could neither trouble nor infect him by our example;

and left us to herd one with another, not out of fear, but from contempt of our society: concluding us

Of the same strain was Statilius' answer, when Brutus courted him into the conspiracy against Caesar; he was

satisfied that the enterprise was just, but he did not think mankind worthy of 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

I cannot allow of the way in which we settle for ourselves the duration of our life. I see that the sages contract

it very much in comparison of the common opinion: "What," said the younger Cato to those who would stay

his hand from killing himself, "am I now of an age to be reproached that I go out of the world too soon?" And

yet he was but eightandforty years old. He thought that to be a mature and advanced age, considering how

few arrive unto it. And such as, soothing their thoughts with I know not what course of nature, promise to

themselves some years beyond it, could they be privileged from the infinite number of accidents to which we

are by a natural subjection exposed, they might have some reason so to do. What an idle conceit is it to expect

to die of a decay of strength, which is the effect of extremest age, and to propose to ourselves no shorter lease

of life than that, considering it is a kind of death of all others the most rare and very seldom seen? We call

that only a natural death; as if it were contrary to nature to see a man break his neck with a fall, be drowned in

shipwreck, be snatched away with a pleurisy or the plague, and as if our ordinary condition did not expose us

to these inconveniences. Let us no longer flatter ourselves with these fine words; we ought rather,

To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and therefore, so much less natural than the

others 'tis the last and extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for. It is indeed, the

bourn beyond which we are not to pass, and which the law of nature has set as a limit, not to be exceeded: but

it is, withal, a privilege she is rarely seen to give us to last till then. 'Tis a lease she only signs by particular

favor, and it may, be to one only in the space of two or three ages, and then with a pass to boot, to carry him

through all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way of this long career. And therefore my

opinion is, that when once forty years we should consider it as an age to which very few arrive. For seeing

that men do not usually proceed so far, it is a sign that we are pretty well advanced; and since we have

exceeded the ordinary bounds, which is the just measure of life, we ought not to expect to go much further;

having escaped so many precipices of death whereinto we have seen so many other men fall, we should

acknowledge that so extraordinary a fortune as that which has hitherto rescued us from those eminent perils,

and kept us alive beyond the ordinary term of living, is not likely to continue long.

'Tis a fault in our very laws to maintain this error: these say that a man is not capable of managing his own

estate till he be fiveandtwenty years old, whereas he will have much ado to manage his life so long.

Augustus cut off five years from the ancient Roman standard, and declared, that thirty years old was

sufficient for a judge. Servius Tullius superseded the knights of above sevenandforty years of age from the

fatigues of war; Augustus dismissed them at fortyfive; though methinks it seems a little unreasonable that

men should be sent to the fireside till fiveandfifty or sixty years of age. I should be of opinion that our

vocation and employment should be as far as possible extended for the public good: I find the fault on the

other side, that they do not employ us early enough. This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen,

and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter.

For my part, I believe our souls are adult at twenty as much as they are ever like to be, and as capable then as

ever. A soul that has not by that time given evident earnest of its force and virtue will never after come to

proof. The natural qualities and virtues produce what they have of vigorous and fine, within that term or

Of all the great human actions I ever heard or read of, of what sort soever, I have observed, both in former

ages and our own, more were performed before the age of thirty than after; and this ofttimes in the very lives

of the same men. May I not confidently instance in those of Hannibal and his great concurrent Scipio? The

better half of their lives they lived upon the glory they had acquired in their youth; great men after, 'tis true, in

comparison of others; but by no means in comparison of themselves. As to my own particular, I do certainly

believe that since that age, both my understanding and my constitution have rather decayed than improved,

and retired rather than advanced. 'Tis possible, that with those who make the best use of their time,

knowledge and experience may increase with their years; but vivacity, promptitude, steadiness, and other

pieces of us, of much greater importance, and much more essentially our own, languish and decay.

Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind; and I have seen enough who have got a

weakness in their brains before either in their legs or stomach; and by how much the more it is a disease of no

great pain to the sufferer, and of obscure symptoms, so much greater is the danger. For this reason it is that I

complain of our laws, not that they keep us too long to our work, but that they set us to work too late. For the

frailty of life considered, and to how many ordinary and natural rocks it is exposed, one ought not to give up

THE world is nothing but variety and dissemblance: vices are all alike, as they are vices, and peradventure

the Stoic understand them so; but although they are equally vices, yet they are not at all equal vices; and he

should not be in a worse condition than he that has advanced but ten, is not to be believed; or that sacrilege is

There is in this as great diversity is in anything whatever. The confounding of the order and measure of sins is

dangerous: murderers, traitors, and tyrants get too much by it, and it is not reasonable they should flatter their

consciences, because another man is idle, lascivious, or not assiduous at his devotion. Every one lays weight

upon the sin of his companions, but lightens his own. Our very instructors themselves rank them sometimes,

in my opinion, very ill. As Socrates said that the principal office of wisdom was to distinguish good from

evil, we, the best of whom are vicious, ought also to say the same of the science of distinguishing between

vice and vice, without which, and that very exactly performed, the virtuous and the wicked will remain

Now, among the rest, drunkenness seems to me to be a gross and brutish vice. The soul has greater part in the

rest, and there are some vices that have something, if a man may so say, of generous in them; there are vices

wherein there is a mixture of knowledge, diligence, valor, prudence, dexterity and address; this one is totally

corporeal and earthly. And the rudest nation this day in Europe is that alone where it is in fashion. Other vices

discompose the understanding: this totally overthrows it and renders the body stupid.

The worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge and government of himself. And 'tis said,

among other things upon this subject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top whatever it

has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyond measure, vents the most inward secrets.

Josephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to him his full dose of liquor, he wormed

out his secrets. And yet, Augustus, committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who

conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than Tiberius did Cossus, with whom he

intrusted his whole counsels, though we know they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain

And the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to Cimber, though he would often be drunk, as

to Cassius, who drank nothing but water. We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post,

I could not have believed there had been so profound, senseless, and dead a degree of drunkenness had I not

read in history that Attalus, having, to put a notable affront upon him, invited to supper the same Pausanias,

who upon the very same occasion afterward killed Philip of Macedon, a king who by his excellent qualities

gave sufficient testimony of his education in the house and company of Epaminondas, made him drink to

such a pitch that he could after abandon his beauty, as of a hedge strumpet, to the muleteers and servants of

the basest office in the house. And I have been further told by a lady whom I highly honor and esteem, that

near Bordeaux and about Castres where she lives, a country woman, a widow of chaste repute, perceiving in

herself the first symptoms of breeding, innocently told her neighbors that if she had a husband she should

think herself with child; but the causes of suspicion every day more and more increasing, and at last growing

up to a manifest proof, the poor woman was reduced to the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed in her

parish church, that whoever had done that deed and would frankly confess it, she did not only promise to

forgive, but moreover to marry him, if he liked the motion; whereupon a young fellow that served her in the

quality of a laborer, encouraged by this proclamation, declared that he had one holiday found her, having

taken too much of the bottle, so fast asleep by the chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he could

conveniently do his business without waking her; and they yet live together man and wife.

It is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice; the writings even of several philosophers speak very

tenderly of it, and even among the Stoics there are some who advise folks to give themselves sometimes the

That censor and reprover of others, Cato, was reproached that he was a hard drinker.

Cyrus, that so renowned king, among the other qualities by which he claimed to be preferred before his

brother Artaxerxes, urged this excellence, that he could drink a great deal more than he. And in the best

governed nations this trial of skill in drinking is very much in use. I have heard Silvius, an excellent

physician of Paris, say that lest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not amiss once

a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest they should grow dull and rusty; and one author

tells us that the Persians used to consult about their most important affairs after being well warmed with

My taste and constitution are greater enemies to this vice than I am; for besides that I easily submit my belief

to the authority of ancient opinions, I look upon it indeed as an unmanly and stupid vice, but less malicious

and hurtful than the others, which, almost all, more directly jostle public society. And if we cannot please

ourselves but it must cost us something, as they hold, I find this vice costs a man's conscience less than the

others, besides that it is of no difficult preparation, nor hard to be found, a consideration not altogether to be

despised. A man well advanced both in dignity and age, among three principal commodities that he said

remained to him of life, reckoned to me this for one, and where would a man more justly find it than among

the natural conveniences? But he did not take it right, for delicacy and the curious choice of wines is therein

to be avoided. If you found your pleasure upon drinking of the best, you condemn yourself to the penance of

drinking of the worst. Your taste must be more indifferent and free; so delicate a palate is not required to

make a good toper. The Germans drink almost indifferently of all wines with delight: their business is to pour

down and not to taste; and it's so much the better for them; their pleasure is so much the more plentiful and

nearer at hand. Secondly, to drink, after the French fashion, but at two meals, and then very moderately, is to

be too sparing of the favors of the god. There is more time and constancy required than so. The ancients spent

whole nights in this exercise, and ofttimes added the day following to eke it out, and therefore we are to take

greater liberty and stick closer to our work. I have seen a great lord of my time, a man of high enterprise and

famous success, that without setting himself to it, and after his ordinary rate of drinking at meals, drank not

much less than five quarts of wine, and at his going away appeared but too wise and discreet, to the detriment

of our affairs. The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our

time dedicated to it; we should, like shopboys and laborers, refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of

drinking, and always have it in our minds. Methinks we every day abridge and curtail the use of wine, and

that the after breakfasts, dinner snatches, and collations I used to see in my father's house, when I was a boy,

Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no.; but it may be we are more addicted to Venus than our

fathers were. They are two exercises that thwart and hinder one another in their vigor. Lechery weakens our

stomach on the one side, and on the other, sobriety renders us more spruce and amorous for the exercise of

'Tis not to be imagined what strange stories I have heard my father tell of the chastity of that age wherein he

lived. It was for him to say it, being both by art and nature cut out and finished for the service of ladies. He

spoke well and little; ever mixing his language with some illustration out of authors most in use, especially in

Spanish. Marcus Aurelius was very frequent in his mouth. His behavior was grave, humble, and very modest;

he was very solicitous of neatness and propriety both in his person and clothes, whether on horseback or

afoot; he was monstrously punctual of his word; and of a conscience and religion generally tending rather

toward superstition than otherwise. For a man of little stature, very strong, well proportioned, and well knit;

of a pleasing countenance, inclining to brown, and very adroit in all noble exercises. I have yet in the house to

be seen canes poured full of lead, with which they say he exercised his arms for throwing the bar or the stone,

or in fencing; and shoes with leaden soles to make him lighter for running or leaping. Of his vaulting he has

left little miracles behind him; I have seen him when past three score laugh at our exercises, and throw

himself in his furred gown into the saddle, make the tour of a table upon his thumbs, and scarce ever mount

the stairs into his chamber without taking three or four steps at a time. But as to what I was speaking of

before, he said there was scarce one woman of quality of ill fame in a whole province: he would tell of

strange privacies, and some of them his own, with virtuous women, free from any manner of suspicion of ill;

and for his own part solemnly swore he was a virgin at his marriage; and yet it was after a long practice of

arms beyond the mountains, of which wars he left us a journal under his own hand, wherein he has given a

precise account from point to point of all passages, both relating to the public and to himself. And he was,

moreover, married at a well advanced maturity, in the year 1528, the threeandthirtieth year of his age,

The incommodities of old age, that stand in need of some refreshment and support, might with reason beget

in me a desire of this faculty, it being as it were the last pleasure the course of years deprives us of. The

natural heat, say the goodfellows, first seats itself in the feet: that concerns infancy; thence it mounts into

the middle region, where it makes a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of

human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; toward the end, like a vapor that still mounts upward, it

arrives at the throat, where it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress. I do not, nevertheless,

understand how a man can extend the pleasure of drinking beyond thirst, and forge in his imagination an

appetite artificial and against nature; my stomach would not proceed so far; it has enough to do to deal with

what it takes in for its necessity. My constitution is not to care for drink but as following eating and washing

down my meat, and for that reason my last draught is always the greatest. And seeing that in old age we have

our palate furred with phlegms or depraved by some other ill constitution, the wine tastes better to us as the

pores are cleaner washed and laid more open. At least, I seldom taste the first glass well. Anacharsis

wondered that the Greeks drank in greater glasses toward the end of a meal than at the beginning; which was,

I suppose, for the same reason the Germans do the same, who then begin the battle of drink.

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them

leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good

deity who restores to younger men their gayety, and to old men their youth; who mollifies the passions of the

soul, as iron is softened by fire; and in his laws allows such merry meetings, provided they have a discreet

chief to govern and keep them in order, as good and of great utility; drunkenness being, he says, a true and

certain trial of every one's nature, and, withal, fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in

dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober. He, moreover, says that

wine is able to supply the soul with temperance and the body with health. Nevertheless, these restrictions, in

part borrowed from the Carthaginians, please him: that men forbear excesses in the expeditions of war; that

every judge and magistrate abstain from it when about the administrations of his place or the consultations of

the public affairs; that the day is not to be employed with it, that being a time due to other occupations, nor

'Tis said that the philosopher Stilpo, when oppressed with age, purposely hastened his end by drinking pure

wine. The same thing, but not designed by him, dispatched also the philosopher Arcesilaus.

But, 'tis an old and pleasant question, whether the soul of a wise man can be overcome by the strength of

To what vanity does the good opinion we have of ourselves push us? The most regular and most perfect soul

in the world has but too much to do to keep itself upright, and from being overthrown by its own weakness.

There is not one of a thousand that is right and settled so much as one minute in a whole life, and that may

not very well doubt, whether according to her natural condition she ever can be; but to join constancy to it is

her utmost perfection; I mean when nothing should jostle and discompose her, which a thousand accidents

may do. 'Tis to much purpose that the great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy, when,

behold! he goes mad with a love philter. Is it to be imagined that an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as

a porter? Some men have forgotten their own names by the violence of a disease; and a slight wound has

turned the judgment of others topseyturvey. Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man; and than

that what is there more frail, more miserable, or more nothing? Wisdom does not force our natural

he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he must tremble upon the margin of a precipice,

like a child; nature having reserved these light marks of her authority, not to be forced by our reason and the

stoic virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness; he turns pale with fear, red with shame, and groans

with the cholic, if not with desperate outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice:

The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their greatest heroes of tears:

'Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for totally to suppress them is not in him to do.

Even our great Plutarch, that excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when be sees Brutus and

Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could proceed so far, and to question whether

these persons had not rather been stimulated by some other passion. All actions exceeding the ordinary

bounds are liable to sinister interpretation, forasmuch as our liking no more holds with what is above than

Let us leave that other sect, that sets up an express profession of scornful superiority; but when even in that

sect, reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades of Metrodorus: "Occupavi te, Fortuna,

atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos interclusi ut ad me aspirare non possess;" when Anaxarchus, by command

of Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, was put into a stone mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not

to say, "Strike, batter, break, 'tis not Anaxarchus, 'tis but his sheath that you pound and bray so;" when we

hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant in the middle of the flame: "This side is roasted enough, fall to and eat,

it is enough done; fall to work with the other;" when we hear the child in Josephus torn piecemeal with

pincers, defying Antiochus, and crying out with a constant and assured voice: "Tyrant, thou losest thy labor, I

am still at ease; where is the pain, where are the torments with which thou didst so threaten me? Is this all

thou canst do? My constancy torments thee more than thy cruelty does me. Oh, pitiful coward, thou faintest,

and I grow stronger; make me complain, make me bend, make me yield if thou canst; encourage thy guards,

cheer up thy executioners; see, see they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spur them

up;" truly, a man must confess that there is some frenzy, some fury, how holy soever, that at that time

possesses those souls. When we come to these Stoical sallies: "I had rather be mad than voluptuous," a saying

of Antisthenes; Maneien mallon e estheien. When Sextius tells us, "he had rather be fettered with affliction

than pleasure;" when Epicurus takes upon him to play with his gout, and, refusing health and ease, defies all

torments, and despising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets and calls out for others

who but must conclude that these are wild sallies pushed on by a courage that has broken loose from its

place? Our soul cannot from her own seat reach so high; 'tis necessary she must leave it, raise herself up, and,

taking the bridle in her teeth, transport her man so far that he shall afterward himself be astonished at what he

has done; as, in war the heat of battle impels generous soldiers to perform things of so infinite danger, as

afterward, recollecting them they themselves are the first to wonder at; as it also fares with the poets, who are

often rapt with admiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the track through which

they performed so fine a career; which also is in them called fury and rapture. And as Plato says, 'tis no

purpose for a soberminded man to knock at the door of poesy: so Aristotle says that no excellent soul is

exempt from a mixture of madness; and he has reason to call all transports, how commendable soever, that

surpass our own judgment and understanding, madness; forasmuch as wisdom is a regular government of the

soul, which is carried on with measure and proportion, and for which she is to herself responsible. Plato

argues thus, that the faculty of the prophesying is so far above us, that we must be out of ourselves when we

meddle with it, and our prudence must either be obstructed by sleep or sickness, or lifted from her place by

THERE is the name and the thing; the name is a voice which denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no

part of the thing, nor of the substance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it.

God, who is all fullness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to

Himself within; but His name may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His

exterior works: which praise seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him, forasmuch as He can have no accession

of good, we attribute to His name, which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that to God

alone glory and honor appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as that we should go in quest of

it for ourselves; for, being indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having continual

need of amelioration, 'tis to that we ought to employ all our endeavor. We are all hollow and empty; 'tis not

with wind and voice that we are to fill ourselves; we want a more solid substance to repair us: a man starving

with hunger would be very simple to seek rather to provide himself with a gay garment than with a good

meal: we are to look after that whereof we have most need. As we have it in our ordinary prayers, "Gloria in

excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus." We are in want of beauty, health, wisdom, virtue, and such like

essential qualities: exterior ornaments should be looked after when we have made provision for necessary

things. Divinity treats amply and more pertinently of this subject, but I am not much versed in it.

Chrysippus and Diogenes were the earliest and firmest advocates of the contempt of glory; and maintained

that among all pleasures, there was none more dangerous nor more to be avoided, than that which proceeds

from the approbation of others. And, in truth, experience makes us sensible of many very hurtful treasons in

it. There is nothing that so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain

credit and favor with them; nor panderism so apt and so usually made use of to corrupt the chastity of women

as to wheedle and entertain them with their own praises. The first charm the Syrens made use of to allure

These philosophers said, that all the glory of the world was not worth an understanding man's holding out his

I say for it alone; for it often brings several commodities along with it, for which it may justly be desired: it

acquires us good will, and renders us less subject and exposed to insult and offense from others, and the like.

It was also one of the principal doctrines of Epicurus; for this precept of his sect, conceal thy life, that forbids

men to encumber themselves with public negotiations and offices, also necessarily presupposes a contempt of

glory, which is the world's approbation of those actions we produce in public. He that bids us conceal

ourselves, and to have no other concern but for ourselves, and who will not have us known to others, would

much less have us honored and glorified; and so advises Idomeneus not in any sort to regulate his actions by

the common reputation or opinion, except so as to avoid the other accidental inconveniences that the

Those discourses are, in my opinion, very true and rational; but we are, I know not how, double in ourselves,

which is the cause that what we believe we do not believe, and cannot disengage ourselves from what we

condemn. Let us see the last and dying words of Epicurus; they are grand, and worthy of such a philosopher,

and yet they carry some touches of the recommendation of his name and of that humor he had decried by his

"While I was passing over the happy and last day of my life, I write this, but at the same time, afflicted with

such pain in my bladder and bowels that nothing can be greater, but it was recompensed with the pleasure the

remembrance of my inventions and doctrines brought to my soul. Now, as the affection thou hast ever from

thy infancy borne toward me and philosophy requires, take upon thee the protection of Metrodorus' children."

This is the letter. And that which makes me interpret that the pleasure he says he had in his soul concerning

his inventions, has some reference to the reputation he hoped for thence after his death, is the manner of his

will in which he gives order that Amynomachus and Timocrates, his heirs should, every January, defray the

expense of the celebration of his birthday as Hermachus should appoint: and also the expense that should be

made the twentieth of every moon in entertaining the philosophers, his friends, who should assemble in honor

Carneades was head of the contrary opinion, and maintained that glory was to be desired for itself, even as we

embrace our posthumous issue for themselves, having no knowledge nor enjoyment of them. This opinion

has not failed to be the more universally followed, as those commonly are that are most suitable to our

inclinations. Aristotle gives it the first place among external goods; and avoids, as too extreme vices, the

immoderate either seeking or evading it. I believe that, if we had the books Cicero wrote upon this subject,

we should there find pretty stories; for he was so possessed with this passion, that, if he had dared, I think he

could willingly have fallen into the excess that others did, that virtue itself was not to be coveted, but upon

which is an opinion so false, that I am vexed it could ever enter into the understanding of a man that was

If this were true, men need not be virtuous but in public; and we should be no further concerned to keep the

operations of the soul, which is the true seat of virtue, regular and in order, than as they are to arrive at the

knowledge of others. Is there no more in it, then, but only slyly and with circumspection to do ill? "If thou

knowest," says Carneades, "of a serpent lurking in a place where, without suspicion, a person is going to sit

down, by whose death thou expectest an advantage, thou dost ill if thou dost not give him caution of his

danger; and so much the more because the action is to be known by none but thyself." If we do not take up of

ourselves the rule of welldoing, if impunity pass with us for justice, to how many sorts of wickedness shall

we every day abandon ourselves? I do not find what Sextus Peduceus did, in faithfully restoring the treasure

that C. Plotius had committed to his sole secrecy and trust, a thing that I had often done myself so

commendable, as I should think it an execrable baseness had we done otherwise; and I think it of good use in

our days to recall the example of P. Sextilius Rufus, whom Cicero accuses to have entered upon an

inheritance contrary to his conscience, not only not against law, but even by the determination of the laws

themselves; and M. Crassus and Q. Hortensius, who, by reason of their authority and power, having been

called in by a stranger to share in the succession of a forged will, that so he might secure his own part,

satisfied themselves with having no hand in the forgery, and refused not to make their advantage and to come

in for a share: secure enough, if they could shroud themselves from accusations, witnesses, and the

cognizance of the laws: "Meminerint Deum se habere testem, id est (ut ego arbitror) mentem suam."

Virtue is a very vain and frivolous thing, if it derive its recommendation from glory; and 'tis to no purpose

that we endeavor to give it a station by itself, and separate it from fortune; for what is more accidental than

reputation? "Profecto fortuna in omni re dominatur: ea res cunctas ex libidine magis, quam ex vero, celebrat,

obscuratque." So to order it that actions may be known and seen is purely the work of fortune; 'tis chance that

helps us to glory, according to its own temerity. I have often seen her go before merit, and often very much

outstrip it. He who first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of; they are both of them

things preeminently vain: glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in

length infinitely exceeds it. They who instruct gentlemen only to employ their valor for the obtaining of

honor, "quasi non sit honestum, quod nobilitatum non sit;" what do they intend by that but to instruct them

never to hazard themselves if they are not seen, and to observe well if there be witnesses present who may

carry news of their valor, whereas a thousand occasions of welldoing present themselves which cannot be

taken notice of? How many brave individual actions are buried in the crowd of a battle? Whoever shall take

upon him to watch another's behavior in such a confusion is not very busy himself, and the testimony he shall

give of his companion's deportment will be evidence against himself. "Vera et sapiens animi magnitudo,

honestum illud, quod maxime naturam sequitur, in factis positum, non in gloria, judicat."

All the glory that I pretend to derive from my life is that I have lived in it quiet; in quiet, not according to

Metrodorus, or Arcesilaus, or Aristippus, but according to myself. For seeing philosophy has not been able to

find out any way to tranquillity that is good in common, let every one seek it in particular.

To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their renown but to fortune? How many men

has she extinguished in the beginning of their progress, of whom we have no knowledge, who brought as

much courage to the work as they, if their adverse hap had not cut them off in the first sally of their arms?

Among so many and so great dangers I do not remember I have anywhere read that Caesar was ever

wounded; a thousand have fallen in less dangers than the least of those he went through. An infinite number

of brave actions must be performed without witness and lost, before one turns to account. A man is not

always on the top of a breach, or at the head of an army, in the sight of his general, as upon a scaffold; a man

is often surprised between the hedge and the ditch; he must run the hazard of his life against a henroost; he

must dislodge four rascally musketeers out of a barn; he must prick out single from his party, and alone make

some attempts, according as necessity will have it. And whoever will observe will, I believe, find it

experimentally true, that occasions of the least luster are ever the most dangerous; and that in the wars of our

own times there have more brave men been lost in occasions of little moment, and in the dispute about some

little paltry fort, than in places of greatest importance, and where their valor might have been more honorably

Who thinks his death unworthy of him if he do not fall in some signal occasion, instead of illustrating his

death willfully obscures his life, suffering in the meantime many very just occasions of hazarding himself to

slip out of his hands; and every just one is illustrious enough, every man's conscience being a sufficient

trumpet to him. "Gloria nostra est testimonium conscientiae nostrae." He who is only a good man that men

may know it, and that he may be the better esteemed when 'tis known: who will not do well but upon

condition that his virtue may be known to men: is one from whom much service is not to be expected.

A man must go to the war upon the account of duty, and expect the recompense that never fails brave and

worthy actions, how private soever, or even virtuous thoughts the satisfaction that a welldisposed

conscience receives in itself in doing well. A man must be valiant for himself, and upon account of the

advantage it is to him to have his courage seated in a firm and secure place against the assaults of fortune:

It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part, but for ourselves within, where no eyes can pierce

but our own; there she defends us from the fear of death, of pain, of shame itself; there she arms us against

the loss of our children, friends, and fortunes; and when opportunity presents itself, she leads us on to the

hazards of war, "non emolumento aliquo, sed ipsius honestatis decore." This profit is of much greater

advantage, and more worthy to be coveted and hoped for, than honor and glory, which are no other than a

A dozen men must be called out of a whole nation to judge about an acre of land; and the judgment of our

inclinations and actions, the most difficult and most important matter that is, we refer to the voice and

determination of the rabble, the mother of ignorance, injustice, and inconstancy. Is it reasonable that the life

of a wise man should depend upon the judgment of fools? "An quidquom stultius, quam, quos singulos

contemnas, eos aliquid putare, esse universos?" He that makes it his business to please them, will have

enough to do and never have done; 'tis a mark that can never be aimed at or hit: "Nil tam inoestimabile est,

quam animi multitudinis." Demetrius pleasantly said of the voice of the people, that he made no more

account of that which came from above than of that which came from below. Cicero says more: "Ego hoc

judico, si quando turpe non sit, tamen non esse non turpe, quum id a multitudine laudatur." No art, no activity

of wit, could conduct our steps so as to follow so wandering and so irregular a guide; in this windy confusion

of the noise of vulgar reports and opinions that drive us on, no way worth anything can be chosen. Let us not

propose to ourselves so floating and wavering an end; let us follow constantly after reason; let the public

approbation follow us there, if it will; and as it wholly depends upon fortune, we have no reason sooner to

expect it by any other way than that. Even though I would not follow the right way because it is right, I

should, however, follow it as having experimentally found that, at the end of the reckoning, 'tis commonly the

most happy and of greatest utility: "Dedit hoc providentia hominicus munus, ut honesta magis juvarent." The

mariner of old said thus to Neptune, in a great tempest: "Oh God, thou mayest save me if thou wilt, and if

thou wilt, thou mayest destroy me; but, however, I will steer my rudder true. I have seen in my time a

thousand men supple, mongrel, ambiguous, whom no one doubted to be more worldy wise than I, destroy

Paulus Aemilius, going on the glorious expedition of Macedonia, above all things charged the people of

Rome not to speak of his actions during his absence. Oh, the license of judgments is a great disturbance to

great affairs! forasmuch as every one has not the firmness of Fabius against common, adverse, and injurious

tongues, who rather suffered his authority to be dissected by the vain fancies of men, than to do less well in

There is I know not what natural sweetness in hearing one's self commended; but we are a great deal too fond

I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others, as what I am in my own; I would be rich of myself, and

not by borrowing. Strangers see nothing but events and outward appearances; everybody can set a good face

on the matter, when they have trembling and terror within; they do not see my heart, they see but my

countenance. 'Tis with good reason that men decry the hypocrisy that is in war; for what is more easy to an

old soldier than to shift in a time of danger, and to counterfeit the brave when he has no more heart than a

chicken? There are so many ways to avoid hazarding a man's own person, that we have deceived the world a

thousand times before we come to be engaged in a real danger: and even then, finding ourselves in an

inevitable necessity of doing something, we can make shift for that time to conceal our apprehensions by

setting a good face on the business, though the heart beats within; and whoever had the use of the Platonic

ring, which renders those invisible that wear it, if turned inward toward the palm of the hand, a great many

would very often hide themselves when they ought most to appear, and would repent being placed in so

Thus we see how all the judgments that are founded upon external appearances, are marvelously uncertain

and doubtful; and that there is no so certain testimony as every one is to himself. In these, how many soldier's

boys are companions of our glory? he who stands firm in an open trench, what does he in that more than fifty

poor pioneers who open to him the way and cover it with their own bodies for fivepence a day pay, do before

The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call making them more great; we will have

them there well received, and that this increase turn to their advantage, which is all that can be excusable in

this design. But the excess of this disease proceeds so far that many covet to have a name, be it what it will.

Trogus Pompeius says of Herostratus, and Titus Livius of Manlius Capitolinus, that they were more

ambitious of a great reputation than of a good one. This is very common; we are more solicitous that men

speak of us, than how they speak: and it is enough for us that our names are often mentioned, be it after what

manner it will. It should seem that to be known, is in some sort to have a man's life and its duration in others'

keeping. I, for my part, hold that I am not, but in myself; and of that other life of mine which lies in the

knowledge of my friends, to consider it naked and simply in itself, I know very well that I am sensible of no

fruit nor enjoyment from it but by the vanity of a fantastic opinion; and when I shall be dead, I shall be still

and much less sensible of it; and shall, withal, absolutely lose the use of those real advantages that sometimes

accidentally follow it. I shall have no more handle whereby to take hold of reputation, neither shall it have

any whereby to take hold of or to cleave to me; for to expect that my name should be advanced by it, in the

first place, I have no name that is enough my own; of two that I have, one is common to all my race, and,

indeed, to others also; there are two families at Paris and Montpellier, whose surname is Montaigne, another

in Brittany, and one in Xaintonge, De La Montaigne. The transposition of one syllable only would suffice so

to ravel our affairs that I shall share in their glory, and they, peradventure, shall partake of my shame: and,

moreover, my ancestors have formerly been surnamed Eyquem, a name wherein a family well known in

England is at this day concerned. As to my other name, every one may take it that will, and so, perhaps, I may

honor a porter in my own stead. And, besides, though I had a particular distinction by myself, what can it

but of this I have spoken elsewhere. As to what remains, in a great battle where ten thousand men are maimed

or killed, there are not fifteen who are taken notice of; it must be some very eminent greatness, or some

consequence of great importance that fortune has added to it, that signalizes a private action, not of a

harquebuser only, but of a great captain; for to kill a man, or two, or ten: to expose a man's self bravely to the

utmost peril of death, is, indeed, something in every one of us, because we there hazard all; but for the

world's concern, they are things so ordinary, and so many of them are every day seen, and there must of

necessity be so many of the same kind to produce any notable effect, that we cannot expect any particular

Of so many thousands of valiant men who have died within these fifteen hundred years in France with their

swords in their hands, not a hundred have come to our knowledge. The memory, not of the commanders only,

but of battles and victories, is buried and gone; the fortunes of above half of the world, for want of a record,

stir not from their place, and vanish without duration. If I had unknown events in my possession, I should

think with great ease to outdo those that are recorded, in all sorts of examples. Is it not strange that even of

the Greeks and Romans, with so many writers and witnesses, and so many rare and noble exploits, so few are

It will be much if a hundred years hence, it be remembered in gross that in our times there were civil wars in

France. The Lacedaemonians, entering into battle, sacrificed to the Muses, to the end that their actions might

be well and worthily written, looking upon it as a divine and no common favor, that brave acts should find

witnesses that could give them life and memory. Do we expect that at every musket shot we receive, and at

every hazard we run, there must be a register ready to record it? and, besides, a hundred registers may enrol

them whose commentaries will not last above three days, and will never come to the sight of any one. We

have not the thousandth part of ancient writings; 'tis fortune that gives them a shorter or longer life, according

to her favor; and 'tis permissible to doubt whether those we have be not the worst, not having seen the rest.

Men do not write histories things of so little moment: a man must have been general in the conquest of an

empire or a kingdom; he must have won twoandfifty set battles, and always the weaker in number, as

Caesar did: ten thousand brave fellows and many great captains lost their lives valiantly in his service, whose

Even those we see behave themselves the best, three months or three years after they have been knocked on

the head, are no more spoken of than if they had never been. Whoever will justly consider, and with due

proportion, of what kind of men and of what sort of actions the glory sustains itself in the records of history,

will find that there are very few actions and very few persons of our times who can there pretend any right.

How many worthy men have we known to survive their own reputation, who have seen and suffered the

honor and glory most justly acquired in their youth, extinguished in their own presence? And for three years

of this fantastic and imaginary life we must go and throw away our true and essential life, and engage

ourselves in a perpetual death! The sages propose to themselves a nobler and more just end in so important an

enterprise: "Recte facti, fecisse merces est: officii fructus, ipsum officium est." It were, peradventure,

excusable in a painter or other artisan, or in a rhetorician or a grammarian, to endeavor to raise himself a

name by his works; but the actions of virtue are too noble in themselves to seek any other reward than from

If this false opinion, nevertheless, be of such use to the public as to keep men in their duty; if the people are

thereby stirred up to virtue; if princes are touched to see the world bless the memory of Trajan, and

abominate that of Nero; if it moves them to see the name of that great beast, once so terrible and feared, so

freely cursed and reviled by every schoolboy, let it by all means increase, and be as much as possible nursed

up and cherished among us; and Plato, bending his whole endeavor to make his citizens virtuous, also advises

them not to despise the good repute and esteem of the people; and says it falls out, by a certain divine

inspiration, that even the wicked themselves ofttimes, as well by word as opinion, can rightly distinguish the

virtuous from the wicked. This person and his tutor are both marvelous and bold artificers everywhere to add

divine operations and revelations where human force is wanting. "Ut tragici poetae confugiunt ad deum, cum

explicare argumenti exitum non possunt:" and, peradventure, for this reason it was that Timon, railing at him

called him the great forger of miracles. Seeing that men by their insufficiency, cannot pay themselves well

enough with current money, let the counterfeit be superadded. 'Tis a way that has been practiced 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. 'Tis for this that most of them have their

originals and beginnings fabulous, and enriched with supernatural mysteries; 'tis this that has given credit to

bastard religions, and caused them to be countenanced by men of understanding; and for this, that Numa and

Sertorius, to possess their men with a better opinion of them, fed them with this foppery; one, that the nymph

Egeria, the other that his white hind, brought them all their counsels from the gods. And the authority that

Numa gave to his laws, under the title of the patronage of this goddess, Zoroaster, legislator of the Bactrians

and Persians, gave to his under the name of the god Oromazis; Trismegistus, legislator of the Egyptians,

under that of Mercury; Xamolxis, legislator of the Scythians, under that of Vesta; Charandas, legislator of the

Chalcidians, under that of Saturn; Minos, legislator of the Candiots, under that of Jupiter: Lycurgus, 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; the others falsely, that truly, which Moses set

over the Jews at their departure out of Egypt. The religion of the Bedouins, as the Sire de Joinville reports,

among other things, enjoined a belief that the soul of him among them who died for his prince, went into

another body more happy, more beautiful, and more robust than the former, which means they much more

This is a very comfortable belief, however erroneous. Every nation has many such examples of its own; but

To add one word more to my former discourse, I would advise the ladies no longer to call that honor which is

but their duty; "Ut enim consuetudo loquitur, id solum dicitur honestum, quod est populari fama gloriosum;"

their duty is the mark, their honor but the outward rind. Neither would I advise them to give this excuse for

payment of their denial: for I presuppose that their intentions, their desire, and will, which are things wherein

their honor is not at all concerned, forasmuch as nothing thereof appears without, are much better regulated

The offense, both toward 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 honor consists, if they had not another respect to their duty, and the affection they bear to

chastity, for itself. Every woman of honor will much rather choose to lose her honor, than to hurt her

THERE is another sort of glory, which is the having too good an opinion of our own worth. 'Tis an

inconsiderate affection with which we flatter ourselves, and that represents us to ourselves other than we truly

are; like the passion of love, and that lends beauties and graces to the object, and makes those who are caught

by it, with a depraved and corrupt judgment, consider the thing which they love other and more perfect than it

I would not, nevertheless, for fear of failing on this side, that a man should not know himself aright, or think

himself less than he is; the judgment ought in all things to maintain its rights; 'tis 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 and the body; we have taught

the ladies to blush when they hear that but named which they are not at all afraid to do; we dare not call our

members by their right names, yet are not afraid to employ them in all sorts of debauchery; 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 nobody obeys it. I find myself here fettered by the laws of ceremony; for it neither

permits a man to speak well of himself, nor ill; we will leave it 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

public actions manifest what they are; but they whom she has only employed in the crowd, and of whom

nobody will say a word unless they speak themselves, are to be excused if they take the boldness to speak of

he always committed to paper his actions and thoughts, and there portrayed himself such as he found himself

I remember, then, that from my infancy there was observed in me I know not what kind of carriage and

behavior, that seemed to relish of pride and arrogance. I will say this, by the way, that it is not unreasonable

to suppose that we have qualities and inclinations so much our own, and so incorporate in us, that we have

not the means to feel and recognize them; and of such natural inclinations the body will retain a certain bent,

without our knowledge or consent. It was an affectation conformable with his beauty, that made Alexander

carry his head on one side, and caused Alcibiades to lisp; Julius Caesar scratched his head with one finger,

which is the fashion of a man full of troublesome thoughts; and Cicero, as I remember, was wont to pucker

up his nose, a sign of a man given to scoffing; such motions as these may imperceptibly happen in us. There

are other artificial ones which I meddle not with, as salutations and congees, by which men acquire, for the

most part unjustly, the reputation of being humble and courteous; one may be humble out of pride. I am

prodigal enough of my hat, especially in summer, and never am so saluted but that I pay it again from persons

of what quality soever, unless they be in my own service. I should make it my request to some princes whom

I know, that they would be more sparing of that ceremony, and bestow that courtesy where it is more due; for

being so indiscreetly and indifferently conferred on all, it is thrown away to no purpose; if it be without

respect of persons, it loses its effect. Among irregular deportment, let us not forget that haughty one of the

Emperor Constantius, who always in public held his head upright and stiff, without bending or turning on

either side, not so much as to look upon those who saluted him on one side, planting his body in a rigid

immovable posture, without suffering it to yield to the motion of his coach, not daring so much as to spit,

blow his nose, or wipe his face before people. I know not whether the gestures that were observed in me were

this first quality, and whether I had really any occult propension to this vice, as it might well be; and I cannot

be responsible for the motions of the body; but as to the motions of the soul, I must here confess what I think

This glory consists of two parts; the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting

too little a value upon others. As to the one, methinks these considerations ought, in the first place, to be of

some force; I feel myself importuned by an error of the soul that displeases me, both as it is unjust, and still

more as it is troublesome; I attempt to correct it, but I cannot root it out: and this is, that I lessen the just value

of things that I possess, and overvalue things, because they are foreign, absent, and none of mine; this humor

spreads very far. As the prerogrative of the authority makes husbands look upon their own wives with a

vicious disdain, and many fathers their children; so I, between two equal merits should always be swayed

against my own; not so much that the jealousy of my advancement and bettering troubles my judgment, and

hinders me from satisfying myself, as that of itself possession begets a contempt of what it holds and rules.

Foreign governments, manners, and languages, insinuate themselves into my esteem; and I am sensible that

Latin allures me by the favor of its dignity to value it above its due, as it does with children, and the common

sort of people: the domestic government, house, horse, of my neighbor, though no better than my own, I prize

above my own, because they are not mine. Besides that I am very ignorant in my own affairs, I am struck by

the assurance that every one has of himself: whereas, there is scarcely anything that I am sure I know, or that

I dare be responsible to myself that I can do: I have not my means of doing anything in condition and ready,

and am only instructed therein after the effect; as doubtful of my own force as I am of another's. Whence it

comes to pass that if I happen to do anything commendable, I attribute it more to my fortune than industry,

forasmuch as I design everything by chance and in fear. I have this, also, in general, that of all the opinions

antiquity has held of men in gross, I most willingly embrace and adhere to those that most contemn and

undervalue us, and most push us to naught; methinks, philosophy has never so fair a game to play as when it

falls upon our vanity and presumption; when it most lays open our irresolution, weakness, and ignorance. I

look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself to be the nursing mother of all the most false

opinions, both public and private. Those people who ride astride upon the epicycle of Mercury, who see so

far into the heavens, are worse to me than a toothdrawer that comes to draw my teeth; for in my study, the

subject of which is man, finding so great a variety of judgments, so profound a labyrinth of difficulties, one

upon another, so great diversity and uncertainty, even in the school of wisdom itself, you may judge, seeing

these people could not resolve upon the knowledge of themselves and their own condition, which is

continually before their eyes, and within them, seeing they do not know how that moves, which they

themselves move, nor how to give us a description of the springs they themselves govern and make use of,

how can I believe them about the ebbing and flowing of the Nile. The curiosity of knowing things has been

But to return to what concerns myself; I think it would be very difficult for any other man to have a meaner

opinion of himself; nay, for any other to have a meaner opinion of me than I have of myself: I look upon

myself as one of the common sort, saving in this, that I have no better an opinion of myself; guilty of the

meanest and most popular defects, but not disowning or excusing them; and I do not value myself upon any

other account than because I know my own value. If there be any vanity in the case, 'tis superficially infused

into me by the treachery of my complexion, and has no body that my judgment can discern; I am sprinkled,

but not dyed. For in truth, as to the effects of the mind, there is no part of me, be it what it will, with which I

am satisfied; and the approbation of others makes me not think the better of myself. My judgment is tender

and nice, especially in things that concern myself; I ever repudiate myself, and feel myself float and waver by

reason of my weakness. I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment. My sight is clear and regular

enough, but, at working, it is apt to dazzle; as I most manifestly find in poetry: I love it infinitely, and am able

to give a tolerable judgment of other men's works; but, in good earnest, when I apply myself to it, I play the

child, and am not able to endure myself. A man may play the fool in everything else, but not in poetry;

I would to God this sentence was written over the doors of all our printers, to forbid the entrance of so many

Why have not we such people? Dionysius the father valued himself upon nothing so much as his poetry; at

the Olympic games, with chariots surpassing all the others in magnificence, he sent also poets and musicians

to present his verses, with tent and pavilions royally gilt and hung with tapestry. When his verses came to be

recited, the excellence of the delivery at first attracted the attention of the people; but when they afterwards

came to poise the meanness of the composition, they first entered into disdain, and continuing to nettle their

judgments, presently proceeded to fury, and ran to pull down and tear to pieces all his pavilions: and, that his

chariots neither performed anything to purpose in the race, and that the ship which brought back his people

failed of making Sicily, and was by the tempest driven and wrecked upon the coast of Tarentum, they

certainly believed was through the anger of the gods, incensed, as they themselves were, against that paltry

poem; and even the mariners who escaped from the wreck seconded this opinion of the people: to which also

the oracle that foretold his death seemed to subscribe; which was, "that Dionysius should be near his end,

when he should have overcome those who were better than himself," which he interpreted of the

Carthaginians, who surpassed him in power; and having war with them, often declined the victory, not to

incur the sense of this prediction, but he understood it ill; for the god indicated the time of the advantage, that

by favor and injustice he obtained at Athens over the tragic poets, better than himself, having caused his own

play called the Leneians to be acted in emulation; presently after which victory he died, and partly of the

What I find tolerable of mine, is not so really and in itself, but in comparison of other worse things, that I see

well enough received. I envy the happiness of those who can please and hug themselves in what they do; for

'tis an easy thing to be so pleased, because a man extracts that pleasure from himself, especially if he be

constant in his selfconceit. I know a poet, against whom the intelligent and the ignorant, abroad and at

home, both heaven and earth exclaim that he has but very little notion of it; and yet for all that he has never a

whit the worse opinion of himself; but is always falling upon some new piece, always contriving some new

invention, and still persists in his opinion, by so much the more obstinately, as it only concerns him to

My works are so far from pleasing me, that as often as I review them, they disgust me:

I have always an idea in my soul, and a sort of disturbed image which presents me as in a dream with a better

form than that I have made use of; but I cannot catch it nor fit it to my purpose; and even that idea is but of

the meaner sort. Hence I conclude that the productions of those great and rich souls of former times are very

much beyond the utmost stretch of my imagination or my wish: their writings do not only satisfy and fill me,

but they astound me, and ravish me with admiration; I judge of their beauty; I see it, if not to the utmost, yet

so far at least as 'tis possible for me to aspire. Whatever I undertake, I owe a sacrifice to the Graces, as

They abandon me throughout; all I write is rude; polish and beauty are wanting: I cannot set things off to any

advantage; my handling adds nothing to the matter; for which reason I must have it forcible, very full, and

that has luster of its own. If I pitch upon subjects that are popular and gay, 'tis to follow my own inclination,

who do not affect a grave and ceremonious wisdom, as the world does; and to make myself more sprightly,

but not my style more wanton, which would rather have them grave and severe; at least, if I may call that a

style, which is an inform and irregular way of speaking, a popular jargon, a proceeding without definition,

division, conclusion, perplexed like that Amafanius and Rabirius. I can neither please nor delight, nor even

tickle my readers: the best story in the world is spoiled by my handling, and becomes flat; I cannot speak but

in rough earnest, and am totally unprovided of that facility which I observe in many of my acquaintance, of

entertaining the first comers and keeping a whole company in breath, or taking up the ear of a prince with all

sorts of discourse without wearying themselves: they never want matter by reason of the faculty and grace

they have in taking hold of the first thing that starts up, and accommodating it to the humor and capacity of

those with whom they have to do. Princes do not much affect solid discourses, nor I to tell stories. The first

and easiest reasons, which are commonly the best taken, I know not how to employ: I am an ill orator to the

common sort. I am apt of everything to say the extremest that I know. Cicero is of opinion that in treatises of

philosophy the exordium is the hardest part; if this be true, I am wise in sticking to the conclusion. And yet

we are to know how to wind the string to all notes, and the sharpest is that which is the most seldom touched.

There is at least as much perfection in elevating an empty as in supporting a weighty thing. A man must

sometimes superficially handle things, and sometimes push them home. I know very well that most men keep

themselves in this lower form from not conceiving things otherwise than by this outward bark; but I likewise

know that the greatest masters, and Xenophon and Plato are often seen to stoop to this low and popular

manner of speaking and treating of things, but supporting it with graces which never fail them.

Further, my language has nothing in it that is facile and polished; 'tis rough, free, and irregular, and as such

pleases, if not my judgment, at all events my inclination, but I very well perceive that I sometimes give

myself too much rein, and that by endeavoring to avoid art and affectation I fall into the other inconvenience:

Plato says, that the long or the short are not properties that either take away or give value to language. Should

I attempt to follow the other more moderate, united, and regular style, I should never attain to it; and though

the short round periods of Sallust best suit with my humor, yet I find Caesar much grander and harder to

imitate; and though my inclination would rather prompt me to imitate Seneca's way of writing, yet I do,

nevertheless, more esteem that of Plutarch. Both in doing and speaking I simply follow my own natural way;

whence, peradventure, it falls out that I am better at speaking than writing. Motion and action animate words,

especially in those who lay about them briskly, as I do, and grow hot. The comportment, the countenance, the

voice, the robe, the place, will set off some things that of themselves would appear no better than prating.

Massalla complains in Tacitus of the straightness of some garments in his time, and of the fashion of the

benches where the orators were to declaim, that were a disadvantage to their eloquence.

My French tongue is corrupted, both in the pronunciation and otherwise, by the barbarism of my country. I

never saw a man who was a native of any of the provinces on his side of the kingdom who had not a twang of

his place of birth, and that was not offensive to ears that were purely French. And yet it is not that I am so

perfect in my Perigordin: for I can no more speak it than High Dutch, nor do I much care. 'Tis a language (as

the rest about me on every side, of Poitou, Xaintonge, Angoumousin, Limosin, Auvergne), a poor, drawling,

scurvy language. There is, indeed, above us toward the mountains a sort of Gascon spoken, that I am mightily

taken with: blunt, brief, significant, and in truth a more manly and military language than any other I am

acquainted with, as sinewy, powerful, and pertinent as the French is graceful, neat, and luxuriant.

As to the Latin, which was given me for my mother tongue, I have, by discontinuance, lost the use of

speaking it, and, indeed, of writing it too, wherein I formerly had a particular reputation, by which you may

Beauty is a thing of great recommendation in the correspondence among men; 'tis the first means of acquiring

the favor and good liking of one another, and no man is so barbarous and morose as not to perceive himself in

some sort struck with its attraction. The body has a great share in our being, has an eminent place there, and

therefore its structure and composition are of very just consideration. They who go about to disunite and

separate our two principal parts from one another are to blame; we must, on the contrary, reunite and rejoin

them. We must command the soul not to withdraw and entertain itself apart, not to despise and abandon the

body (neither can she do it but by some apish counterfeit), but to unite herself close to it, to embrace, cherish,

assist, govern, and advise it, and to bring it back and set it into the true way when it wanders; in sum, to

espouse and be a husband to it, so that their effects may not appear to be diverse and contrary, but uniform

and concurring. Christians have a particular instruction concerning this connection, for they know that the

Divine justice embraces this society and juncture of body and soul, even to the making the body capable of

eternal rewards; and that God has an eye to the whole man's ways, and will that he receive entire

chastisement or reward according to his demerits or merits. The sect of the Peripatetics, of all sects the most

sociable, attribute to wisdom this sole care equally to provide for the good of these two associate parts: and

the other sects, in not sufficiently applying themselves to the consideration of this mixture, show themselves

to be divided, one for the body and the other for the soul, with equal error, and to have lost sight of their

subject, which is Man, and their guide, which they generally confess to be Nature. The first distinction that

ever was among men, and the first consideration that gave some preeminence over others, 'tis likely was the

Now I am of something lower than the middle stature, a defect that not only borders upon deformity, but

carries withal a great deal of inconvenience along with it, especially for those who are in office and

command; for the authority which a graceful presence and a majestic mien beget, is wanting. C. Marius did

not willingly enlist any soldiers who were not six feet high. The courtier has, indeed, reason to desire a

moderate stature in the gentlemen he is setting forth, rather than any other, and to reject all strangeness that

should make him be pointed at. But if I were to choose whether this medium must be rather below than above

the common standard, I would not have it so in a soldier. Little men, says Aristotle, are pretty but not

handsome; and greatness of soul is discovered in a great body, as beauty is in a conspicuous stature: the

Ethiopians and Indians, says he, in choosing their kings and magistrates, had regard to the beauty and stature

of their persons. They had reason; for it creates respect in those who follow them, and is a terror to the enemy

Our holy and heavenly king, of whom every circumstance is most carefully and with the greatest religion and

reverence to be observed, has not himself rejected bodily recommendation, "Speciosus forma prae filiis

hominum." And Plato, together with temperance and fortitude, requires beauty in the conservators of his

republic. It would vex you that a man should apply himself to you among your servants to inquire where

monsieur is, and that you should only have the remainder of the compliment of the hat that is made to your

barber or your secretary; as it happened to poor Philopoemen, who arriving the first of all his company at an

inn where he was expected, the hostess who knew him not, and saw him an unsightly fellow, employed him

to go help her maids a little to draw water, and make a fire against Philopoemen's coming: the gentlemen of

his train arriving presently after, and surprised to see him busy in this fine employment, for he failed not to

obey his landlady's command, asked him what he was doing there. "I am," said he, "paying the penalty of my

ugliness." The other beauties belong to women; the beauty of stature is the only beauty of men. Where there

is a contemptible stature, neither the largeness and roundness of the forehead, nor the whiteness and

sweetness of the eyes, nor the moderate proportion of the nose, nor the littleness of the ears and mouth, nor

the evenness and whiteness of the teeth, nor the thickness of a wellset brown beard, shining like the husk of

a chestnut, nor curled hair, nor the just proportion of the head, nor a fresh complexion, nor a pleasing air of a

face, nor a body without any offensive scent, nor the just proportion of limbs, can make a handsome man. I

am, as to the rest, strong and well knit; my face is not puffed, but full, and my complexion between jovial and

my health vigorous and sprightly, even to a well advanced age, and rarely troubled with sickness. Such I was,

for I do not now make any account of myself, now that I am engaged in the avenues of old age, being already

what shall be from this time forward, will be but a halfbeing, and no more me. I every day escape and steal

Agility and address I never had, and yet am the son of a very active and sprightly father, who continued to be

so to an extreme old age. I have scarce known any man of his condition, his equal in all bodily exercises: as I

have seldom met with any who have not excelled me, except in running, at which I was pretty good. In music

or singing, for which I have a very unfit voice, or to play on any sort of instrument, they could never teach me

anything. In dancing, tennis, or wrestling, I could never arrive to more than an ordinary pitch; in swimming,

fencing, vaulting, and leaping, to none at all. My hands are so clumsy that I cannot even write so as to read it

myself, so that I had rather do what I have scribbled over again, than take upon me the trouble to make it out.

I do not read much better than I write, and feel that I weary my auditors: otherwise, not a bad clerk. I cannot

decently fold up a letter, nor could ever make a pen, or carve at table worth a pin, nor saddle a horse, nor

carry a hawk and fly her, nor hunt the dogs, nor lure a hawk, nor speak to a horse. In fine, my bodily qualities

are very well suited to those of my soul; there is nothing sprightly, only a full and firm vigor: I am patient

enough of labor and pains, but it is only when I go voluntary to work, and only so long as my own desire

otherwise, if I am not allured with some pleasure, or have other guide than my own pure and free inclination,

I am good for nothing: for I am of a humor that, life and health excepted, there is nothing for which I will bite

my nails, and that I will purchase at the price of torment of mind and constraint:

Extremely idle, extremely given up to my own inclination both by nature and art, I would as willingly lend a

man my blood as my pains. I have a soul free and entirely its own, and accustomed to guide itself after its

own fashion; having hitherto never had either master or governor imposed upon me; I have walked as far as I

would, and at the pace that best pleased myself; that is it that has rendered me unfit for the service of others,

Nor was there any need of forcing my heavy and lazy disposition; for being born to such a fortune as I had

reason to be contented with (a reason, nevertheless, that a thousand others of my acquaintance would have

rather made use of for a plank upon which to pass over in search of higher fortune, to tumult and disquiet),

and with as much intelligence as I required, I sought for no more, and also got no more:

I had only need of what was sufficient to content me: which nevertheless is a government of soul, to take it

right, equally difficult in all sorts of conditions, and that, of custom, we see more easily found in want than in

abundance: forasmuch, peradventure, as according to the course of our other passions, the desire of riches is

more sharpened by their use than by the need of them: and the virtue of moderation more rare than that of

patience: and I never had anything to desire, but happily to enjoy the estate that God by His bounty had put

into my hands. I have never known anything of trouble, and have had little to do in anything but the

management of my own affairs: or, if I have, it has been upon condition to do it at my own leisure and after

my own method; committed to my trust by such as had a confidence in me, who did not importune me, and

who knew my humor; for good horsemen will make shift to get service out of a rusty and brokenwinded

Even my infancy was trained up after a gentle and free manner, and exempt from any rigorous subjection. All

this has helped me to a complexion delicate and incapable of solicitude, even to that degree that I love to have

my losses and the disorders wherein I am concerned, concealed from me. In the account of my expenses, I

I love not to know what I have, that I may be less sensible of my loss; I entreat those who serve me, where

affection and integrity are absent, to deceive me with something like a decent appearance. For want of

constancy enough to support the shock of adverse accidents to which we are subject, and of patience

seriously to apply myself to the management of my affairs, I nourish as much as I can this in myself, wholly

leaving all to fortune "to take all things at the worst, and to resolve to bear that worst with temper and

patience;" that is the only thing I aim at, and to which I apply my whole meditation. In a danger, I do not so

much consider how I shall escape it, as of how little importance it is, whether I escape it or no; should I be

left dead upon the place, what matter? Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to

them, if they will not apply themselves to me. I have no great art to evade, escape from or force fortune, and

by prudence to guide and incline things to my own bias. I have still less patience to undergo the troublesome

and painful care therein required; and the most uneasy condition for me is to be suspended on urgent

Deliberation, even in things of lightest moment, is very troublesome to me; and I find my mind more put to it

to undergo the various tumblings and tossings of doubt and consultation, than to set up its rest and to

acquiesce in whatever shall happen after the die is thrown. Few passions break my sleep, but of deliberations,

the least will do it. As in roads, I preferably avoid those, that are sloping and slippery, and put myself into the

beaten track how dirty or deep soever, where I can fall no lower, and there seek my safety; so I love

misfortunes that are purely so, that do not torment and teaze me with the uncertainty of their growing better;

but that at the first push plunge me directly into the worst that can be expected:

In events, I carry myself like a man; in the conduct, like a child. The fear of the fall more fevers me than the

fall itself. The game is not worth the candle. The covetous man fares worse with his passion than the poor,

and the jealous man than the cuckold; and a man ofttimes loses more by defending his vineyard than if he

gave it up. The lowest walk is the safest; 'tis the seat of constancy; you have there need of no one but

yourself; 'tis there founded and wholly stands upon its own basis. Has not this example of a gentleman very

well known, some air of philosophy in it? He married, being well advanced in years, having spent his youth

in good fellowship, a great talker and a great jeerer, calling to mind how much the subject of cuckoldry had

given him occasion to talk and scoff at others. To prevent them from paying him in his own coin he married a

wife from a place where any one may have flesh for his money; "Goodmorrow strumpet;" "goodmorrow,

cuckold;" and there was not anything wherewith he more commonly and openly entertained those who came

to see him, than with this design of his, by which he stopped the private chattering of mockers, and blunted

As to ambition, which is neighbor, or rather daughter to presumption, fortune, to advance me, must have

come and taken me by the hand; for to trouble myself for an uncertain hope, and to have submitted myself to

all the difficulties that accompany those who endeavor to bring themselves into credit in the beginning of

I apply myself to what I see and to what I have in my hand, and go not very far from the shore;

and besides, a man rarely arrives to these advancements but in first hazarding what he has of his own; and I

am of opinion, that if a man have sufficient to maintain him in the condition wherein he was born and

brought up, 'tis a great folly to hazard that upon the uncertainty of augmenting it. He to whom fortune has

denied whereon to set his foot, and to settle a quiet and composed way of living, is to be excused if he

venture what he has, because, happen what will, necessity puts him upon shifting for himself:

and I rather excuse a younger brother for exposing what his friends have left him to the courtesy of fortune,

than him with whom the honor of his family is entrusted, who cannot be necessitous but by his own fault. I

have found a much shorter and more easy way, by the advice of the good friends I had in my younger days, to

judging rightly enough of my own strength, that it was not capable of any great matters; and calling to mind

the saying of the late Chancellor Olivier, that the French were like monkeys that swarm up a tree from branch

to branch, and never stop till they come to the highest, and there show their breech.

I should find the best qualities I have useless in this age; the facility of my manners would have been called

weakness and negligence; my faith and conscience, scrupulosity and superstition; my liberty and freedom

would have been reputed troublesome, inconsiderate, and rash. Ill luck is good for something. It is good to be

born in a very depraved age; for so, in comparison of others, you shall be reputed virtuous cheaply; he who in

our days is but a parricide and a sacrilegious person, is an honest man and a man of honor:

and never was time or place wherein princes might propose to themselves more assured or greater rewards for

virtue and justice. The first who shall make it his business, to get himself into favor and esteem by those

ways, I am much deceived if he do not and by the best title outstrip his competitors: force and violence can

do something, but not always all. We see merchants, country justices, and artisans, go cheek by jowl with the

best gentry in valor and military knowledge: they perform honorable actions, both in public engagements and

private quarrels; they fight duels, they defend towns in our present wars; a prince stifles his special

recommendation, renown, in this crowd; let him shine bright in humanity, truth, loyalty, temperance, and

especially in justice; marks rare, unknown, and exiled; 'tis 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 the

By this standard, I had been great and rare, just as I find myself now pigmy and vulgar by the standard of

some past ages, wherein, if no other better qualities concurred, it was ordinary and common to see a man

moderate in his revenges, gentle in resenting injuries, religious of his word, neither double nor supple, nor

accommodating his faith to the will of others, or the turns of the times: I would rather see all affairs go to

wreck and ruin than falsify my faith to secure them. For as to this new virtue of feigning and dissimulation,

which is now in so great credit, I mortally hate it; and of all vices find none that evidences so much baseness

and meanness of spirit. 'Tis a cowardly and servile humor to hide and disguise a man's self under a visor, and

not to dare to show himself what he is; 'tis by this our servants are trained up to treachery; being brought up

to speak what is not true, they make no conscience of a lie. A generous heart ought not to belie its own

thoughts; it will make itself seen within; all there is good, or at least, human. Aristotle reputes it the office of

magnanimity openly and professedly 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 lie, and for

freemen to speak truth: 'tis the chief and fundamental part of virtue; we must love it for itself. He who speaks

truth because be is obliged so to do, and because it serves him, and who is not afraid to lie when it signifies

nothing to anybody, is not sufficiently true. My soul naturally abominates lying, and hates the very thought of

it. I have an inward shame and a sharp remorse, if sometimes a lie escape me; as sometimes it does, being

surprised 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 'tis knavery. I do not know what advantage men

pretend to by eternally counterfeiting and dissembling, if not, never to be believed when they speak the truth;

it may once or twice pass with men; but to profess the concealing their thought, 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 they who know not how to dissemble know not how to rule, is to

give warning to all who have anything to do with them, that all they say is nothing but lying and deceit: "Quo

quis versuitior et callidior est, hoc invisior et suspectior, detracta opinione probitatis:" it were a great

simplicity in any one to lay any stress either on the countenance or word of a man, who has put on a

resolution to be always another thing without than he is within, as Tiberius did; and I cannot conceive what

part such persons can have in conversation with men, seeing they produce nothing that is received as true:

Those of our time, who have considered in the establishment of the duty of a prince, the good of his affairs

only, and have preferred that to the care of his faith and conscience, might have something to say to a prince

whose affairs fortune had put into such a posture that he might forever 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 one peace and enter

into more than one treaty in their lives. Gain tempts to the first breach of faith, and almost always presents

itself, as in all other ill acts, sacrileges, murders, rebellions, treasons, as being undertaken for some kind of

advantage; but this first gain has infinite mischievous consequences, throwing this prince out of all

correspondence and negotiation, by this example of infidelity. Soliman, of the Ottoman race, a race not very

solicitous of keeping their words or compacts, when, in my infancy he made his army land at Otranto, being

informed that Mercurino de' Gratinare, and the inhabitants of Castro were detained prisoners, after having

surrendered the place, contrary to the articles of their capitulation, sent orders to have them set at liberty,

saying that having other great enterprises in hand in those parts, the disloyalty, though it carried a show of

present utility, would for the future bring on him a disrepute and distrust of infinite prejudice.

Now, for my part, I had rather be troublesome and indiscreet, than a flattterer and a dissembler. I confess that

there may be some mixture of pride and obstinacy in keeping myself 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 myself to follow the propension of my own

nature for want of art; using the same liberty, speech and countenance toward great persons, that I bring with

me from my own house: I am sensible how much it declines toward 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 feigned; nor, truly, assurance enough to maintain it,

and so play the brave out of weakness. And therefore it is that I abandon myself to candor, always to speak as

I think, both by complexion and design leaving the event to fortune. Aristippus was wont to say, that the

principal benefit he had extracted from philosophy was that he spoke freely and openly to all.

Memory is a faculty of wonderful use, and without which the judgment can very hardly perform its office; for

my part I have none at all. What any one will propound to me, he must do it piecemeal, for to answer a

speech consisting of several heads I am not able. I could not receive a commission by word of mouth, without

a note book. And when I have a speech of consequence to make, if it be long, I am reduced to the miserable

necessity of getting by heart word for word, what I am to say; I should otherwise have neither method nor

assurance, being in fear that my memory would play me a slippery trick. But this way is no less difficult to

me than the other; I must have three hours to learn three verses. And besides, in a work of a man's own, the

liberty and authority of altering the order, of changing a word, incessantly varying the matter, makes it harder

to stick in the memory of the author. The more I mistrust it the worse it is; it serves me best by chance; I must

solicit it negligently; for if I press it, 'tis confused, and after it once begins to stagger, the more I sound it, the

And the same defect I find in my memory, I find also in several other parts. I fly command, obligation, and

constraint; that which I can otherwise naturally and easily do, if I impose it upon myself by an express and

strict injunction, I cannot do it. Even the members of my body, which have a more particular jurisdiction of

their own, sometimes refuse to obey me, if I enjoin them a necessary service at a certain hour. This tyrannical

and compulsive appointment baffles them; they shrink up either through fear or spite, and fall into a trance.

Being once in a place where it is looked upon as the greatest discourtesy imaginable not to pledge those who

drink to you, though I had there all liberty allowed me, I tried to play the good fellow, out of respect to the

ladies who were there, according to the custom of the country; but there was sport enough; for this

threatening and preparation, that I was to force myself contrary to my custom and inclination, so stopped my

throat that I could not swallow one drop, and was deprived of drinking so much as with my meat; I found

myself gorged, and my thirst quenched by the quantity of drink that my imagination had swallowed. This

effect is most manifest in such as have the most vehement and powerful imagination; but it is natural,

notwithstanding, and there is no one who does not in some measure feel it. They offered an excellent archer,

condemned to die, to save his life, if he would show some notable proof of his art, but he refused to try,

fearing lest the too great contention of his will should make him shoot wide, and that instead of saving his

life, he should also lose the reputation he had got of being a good marksman. A man who thinks of something

else, will not fail to take over and over again the same number and measure of steps, even to an inch, in the

place where he walks; but if he make it his business to measure and count them, he will find that what he did

My library, which is of the best sort of country libraries, is situated in a corner of my house; if anything

comes into my head that I have a mind to look at or to write there, lest I should forget it in but going across

the court, I am fain to commit it to the memory of some other. If I venture in speaking to digress never so

little from my subject, I am infallibly lost, which is the reason that I keep myself, in discourse, strictly close. I

am forced to call the men who serve me either by the names of their offices or their country; for names are

very hard for me to remember. I can tell, indeed, that there are three syllables, that it has a harsh sound, and

that it begins or ends with such a letter, but that's all: and if I should live long, I do not doubt but I should

forget my own name, as some others have done. Messala Corvinus was two years without any trace of

memory, which is also said of Georgius Trapezuntius. For my own interest, I often meditate what a kind of

life theirs was, and if, without this faculty, I should have enough left to support me with any manner of ease;

and prying narrowly into it, I fear that this privation, if absolute, destroys all the other functions of the soul:

It has befallen me more than once to forget the watchword I had three hours before given or received, and to

forget where I had hidden my purse; whatever Cicero is pleased to say, I help myself to lose what I have a

particular care to lock safe up. "Memoria certe non modo Philosophiam, sed omnis vitae usum, omnesque

artes, una maxime continet." Memory is the receptacle and case of science: and therefore mine being so

treacherous, if I know little, I cannot much complain. I know, in general, the names of the arts, and of what

they treat, but nothing more. I turn over books; I do not study them. What I retain I no longer recognize as

another's; 'tis only what my judgment has made its advantage of, the discourses and imaginations in which it

has been instructed: the author, place, words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget; I am so excellent

at forgetting, that I no less forget my own writings and compositions than the rest. I am very often quoted to

myself and am not aware of it. Whoever should inquire of me where I had the verses and examples that I

have here huddled together, would puzzle me to tell him, and yet I have not borrowed them but from famous

and known authors, not contenting myself that they were rich, if I, moreover, had them not from rich and

honorable hands, where there is a concurrence of authority with reason. It is no great wonder if my book run

the same fortune that other books do, and if my memory lose what I have written as well as what I have read,

Besides the defect of memory, I have others which very much contribute to my ignorance; I have a slow and

heavy wit, the least cloud stops its progress, so that, for example, I never proposed to it any never so easy a

riddle that it could find out; there is not the least idle subtlety that will not gravel me; in games, where wit is

required, as chess, draughts, and the like, I understand no more than the common movements. I have a slow

and perplexed apprehension, but what it once apprehends, it apprehends well, for the time it retains it. My

sight is perfect, entire, and discovers at a very great distance, but is soon weary and heavy at work, which

occasions that I cannot read long, but am forced to have one to read to me. The younger Pliny can inform

such as has not experimented it themselves, what, and how important, an impediment this is to those who

There is no so wretched and coarse a soul, wherein some particular faculty is not seen to shine; no soul so

buried in sloth and ignorance, but it will sally at one end or another; and how it comes to pass that a man

blind and asleep to everything else, shall be found sprightly, clear, and excellent in some one particular effect,

we are to inquire of our masters: but the beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all

things; if not instructed, at least capable of being so; which I say to accuse my own; for whether it be through

infirmity or negligence (and to neglect that which lies at our feet, which we have in our hands, and what

nearest concerns the use of life, is far from my doctrine) there is not a soul in the world so awkward as mine,

and so ignorant of many common things, and such as a man cannot without shame fail to know. I must give

I was born and bred up in the country, and among husbandmen; I have had business and husbandry in my

own hands ever since my predecessors, who were lords of the estate I now enjoy, left me to succeed them;

and yet I can neither cast accounts, nor reckon my counters; most of our current money I do not know, nor the

difference between one grain and another, either growing or in the barn, if it be not too apparent; and scarcely

can distinguish between the cabbage and lettuce in my garden. I do not so much as understand the names of

the chief instruments of husbandry, nor the most ordinary elements of agriculture, which the very children

know; much less the mechanic arts, traffic, merchandise, the variety and nature of fruits, wines and viands,

nor how to make a hawk fly, nor to physic a horse or a dog. And, since I must publish my whole shame 'tis

not above a month ago, that I was trapped in my ignorance of the use of leaven to make bread, or to what end

it was to keep wine in the vat. They conjectured of old at Athens, an aptitude for the mathematics in him they

saw ingeniously bavin up a burthen of brushwood. In earnest, they would draw a quite contrary conclusion

from me, for give me the whole provision and necessaries of a kitchen, I should starve. By these features of

my confession men may imagine others to my prejudice: but whatever I deliver myself to be, provided it be

such as I really am, I have my end; neither will I make any excuse for committing to paper such mean and

frivolous things as these; the meanness of the subject compels me to it. They may, if they please, accuse my

project, but not my progress; so it is, that without anybody's needing to tell me, I sufficiently see of how little

weight and value all this is, and the folly of my design: 'tis enough that my judgment does not contradict

I am not obliged to refrain from uttering absurdities, provided I am not deceived in them and know them to be

such; and to trip knowingly, is so ordinary with me, that I seldom do it otherwise, and rarely trip by chance.

'Tis no great matter to add ridiculous actions to the temerity of my humor, since I cannot ordinarily help

I was present one day at Barleduc, when King Francis II., for a memorial of Rene, king of Sicily, was

presented with a portrait he had drawn of himself; why is it not, in like manner, lawful for every one to draw

himself with a pen as he did with a crayon? I will not therefore omit this blemish, though very unfit to be

published, which is irresolution; a very great defect, and very incommodious in the negotiations of the affairs

I can maintain an opinion, but I cannot choose one. By reason that in human things, to what sect soever we

incline, many appearances present themselves that confirm us in it (and the philosopher Chrysippus said, that

he would of Zeno and Cleanthes, his masters, learn their doctrines only; for, as to proofs and reasons, he

should find enough of his own), which way soever I turn, I still furnish myself with causes, and likelihood

enough to fix me there; which makes me detain doubt and the liberty of choosing, till occasion presses; and

then, to confess the truth, I, for the most part, throw the feather into the wind, as the saying is, and commit

myself to the mercy of fortune; a very light inclination and circumstance carries me along with it:

The uncertainty of my judgment is so equally balanced in most occurrences, that I could willingly refer it to

be decided by the chance of a die: and I observe, with great consideration of our human infirmity, the

examples that the divine history itself has left us of this custom of referring to fortune and chance the

determination of election in doubtful things: "Sors cecidit super Matthiam." Human reason is a twoedged

and dangerous sword: observe in the hands of Socrates, her most intimate and familiar friend, how many

several points it has. I am thus good for nothing but to follow and suffer myself to be easily carried away with

the crowd; I have not confidence enough in my own strength to take upon me to command and lead; I am

very glad to find the way beaten before me by others. If I must run the hazard of an uncertain choice, I am

rather willing to have it under such a one as is more confident in his opinions than I am in mine, whose

Yet, I do not easily change, by reason that I discern the same weakness in contrary opinions: "Ipsa

consuetudo assentiendi periculosa esse videtur, et lubrica;" especially in political affairs, there is a large field

Macchiavelli's writings, for example, were solid enough for the subject, yet were they easy enough to be

controverted; and they who have taken up the cudgels against him, have left as great a facility of

controverting theirs; there was never wanting in that kind of argument, replies and replies upon replies, and as

infinite a contexture of debates, as our wrangling lawyers have extended in favor of long suits:

the reasons having little other foundation than experience, and the variety of human events presenting us with

infinite examples of all sorts of forms. An understanding person of our times says: That whoever would, in

contradiction to our almanacs, write cold where they say hot, and wet where they say dry, and always put the

contrary to what they foretell; if he were to lay a wager, he would not care which side he took, excepting

where no uncertainty could fall out, as to promise excessive heats at Christmas, or extremity of cold at

midsummer. I have the same opinion of these political controversies; be on which side you will, you have as

fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to jostle principles that are too

manifest to be disputed. And yet, in my conceit, in public affairs, there is no government so ill, provided it be

ancient and has been constant, that is not better than change and alteration. Our manners are infinitely

corrupt, and wonderfully incline to the worse; of our laws and customs there are many that are barbarous and

monstrous; nevertheless, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the danger of stirring things, if I

could put something under to stop the wheel, and keep it where it is, I would do it with all my heart:

The worst thing I find in our state is instability, and that our laws, no more than our clothes, cannot settle in

any certain form. It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it: it

is very easy to beget in a people a contempt of ancient observances; never any man undertook it but he did it;

but to establish a better regimen in the stead of that which a man has overthrown, many who have attempted

it have foundered. I very little consult my prudence in my conduct; I am willing to let it be guided by the

public rule. Happy the people who do what they are commanded, better than they who command, without

tormenting themselves as to the causes; who suffer themselves gently to roll after the celestial revolution!

In fine, to return to myself: the only thing by which I esteem myself to be something, is that wherein never

any man thought himself to be defective; my recommendation is vulgar and common, for who ever thought

he wanted sense? It would be a proposition that would imply a contradiction in itself; 'tis a disease that never

is where it is discerned; 'tis tenacious and strong, but what the first ray of the patient's sight nevertheless

pierces through and disperses, as the beams of the sun do thick and obscure mists: to accuse one's self would

be to excuse in this case, and to condemn, to absolve. There never was porter or the silliest girl, that did not

think they had sense enough to do their business. We easily enough confess in others an advantage of

courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty; but an advantage in judgment we yield to none; and the

reasons that proceed simply from the natural conclusions of others, we think, if we had but turned our

thoughts that way, we should ourselves have found out as well as they. Knowledge, style, and such parts as

we see in others' works, we are soon aware of, if they excel our own: but for the simple products of the

understanding, every one thinks he could have found out the like in himself, and is hardly sensible of the

weight and difficulty, if not (and then with much ado), in an extreme and incomparable distance. And

whoever should be able clearly to discern the height of another's judgment, would be also able to raise his

own to the same pitch. So that it is a sort of exercise, from which a man is to expect very little praise; a kind

of composition of small repute. And, besides, for whom do you write? The learned, to whom the authority

appertains of judging books, know no other value but that of learning, and allow of no other proceeding of

wit but that of eruditon and art: if you have mistaken one of the Scipios for another, what is all the rest you

have to say worth? Whoever is ignorant of Aristotle, according to their rule, is in some sort ignorant of

himself; vulgar souls cannot discern the grace and force of a lofty and delicate style. Now these two sorts of

men take up the world. The third sort into whose hands you fall, of souls that are regular and strong of

themselves, is so rare, that it justly has neither name nor place among us; and 'tis so much time lost to aspire

'Tis commonly said that the justest portion nature has given us of her favors, is that of sense; for there is no

one who is not contented with his share: is it not reason? whoever should see beyond that, would see beyond

his sight. I think my opinions are good and sound, but who does not think the same of his own? One of the

best proofs I have that mine are so, is the small esteem I have of myself; for had they not been very well

assured, they would easily have suffered themselves to have been deceived by the peculiar affection I have to

myself, as one that place it almost wholly in myself, and do not let much run out. All that others distribute

among an infinite number of friends and acquaintance, to their glory and grandeur, I dedicate to the repose of

my own mind and to myself; that which escapes thence is not properly by my direction:

Now I find my opinions very bold and constant in condemning my own imperfection. And, to say the truth,

'tis a subject upon which I exercise my judgment, as much as upon any other. The world looks always

opposite; I turn my sight inward, and there fix and employ it. I have no other business but myself, I am

eternally meditating upon myself, considering and tasting myself. Other men's thoughts are ever wandering

for my part, I circulate in myself. This capacity of trying the truth, whatever it be, in myself, and this free

humor of not over easily subjecting my belief, I owe principally to myself; 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 produced them crude and simple, with a strong and bold production, but a little troubled and

imperfect; I have since established 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 embraced. The reputation that every one pretends to of vivacity

and promptness of wit, I seek in regularity; the glory they pretend to from a striking and signal action, or

some particular excellence, I claim from order, correspondence, and tranquillity of opinions and manners:

"Omnine si quidquam est decorum, nihil est profecto magis, quam aequabilitas universae vitae, tum

singularum actionum, quam conservare non possis, si, aliorum naturam imitans omittas tuam."

Here, then, you see to what degree I find myself guilty of this first part, that I said was 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 myself; but whatever comes on't I am resolved to speak the truth. And

whether, peradventure, it be that the continual frequentation I have had with the humors of the ancients, and

the idea of those great souls of past ages, put me out of taste both with others and myself, or that, in truth, the

age we live in produces 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

judgement of them; and those with whom my condition makes me the most frequent, are, for the most part,

men who have little care of the culture of the soul, but that look upon honor as the sum of all blessings, and

What I see that is fine in others I very readily commend and esteem: nay, I often say more in their

commendation than I think they really deserve, and give me myself so far leave to lie, 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 give my very enemies their due testimony

of honor; my affection alters, my judgment does not, and I never confound my animosity with other

circumstances that are foreign to it; and I am so jealous of the liberty of my judgment that I can very hardly

part with it for any passion what ever. I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

This commendable and generous custom is observed of the Persian nation, that they spoke of their mortal

enemies and with whom they were at deadly war, as honorably and justly as their virtues deserved.

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 who 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 honor 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 Etienne De la Boetie; his was a full soul

indeed, and that had every way a beautiful aspect: a soul of the old stamp, and that had produced great effects

had his fortune been so pleased, 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 required and expected from them,

and that common defects are excusable 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 manifests 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 required, than in a matter of less value; and men are more displeased at a

disproportion in a statue of gold than in one of plaster; so do these when they advance things that in

themselves and in their place would be good; for they make use of them without discretion, honoring their

memories at the expense of their understandings, and making themselves ridiculous by honoring Cicero,

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 she has obtained it. She has not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and

prudence, but she has imprinted in us their derivation and etymology; we know how to decline virtue, if we

know not how to love it: if we do not know what prudence is really and in effect, and by experience, we have

it, however, by jargon and heart: we are not content to know the extraction, kindred, and alliances of our

neighbors; we desire, moreover, to have them our friends and to establish a correspondence and intelligence

with them; but this education of ours has taught us definitions, divisions, and partitions of virtue, as so many

surnames and branches of a genealogy, without any further care of establishing any familiarity or intimacy

between her and us. It has culled out for our initiatory instruction not such books as contain the soundest and

truest opinions, but those that speak the best Greek and Latin, and by their fine words has instilled into our

A good education alters the judgment and manners; as it happened to Polemon, a lewd and debauched young

Greek, who going by chance to hear one of Xenocrates' lectures, did not only observe the eloquence and

learning of the reader, and not only brought away the knowledge of some fine matter, but a more manifest

and a more solid profit, which was the sudden change and reformation of his former life. Whoever found

That seems to me to be the least contemptible condition of men, which by its plainness and simplicity is

seated in the lowest degree, and invites us to a more regular course. I find the rude manners and language of

country people commonly better suited to the rule and prescription of true philosophy, than those of our

philosophers themselves: "Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit."

The most remarkable men, as I have judged by outward appearance (for to judge of them according to my

own method, I must penetrate a great deal deeper) for soldiers and military conduct, were the duke of Guise,

who died at Orleans, and the late Marshal Strozzi; and for men of great ability and no common virtue,

Olivier, and De l'Hospital, chancellors of France. Poetry, too, in my opinion, has flourished in this age of

ours; we have abundance of very good artificers in the trade; D'Aurat, Beza, Buchanan, L'Hospital,

Montdore, Turnebus: as to the French poets, I believe they raised their art to the highest pitch to which it can

ever arrive; and in those parts of it wherein Ronsard and du Bellay excel, I find them little inferior to the

ancient perfection. Adrian Turnebus knew more, and what he did know, better than any man of his time, or

long before him. The lives of the last duke of Alva, and of our Constable de Montmorency, were both of them

great and noble, and that had many rare resemblances of fortune; but the beauty and glory of the death of the

last, in the sight of Paris and of his king, in their service, against his nearest relations, at the head of an army

through his conduct victorious, and by a sudden stroke, in so extreme old age, merits methinks to be recorded

among the most remarkable events of our times. As also the constant goodness, sweetness of manners, and

conscientious facility of Monsieur de la Noue, in so great an injustice of armed parties (the true school of

treason, inhumanity, and robbery), wherein he always kept up the reputation of a great and experienced

I have taken a delight to publish in several places the hopes I have of Marie de Gournay le Jars, my adopted

daughter, and certainly beloved by me with more than a paternal love, and enveloped in my solitude and

retirement as one of the best parts of my own being; I have no longer regard to anything in this world but her.

And if a man may presage from her youth, her soul will one day be capable of very great things; and among

others, of the perfection of that sacred friendship, to which we do not read that any of her sex could ever yet

arrive; the sincerity and solidity of her manners are already sufficient for it, and her affection towards me

more than superabundant, and such, in short, as that there is nothing more to be wished, if not that the

apprehension she has of my end, being now five and fifty years old, might not so much afflict her. The

judgment she made of my first Essays, being a woman, so young, and in this age, and alone in her own

country; and the famous vehemence wherewith she loved me, and desired my acquaintance solely from the

esteem she had thence of me, before she ever saw my face, is an incident very worthy of consideration.

Other virtues have had little or no credit in this age; but valor is become popular by our civil wars; and in

this, we have souls brave even to perfection, and in so great number that the choice is impossible to be made.

This is all of extraordinary and not common grandeur that has hitherto arrived at my knowledge.

THE imbecility of our condition is such that things cannot, in their natural simplicity and purity, fall into our

use; the elements that we enjoy are changed, and so 'tis with metals; and gold must be debased with some

other matter to fit it for our service. Neither has virtue, so simple as that which Aristo, Pyrrho, and also the

Stoics, made the end of life; nor the Cyrenaic and Aristippic pleasure, been without mixture useful to it. Of

the pleasure and goods that we enjoy, there is not one exempt from some mixture of ill and inconvenience:

Our extremest pleasure has some air of groaning and complaining in it; would you not say that it is dying of

pain? Nay when we frame the image of it in its full excellence, we stuff it with sickly and painful epithets and

qualities, languor, softness, feebleness, faintness, morbidezza: a great testimony of their consanguinity and

consubstantiality. The most profound joy has more of severity than gayety in it. The highest and fullest

contentment offers more of the grave than of the merry; "Ipsa felicitas, se nisi temperat, premit." Pleasure

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 purchase but at the price of

Labor and pleasure, very unlike in nature, associate, nevertheless, by I know not what natural conjunction.

Socrates says, that some god tried to mix in one mass and to confound pain and pleasure, but not being able

to do it, he bethought 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 anything 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

beside 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 constitutions that

and one Attalus in Seneca says, that the memory of our lost friends is as grateful to us, as bitterness in wine,

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 finished, do but observe

the painter's manner of handling, and you will be in doubt to which of the two the design tends; and the

extreme of laughter does, at last bring tears. "Nullum sine auctoramento malum est."

When I imagine man abounding with all the conveniences that are to be desired (let us put the case that all his

members were always seized 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 while he is there, and naturally makes haste to escape as

When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice;

and I am afraid that Plato, in his purest virtue (I, who am as sincere and loyal a lover of virtue of that stamp,

as any other whatever) if he had listened and laid his ear close to himself, and he did so no doubt, would have

heard some jarring sound of human mixture, but faint and only perceptible to himself. Man is wholly and

throughout but patch and motley. 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 inconveniences. "Omne magnum exemplum habet aliquid ex iniquo, quod contra singulos utilitate publica

It is likewise true, that for the use of life and the service of public commerce, there may be some excesses in

the purity and perspicacity of our minds; that penetrating light has in it too much of subtlety and curiosity: we

must a little stupefy and blunt 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 earthy life. And therefore common and less

speculative souls are found to be more proper for and more successful in the management of affairs; and the

elevated and exquisite opinions of philosophy unfit for business. This sharp vivacity of soul, and the supple

and restless volubility attending it, disturb our negotiations. We are to manage human enterprises more

superficially and roughly, 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 lusters, and so many

'Tis 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 sharp and subtle

considerations, while he doubted which was the most likely, he totally despaired of the truth.

He who dives into and in his inquisition comprehends all circumstances and consequences, hinders his

elections: a little engine well handled is sufficient for executions, whether of less or greater weight. The best

managers are those who can worst give account how they are so; while the greatest talkers, for the most part,

do nothing to purpose: I know one of this sort of men, and a most excellent discourser upon all sorts of good

husbandry, who has miserably let a hundred thousand livres yearly revenue slip through his hands; I know

another who talks, who better advises than any man of his counsel, and there is not in the world a fairer show

of soul and understanding than he has; nevertheless, when he comes to the test, his servants find him quite

Tacitus reports, that among certain barbarian kings their manner was, when they would make a firm

obligation, to join their right hands close to one another, and intertwist their thumbs; and when, by force of

straining, the blood it appeared in the ends, they lightly pricked them with some sharp instrument, and

Physicians say, that the thumbs are the master fingers of the hand, and that their Latin etymology is derived

from "pollere." The Greeks called them Anticheir, as who should say, another hand. And it seems that the

The Romans exempted from war all such were maimed in the thumbs, as having no more sufficient strength

to hold their weapons. Augustus confiscated the strength of a Roman knight, who had maliciously cut off the

thumbs of two young children he had, to excuse them from going into the armies: and before him, the senate,

in the time of the Italic war, had condemned Caius Vatienus to perpetual imprisonment, and confiscated all

his goods, for having purposely cut off the thumb of his left hand, to exempt himself from that expedition.

Some one, I have forgotten who, having won a naval battle, cut off the thumbs of all his vanquished enemies,

to render them incapable of fighting and of handling the oar. The Athenians also caused the thumbs of the

Aeginatans to be cut off, to deprive them of the superiority in the art of navigation.

THIS faggoting up of so many divers pieces is so done that I never set pen to paper, but when I have too

much idle time, and never anywhere but at home; so that it is compiled after divers interruptions and

intervals, occasions keeping me sometimes many months elsewhere. As to the rest I never correct my first by

any second conceptions; I, peradventure, may alter a word or so: but 'tis only to vary the phrase, and not to

destroy my former meaning. I have a mind to represent the progress of my humors, and that every one may

see each piece as it came from the forge. I could wish I had begun sooner, and had taken more notice of the

course of my mutations. A servant of mine whom I employed to transcribe for me, thought he had got a prize

by several pieces from me, wherewith he was best pleased; but it is my comfort that he will be no greater a

gainer than I shall be a loser by the theft. I am grown older by seven or eight years since I began; nor has it

been without some new acquisition: I have, in that time, by the liberality of years, been acquainted with the

stone: their commerce and long converse do not well pass away without some such inconvenience. I could

have been glad that of other infirmities age has to present longlived men withal, it had chosen some one that

would have been more welcome to me, for it could not possibly have laid upon me a disease, for which, even

from my infancy, I have had so great a horror; and it is, in truth, of all the accidents of old age, that of which I

have ever been most afraid. I have often thought with myself, that I went on too far; and that in so long a

voyage I should at last run myself into some disadvantage; I perceived and have often enough declared, that it

was time to depart, and that life should be cut off in the sound and living part, according to the surgeon's rule

in amputations; and that nature made him pay very strict usury, who did not in due time pay the principal.

And yet I was so far from being ready, that in the eighteen months time or thereabout, that I have been in this

uneasy condition, I have so inured myself to it as to be content to live on in it; and have found wherein to

comfort myself, and to hope: so much are men enslaved to their miserable being, that there is no condition so

And Tamerlane, with a foolish humanity, palliated the fantastic cruelty he exercised upon lepers, when he put

all he could hear of to death, to deliver them, as he pretended, from the painful life they lived. For there was

not one of them who would not rather have undergone a triple leprosy than be deprived of his being. And

Antisthenes the Stoic, being very sick, and crying out, "Who will deliver me from these evils?" Diogenes,

who had come to visit him, "This," said he, presenting him a knife, "presently, if thou wilt." "I do not mean

from my life," he replied, "but from my disease." The sufferings that only attack the mind, I am not so

sensible of as most other men; and this partly out of judgment, for the world looks upon several things as

dreadful or to be avoided at the expense of life, that are almost indifferent to me: partly, through a dull and

insensible complexion I have in accidents which do not point blank hit me; and that insensibly I look upon as

one of the best parts of my natural condition: but essential and corporeal pains I am very sensible of. And yet,

having long since foreseen them, though with a sight weak and delicate and softened with the long and happy

health and quiet that God has been pleased to give me the greatest part of my time, I had in my imagination

fancied them so insupportable, that, in truth, I was more afraid than I have since found I had cause: by which

I am still more fortified in this belief, that most of the faculties of the soul, as we employ them, more trouble

I am in conflict with the worst, the most sudden, the most painful, the most mortal, and the most irremediable

of all diseases; I have already had the trial of five or six very long and very painful fits; and yet I either flatter

myself, or there is even in this state what is very well to be endured by a man who has his soul free from the

fear of death, and of the menaces, conclusions, and consequences which physic is ever thundering in our ears;

but the effect even of pain itself is not so sharp and intolerable as to put a man of understanding into rage and

despair. I have at least this advantage by my stone, that what I could not hitherto prevail upon myself to

resolve upon, as to reconciling and acquainting myself with death, it will perfect; for the more it presses upon

and importunes me, I shall be so much the less afraid to die. I had already gone so far as only to love life for

life's sake, but my pain will dissolve this intelligence; and, God grant that in the end, should the sharpness of

it be once greater than I shall be able to bear, it does not throw me into the other no less vicious extreme, to

they are two passions to be feared, but the one has its remedy much nearer at hand than the other.

As to the rest, I have always found the precept, that so rigorously enjoins a resolute countenance and

disdainful and indifferent comportment in the toleration of infirmities, to be merely ceremonial. Why should

philosophy, which only has respect to life and effects, trouble itself about these external appearances? Let us

leave that care to actors and masters of rhetoric, who set so great a value upon our gestures. Let her allow this

vocal frailty to disease, if it be neither cordial nor stomachic, and permit the ordinary ways of expressing

grief by sighs, sobs, palpitations, and turning pale, that nature has put out of our power; provided the courage

be undaunted, and the tones not expressive of despair, let her be satisfied. What matter the wringing of our

hands, if we do not wring our thoughts? She forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem; let her

be satisfied with governing our understanding which she has taken upon her the care of instructing; that, in

the fury of the colic, she maintain the soul in a condition to know itself, and to follow its accustomed way,

contending with, and enduring not meanly truckling, under pain; moved and heated, not subdued and

conquered, in the contention; capable and discourse and other things, to a certain degree. In such extreme

accidents, 'tis cruelty to require so exact a composedness. 'Tis no great matter that we make a wry face, if the

mind plays its part well; if the body find itself relieved by complaining, let it complain; if agitation ease it, let

it tumble and toss at pleasure; if it seem to find the disease evaporate (as some physicians hold that it helps

women in delivery) in making loud outcries, or if this do but divert its torments, let it roar as it will. Let us

not command this voice to sally, but stop it not. Epicurus not only forgives his sage for crying out in

torments, but advises him to it: "Pugiles etiam, quum feriunt, in jactandis caestibus ingemiscunt, quia

profundenda voce omne corpus intenditur, venitque plaga vehementior." We have enough to do to deal with

Which I say in excuse of those whom we ordinarily see impatient in the assaults of this malady; for as to what

concerns myself, I have passed it over hitherto with a little better countenance, and contented myself with

groaning without roaring out; not, nevertheless, that I put any great constraint upon myself to maintain this

exterior decorum, for I make little account of such an advantage; I allow herein as much as the pain requires;

but either my pains are not so excessive, or I have more than ordinary patience. I complain, I confess, and am

a little impatient in a very sharp fit, but I do not arrive to such a degree of despair as he who with

I try myself in the depth of my dolor, and have always found that I was in a capacity to speak, think, and give

a rational answer as well as at any other time, but not so firmly, being troubled and interrupted by the pain.

When I am looked upon by my visitors to be in the greatest torment, and that they therefore forbear to trouble

me, I often essay my own strength, and myself set some discourse on foot, the most remote I can contrive

from my present condition. I can do anything upon a sudden endeavor, but it must not continue long. Oh,

what pity 'tis I have not the faculty of that dreamer in Cicero, who dreaming he was lying with a wench,

found he had discharged his stone in the sheets! My pains strangely disappetite me that way. In the intervals

from this excessive torment, when my ureters only languish without any great dolor, I presently feel myself in

my wonted state, forasmuch as my soul takes no other alarm but what is sensible and corporal, which I

certainly owe to the care I have had of preparing myself by meditation against such accidents:

I am, however, a little roughly handled for a learner, and with a sudden and sharp alteration, being fallen in

an instant from a very easy and happy condition of life into the most uneasy and painful that can be imagined.

For besides that it is a disease very much to be feared in itself, it begins with me after a more sharp and

severe manner than it is used to do with other men. My fits come so thick upon me that I am scarcely ever at

ease; yet I have hitherto kept my mind so upright that, provided I can still continue it, I find myself in a much

better condition of life than a thousand others, who have no fever nor other disease but what they create to

There is a certain sort of crafty humility that springs from presumption, as this, for example, that we confess

our ignorance in many things, and are so courteous as to acknowledge that there are in the works of nature

some qualities and conditions that are imperceptible to us, and of which our understanding cannot discover

the means and causes; by this so honest and conscientious declaration we hope to obtain that people shall also

believe us as to those that we say we do understand. We need not trouble ourselves to seek out foreign

miracles and difficulties; methinks, among the things that we ordinarily see, there are such incomprehensible

wonders as surpass all difficulties of miracles. What a wonderful thing it is that the drop of seed from which

we are produced should carry in itself the impression not only of the bodily form, but even of the thoughts

and inclinations of our fathers! Where can that drop of fluid matter contain that infinite number of forms? and

how can they carry on these resemblances with so temerarious and irregular a progress that the son shall be

like his greatgrandfather, the nephew like his uncle? In the family of Lepidus at Rome there were three, not

successively but by intervals, who were born with the same eye covered with a cartilage. At Thebes there was

a race that carried from their mother's womb the form of the head of a lance, and he who was not born so was

looked upon as illegitimate. And Aristotle says that in a certain nation, where the women were in common,

'Tis to be believed that I derive this infirmity from my father, for he died wonderfully tormented with a great

stone in his bladder, he was never sensible of his disease till the sixtyseventh year of his age; and before that

had never felt any menace or symptoms of it, either in his reins, sides, or any other part, and had lived, till

then, in a happy, vigorous state of health, little subject to infirmities, and he continued seven years after, in

this disease, dragging on a very painful end of life. I was born above five and twenty years before his disease

seized him, and in the time of his most flourishing and healthful state of body, his third child in order of birth,

where could his propension to this malady lie lurking all that while? And he being then so far from the

infirmity, how could that small part of his substance wherewith he made me, carry away so great an

impression for its share? and how so concealed, that till five and forty years after, I did not begin to be

sensible of it? being the only one to this hour, among so many brothers and sisters, and all by one mother,

that was ever troubled with it. He that can satisfy me in this point, I will believe him in as many other

miracles as he pleases; always provided that, as their manner is, he do not give me a doctrine much more

Let the physicians a little excuse the liberty I take, for by this same infusion and fatal insinuation it is that I

have received a hatred and contempt of their doctrine; the antipathy I have against their art is hereditary. My

father lived threescore and fourteen years, my grandfather sixtynine, my great grandfather almost fourscore

years, without ever tasting any sort of physic: and, with them, whatever was not ordinary diet, was instead of

a drug. Physic is grounded upon experience and examples: so is my opinion. And is not this an express and

very advantageous experience? I do not know that they can find me in all their records three that were born,

bred and died under the same roof, who have lived so long by their conduct. They must here of necessity

confess, that if reason be not, fortune at least is on my side, and with physicians, fortune goes a great deal

further than reason. Let them not take me now at a disadvantage; let them not threaten me in the subdued

condition wherein I now am; that were treachery. In truth, I have enough the better of them by these domestic

examples, that they should rest satisfied. Human things are not usually so constant; it has been two hundred

years, save eighteen, that this trial has lasted, for the first of them was born in the year 1402: 'tis now, indeed,

very good reason that this experience should begin to fail us. Let them not, therefore, reproach me with the

infirmities under which I now suffer; is it not enough that I for my part have lived seven and forty years in

My ancestors had an aversion to physic by some occult and natural instinct: for the very sight of a potion was

loathsome to my father. The Seigneur de Gaviac, my uncle by the father's side, a churchman, and a

valetudinary from his birth, and yet who made that crazy life hold out to sixtyseven years, being once fallen

into a furious fever, it was ordered by the physicians he should be plainly told that if he would not make use

of help (for so they call that which is very often quite contrary), he would infallibly be a dead man. The good

man, though terrified with this dreadful sentence, yet replied, "I am then a dead man." But God soon after

made the prognostic false. The youngest of the brothers there were four of them and by many years the

youngest, the Sieur de Bussaguet, was the only one of the family who made use of medicine, by reason I

suppose, of the commerce he had with the other arts, for he was a councilor in the court of parliament, and it

succeeded so ill with him, that being in outward appearance, of the strongest constitution, he yet died before

'Tis possible I may have derived this natural antipathy to physic from them; but had there been no other

consideration in the case, I would have endeavored to have overcome it; for all these conditions that spring in

us without reason, are vicious, 'tis a kind of disease that we should wrestle with. It may be I had naturally this

propension; but I have supported and fortified it by arguments and reasons which have established in me the

opinion I am of. For I also hate the consideration of refusing physic for the nauseous taste: I should hardly be

of that humor, who hold health to be worth purchasing by all the most painful cauteries and incisions that can

be applied. And with Epicurus, I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided, if greater pains be the

consequence, and pains to be coveted, that will terminate in greater pleasures. Health is a precious thing, and

the only one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out, not only his time, sweat, labor and goods, but also

his life itself to obtain it; forasmuch as, without it, life is wearisome and injurious to us: pleasure, wisdom,

learning, and virtue, without it, wither away and vanish; and to the most labored and solid discourses that

philosophy would imprint in us to the contrary, we need no more but oppose the image of Plato being struck

with an epilepsy or apoplexy; and, in this presupposition, to defy him to call the rich faculties of his soul to

his assistance. All means that conduce to health can neither be too painful nor too dear to me. But I have

some other appearances that make me strangely suspect all this merchandise. I do not deny but that there may

be some art in it, that there are not among so many works of nature, things proper for the conservation of

health: that is most certain: I very well know there are some simples that moisten and others that dry; I

experimentally know that radishes are windy, and sennaleaves purging; and several other such experiences I

have, as that mutton nourishes me, and wine warms me: and Solon said "that eating was physic against the

malady hunger." I do not disapprove the use we make of things the earth produces, nor doubt, in the least, of

the power and fertility of nature, and of its application to our necessities: I very well see that pikes and

swallows live by her laws; but I mistrust the inventions of our mind, our knowledge and art, to countenance

which, we have abandoned nature and her rules, and wherein we keep no bounds nor moderation. As we call

the piling up of the first laws that fall into our hands, justice, and their practice and dispensation very often

foolish and very unjust; and as those who scoff at and accuse it, do not nevertheless, blame that noble virtue

itself, but only condemn the abuse and profanation of that sacred title; so in physic I very much honor that

glorious name, its propositions, its promises, so useful for the service of mankind, but the ordinances it foists

In the first place, experience makes me dread it; for among all my acquaintance, I see no people so soon sick,

and so long before they are well, as those who take much physic; their very health is altered and corrupted by

their frequent prescriptions. Physicians are not content to deal only with the sick, but they will moreover

corrupt health itself, for fear men should at any time escape their authority. Do they not, from a continual and

perfect health, extract suspicion of some great sickness to ensue? I have been sick often enough, and have

always found my sicknesses easy enough to be supported (though I have made trial of almost all sorts) and as

short as those of any other, without their help, or without swallowing their illtasting doses. The health I have

is full and free, without other rule or discipline than my own custom and pleasure. Every place serves me well

enough to stay in, for I need no other conveniences, when I am sick, than what I must have when I am well. I

never disturb myself that I have no physician, no apothecary, nor any other assistance, which I see most other

sick men more afflicted at than they are with their disease. What! Do the doctors themselves show us more

felicity and duration in their own lives, that may manifest to us some apparent effect of their skill?

There is not a nation in the world that has not been many ages without physic; and these the first ages, that is

to say, the best and most happy; and the tenth part of the world knows nothing of it yet; many nations are

ignorant of it to this day, where men live more healthful and longer than we do here, and even among us the

common people live well enough without it. The Romans were six hundred years before they received it; and

after having made trial of it, banished it from their city at the instance of Cato the Censor, who made it appear

how easy it was to live without it, having himself lived four score and five years, and kept his wife alive to an

extreme old age, not without physic, but without a physician: for everything that we find to be healthful to

life may be called physic. He kept his family in health, as Plutarch says, if I mistake not, with hare's milk; as

Pliny reports, that the Arcadians cured all manner of diseases with that of a cow; and Herodotus says, the

Lybians generally enjoy rare health, by a custom they have, after their children are arrived to four years of

age, to burn and cauterize the veins of their head and temples, by which means they cut off all defluxions of

rheum for their whole lives. And the country people of our province make use of nothing, in all sorts of

distempers, but the strongest wine they can get, mixed with a great deal of saffron and spice, and always with

And to say the truth, of all this diversity and confusion of prescriptions, what other end and effect is there

after all, but to purge the belly? which a thousand ordinary simples will do as well; and I do not know

whether such evacuations be so much to our advantage as they pretend, and whether nature does not require a

residence of her excrements to a certain proportion, as wine does of its lees to keep it alive: you often see

healthful men fall into vomitings and fluxs of the belly by some extrinsic accident, and make a great

evacuation of excrements, without any preceding need, or any following benefit, but rather with hurt to their

constitution. 'Tis from the great Plato, that I lately learned, that of three sorts of motions which are natural to

us, purging is the worst, and that no man unless he be a fool, ought to take anything to that purpose but in the

extremest necessity. Men disturb and irritate the disease by contrary oppositions; it must be the way of living

that must gently dissolve, and bring it to its end. The violent gripings and contest between the drug and the

disease, are ever to our loss, since the combat is fought within ourselves, and that the drug is an assistant not

to be trusted, being in its own nature an enemy to our health and by trouble having only access into our

condition. Let it alone a little; the general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles, also takes care of

men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself. 'Tis to much purpose

we cry out "Bihore," 'tis a way to make us hoarse, but not to hasten the matter. 'Tis a proud and

uncompassionate order; our fears, our despair displease and stop it from, instead of inviting it to our relief; it

owes its course to the disease, as well as to health; and will not suffer itself to be corrupted in favor of the one

to the prejudice of the other's right, for it would then fall into disorder. Let us, in God's name follow it; it

leads those that follow, and those who will not follow it, drags along, both their fury and physic together.

Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.

One asking a Lacedaemonian what had made him live so long, he made answer, "The ignorance of physic;"

and so Emperor Adrian continually exclaimed as he was dying, that the crowd of physicians had killed him.

A bad wrestler turned physician: "Courage," says Diogenes to him, "thou hast done well, for now thou wilt

throw those who had formerly thrown thee." But they have this advantage, according to Nicocles, that the sun

gives light to their success and the earth covers their failures. And besides, they have a very advantageous

way of making use of all sorts of events; for what fortune, nature, or any other cause (of which the number is

infinite), produces of good and healthful in us, it is the privilege of physic to attribute to itself; all the happy

successes that happen to the patient, must be thence derived; the accidents that have cured me, and a thousand

others, who do not employ physicians, physicians usurp to themselves: and as to ill accidents, they either

absolutely disown them, in laying the fault upon the patient, by such frivolous reasons as they are never at a

loss for; as "he lay with his arms out of bed," or "he was disturbed with the rattling of a coach:"

or "somebody had set open the casement," or "he had lain upon his left side;" or "he had some disagreeable

fancies in his head;" in sum, a word, a dream, or a look, seems to them excuse sufficient wherewith to palliate

their own errors; or, if they so please, they even make use of our growing worse, and do their business in this

way which can never fail them; which is by buzzing us in the ear when the disease is more enflamed by their

medicaments, that it had been much worse but for those remedies; he, whom from an ordinary cold they have

thrown into a double tertianague, had but for them been in a continued fever. They do not much care what

mischief they do, since it turns to their own profit. In earnest, they have reason to require a very favorable

belief from their patients; and, indeed, it ought to be a very easy one, to swallow things so hard to be

believed. Plato said very well, that physicians were the only men who might lie at pleasure, since our health

Aesop, a most excellent author, and of whom few men discover all the graces, pleasantly represents to us the

tyrannical authority physicians usurp over poor creatures, weakened and subdued by sickness and fear, when

he tells us, that a sick person, being asked by his physician what operation he found of the potion he had

given him: "I have sweated very much," says the sick man. "That's good," says the physician. Another time,

having asked how he felt himself after his physic: "I have been very cold, and have had a great shivering

upon me," said he. "That is good," replied the physician. After the third potion he asked him again how he

did: "Why, I find myself swollen, and puffed up," said he, "as if I had a dropsy." "That is very well," said the

physician. One of his servants coming presently after to inquire how he felt himself, "Truly, friend," said he,

There was a more just law in Egypt, by which the physician, for the first three days, was to take charge of his

patient; at the patient's own risk and cost: but those three days being past, it was to be at his own. For what

reason is it, that their patron, Aesculapius, should be struck with thunder for restoring Hippolitus from death

and his followers be pardoned, who send so many souls from life to death? A physician, boasting to Nicocles

that his art was of great authority: "It is so, indeed," said Nicocles, "that can with impunity kill so many

As to what remains, had I been of their counsel, I would have rendered my discipline more sacred and

mysterious; they begun well, but they have not ended so. It was a good beginning to make gods and demons

the authors of their science, and to have used a peculiar way of speaking and writing, notwithstanding that

philosophy concludes it folly to persuade a man to his own good by an unintelligible way: "Ut si quis

"Terrigenam, herbigradam, domipotam, sanguina cassam:" It was a good rule in their art, and that

accompanies all other vain, fantastic, and supernatural arts, that the patient's belief should prepossess them

with good hope and assurance of their effects and operation: a rule they hold to that degree, as to maintain

that the most inexpert and ignorant physician is more proper for a patient who has confidence in him, than the

most learned and experienced, whom he is not so acquainted with. Nay, even the very choice of most of their

drugs is in some sort mysterious and divine; the left foot of a tortoise, the urine of a lizard, the dung of an

elephant, the liver of a mole, blood drawn from under the right wing of a white pigeon; and for us who have

the stone (so scornfully they use us in our miseries) the excrement of rats beaten to powder, and such like

trash and fooleries which rather carry a face of magical enchantment than of any solid science. I omit the odd

number of their pills, the destination of certain days and feasts of the year, the superstition of gathering their

simples at certain hours, and that so austere and very wise countenance and carriage which Pliny himself so

much derides. But they have, as I said, failed in that they have not added to this fine beginning, the making

their meetings and consultations more religious and secret, where no profane person should have admission,

no more than in the secret ceremonies of Aesculapius; for by the reason of this it falls out that their

irresolution, the weakness of their arguments, divinations and foundations, the sharpness of their disputes,

full of hatred, jealousy, and selfconsideration, coming to be discovered by every one, a man must be

marvelously blind not to see that he runs a very great hazard in their hands. Who ever saw one physician

approve of another's prescription, without taking something away, or adding something to it? by which they

sufficiently betray their tricks, and make it manifest to us that they therein more consider their own

reputation, and consequently their profit, than their patient's interest. He was a much wiser man of their tribe,

who of old gave it as a rule, that only one physician should undertake a sick person; for if he do nothing to

purpose, one single man's default can bring no great scandal upon the art of medicine; and, on the contrary,

the glory will be great, if he happen to have success; whereas, when there are many, they at every turn bring a

disrepute upon their calling, forasmuch as they oftener do hurt than good. They ought to be satisfied with the

perpetual disagreement which is found in the opinions of the principal masters and ancient authors of this

science, which is only known to men well read, without discovering to the vulgar the controversies and

Will you have one example of the ancient controversy in physic? Herophilus lodges the original cause of all

diseases in the humors; Erasistratus, in the blood of the arteries; Asclepiades, in the invisible atoms of the

pores; Alcmaeon, in the exuberance or defect of our bodily strength; Diocles, in the inequality of the elements

of which the body is composed, and in the quality of the air we breathe; Strato, in the abundance, crudity, and

corruption of the nourishment we take; and Hippocrates lodges it in the spirits. There is a certain friend of

theirs, whom they know better than I, who declares upon this subject, "that the most important science in

practice among us, as that which is intrusted with our health and conservation, is, by ill luck, the most

uncertain, the most perplexed, and agitated with the greatest mutations." There is no great danger in our

mistaking the height of the sun, or the fraction of some astronomical computation: but here, where our whole

being is concerned, 'tis not wisdom to abandon ourselves to the mercy of the agitation of so many contrary

Before the Peloponnesian war, there was no great talk of this science. Hippocrates brought it into repute;

whatever he established, Chrysippus overthrew; after that, Erasistratus, Aristotle's grandson, overthrew what

Chrysippus had written; after these, the Empirics started up, who took a quite contrary way to the ancients in

the management of this art; when the credit of these began a little to decay, Herophilus set another sort of

practice on foot, which Asclepiades in turn stood up against, and overthrew; then, in their turn the opinions

first of Themiso, and then of Musa, and after that those of Vectius Valens, a physician famous through the

intelligence he had with Messalina, came in vogue; the empire of physic in Nero's time was established in

Thessalus, who abolished and condemned all that had been held till his time; this man's doctrine was refuted

by Crinas of Marseilles, who first brought all medicinal operations under the Ephemerides and motions of the

stars, and reduced eating, sleeping, and drinking to hours that were most pleasing to Mercury, and the moon;

his authority was soon after supplanted by Charinus, a physician of the same city of Marseilles; a man who

not only controverted all the ancients methods of physic, but moreover the usage of hot baths, that had been

generally, and for so many ages in common use; he made men bathe in cold water, even in winter, and

plunged his sick patients in the natural waters of streams. No Roman till Pliny's time had ever vouchsafed to

practice physic; that office was only performed by Greeks and foreigners, as 'tis now among us French, by

those who sputter Latin; for, as a very great physician says, we do not easily accept the medicine we

understand, no more than we do the drugs we ourselves gather. If the nations whence we fetch our guaiacum,

sarsaparilla, and China wood, have physicians, how great a value must we imagine, by the same

recommendation of strangeness, rarity, and dear purchase, do they set upon our cabbage and parsley? for who

would dare to contemn things so far fetched, and sought out at the hazard of so long and dangerous a voyage?

Since these ancient mutations in physic, there have been infinite others down to our own times, and, for the

most part, mutations entire and universal, as those, for example, produced by Paracelsus, Fioravanti, and

Argentier; for they, as I am told, not only alter one recipe, but the whole contexture and rules of the body of

physic, accusing all others of ignorance and imposition who have practiced before them. At this rate, in what

If we were even assured that, when they make a mistake that mistake of theirs would do us no harm, though it

did us no good, it were a reasonable bargain to venture the making ourselves better without any danger of

being made worse. Aesop tells a story, that one who had bought a Morisco slave, believing that his black

complexion was accidental in him, and occasioned by the ill usage of his former master, caused him to enter

into a course of physic, and with great care to be often bathed and purged: it happened that the Moor was

nothing amended in his tawny complexion, but he wholly lost his former health. How often do we see

physicians impute the death of their patients to one another? I remember that some years ago, there was an

epidemical disease, very dangerous, and for the most part mortal, that raged in the towns about us: the storm

being over which had swept away an infinite number of men, one of the most famous physicians of all the

country, presently after published a book upon that subject, wherein, upon better thoughts, he confesses, that

the letting blood in that disease was the principal cause of so many mishaps. Moreover, their authors hold that

there is no physic that has not something hurtful in it. And if even those of the best operation in some

measure offend us, what must those do that are totally misapplied? For my own part, though there were

nothing else in the case, I am of opinion, that to those who loathe the taste of physic, it must needs be a

dangerous and prejudicial endeavor to force it down at so incommodious a time, and with so much aversion,

and believe that it marvelously distempers a sick person at a time when he has so much need of repose. And

moreover, if we but consider the occasions upon which they usually ground the cause of our diseases, they

are, so light and nice, that I thence conclude a very little error in the dispensation of their drugs may do a

great deal of mischief. Now, if the mistake of a physician be so dangerous, we are in but a scurvy condition;

for it is almost impossible but he must often fall into those mistakes: he had need of too many parts,

considerations, and circumstances, rightly to level his design: he must know the sick person's complexion, his

temperament, his humors, inclinations, actions, nay, his very thoughts and imaginations; he must be assured

of the external circumstances, of the nature of the place, the quality of the air and season, the situation of the

planets, and their influences: he must know in the disease, the causes, prognostics, affections, and critical

days; in the drugs, the weight, the power of working, the country, figure, age, and dispensation, and he must

know how rightly to proportion and mix them together, to beget a just and perfect symmetry; wherein if there

be the least error, if among so many springs there be but any one out of order, 'tis enough to destroy us. God

knows with how great difficulty most of these things are to be understood: for (for example) how shall a

physician find out the true sign of the disease, every disease being capable of an infinite number of

indications? How many doubts and controversies have they among themselves upon the interpretation of

urines? otherwise, whence should the continual debates we see among them about the knowledge of the

disease proceed? how could we excuse the error they so oft fall into, of taking fox for marten? In the diseases

I have had, though there were ever so little difficulty in the case, I never found three of one opinion: which I

A gentleman at Paris was lately cut for the stone by order of the physicians, in whose bladder, being

accordingly so cut, there was found no more stone than in the palm of his hand; and, in the same place, a

bishop, who was my particular good friend, having been earnestly pressed by the majority of the physicians

in town, whom he consulted, to suffer himself to be cut, to which also, upon their word, I used my interest in

persuade him, when he was dead, and opened, it appeared that he had no malady but in the kidneys. They are

least excusable for any error in this disease, by reason that it is in some sort palpable; and 'tis thence, that I

conclude surgery to be much more certain, by reason that it sees and feels what it does, and so goes less upon

conjecture; whereas the physicians have no speculum matricis, by which to examine our brains, lungs, and

Even the very promises of physic are incredible in themselves; for, having to provide against divers and

contrary accidents that often afflict us at one and the same time, and that have almost a necessary relation, as

the heat of the liver, and the coldness of the stomach, they will needs persuade us, that of their ingredients

one will heat the stomach, and the other will cool the liver; one has its commission to go directly to the

kidneys, nay even to the bladder, without scattering its operations by the way, and is to retain its power and

virtue through all those turns and meanders, even to the place to the service of which it is designed, by its

own occult property; this will dry the brain; that will moisten the lungs. Of all this bundle of things having

mixed up a potion, is it not a kind of madness to imagine or to hope that these differing virtues should

separate themselves from one another in this mixture and confusion, to perform so many various errands? I

should very much fear that they would either lose or change their tickets, and disturb one another's quarters.

And who can imagine but that, in this liquid confusion, these faculties must corrupt, confound and spoil one

another? And is not the danger still more, when the making up of this medicine is intrusted to the skill and

As we have doublet and breeches makers, distinct trades, to clothe us, and are so much the better fitted,

seeing that each of them meddles only with his own business, and has less to trouble his head with than the

tailor who undertakes all; and as, in matter of diet, great persons, for their better convenience and to the end

they may be better served, have cooks for the different offices, this for soups and potages, that for roasting,

instead of which if one cook should undertake the whole service, he could not so well perform it; so also as to

the cure of our maladies. The Egyptians had reason to reject this general trade of physician; and to divide the

profession: to each disease, to each part of the body, its particular workman; for that part was more properly

and with less confusion cared for, seeing the person looked to nothing else. Ours are not aware that he who

provides for all, provides for nothing; and that the entire government of this microcosm is more than they are

able to undertake. While they were afraid of stopping a dysentery, lest they should put the patient into a fever,

they killed me a friend, who was worth more than the whole pack of them put together. They counterpoise

their own divinations with the present evils; and because they will not cure the brain to the prejudice of the

As to the variety and weakness of the rationale of this profession, they are more manifest in it than in any

other art; aperitive medicines are proper for a man subject to the stone, by reason that opening and dilating

the passages they helped forward the slimy matter whereof gravel and stone are engendered, and convey that

downward which begins to harden and gather in the reins; aperitive things are dangerous for a man subject to

the stone, by reason that, opening and dilating the passages, they help forward the matter proper to create the

gravel toward the reins, which by their own propension being apt to seize it, 'tis not to be imagined but that a

great deal of what has been conveyed thither must remain behind: moreover, if the medicine happen to meet

with anything too large to be carried through all the narrow passages it must pass to be expelled, that

obstruction, whatever it is, being stirred by these aperitive things and thrown into those narrow passages,

coming to stop them, will occasion a certain and most painful death. They have the like uniformity in the

counsels they give us for the regiment of life; it is good to make water often, for we experimentally see that in

letting it lie long in the bladder we give it time to settle the sediment which will concrete into a stone; it is

good not to make water often; for the heavy excrements it carries along with it will not be voided without

violence, as we see by experience that a torrent that runs with force washes the ground it rolls over much

cleaner than the course of a slow and tardy stream; so, it is good to have often to do with women, for that

opens the passages and helps to evacuate gravel; it is also very ill to have often to do with women, because it

heats, tires, and weakens the reins. It is good to bathe frequently in hot water, forasmuch as that relaxes and

mollifies the places where the gravel and stone lie; it is also ill by reason that this application of external heat

helps the reins to bake, harden, and petrify the matter so disposed. For those who are taking baths it is most

healthful to eat little at night, to the end that the waters they are to drink the next morning may have a better

operation upon an empty stomach; on the other hand it is better to eat little at dinner, that it hinder not the

operation of the waters, while it is not yet perfect, and not to oppress the stomach so soon after the other

labor, but leave the office of digestion to the night, which will much better perform it than the day, when the

body and soul are in perpetual moving and action. Thus do they juggle and cant in all their discourses at our

expense; and they cannot give me one proposition against which I cannot erect a contrary of equal force. Let

them, then, no longer exclaim against those who in this trouble of sickness suffer themselves to be gently

guided by their own appetite and the advice of nature, and commit themselves to the common fortune.

I have seen in my travels almost all the famous baths of Christendom, and for some years past have begun to

make use of them myself: for I look upon bathing as generally wholesome, and believe that we suffer no little

inconveniences in our health by having left off the custom that was generally observed, in former times,

almost by all nations, and is yet in many, of bathing every day; and I cannot imagine but that we are much the

worse by having our limbs crusted and our pores stopped with dirt. And as to the drinking of them, fortune

has in the first place rendered them not at all unacceptable to my taste; and secondly, they are natural and

simple, which at least carry no danger with them, though they may do us no good, of which the infinite crowd

of people of all sorts and complexions who repair thither I take to be a sufficient warranty; and although I

have not there observed any extraordinary and miraculous effects, but that on the contrary, having more

narrowly than ordinary inquired into it, I have found all the reports of such operations that have been spread

abroad in those places illgrounded and false, and those that believe them (as people are willing to be gulled

in what they desire) deceived in them, yet I have seldom known any who have been made worse by those

waters, and a man cannot honestly deny but that they beget a better appetite, help digestion, and do in some

sort revive us, if we do not go too late and in too weak a condition, which I would dissuade every one from

doing. They have not the virtue to raise men from desperate and inveterate diseases, but they may help some

light indisposition, or prevent some threatening alteration. He who does not bring along with him so much

cheerfulness as to enjoy the pleasure of the company he will there meet, and of the walks and exercises to

which the amenity of those places invite us, will doubtless lose the best and surest part of their effect. For this

reason I have hitherto chosen to go to those of the most pleasant situation, where there was the best

conveniency of lodging, provision, and company, as the baths of Bagneres in France, those of Plombieres, on

the frontiers of Germany and Lorraine, those of Baden in Switzerland, those of Lucca in Tuscany, and

especially those of Della Villa, which I have the most and at various seasons frequented.

Every nation has particular opinions touching their use, and particular rules and methods in using them; and

all of them, according to what I have seen, almost with like effect. Drinking them is not at all received in

Germany; the Germans bathe for all diseases, and will lie dabbling in the water almost from sun to sun; in

Italy, where they drink nine days, they bathe at least thirty, and commonly drink the water mixed with some

other drugs to make it work the better. Here we are ordered to walk to digest it; there we are kept in bed after

taking it till it be wrought off, our stomachs and feet having continually hot cloths applied to them all the

while; and as the Germans have a particular practice generally to use cupping and scarification in the bath, so

the Italians have their doccie, which are certain little streams of this hot water brought through pipes, and

with these bathe an hour in the morning, and as much in the afternoon, for a month together, either the head,

stomach, or any other part where the evil lies. There are infinite other varieties of customs in every country,

or rather there is no manner of resemblance to one another. By this, you may see that this little part of physic

to which I have only submitted, though the least depending upon art of all others, has yet a great share of the

The poets put what they would say with greater emphasis and grace; witness these two epigrams:

The Baron de Caupene, in Chalosse, and I, have between us the advowson of a benefice of great extent, at the

foot of our mountains; called Lahontan. It is with the inhabitants of this angle, as 'tis said of those of the Val

d'Angrougne: they lived a peculiar sort of life, their fashions, clothes, and manners distinct from other people;

ruled and governed by certain particular laws and usages, received from father to son, to which they

submitted, without other constraint than the reverence to custom. This little state had continued from all

antiquity in so happy a condition, that no neighboring judge was ever put to the trouble of inquiring into their

doings; no advocate was ever retained to give them counsel, no stranger ever called in to compose their

differences; nor was ever any of them seen to go abegging. They avoided all alliances and traffic with the

outer world, that they might not corrupt the purity of their own government; till, as they say, one of them, in

the memory of man having a mind spurred on with a noble ambition, took it into his head, to bring his name

into credit and reputation, to make one of his sons something more than ordinary, and having put him to learn

to write in a neighboring town, made him at last a brave village notary. This fellow, having acquired such

dignity, began to disdain their ancient customs, and to buzz into the people's ears the pomp of the other parts

of the nation; the first prank he played was to advise a friend of his, whom somebody had offended by sawing

off the horns of one of his goats, to make his complaint to the royal judges thereabout, and so he went on

from one to another, till he had spoiled and confounded all. In the tail of this corruption, they say, there

happened another, and of worse consequence, by means of a physician, who falling in love with one of their

daughters, had a mind to marry her and to live among them. This man first of all began to teach them the

names of fevers, colds, and imposthumes; the seat of the heart, liver, and intestines, a science till then utterly

unknown to them; and instead of garlic, with which they were wont to cure all manner of diseases how

painful or extreme soever, he taught them, though it were but for a cough, or any little cold, to take strange

mixtures, and began to make a trade not only of their health but of their lives. They swear till then they never

perceived the evening air to be offensive to the head; that to drink, when they were hot, was hurtful, and that

the winds of autumn were more unwholesome than those of spring; that, since this use of physic, they find

themselves oppressed with a legion of unaccustomed diseases, and that they perceive a general decay in their

ancient vigor, and their lives are cut shorter by the half. This is the first of my stories.

The other is, that before I was afflicted with the stone, hearing that the blood of a hegoat was with many in

very great esteem, and looked upon as a celestial manna rained down upon these latter ages for the good and

preservation of the lives of men, and having heard it spoken of by men of understanding for an admirable

drug, and of infallible operation; I, who have ever thought myself subject to all the accidents that can befall

other men, had a mind, in my perfect health, to furnish myself with this miracle, and therefore gave order to

have a goat fed at home according to the recipe: for he must be taken in the hottest month of all summer, and

must only have aperitive herbs given him to eat, and white wine to drink. I came home by chance the very

day he was to be killed; and some one came and told me, that the cook had found two or three great balls in

his paunch, that rattled against one another among what he had eaten. I was curious to have all his entrails

brought before me, where, having caused the skin that enclosed them to be cut, there tumbled out three great

lumps, as light as sponges, so that they appeared to be hollow; but, as to the rest, hard and firm without, and

spotted and mixed all over with various dead colors; one was perfectly round, and of the bigness of an

ordinary ball; the other two something less, of an imperfect roundness, as seeming not to be arrived at their

full growth. I find, by inquiry of people accustomed to open these animals, that it is a rare and unusual

accident. 'Tis likely these are stones of the same nature with ours: and if so, it must needs be a very vain hope

in those who have the stone, to extract their cure from the blood of a beast that was himself about to die of the

same disease. For to say that the blood does not participate of this contagion, and does not thence alter its

wonted virtue, it is rather to be believed than nothing is engendered in a body but by the conspiracy and

communication of all the parts; the whole mass works together, though one part contributes more to the work

than another, according to the diversity of operations: wherefore it is very likely that there was some

petrifying quality in all the parts of this goat. It was not so much for fear of the future, and for myself, that I

was curious in this experiment, but because it falls out in mine, as it does in many other families, that the

women store up such little trumperies for the service of the people, using the same recipe in fifty several

diseases, and such a recipe as they will not take themselves, and yet triumph when they happen to be

As to what remains I honor physicians, not according to the precept for their necessity (for to this passage

may be opposed another of the prophet reproving King Asa for having recourse to a physician), but for

themselves, having known many very good men of that profession, and most worthy to be beloved. I do not

attack them; 'tis their art I inveigh against, and do not much blame them for making their advantage of our

folly, for most men do the same. Many callings, both of greater and of less dignity than theirs, have no other

foundation or support than public abuse. When I am sick I send for them if they be near, only to have their

company, and pay them as others do. I give them leave to command me to keep myself warm, because I

naturally love to do it, and to appoint leeks or lettuce for my broth; to order me white wine or claret; and so as

to all other things, which are indifferent to my palate and custom. I know very well that I do nothing for them

in so doing, because sharpness and strangeness are incidents of the very essence of physic. Lycurgus ordered

wine for the sick Spartans: Why? because they abominated the drinking it when they were well; as a

gentleman, a neighbor of mine, takes it as an excellent medicine in his fever, because naturally he mortally

hates the taste of it. How many do we see among them of my humor, who despise taking physic themselves,

are men of a liberal diet, and live a quite contrary sort of life to what they prescribe others? What is this but

flatly to abuse our simplicity? for their own lives and health are no less dear to them than ours are to us, and

consequently they would accommodate their practice to their rules, if they did not themselves know how false

'Tis the fear of death and of pain, impatience of disease, and a violent and indiscreet desire of a present cure,

that so blind us; 'tis pure cowardice that makes our belief so pliable and easy to be imposed upon: and yet

most men do not so much believe as they acquiesce and permit; for I hear them find fault and complain as

well as we; but they resolve at last, "What should I do then?" As if impatience were of itself a better remedy

than patience. Is there any one of those who have suffered themselves to be persuaded into this miserable

subjection, who does not equally surrender himself to all sorts of impostures? who does not give up himself

to the mercy of whoever has the impudence to promise him a cure? The Babylonians carried their sick into

the public square; the physician was the people; every one who passed by, being in humanity and civility

obliged to inquire of their condition, gave some advice according to his own experience. We do little better;

there is not so simple a woman whose chatterings and drenches we do not make use of; and according to my

humor, if I were to take physic, I would sooner choose to take theirs than any other, because at least, if they

do no good, they will do no harm. What Homer and Plato said of the Egyptians, that they were all physicians,

may be said of all nations; there is not a man among any of them who does not boast of some rare recipe, and

who will not venture it upon his neighbor, if he will let him. I was the other day in company where some of

my fraternity told us of a new sort of pills made up of a hundred and odd ingredients; it made us very merry,

and was a singular consolation, for what rock could withstand so great a battery? And yet I hear from those

I cannot take my hand from the paper, before I have added a word or two more concerning the assurance they

give us of the infallibility of their drugs, from the experiments they have made.

The greatest part, I should say above twothirds, of the medicinal virtues, consist in the quintessence, or

occult property of simples, of which we can have no other instruction than use and custom; for quintessence

is no other than a quality of which we cannot by our reason find out the cause. In such proofs, those they

pretend to have acquired by the inspiration of some demon, I am content to receive (for I meddle not with

miracles); and also the proofs which are drawn from things that, upon some other account, often fall into use

among us; as if in the wool, wherewith we are wont to clothe ourselves, there has accidentally some occult

dessicative property been found out of curing kibed heels, or as if in the radish we eat for food, there has been

found out some aperitive operation. Galen reports, that a man happened to be cured of a leprosy by drinking

wine out of a vessel into which a viper had crept by chance. In this example we find the means and a very

likely guide and conduct to this experience, as we also do in those that physicians pretend to have been

directed to by the example of some beasts. But in most of their other experiments wherein they affirm they

have been conducted by fortune, and to have had no other guide than chance, I find the progress of this

information incredible. Suppose man looking round about him upon the infinite number of things, plants,

animals, metals; I do not know where he would begin his trial; and though his fancy should fix him upon an

elk's horn, wherein there must be a very pliant and easy belief, he will yet find himself as perplexed in his

second operation. There are so many maladies and so many circumstances presented to him, that before he

can attain the certainty of the point to which the perfection of his experience should arrive, human sense will

be at the end of its lesson; and before he can, among this infinity of things, find out what this horn is; among

so many diseases, what is epilepsy; the many complexions in a melancholy person; the many seasons in

winter; the many nations in the French; the many ages in age; the many celestial mutations in the conjunction

of Venus and Saturn; the many parts in man's body, nay, in a finger; and being, in all this, directed neither by

argument, conjecture, example, nor divine inspirations, but merely by the sole motion of fortune, it must be

by a perfectly artificial, regular, and methodical fortune. And after the cure is performed, how can he assure

himself that it was not because the disease had arrived at its period or an effect of chance? or the operation of

something else that he had eaten, drunk, or touched that day? or by virtue of his grandmother's prayers? And,

moreover, had this experiment been perfect, how many times was it repeated, and this long beadroll of haps

and concurrences strung anew by chance to conclude a certain rule? And when the rule is concluded, by

whom, I pray you? Of so many millions, there are but three men who take upon them to record their

experiments: must fortune needs just hit one of these? What if another, and a hundred others, have made

contrary experiments? We might, peradventure, have some light in this, were all the judgments and

arguments of men known to us: but that three witnesses, three doctors, should lord it over all mankind, is

against reason: it were necessary that human nature should have deputed and culled them out, and that they

OTHERS form man; I only report him: and represent a particular one, ill fashioned enough, and whom, if I

had to model him anew, I should certainly make something else than what he is: but that's past recalling.

Now, though the features of my picture alter and change, 'tis 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 public motion and their own. Even constancy itself is no other but a slower and more languishing

motion. I cannot fix my object; 'tis always tottering and reeling by a natural giddiness: I take it as it is at the

instant I consider 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. 'Tis a counterpart

of various and changeable accidents, and of 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 myself, 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 trial.

I propose a life ordinary and without lustre: 'tis all one; all moral philosophy may as well be applied to a

common and private life, as to one of richer composition: every man carries the entire form of human

condition. Authors communicate themselves to the people by some especial and extrinsic mark; I, the first of

any, by my universal being; as Michel de Montaigne, not as a grammarian, a poet, or a lawyer. If the world

find fault that I speak too much of myself, I find fault that they do not so much as think of themselves. But is

it reason, that being so particular in my way of living, I should pretend to recommend myself to the public

knowledge? And is it also reason that I should produce to 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 and without art? The fancies of

music 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 I 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 sequences of it, nor ever more exactly and fully arrived at the end he

proposed to himself. To perfect it, I need bring nothing but fidelity to the work; and that is there, and the most

pure and sincere that is anywhere 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: "Can a man of such sober conversation have written so foolish

a book?" Or "Do so learned writings proceed from a man of so weak conversation?" He who talks at a very

ordinary rate, and writes rare matter, 'tis to say that his capacity is borrowed and not his own. A learned man

is not learned in all things: but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself; here my

book and I go hand in hand together. Elsewhere men may commend or censure the work, without reference to

the workman; here they cannot: who touches the one, touches the other. He who shall judge of it without

knowing him, will more wrong himself than me; he who does know him, gives me all the satisfaction I

desire. I shall be happy beyond my desert, if I can obtain only thus much from the public approbation, as to

make men of understanding perceive that I was capable of profiting by knowledge, had I had it; and that I

Be pleased here to excuse what I often repeat, that I very rarely repent, and that my conscience is satisfied

with itself, not as the conscience of an angel, or that of a horse, but as the conscience of a man, always adding

this clause, not one of ceremony, but a true and real submission, that I speak inquiring and doubting, purely

and simply referring myself to the common and accepted beliefs for the resolution. I do not teach, I only

There is no vice that is absolutely a vice which does not offend, and that a sound judgment does not accuse;

for there is in it so manifest a deformity and inconvenience, that, peradventure, they are in the right who say

that it is chiefly begotten by stupidity and ignorance: so hard is it to imagine that a man can know without

abhorring it. Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself. Vice leaves repentance in

the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other

grief and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance, which is so much the more grievous, by reason it springs

within, as the cold and heat of fevers are more sharp than those that only strike upon the outward skin. I hold

for vices (but every one according to its proportion), not only those which reason and nature condemn, but

those also which the opinion of men, though false and erroneous, have made such, if authorized by law and

There is likewise no virtue which does not rejoice a welldescended nature; there is a kind of, I know not

what, congratulation in well doing that gives us an inward satisfaction, and a generous boldness that

accompanies a good conscience: a soul daringly vicious may, peradventure, arm itself with security, but it

cannot supply itself with this complacency and satisfaction. 'Tis no little satisfaction to feel a man's self

preserved from the contagion of so depraved an age, and to say to himself: "Whoever could penetrate into my

soul would not there find me guilty either of the affliction or ruin of any one, or of revenge or envy, or any

offense against the public laws, or of innovation or disturbance, or failure of my word; and though the license

of the time permits and teaches every one so to do, yet have I not plundered any Frenchman's goods, or taken

his money, and have lived upon what is my own, in war as well as in peace; neither have I set any man to

work without paying him his hire." These testimonies of a good conscience please, and this natural rejoicing

To ground the recompense of virtuous actions upon the approbation of others is too uncertain and unsafe a

foundation, especially in so corrupt and ignorant an age as this, wherein the good opinion of the vulgar is

injurious: upon whom do you rely to show you what is recommendable? God defend me from being an

honest man, according to the descriptions of honor I daily see every one make of himself. "Quae fuerant vitia,

mores sunt." Some of my friends have at times schooled and scolded me with great sincerity and plainness,

either of their own voluntary motion, or by me entreated to it as to an office, which to a wellcomposed soul

surpasses not only in utility, but in kindness all other offices of friendship: I have always received them with

the most open arms, both of courtesy and acknowledgment; but, to say the truth, I have often found so much

false measure, both in their reproaches and praises, that I had not done much amiss, rather to have done ill,

than to have done well according to their notions. We, who live private lives, not exposed to any other view

than our own, ought chiefly to have settled a pattern within ourselves by which to try our actions; and

according to that, sometimes to encourage and sometimes to correct ourselves. I have my laws and my

judicature to judge of myself, and apply myself more to these than to any other rules: I do, indeed, restrain

my actions according to others; but extend them not by any other rule than my own. You yourself only know

if you are cowardly and cruel, loyal and devout: others see you not, and only guess at you by uncertain

conjectures, and do not so much see your nature as your art; rely not therefore upon their opinions, but stick

to your own: "Tuo tibi judicio est utendum... Virtutis et vitiorum grave ipsius conscientiae pondus est: qua

But the saying that repentance immediately follows the sin seems not to have respect to sin in its high estate,

which is lodged in us as in its own proper habitation. One may disown and retract the vices that surprise us,

and to which we are hurried by passions; but those which by a long habit are rooted in a strong and vigorous

will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is no other but a recanting of the will and an opposition to

our fancies, which lead us which way they please. It makes this person disown his former virtue and

'Tis an exact life that maintains itself in due order in private. Every one may juggle his part, and represent an

honest man upon the stage: but within, and in his own bosom, where all may do as they list, where all is

concealed, to be regular there's the point. The next degree is to be so in his house, and in his ordinary

actions, for which we are accountable to none, and where there is no study nor artifice. And therefore Bias,

setting forth the excellent state of a private family, says: "of which the master is the same within, by his own

virtue and temper, that he is abroad, for fear of the laws and report of men." And it was a worthy saying of

Julius Drusus, to the masons who offered him, for three thousand crowns, to put his house in such a posture

that his neighbours should no longer have the same inspection into it as before; "I will give you," said he, "six

thousand to make it so that everybody may see into every room." 'Tis honorably recorded of Agesilaus, that

he used in his journeys always to take up his lodgings in temples, to the end that the people and the gods

themselves might pry into his most private actions. Such a one has been a miracle to the world, in whom

neither his wife nor servant has ever seen anything so much as remarkable; few men have been admired by

their own domestics; no one was ever a prophet, not merely in his own house, but in his own country, says

the experience of histories: 'tis the same in things of naught, and in this low example the image of a greater is

to be seen. In my country of Gascony, they look upon it as a drollery to see me in print; the further off I am

read from my own home, the better I am esteemed. I am fain to purchase printers in Guienne; elsewhere they

purchase me. Upon this it is that they lay their foundation who conceal themselves present and living, to

obtain a name when they are absent and dead. I had rather have a great deal less in hand, and do not expose

myself to the world upon any other account than my present share; when I leave it I quit the rest. See this

functionary whom the people escort in state, with wonder and applause, to his very door; he puts off the

pageant with his robe, and falls so much the lower by how much he was higher exalted: in himself within, all

is tumult and degraded. And though all should be regular there, it will require a vivid and wellchosen

judgment to perceive it in these low and private actions; to which may be added, that order is a dull, somber

virtue. To enter a breach, conduct an embassy, govern a people, are actions of renown: to reprehend, laugh,

sell, pay, love, hate, and gently and justly converse with a man's own family, and with himself; not to relax,

not to give a man's self the lie is more rare and hard, and less remarkable. By which means, retired lives,

whatever, is said to the contrary, undergo duties of as great or greater difficulty than the others do; and

private men, says Aristotle, serve virtue more painfully and highly, than those in authority do: we prepare

ourselves for eminent occasions, more out of glory than conscience. The shortest way to arrive at glory,

would be to do that for conscience which we do for glory: and the virtue of Alexander appears to me of much

less vigor in his great theater, than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure employment. I can easily

conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates, I cannot. Who shall ask the

one what he can do, he will answer, "Subdue the world:" and who shall put the same question to the other, he

will say, "Carry on human life conformably with its natural condition;" a much more general, weighty, and

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise

itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity. As they who judge and try us within, make no great account of the luster

of our public actions, and see they are only streaks and rays of clear water springing from a slimy and muddy

bottom: so, likewise, they who judge of us by this gallant outward appearance, in like manner conclude of our

internal constitution; and cannot couple common faculties, and like their own, with the other faculties that

astonish them, and are so far out of their sight. Therefore it is, that we give such savage forms to demons: and

who does not give Tamerlane great eyebrows, wide nostrils, a dreadful visage, and a prodigious stature,

according to the imagination he has conceived by the report of his name? Had any one formerly brought me

to Erasmus, I should hardly have believed but that all was adage and apothegm he spoke to his man or his

hostess. We much more aptly imagine an artisan upon his closestool, or upon his wife, than a great president

venerable by his port and sufficiency: we fancy that they, from their high tribunals, will not abase themselves

so much as to live. As vicious souls are often incited by some foreign impulse to do well, so are virtuous

souls to do ill; they are therefore to be judged by their settled state, when they are at home, whenever that

may be; and, at all events, when they are nearer repose, and in their native station.

Natural inclinations are much assisted and fortified by education: but they seldom alter and overcome their

institution: a thousand natures of my time have escaped toward virtue or vice, through a quite contrary

these original qualities are not to be rooted out; they may be covered and concealed. The Latin tongue is as it

were natural to me; I understand it better than French; but I have not been used to speak it, nor hardly to write

it these forty years. Yet, upon extreme and sudden emotions which I have fallen into twice or thrice in my

life, and once, seeing my father in perfect health fall upon me in a swoon, I have always uttered my first

outcries and ejaculations in Latin; nature starting up, and forcibly expressing itself, in spite of so long a

They who in my time have attempted to correct the manners of the world by new opinions, reform seeming

vices, but the essential vices they leave as they were, if indeed, they do not augment them; and augmentation

is, therein, to be feared; we defer all other well doing upon the account of these external reformations, of less

cost and greater show, and thereby expiate cheaply, for the other natural consubstantial and intestine vices.

Look a little into our experience: there is no man, if he listen to himself, who does not in himself discover a

particular and governing form of his own, that jostles his education, and wrestles with the tempest of passions

that are contrary to it. For my part, I seldom find myself agitated with surprises; I always find myself in my

place, as heavy and unwieldy bodies do; if I am not at home, I am always near at hand; my dissipations do

not transport me very far, there is nothing strange nor extreme in the case; and yet I have sound and vigorous

The true condemnation, and which touches the common practice of men, is, that their very retirement itself is

full of filth and corruption; the idea of their reformation composed; their repentance sick and faulty, very

nearly as much as their sin. Some, either from having been linked to vice by a natural propension, or long

practice, cannot see its deformity. Others (of which constitution I am) do indeed feel the weight of vice, but

they counterbalance it with pleasure, or some other occasion; and suffer, and lend themselves to it, for a

certain price, but viciously and basely. Yet there might, haply, be imagined so vast a disproportion of

measure, where with justice the pleasure might excuse the sin, as we say of utility; not only if accidental, and

out of sin, as in thefts, but the very exercise of sin, as in the enjoyment of women, where the temptation is

Being the other day at Armaignac, on the estate of a kinsman of mine, I there saw a country fellow who was

by every one nicknamed the thief. He thus related the story of his life; that being born a beggar, and finding

that he should not be able, so as to be clear of indigence, to get his living by the sweat of his brow, he

resolved to turn thief, and by means of his strength of body, had exercised this trade all the time of his youth

in great security; for he ever made his harvest and vintage in other men's grounds, but a great way off, and in

so great quantities, that it was not to be imagined one man could have carried away so much in one night

upon his shoulders; and, moreover, was careful equally to divide and distribute the mischief he did, that the

loss was of less importance to every particular man. He is now grown old, and rich for a man of his condition,

thanks to his trade, which he openly confesses to every one. And to make his peace with God, he says, that he

is daily ready by good offices to make satisfaction to the successors of those he has robbed, and if he do not

finish (for to do it all at once he is not able) he will then leave it in charge to his heirs to perform the rest,

proportionably to the wrong he himself only knows he has done to each. By this description, true or false, this

man looks upon theft as a dishonest action, and hates it, but less than poverty, and simply repents; but to the

extent he has thus recompensed, he repents not. This is not that habit which incorporates us into vice, and

conforms even our understanding itself to it; nor is it that impetuous whirlwind that by gusts troubles and

blinds our souls and for the time precipitates us, judgment and all, into the power of vice.

I customarily do what I do thoroughly and make but one step on't; I have rarely any movement that hides

itself and steals away from my reason, and that does not proceed in the matter by the consent of all my

faculties, without division or intestine sedition; my judgment is to have all the blame or all the praise; and the

blame it once has, it has always; for almost from my infancy it has ever been one; the same inclination, the

same turn, the same force; and as to universal opinions, I fixed myself from my childhood in the place where

I resolved to stick. There are some sins that are impetuous, prompt, and sudden; let us set them aside; but in

these other sins so often repeated, deliberated, and contrived, whether sins of complexion or sins of

profession and vocation, I cannot conceive that they should have so long been settled in the same resolution,

unless the reason and conscience of him who has them, be constant to have them; and the repentance he

boasts to be inspired with on a sudden, is very hard for me to imagine or form. I follow not the opinion of the

Pythagorean sect, "that men take up a new soul when they repair to the images of the gods to receive their

oracles," unless he mean that it must needs be extrinsic, new, and lent for the time; our own showing so little

They act quite contrary to the stoical precepts, who do indeed, command us to correct the imperfections and

vices we know ourselves guilty of, but forbid us therefore to disturb the repose of our souls; these make us

believe that they have great grief and remorse within; but of amendment, correction, or interruption, they

make nothing appear. It cannot be a cure if the malady be not wholly discharged; if repentance were laid

upon the scale of the balance, it would weigh down sin. I find no quality so easy to counterfeit as devotion, if

men do not conform their manners and life to the profession; its essence is abstruse and occult; the

For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form,

and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity:

but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more, than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or

Cato. My actions are regular, and conformable with what I am, and to my condition; I can do no better; and

repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power; sorrow does. I imagine an infinite

number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no

more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so. If to

conceive and wish a nobler way of acting than that we have, should produce a repentance of our own, we

must then repent us of our most innocent actions, forasmuch as we may well suppose that in a more excellent

nature they would have been carried on with greater dignity and perfection; and we would that ours were so.

When I reflect upon the deportments of my youth, with that of my old age, I find that I have commonly

behaved myself with equal order in both, according to what I understand: this is all that my resistance can do.

I do not flatter myself; in the same circumstances I should do the same things. It is not a patch, but rather an

universal tincture, with which I am stained. I know no repentance, superficial, halfway and ceremonious; it

must sting me all over before I can call it so, and must prick my bowels as deeply and universally as God sees

As to business, many excellent opportunities have escaped me for want of good management; and yet my

deliberations were sound enough, according to the occurrences presented to me: 'tis their way to choose

always the easiest and safest course. I find that, in my former resolves, I have proceeded with discretion,

according to my own rule, and according to the state of the subject proposed, and should do the same a

thousand years hence in like occasions; I do not consider what it is now, but what it was then, when I

deliberated on it: the force of all counsel consists in the time; occasions and things eternally shift and change.

I have in my life committed some important errors, not for want of good understanding, but for want of good

luck. There are secret, and not to be foreseen, parts in matters we have in hand, especially in the nature of

men; mute conditions, that make no show, unknown sometimes even to the possessors themselves, that spring

and start up by incidental occasions; if my prudence could not penetrate into nor foresee them, I blame it not:

'tis commissioned no further than its own limits; if the event be too hard for me, and take the side I have

refused, there is no remedy; I do not blame myself, I accuse my fortune, and not my work; this cannot be

Phocion, having given the Athenians an advice that was not followed, and the affair nevertheless succeeding

contrary to his opinion, some one said to him; "Well, Phocion, art thou content that matters go so well?" "I

am very well content," replied he, "that this has happened so well, but I do not repent that I counseled the

other." When any of my friends address themselves to me for advice, I give it candidly and clearly, without

sticking, as almost all other men do, at the hazard of the thing's falling out contrary to my opinion, and that I

may be reproached for my counsel; I am very indifferent as to that, for the fault will be theirs for having

I, for my own part, can rarely blame any one but myself for my oversights and misfortunes, for indeed I

seldom solicit the advice of another, if not by honor of ceremony, or excepting where I stand in need of

information, special science, or as to matter of fact. But in things wherein I stand in need of nothing but

judgment, other men's reasons may serve to fortify my own, but have little power to dissuade me; I hear them

all with civility and patience: but to my recollection, I never made use of any but my own. With me, they are

but flies and atoms, that confound and distract my will; I lay no great stress upon my opinions; but I lay as

little upon those of others, and fortune rewards me accordingly: if I receive but little advice, I also give but

little. I am seldom consulted, and still more seldom believed, and know no concern, either public or private,

that has been mended or bettered by my advice. Even they whom fortune had in some sort tied to my

direction, have more willingly suffered themselves to be governed by any other counsels than mine. And as a

man who am as jealous of my repose as of my authority, I am better pleased that it should be so; in leaving

me there, they humor what I profess, which is to settle and wholly contain myself within myself. I take a

pleasure in being uninterested in other men's affairs, and disengaged from being their warranty, and

In all affairs that are past, be it how it will, I have very little regret; for this imagination puts me out of my

pain, that they were so to fall out; they are in the great revolution of the world, and in the chain of stoical

causes: your fancy cannot, by wish and imagination, move one tittle, but that the great current of things will

As to the rest, I abominate that incidental repentance which old age brings along with it. He, who said of old,

that he was obliged to his age for having weaned him from pleasure, was of another opinion than I am; I can

never think myself beholden to impotency, for any good it can do to me; "Nec tam aversa unquam videbitur

ab opere suo providentia, ut debilitas inter optima inventa sit." Our appetites are rare in old age; a profound

satiety seizes us after the act; in this I see nothing of conscience; chagrin and weakness imprint in us a

drowsy and rheumatic virtue. We must not suffer ourselves to be so wholly carried away by natural

alterations, as to suffer our judgments to be imposed upon by them. Youth and pleasure have not formerly so

far prevailed with me, that I did not well enough discern the face of vice in pleasure; neither does the distaste

that years have brought me, so far prevail with me now, that I cannot discern pleasure in vice. Now that I am

no more in my flourishing age, I judge as well of these things as if I were. I, who narrowly and strictly

examine it, find my reason the very same it was in my most licentious age, except, perhaps, that 'tis weaker

and more decayed by being grown older; and I find that the pleasure it refuses me upon the account of my

bodily health, it would no more refuse now, in consideration of the health of my soul, than at any time

heretofore. I do not repute it the more valiant for not being able to combat; my temptations are so broken and

mortified, that they are not worth its opposition; holding but out my hands, I repel them. Should one present

the old concupiscence before it, I fear it would have less power to resist it than heretofore; I do not discern

that in itself it judges anything otherwise now, than it formerly did, nor that it has acquired any new light:

wherefore, if there be convalescence, 'tis an enchanted one. Miserable kind of remedy, to owe one's health to

one's disease! 'Tis not that our misfortune should perform this office, but the good fortune of our judgment. I

am not to be made to do anything by persecutions and afflictions, but to curse them: that is for people who

cannot be roused but by a whip. My reason is much more free in prosperity, and much more distracted, and

put to't to digest pains than pleasures: I see best in a clear sky; health admonishes me more cheerfully, and to

better purpose, than sickness. I did all that in me lay to reform and regulate myself from pleasures, at a time

when I had health and vigor to enjoy them; I should be ashamed and envious, that the misery and misfortune

of my old age should have credit over my good, healthful, sprightly, and vigorous years; and that men should

In my opinion, 'tis the happy living, and not (as Antisthenes said) the happy dying, in which human felicity

consists. I have not made it my business to make a monstrous addition of a philosopher's tail to the head and

body of a libertine; nor would I have this wretched remainder give the lie to the pleasant, sound, and long part

of my life: I would present myself uniformly throughout. Were I to live my life over again, I should live it

just as I have lived it; I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future; and if I am not much deceived, I

am the same within that I am without. 'Tis one main obligation I have to my fortune, that the succession of

my bodily estate has been carried on according to the natural seasons; I have seen the grass, the blossom, and

the fruit; and now see the withering; happily, however, because naturally. I bear the infirmities I have the

better, because they came not till I had reason to expect them, and because also they make me with greater

pleasure remember that long felicity of my past life. My wisdom may have been just the same in both ages;

but it was more active, and of better grace while young and sprightly, than now it is when broken, peevish

and uneasy. I repudiate, then, these casual and painful reformations. God must touch our hearts; our

consciences must amend of themselves, by the aid of our reason, and not by the decay of our appetites;

pleasure is, in itself, neither pale nor discolored, to be discerned by dim and decayed eyes.

We ought to love temperance for itself, and because God has commanded that and chastity; but that which we

are reduced to by catarrhs, and for which I am indebted to the stone, is neither chastity nor temperance; a man

cannot boast that he despises and resists pleasure, if he cannot see it, if he knows not what it is, and cannot

discern its graces, its force, and most alluring beauties; I know both the one and the other, and may therefore

the better say it. But, methinks, our souls, in old age, are subject to more troublesome maladies and

imperfections than in youth; I said the same when young and when I was reproached with the want of a

beard; and I say so now that my gray hairs give me some authority. We call the difficulty of our humors and

the disrelish of present things wisdom; but, in truth, we do not so much forsake vices as we change them, and,

in my opinion, for worse. Besides a foolish and feeble pride, an impertinent prating, froward and insociable

humors, superstition, and a ridiculous desire of riches when we have lost the use of them, I find there more

envy, injustice and malice. Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face; and souls are

never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both

toward his perfection and decay. In observing the wisdom of Socrates, and many circumstances of his

condemnation, I should dare to believe, that he in some sort himself purposely, by collusion, contributed to it,

seeing that, at the age of seventy years, he might fear to suffer the lofty motions of his mind to be cramped,

and his wonted luster obscured. What strange metamorphoses do I see age every day make in many of my

acquaintance! 'Tis a potent malady, and that naturally and imperceptibly steals into us; a vast provision of

study and great precaution are required to evade the imperfections it loads us with, or at least, to weaken their

progress. I find that, notwithstanding all my entrenchments, it gets foot by foot upon me; I make the best

resistance I can, but I do not know to what at last it will reduce me. But fall out what will, I am content the

BY how much profitable thoughts are more full and solid, by so much are they also more cumbersome and

heavy: vice, death, poverty, diseases, are grave and grievous subjects. A man should have his soul instructed

in the means to sustain and contend with evils, and in the rules of living and believing well; and often rouse it

up, and exercise it in this noble study; but in an ordinary soul it must be by intervals and with moderation; it

will otherwise grow besotted if continually intent upon it. I found it necessary, when I was young, to put

myself in mind and solicit myself to keep me to my duty: gayety and health do not, they say, so well agree

with those grave and serious meditations; I am at present in another state: the conditions of age but too much

put me in mind, urge me to wisdom, and preach to me. From the excess of sprightliness I am fallen into that

of severity, which is much more troublesome: and for that reason I now and then suffer myself purposely a

little to run into disorder, and occupy my mind in wanton and youthful thoughts, wherewith it diverts itself. I

am of late but too reserved, too heavy, and too ripe; years every day read to me lectures of coldness and

temperance. This body of mine avoids disorder, and dreads it; 'tis now my body's turn to guide my mind

toward reformation; it governs, in turn, and more rudely and imperiously than the other; it lets me not an hour

alone, sleeping or waking, but is always preaching to me death, patience, and repentance. I now defend

myself from temperance, as I have formerly done from pleasure; it draws me too much back, and even to

stupidity. Now I will be master of myself, to all intent and purposes; wisdom has its excesses, and has no less

need of moderation than folly. Therefore, lest I should wither, dry up, and overcharge myself with prudence,

I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy and cloudy sky I have before me, which, thanks be to

God I regard without fear, but not without meditation and study, and amuse myself in the remembrance of my

Let childhood look forward, and age, backward; is not this the signification of Janus' double face? Let years

haul me along if they will, but it shall be backward, as long as my eyes can discern the pleasant season

expired, I shall now and then turn them that way; though it escape from my blood and veins, I shall not,

Plato ordains that old men should be present at the exercises, dances, and sports of young people, that they

may rejoice in others for the activity and beauty of body which is no more in themselves, and call to mind the

grace and comeliness of that flourishing age; and wills that in these recreations the honor of the prize should

be given to that young man who has most diverted the company. I was formerly wont to mark cloudy and

gloomy days as extraordinary; these are now my ordinary days; the extraordinary are the clear and bright; I

am ready to leap out of my skin for joy, as for an unwonted favor, when nothing happens me. Let me tickle

myself, I cannot force a poor smile from this wretched body of mine; I am only merry in conceit and in

dreaming, by artifice to divert the melancholy of age; but, in faith, it requires another remedy than a dream. A

weak contest of art against nature. 'Tis great folly to lengthen and anticipate human incommodities, as every

one does; I had rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so. I seize on even the least occasions

of pleasure I can meet. I know very well, by hearsay, several sorts of prudent pleasures, effectually so, and

glorious to boot; but opinion has not power enough over me to give me an appetite to them. I covet not so

much to have them magnanimous, magnificent, and pompous, as I do to have them sweet, facile and ready:

"A natura discedimus; populo nos damus, nullius rei bono auctori." My philosophy is in action, in natural and

present practice, very little in fancy; what if I have a mind to play at cobnut or to whip a top!

Pleasure is a quality of very little ambition: it thinks itself rich enough of itself without any addition of

repute; and is best pleased where most retired. A young man should be whipped who pretends to a taste in

wine and sauces; there was nothing which, at that age, I less valued or knew; now I begin to learn; I am very

much ashamed on't; but what should I do? I am more ashamed and vexed at the occasions that put me upon't.

'Tis for us to dote and trifle away the time, and for young men to stand upon their reputation and nice

punctilios; they are going toward the world and the world's opinion; we are retiring from it: "Sibi arma, sibi

equos, sibi hastas, sibi clavam, sibi pilam, sibi natationes, et cursus habeant: nobis senibus ex lusionibus

multis, talos relinquant et tesseras;" the laws themselves send us home. I can do no less in favor of this

wretched condition into which my age has thrown me, than furnish it with toys to play withal, as they do

children; and, in truth, we become such. Both wisdom and folly will have enough to do to support and relieve

I accordingly avoid the lightest punctures; and those that formerly would not have rippled the skin, now

pierce me through and through: my habit of body is now so naturally declining to ill: "In fragili corpore,

I have ever been very susceptibly tender as to offenses; I am much more tender now, and open throughout:

My judgment restrains me from kicking against and murmuring at the inconveniences that nature orders me

to endure, but it does not take away my feeling them: I, who have no other thing in my aim but to live and be

merry, would run from one end of the world to the other to seek out one good year of pleasant and jocund

tranquillity. A melancholic and dull tranquillity may be enough for me, but it benumbs and stupefies me; I am

not contented with it. If there be any person, any knot of good company in country or city, in France, or

elsewhere, resident, or in motion, who can like my humor, and whose humors I can like, let them but whistle

Seeing it is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, I advise mine to it with all the power I

have; let it meanwhile continue green, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree. But I fear 'tis a

traitor; it has contracted so strict a fraternity with the body that it leaves me at every turn, to follow that in its

need. I wheedle and deal with it apart in vain; I try to much purpose to wean it from this correspondence, to

much effect quote to it Seneca and Catullus, and represent to it beautiful ladies and royal masques: if its

companion have the stone, it seems to have it too; even the faculties that are most peculiarly and properly its

own cannot then perform their functions, but manifestly appear stupefied and asleep; there is no sprightliness

in its productions, if there be not at the same time an equal proportion in the body too.

Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the extraordinary emotions of the soul, besides

attributing it to a divine ecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not also attributed a part to

health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health, such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits,

supplied me withal; that fire of sprightliness and gayety darts into the mind flashes that are lively and bright

beyond our natural light, and of all enthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant.

It is, then, no wonder if a contrary state stupefy and clog my spirit, and produce a contrary effect:

and yet would have me obliged to it for giving, as it wants to make out, much less consent to this stupidity,

than is the ordinary case with men of my age. Let us, at least, while we have truce, drive away incommodities

"Tetrica sunt amoenanda jocularibus." I love a gay and civil wisdom, and fly from all sourness and austerity

I am very much of Plato's opinion, who says that facile or harsh humors are great indications of the good or

ill disposition of the mind. Socrates had a constant countenance, but serene and smiling; not sourly constant,

like the elder Crassus, whom no one ever saw laugh. Virtue is a pleasant and gay quality.

I know very well that few will quarrel with the license of my writings, who have not more to quarrel with in

the license of their own thoughts: I conform myself well enough to their inclinations, but I offend their eyes.

'Tis a fine humor to strain the writings of Plato, to wrest his pretended intercourses with Phaedo, Dion, Stella,

and Archeanassa. "Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire." I hate a froward and dismal spirit, that slips

over all the pleasures of life and seizes and feeds upon misfortunes; like flies, that cannot stick to a smooth

and polished body, but fix and repose themselves upon craggy and rough places; and like cuppingglasses,

As to the rest, I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to do; even thoughts that are not to be

published, displease me; the worst of my actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil, as I find it evil and

base not to dare to own them. Every one is wary and discreet in confession, but men ought to be so in action;

the boldness of doing ill is in some sort compensated and restrained by the boldness of confessing it.

Whoever will oblige himself to tell all, should oblige himself to do nothing that he must be forced to conceal.

I wish that this excessive license of mine may draw men to freedom, above these timorous and mincing

virtues, sprung from our imperfections; and that at the expense of my immoderation, I may reduce them to

reason. A man must see and study his vice to correct it; they who conceal it from others, commonly conceal it

from themselves; and do not think it close enough, if they themselves see it: they withdraw and disguise it

from their own consciences: "Quare vitia sua nemo confitetur? Quia etiam nunc in illis est; somnium narrare,

vigilantis est." The diseases of the body explain themselves by their increase; we find that to be the gout

which we called a rheum or a strain; the diseases of the soul, the greater they are, keep themselves the most

obscure; the most sick are the least sensible; therefore it is, that with an unrelenting hand, they must often, in

full day, be taken to task, opened, and torn from the hollow of the heart. As in doing well, so in doing ill, the

mere confession is sometimes satisfaction. Is there any deformity in doing amiss, that can excuse us from

confessing ourselves? It is so great a pain to me to dissemble, that I evade the trust of another's secrets,

wanting the courage to disavow my knowledge. I can keep silent; but deny I cannot without the greatest

trouble and violence to myself imaginable: to be very secret, a man must be so by nature not by obligation.

'Tis little worth, in the service of a prince, to be secret, if a man be not a liar to boot. If he who asked Thales

the Milesian, whether he ought solemnly to deny that he had committed adultery, had applied himself to me, I

should have told him, that he ought not to do it; for I look upon lying as a worse fault than the other. Thales

advised him quite contrary, bidding him swear, to shield the greater fault by the less: nevertheless, this

counsel was not so much an election, as a multiplication, of vice. Upon which, let us say this bytheby, that

we deal well with a man of conscience, when we propose to him some difficulty in counterpoise of the vice;

but when we shut him up between two vices, he is put to a hard choice: as Origen was, either to idolatrize, or

to suffer himself to be carnally abused by a great Ethiopian slave they brought to him. He submitted to the

first condition, and wrongly people say. And yet those women of our times are not much out, according to

their error, who protest they had rather burden their consciences with ten men than one mass.

If it be indiscretion so to publish one's errors, yet there is no great danger that it pass into example and

custom; for Aristo said, that the winds men most fear, are those that lay them open. We must tuck up this

ridiculous rag that hides our manners: they send their consciences to the stews, and keep a starched

countenance: even traitors and assassins espouse the laws of ceremony and there fix their duty. So that

neither can injustice complain of incivility nor malice of indiscretion. 'Tis pity but a bad man should be a fool

to boot and that outward decency should palliate his vice: this roughcast only appertains to a good and

In favor of the Huguenots, who condemn our auricular and private confession, I confess myself in public,

religiously and purely: St. Augustin, Origen and Hippocrates, have published the errors of their opinions; I,

moreover, of my manners. I am greedy of making myself known, and I care not to how many, provided it be

truly; or to say better, I hunger for nothing, but I mortally hate to be mistaken by those who come to learn my

name. He who does all things for honor and glory, what can he think to gain by showing himself to the world

in a visor and by concealing his true being from the people? Praise a humpback for his stature, he has reason

to take it for an affront; if you are a coward, and men commend you for your valor, is it of you they speak?

They take you for another. I should like him as well, who glorifies himself in the compliments and congees

that are made him as if he were master of the company, when he is one of the least of the train. Archelaus,

king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw water on his head, which they who were with

him said he ought to punish: "Ay but," said he, "whoever it was, he did not throw the water upon me, but

upon him whom he took me to be." Socrates being told that people spoke ill of him, "Not at all," said he,

"there is nothing in me of what they say." For my part, if any one should recommend me as a good pilot, as

being very modest, or very chaste, I should owe him no thanks; and so, whoever should call me traitor, robber

or drunkard, I should be as little concerned. They who do not rightly know themselves, may feed themselves

with false approbations; not I, who see myself and who examine myself even to my very bowels, and who

very well know what is my due. I am content to be less commended, provided I am better known. I may be

reputed a wise man in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly. I am vexed that my Essays only serve the

ladies for a common movable, a book to lay in the parlor window; this chapter shall prefer me to the closet. I

love to traffic with them a little in private; public conversation is without favor and without savor. In

farewells, we oftener than not heat our affections toward the things we take leave of; I take my last leave of

But to come to my subject: what has rendered the act of generation, an act so natural, so necessary, and so

just, a thing not to be spoken of without blushing and to be excluded from all serious and regular discourse?

We boldly pronounce, kill, rob, betray, but the other we dare only to mutter between the teeth. Is it to say, the

less we expend in words, we may pay so much the more in thinking? For it is certain that the words least in

use, most seldom written, and best kept in, are the best and most generally known; no age, no manners, are

ignorant of them, no more than the word bread: they imprint themselves in every one, without being

expressed, without voice, and without figure; and the sex that most practices it, is bound to say least of it. 'Tis

an act that we have placed in the franchise of silence, from which to take it is a crime, even to accuse and

judge it; neither dare we reprehend it but by periphrasis and picture. A great favor to a criminal to be so

execrable that justice thinks it unjust to touch and see him; free and safe by the benefit of the severity of his

condemnation. Is it not here as in matter of books, that sell better and become more public for being

suppressed? For my part, I will take Aristotle at his word who says, that "Bashfulness is an ornament to

youth, but a reproach to old age." These verses are preached in the ancient school, a school that I much more

adhere to than the modern: its virtues appear to me to be greater and the vices less:

I know not who could set Pallas and the Muses at variance with Venus, and make them cold toward Love: but

I see no deities so well met, or that are more indebted to one another. Who will deprive the Muses of amorous

imaginations, will rob them of the best entertainment they have, and of the noblest matter of their work: and

who will make Love lose the communication and service of poesy, will disarm him of his best weapons: by

this means, they charge the god of familiarity and good will, and the protecting goddesses of humanity and

justice, with the vice of ingratitude and unthankfulness. I have not been so long cashiered from the state and

service of this god, that my memory is not still perfect in his force and value;

but from what I understand of it, the force and power of this god are more lively and animated in the picture

it has, I know not what kind of air more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful, naked, alive, and

All that I find fault with in considering it is, that he has represented her a little too passionate for a married

Venus; in this discreet kind of coupling, the appetite is not usually so wanton, but more grave and dull. Love

hates that people should hold of any but itself, and goes but faintly to work in familiarities derived from any

other title, as marriage is: alliance, dowry, therein sway by reason, as much or more than grace and beauty.

Men do not marry for themselves, let them say what they will; they marry as much or more for their posterity

and family; the custom and interest of marriage concern our race much more than us; and therefore it is, that I

like to have a match carried on by a third hand rather than a man's own, and by another man's liking than that

of the party himself; and how much is all this opposite to the conventions of love? And also it is a kind of

incest to employ in this venerable and sacred alliance, the heat and extravagance of amorous license, as I

think I have said elsewhere. A man, says Aristotle, must approach his wife with prudence and temperance,

lest in dealing too lasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds of reason. What he

says upon the account of conscience, the physicians say upon the account of health: "that a pleasure

excessively lascivious, voluptuous, and frequent, makes the seed too hot, and hinders conception:" 'tis said,

elsewhere, that to a languishing congression, as this naturally is, to supply it with a due and fruitful heat, a

I see no marriages where the conjugal intelligence sooner fails, than those that we contract upon the account

of beauty and amorous desires; there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should proceed

They who think they honor marriage by joining love to it, do, methinks, like those who, to favor virtue, hold

that nobility is nothing else but virtue. They are indeed things that have some relation to one another, but

there is a great deal of difference; we should not so mix their names and titles; 'tis a wrong to them both, so to

confound them. Nobility is a brave quality, and with good reason introduced; but forasmuch as 'tis a quality

depending upon others, and may happen in a vicious person, in himself nothing, 'tis in estimate infinitely

below virtue: 'tis a virtue, if it be one, that is artificial and apparent, depending upon time and fortune; various

in form, according to the country; living and mortal; without birth, as the river Nile; genealogical and

common; of succession and similitude; drawn by consequence, and a very weak one. Knowledge, strength,

goodness, beauty, riches, and all other qualities, fall into communication and commerce, but this is

consummated in itself, and of no use to the service of others. There was proposed to one of our kings the

choice of two concurrents for the same command, of whom one was a gentleman, the other not; he ordered,

that without respect to quality, they should choose him who had the most merit; but where the worth of the

competitors should appear to be entirely equal, they should have respect to birth: this was justly to give it its

rank. A young man unknown, coming to Antigonus to make suit for his father's command, a valiant man,

lately dead: "Friend," said he, "in such preferments as these, I have not so much regard to the nobility of my

soldiers as to their prowess." And, indeed, it ought not to go as it did with the officers of the kings of Sparta,

trumpeters, fiddlers, cooks, the children of whom always succeeded to their places, how ignorant soever, and

were preferred before the most experienced in the trade. They of Calicut make of nobles a sort of persons

above human: they are interdicted marriage and all but warlike employments: they may have of concubines

their fill, and the women as many lovers, without being jealous of one another; but 'tis a capital and

irremissible crime to couple with a person of meaner condition than themselves; and they think themselves

polluted, if they have but touched one in walking along; and supposing their nobility to be marvelously

interested and injured in it, kill such as only approach a little too near them: insomuch that the ignoble are

obliged to cry out as they walk, like the gondoliers of Venice, at the turnings of streets for fear of jostling;

and the nobles command them to step aside to what part they please: by which means these avoid what they

repute a perpetual ignominy, and those certain death. No time, no favor of the prince, no office, or virtue, or

riches, can ever prevail to make a plebeian become noble; to which this custom contributes, that marriages

are interdicted between different trades; the daughter of a shoemaker is not permitted to marry a carpenter;

and the parents are obliged to train up their children precisely in their own callings, and not put them to any

other trade; by which means the distinction and continuance of their position is maintained.

A good marriage, if there be any such, rejects the company and conditions of love, and tries to represent those

of friendship. 'Tis a sweet society of life, full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid

would be loath to serve her husband in quality of a mistress. If she be lodged in his affection as a wife, she is

more honorably and securely placed. When he purports to be in love with another, and works all he can to

obtain his desire, let any one but ask him, on which he had rather a disgrace should fall, his wife or his

mistress, which of their misfortunes would most afflict him, and to which of them he wishes the most

And that so few are observed to be happy, is a token of its price and value. If well formed and rightly taken,

'tis the best of all human societies; we cannot live without it, and yet we do nothing but decry it. It happens,

as with cages, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out. Socrates, being

asked, whether it was more commodious to take a wife, or not; "Let a man take which course he will," said

he, "he will be sure to repent." 'Tis a contract to which the common saying, "Homo homini, aut deus, aut

lupus," may very fitly be applied; there must be a concurrence of many qualities in the construction. It is

found nowadays more convenient for simple and plebeian souls, where delights, curiosity, and idleness do

not so much disturb it; but extravagant humors, such as mine, that hate all sorts of obligation and restraint, are

Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, if she would have had me. But 'tis

to much purpose to evade it; the common custom and usance of life will have it so. The most of my actions

are guided by example, not by choice, and yet I did not go to it of my own voluntary motion; I was led and

drawn to it by extrinsic occasions, for not only things that are incommodious in themselves, but also things

however ugly, vicious, and to be avoided, may be rendered acceptable by some condition or accident; so

unsteady and vain is all human resolution! and I was persuaded to it, when worse prepared, and less tractable

than I am at present, that I have tried what it is: and as great a libertine as I am taken to be, I have in truth

more strictly observed the laws of marriage, than I either promised or expected. 'Tis in vain to kick, when a

man has once put on his fetters: a man must prudently manage his liberty; but having once submitted to

obligation, he must confine himself within the laws of common duty, at least, do what he can toward it. They

who engage in this contract, with a design to carry themselves in it with hatred and contempt, do an unjust

and inconvenient thing; and the fine rule that I hear pass from hand to hand among the women, as a sacred

which is to say, comport thyself toward him with a dissembled, inimical, and distrustful reverence (a cry of

war and defiance), is equally injurious and hard. I am too mild for such rugged designs; to say the truth, I am

not arrived to that perfection of ability and refinement of wit, to confound reason with injustice, and to laugh

at all rule and order that does not please my palate; because I hate superstition, I do not presently run into the

contrary extreme of irreligion. If a man does not always perform his duty, he ought at least to love and

Our poet represents a marriage happy in good intelligence, wherein nevertheless there is not much loyalty.

Does he mean, that it is not impossible but a woman may give the reins to her own passion, and yield to the

importunities of love, and yet reserve some duty toward marriage, and that it may be hurt, without being

totally broken? A serving man may cheat his master, whom nevertheless he does not hate. Beauty,

have attached her to a stranger; though not so wholly, peradventure, but that she may have some remains of

kindness for her husband. They are two designs, that have several paths leading to them, without being

confounded with one another; a woman may yield to a man she would by no means have married, not only

for the condition of his fortune, but for those also of his person. Few men have made a wife of a mistress,

who have not repented it. And even in the other world, what an unhappy life does Jupiter lead with his, whom

he had first enjoyed as a mistress? 'Tis, as the proverb runs, to befoul a basket and then put it upon one's head.

I have in my time, in a good family, seen love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage; the

considerations are widely different. We love at once, without any tie, two things contrary in themselves.

Socrates was wont to say, that the city of Athens pleased as ladies do whom men court for love; every one

loved to come thither to take a turn, and pass away his time; but no one liked it so well as to espouse it, that

is, to inhabit there, and to make it his constant residence. I have been vexed to see husbands hate their wives

only because they themselves do them wrong; we should not, at all events, methinks, love them the less for

our own faults; they should at least upon the account of repentance and compassion, be dearer to us.

They are different ends, he says, and yet in some sort compatible; marriage has utility, justice, honor, and

constancy for its share; a flat, but more universal pleasure; love founds itself wholly upon pleasure, and,

indeed, has it more full, lively and sharp; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty; there must be in it sting and

smart; 'tis no longer love, if without darts and fire. The bounty of ladies is too profuse in marriage, and dulls

the point of affection and desire; to evade which inconvenience, do but observe what pains Lycurgus and

Women are not to blame at all, when they refuse the rules of life that are introduced into the world,

forasmuch as the men made them without their consent. There is naturally contention and brawling between

them and us; and the strictest friendship we have with them, is yet mixed with tumult and tempest. In the

opinion of our author, we deal inconsiderately with them in this; after we have discovered, that they are,

without comparison, more able and ardent in the practice of love than we, and that the old priest testified as

and moreover, that we have learned from their own mouths the proof that, in several ages, was made by an

emperor and empress of Rome, both famous for ability in that affair! for he in one night deflowered ten

Sarmatian virgins who were his captives: but she had fiveandtwenty bouts in one night, changing her man

and that upon the dispute which happened in Catalonia, wherein a wife complaining of her husband's too

frequent addresses to her, not so much, as I conceive, that she was incommodated by it (for I believe no

miracles out of religion) as under this pretense, to curtail and curb in this, which is the fundamental act of

marriage, the authority of husbands over their wives, and to show that their frowardness and malignity go

beyond the nuptial bed, and spurn under foot even the graces and sweets of Venus; the husband, a man truly

brutish and unnatural, replied that even on fasting days he could not subsist with less than ten courses:

whereupon came out that notable sentence of the queen of Arragon, by which, after mature deliberation of her

council, this good queen, to give a rule and example to all succeeding ages of the moderation required in a

just marriage, set down six times a day as a legitimate and necessary stint; surrendering and quitting a great

deal of the needs and desires of her sex, that she might, she said, establish an easy, and consequently, a

permanent and immutable rule. Hereupon the doctors cry out; what must the female appetite and

concupiscence be, when their reason, their reformation and virtue, are taxed at such a rate? considering the

divers judgments of our appetites; for Solon, master of the law school, taxes us at but three a month, that men

may not foil in point of conjugal frequentation: after having, I say, believed and preached all this, we go and

enjoin them continency for their particular share, and upon the extremest penalties.

There is no passion so hard to contend with as this, which we would have them only resist, not simply as an

ordinary vice, but as an execrable abomination, worse than irreligion and parricide; while we, at the same

time, go to't without offense or reproach. Even those among us, who have tried the experiment, have

sufficiently confessed what difficulty, or rather impossibility, they have found by material remedies to

subdue, weaken, and cool the body. We, on the contrary, would have them at once sound, vigorous, plump,

highfed, and chaste; that is to say, both hot and cold, for the marriage, which we tell them is to keep them

from burning, is but small refreshment to them as we order the matter. If they take one whose vigorous age is

Polemon the philosopher was justly by his wife brought before the judge for sowing in a barren field the seed

that was due to one that was fruitful: if, on the other hand, they take a decayed fellow, they are in a worse

condition in marriage than either maids or widows. We think them well provided for, because they have a

man to lie with, as the Romans concluded Clodia Laeta, a vestal nun, violated, because Caligula had

approached her, through it was declared he did no more but approach her: but, on the contrary, we by that

increase their necessity, forasmuch as the touch and company of any man whatever rouses their desires, that

in solitude would be more quiet. And to the end 'tis likely, that they might render their chastity more

meritorious by this circumstance and consideration, Boleslaus and Kinge, his wife, king and queen of Poland,

vowed it by mutual consent, being in bed together, on their very wedding day, and kept their vow in spite of

We train them up from their infancy to the traffic of love; their grace, dressing, knowledge, language, and

whole instruction tend that way: their governesses imprint nothing in them but the idea of love, if for nothing

else but by continually representing it to them, to give them a distaste for it. My daughter, the only child I

have, is now of an age that forward young women are allowed to be married at; she is of a slow, thin, and

tender complexion, and has accordingly been brought up by her mother after a retired and particular manner,

so that she but now begins to be weaned from her childish simplicity. She was one day reading before me in a

French book, where she happened to meet the word fouteau, the name of a tree very well known; the woman

to whose conduct she is committed stopped her short a little roughly, and made her skip over that dangerous

step. I let her alone, not to trouble their rules, for I never concern myself in that sort of government; feminine

polity has a mysterious procedure; we must leave it to them; but if I am not mistaken, the commerce of

twenty lackeys could not, in six months' time, have so imprinted in her fancy the meaning, usage, and all the

consequences of the sound of these wicked syllables, as this old woman did by reprimand and interdiction.

Let them but give themselves the rein a little, let them but enter into liberty of discourse, we are but children

to them in this science. Hear them but describe our pursuits and conversation, they will very well make you

understand that we bring them nothing they have not known before, and digested without our help. Is it

perhaps, as Plato says, that they have formerly been debauched young fellows? I happened one day to be in a

place where I could hear some of their talk without suspicion; I am sorry I cannot repeat it. By'r lady, said I,

we had need go study the phrases of Amadis, and the tales of Boccaccio and Aretin, to be able to discourse

with them: we employ our time to much purpose indeed. There is neither word, example, nor step they are

not more perfect in than our books; 'tis a discipline that springs with their blood,

which these good instructors, nature, youth, and health are continually inspiring them with; they need not

So that if the natural violence of their desire were not a little restrained by fear and honor, which were wisely

contrived for them, we should be all shamed. All the motions in the world resolve into and tend to this

conjunction; 'tis a matter infused throughout: 'tis a center to which all things are directed. We yet see the

edicts of the old and wise Rome, made for the service of love; and the precepts of Socrates for the instruction

Zeno, among his laws, also regulated the motions to be observed in getting a maidenhood. What was the

philosopher Strato's book of "Carnal Conjunction?" And what did Theophrastus treat of in those he intituled,

the one "The Lover," and the other "Of Love?" Of what Aristippus in his "Of Former Delights?" What do the

so long and lively description in Plato of the loves of his time pretend to? and the book called "The Lover," of

Demetrius Phalereus? and Clinias, or the Ravished Lover, of Heralides, and that of Antisthenes, "Of Getting

Children," or, "Of Weddings," and the other, "Of the Master or the Lover?" And that of Aristo: "Of Amorous

Exercises?" What those of Cleanthes: one, "Of Love," the other, "Of the Art of Loving?" The amorous

dialogues of Sphaereus? and the fable of Jupiter and Juno, of Chrysippus, impudent beyond all toleration?

And his fifty so lascivious epistles? I will let alone the writings of the philosophers of the Epicurean sect,

protectress of voluptuousness. Fifty deities were, in time past, assigned to this office; and there have been

nations where, to assuage the lust of those who came to their devotion, they kept men and women in their

temples for the worshippers to lie with; and it was an act of ceremony to do this before they went to prayers:

"Nimirum propter continentiam incontineniia necessatia est; incendium ignibus extinguiter."

In the greatest part of the world, that member of our body was deified; in the same province, some flayed off

the skin to offer and consecrate a piece; others offered and consecrated their seed. In another, the young men

publicly cut through betwixt the skin and the flesh of that part in several places, and thrust pieces of wood

into the openings as long and thick as they would receive; and of these pieces of wood afterward made a fire

as an offering to their gods; and were reputed neither vigorous nor chaste, if by the force of that cruel pain,

they seemed to be at all dismayed. Elsewhere the most sacred magistrate was reverenced and acknowledged

by that member: and in several ceremonies the effigy of it was carried in pomp to the honor of various

divinities. The Egyptian ladies, in their Bacchanalia, each carried one finelycarved of wood about their

necks, as large and heavy as she could so carry it; besides which, the statue of their god presented one, which

in greatness surpassed all the rest of his body. The married women, near the place where I live, make of their

kerchiefs the figure of one upon their foreheads, to glorify themselves in the enjoyment they have of it; and

coming to be widows, they throw it behind, and cover it with their headcloths. The most modest matrons of

Rome thought it an honor to offer flowers and garlands to the god Priapus; and they made the virgins, at the

time of their espousals, sit upon his shameful parts. And I know not whether I have not in my time seen some

air of like devotion. What was the meaning of that ridiculous thing our forefathers wore on the forepart of

their breeches, and that is still worn by the Swiss? To what end do we make a show of our implements in

figure under our gaskins, and often, which is worse, above their natural size, by falsehood and imposture? I

have half a mind to believe that this sort of vestment was invented in the better and more conscientious ages,

that the world might not be deceived, and that every one should give a public account of his proportions; the

simple nations wear them yet, and near about the real size. In those days, the tailor took measure of it, as the

shoemaker does now of a man's foot. That good man, who, when I was young, gelded so many noble and

ancient statues in his great city, that they might not corrupt the sight of the ladies, according to the advice of

this other ancient worthy, "Flagitii principium est, nudare inter cives corpora," should have called to mind,

that, as in the mysteries of the Bona Dea all masculine appearance was excluded, he did nothing, if he did not

The gods, says Plato, have given us one disobedient and unruly member that, like a furious animal, attempts,

by the violence of its appetite, to subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like a greedy

and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, grows wild, impatient of delay, and infusing its

rage into their bodies, stops the passages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till, having imbibed

the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewed the bottom of their matrix. Now my legislator

should also have considered, that, peradventure, it were a chaster and more fruitful usage to let them know

the fact as it is betimes, than permit them to guess according to the liberty and heat of their own fancy;

instead of the real parts they substitute, through hope and desire, others that are three times more extravagant;

and a certain friend of mine lost himself by producing his in place and time when the opportunity was not

present to put them to their more serious use. What mischief do not those pictures of prodigious dimension do

that the boys make upon the staircases and galleries of the royal houses? they give the ladies a cruel contempt

of our natural furniture. And what do we know but that Plato, after other wellinstituted republics, ordered

that the men and women, old and young, should expose themselves naked to the view of one another, in his

gymnastic exercises, upon that very account? The Indian women who see the men stark naked, have at least

cooled the sense of seeing. And let the women of the kingdom of Pegu say what they will, who below the

waist have nothing to cover them but a cloth slit before, and so straight, that what decency and modesty

soever they pretend by it, at every step all is to be seen, that it is an invention to allure the men to them, and

to divert them from boys, to whom that nation is generally inclined; yet peradventure, they lose more by it

than they get, and one may venture to say, that an entire appetite is more sharp than one already halfglutted

by the eyes. Livia was wont to say, that to a virtuous woman a naked man was but a statue. The

Lacedaemonian woman, more virgins when wives than our daughters are, saw every day the young men of

their city stripped naked in their exercises, themselves little heeding to cover their thighs in walking,

believing themselves says Plato, sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe. But those of

whom St. Augustine speaks, have given nudity a wonderful power of temptation, who have made it a doubt,

whether women at the day of judgment shall rise again in their own sex, and not rather in ours, for fear of

tempting us again in that holy state. In brief, we allure and flesh them by all sorts of ways; we incessantly

heat and stir up their imagination, and then we find fault. Let us confess the truth; there is scarce one of us

who 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 solicitous (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 murderess and a heretic, 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

The austerity of our decrees renders the application of women to this vice more violent and vicious than its

own condition needs, and engages it in consequences worse than their cause; they will readily offer to go to

the law courts to seek for gain, and to the wars to get reputation, rather than, in the midst of ease and delights,

to have to keep so difficult a guard. Do not they very well see that there is neither merchant nor soldier who

will not leave his business to run after this sport, or the porter or cobbler, toiled and tired out as they are with

I do not know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpass the resolution of a beautiful young

woman, bred up after our fashion in the light and commerce of the world, assailed by so many contrary

examples, and yet keeping herself entire in the midst of a thousand continual and powerful solicitations.

There is no doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active: I hold it more easy to carry a suit of

armor all the days of one's life than a maidenhood; 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. Jerome. We have doubtless, resigned to the

ladies the most difficult and most vigorous of all human endeavors, and let us resign to them the glory too.

This ought to encourage them to be obstinate in it; 'tis a brave thing for them to defy us, and to spurn under

foot that vain preeminence of valor 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 esteemed for it but also much more beloved. A gallant

man does not give over his pursuit for being refused, provided it be a refusal of chastity, and not of choice;

we may swear, threaten, and complain to much purpose; we therein do but lie, for we love them all the better:

there is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude and crabbed. 'Tis stupidity and meanness to be obstinate

against hatred and disdain; but against a virtuous and constant resolution, mixed with good will, 'tis the

exercise of a noble and generous soul. They may acknowledge our service to a certain degree, and give us

civilly to understand that they disdain us not; for the law that enjoins them to abominate us because we adore

them, and to hate us because we love them, is certainly very cruel, if but for the difficulty of it. Why should

they not give ear to our offers and requests, so long as they are kept 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 courtesies is a testimony of weakness in women and a selfaccusation

of facility, and that a lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted." The limits of honor are not

cut so short; they may give themselves a little rein, and relax a little without being faulty: there lies on the

frontier some space free, indifferent and neuter. He that has beaten and pursued her into her fort is a strange

fellow if he be not satisfied with his fortune: the price of the conquest is considered by the difficulty. Would

you know what impression your service and merit have made in her heart? Judge of it by her behavior. 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 anything rarity give 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 coinage and stamp of the place. Whatever the spite and indiscretion of some may make

them say in the excess of their discontent, virtue and truth will in time recover all the advantage. I have

known some whose reputation has for a great while suffered under slander, who have afterward been restored

to the world's universal approbation by their mere constancy without care or artifice; every one repents, and

gives himself the lie for what he has believed and said; and from girls a little suspected they have been

afterward advanced to the first rank among the ladies of honor. Somebody 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 value of so rare a glory, which ought to make them look to themselves, the corruption of the age

we live in compels them to it; and if I were 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 inferior to that of doing)

was not permitted but to those who had some faithful and only friend; but now the ordinary discourse and

common tabletalk is nothing but boasts of favors received and the secret liberality of ladies. In earnest, 'tis

too abject, too much meanness of spirit, in men to suffer such ungrateful, indiscreet, and giddyheaded

This our immoderate and illegitimate exasperation against this vice springs from the most vain and turbulent

she, and envy, her sister, seem to me to be the most foolish of the whole troop. As to the last, I can say little

about it; 'tis a passion that, though said to be so mighty and powerful had never to do with me. As to the

other, I know it by sight, and that's all. Beasts feel it; the shepherd Cratis, having fallen in love with a

shegoat, the hegoat, out of jealousy, came to butt him as he lay asleep, and beat out his brains. We have

raised this fever to a greater excess by the examples of some barbarous nations; the best disciplined have

Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Cato, and other brave men were cuckolds, and knew it, without making

any bustle about it; there was in those days but one coxcomb, Lepidus, that died for grief that his wife had

and the god of our poet, when he surprised one of his companions with his wife, satisfied himself by putting

and nevertheless took anger at the lukewarm embraces she gave him, complaining that upon that account she

with in truth, a more than human humanity. And I am willing to leave this excess of kindness to the gods:

As to the confusion of children, besides that the gravest legislators ordain and affect it in their republics, it

touches not the women, where this passion is, I know not how, much better seated:

When jealousy seizes these poor souls, weak and incapable of resistance, 'tis pity to see how miserably it

torments and tyrannizes over them; it insinuates itself into them under the title of friendship, but after it has

once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation of good will serve them for a foundation

of mortal hatred. 'Tis, of all the diseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment, and the

fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of the husband are incendiaries of their fury and ill

This fever defaces and corrupts all they have of beautiful and good besides; and there is no action of a jealous

woman, let her be how chaste and how good a housewife soever, that does not relish of anger and wrangling:

'tis a furious agitation, that rebounds them to an extremity quite contrary to its cause. This was very manifest

in one Octavius at Rome, who, having lain with Pontia Posthumia, found his love so much augmented by

fruition, that he solicited with all importunity to marry her, which seeing he could not persuade her to, this

excessive affection precipitated him to the effects of the most cruel and mortal hatred, for he killed her. In

like manner, the ordinary symptoms of this other amorous disease are intestine hatreds, private conspiracies,

and a rage which so much the more frets itself, as it is compelled to excuse itself by a pretense of good will.

Now, the duty of chastity is of a vast extent; is it their will that we would have them restrain? That is a very

supple and active thing; a thing very nimble, to be stayed. How? if dreams sometimes engage them so far that

they cannot deny them: it is not in them, nor, peradventure, in chastity itself, seeing that is a female, to defend

itself from lust and desire. If we are only to trust to their will, what a case are we in, then? Do but imagine

what crowding there would be among men in pursuance of the privilege to run full speed, without tongue or

eyes, into every woman's arms who would accept them. The Scythian women put out the eyes of all their

slaves and prisoners of war, that they might have their pleasure of them, and they never the wiser. Oh, the

furious advantage of opportunity! Should any one ask me, what was the first thing to be considered in love

matters, I should answer, that it was how to take a fitting time; and so the second; and so the third 'tis a point

that can do everything. I have sometimes wanted fortune, but I have also sometimes been wanting to myself

in matters of attempt. There is greater temerity required in this age of ours, which our young men excuse,

under the name of heat; but should women examine it more strictly, they would find that it rather proceeds

from contempt. I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offense, and have ever had a great respect for

her I loved: besides, he who in this traffic takes away the reverence, defaces at the same time the luster. I

would in this affair have a man a little play the child, the timorous, and the servant. If not altogether in this, I

have in other things some air of the foolish bashfulness whereof Plutarch makes mention; and the course of

my life has been divers ways hurt and blemished with it; a quality very ill suiting my universal form: and,

indeed, what are we but sedition and discrepancy? I am as much out of countenance to be denied as I am to

deny; and it so much troubles me to be troublesome to others, that on occasions where duty compels me to try

the good will of any one in a thing that is doubtful and that will be chargeable to him, I do it very faintly, and

very much against my will: but if it be for my own particular (whatever Homer truly says, that modesty is a

foolish virtue in an indigent person), I commonly commit it to a third person to blush for me, and deny those

who employ me with the same difficulty: so that it has sometimes befallen me to have had a mind to deny

'Tis folly, then to attempt to bridle in women a desire that is so powerful in them, and so natural to them. And

when I hear them brag of having so maidenly and so temperate a will, I laugh at them: they retire too far

back. If it be an old toothless trot, or a young dry consumptive thing, though it be not altogether to be

believed, at least they may say it with more similitude of truth. But they who still move and breathe, talk at

that ridiculous rate to their own prejudice, by reason that inconsiderate excuses are a kind of selfaccusation;

who three or four days after he was married, to justify himself, went about boldly swearing that he had ridden

twenty stages the night before: an oath that was afterward made use of to convict him of his ignorance in that

affair, and to divorce him from his wife. Besides, it signifies nothing, for there is neither continency nor

virtue where there are no opposing desires. It is true they may say, but we will not yield; saints themselves

speak after that manner. I mean those who boast in good gravity of their coldness and insensibility, and who

expect to be believed with a serious countenance; for when 'tis spoken with an affected look, when their eyes

give the lie to their tongue, and when they talk in the cant of their profession which always goes against the

hair, 'tis good sport. I am a great servant of liberty and plainness; but there is no remedy; if it be not wholly

simple or childish, 'tis silly, and unbecoming ladies in this commerce, and presently runs into impudence.

Their disguises and figures only serve to cozen fools; lying is there in its seat of honor; 'tis a byway, that by

a back door leads us to truth. If we cannot curb their imagination, what would we have from them. Effects?

There are enough of them that evade all foreign communication, by which chastity may be corrupted;

and those which we fear the least, are, peradventure, most to be feared; their sins that make the least noise are

There are ways by which they may lose their virginity without prostitution, and, which is more, without their

knowledge: "Obsterix, virginis cujusdam integritatem manu velut explorans, sive malevolentia, sive inscitia,

sive casu, dum inspicit, perdidit." Such a one, by seeking her maidenhood, has lost it; another by playing with

it, has destroyed it. We cannot precisely circumscribe the actions, we interdict them; they must guess at our

meaning under general and doubtful terms; the very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous: for, among

the greatest examples arrived at my knowledge, Fatua, the wife of Faunus, is one: who never, after her

marriage, suffered herself to be seen by any man whatever: and the wife of Hiero, who never perceived her

husband's stinking breath, imagining that it was common to all men. They must become insensible and

Now let us confess that the knot of this judgment of duty principally lies in the will; there have been

husbands who have suffered cuckoldom, not only without reproach or taking offense at their wives, but with

singular obligation to them and great commendation of their virtue. Such a woman has been, who prized her

honor above her life, and yet has prostituted it to the furious lust of a mortal enemy, to save her husband's

life, and who, in so doing: did that for him she would not have done for herself! This is not the place wherein

we are to multiply these examples; they are too high and rich to be set off with so poor a foil as I can give

them here; let us reserve them for a nobler place; but for examples of ordinary luster, do we not every day see

women among us who surrender themselves for their husbands' sole benefit, and by their express order and

mediation? and, of old, Phaulius the Argian who offered his to King Philip out of amibition: as Galba did it

out of civility, who having entertained Maecenas at supper, and observing that his wife and he began to cast

sheep's eyes at one another and to complot love by signs, let himself sink down upon his cushion, like one in

a profound sleep, to give opportunity to their desires: which he handsomely confessed, for, at the same time,

a servant making bold to lay hands on the plate that stood upon the table, he frankly cried, "What, you rogue?

do you not see that I only sleep for Maecenas?" Such a woman there may be, whose manners may be lewd

enough, and yet whose will may be more reformed than another, who outwardly carries herself after a more

regular manner. As we see some, who complain of having vowed chastity before they knew what they did;

and I have also known others really complain of having been given up to debauchery before they were of the

years of discretion. The vice of the parents, or the impulse of nature, which is a rough counselor, may be the

In the east Indies, though chastity is of singular reputation, yet custom permitted a married woman to

prostitute herself to any one who presented her with an elephant, and that with glory to have been valued at so

high a rate. Phaedo the philosopher, a man of birth, after the taking of his country Elis, made it his trade to

prostitute the beauty of his youth, so long as it lasted, to any one that would, for money, thereby to gain his

living; and Solon was the first in Greece, 'tis said, who by his laws gave liberty to women, at the expense of

their chastity, to provide for the necessities of life; a custom that Herodotus says had been received in many

governments before his time. And besides, what fruit is there of this painful solicitude? For what justice

soever there is in this passion, we are yet to consider whether it turns to account or no: does any one think to

Curiosity is vicious throughout; but 'tis pernicious here. 'Tis folly to examine into a disease for which there is

no physic that does not inflame and make it worse; of which the shame grows still greater, and more public

by jealousy, and of which the revenge more wounds our children than it heals us. You wither and die in the

search of so obscure a proof. How miserably have they of my time arrived at that knowledge, who have been

so unhappy as to have found it out? If the informer, does not at the same time apply a remedy and bring

relief, 'tis an injurious information, and that better deserves a stab than the lie. We no less laugh at him who

takes pains to prevent it, than at him who is a cuckold, and knows it not. The character of cuckold is

indelible: who once has it carries it to his grave; the punishment proclaims it more than the fault. It is to much

purpose to drag out of obscurity and doubt our private misfortunes, thence to expose them on tragic scaffolds;

and misfortunes that only hurt us by being known; for we say a good wife, or a happy marriage, not that they

are really so, but because no one says to the contrary. Men should be so discreet as to evade this tormenting

and unprofitable knowledge: and the Romans had a custom, when returning from any expedition, to send

home before to acquaint their wives with their coming, that they might not surprise them; and to this purpose

it is, that a certain nation has introduced a custom, that the priest shall on the weddingday unlock the bride's

cabinet, to free the husband from the doubt and curiosity of examining in the first assault, whether she comes

But the world will be talking. I know a hundred honest men cuckolds, that are handsomely, and not

discreditably met; a worthy man is pitied, but not disesteemed for it. Order it so that your virtue may conquer

your misfortune; that good men may curse the occasion, and that he who wrongs you may tremble but to

think on't. And, moreover, who escapes being talked of at the same rate, from the least even to the greatest?

You hear how many honest men are reproached with this in your presence; you may believe that you are no

more spared behind your back. Nay, the very ladies will be laughing too; and what are they so apt to laugh at

in this virtuous age of ours, as at a peaceable and wellcomposed marriage? There is not one among you but

has made somebody cuckold: and nature runs much in parallel, in compensation, and turn for turn. The

frequency of this accident ought long since to have made it more easy; 'tis now passed into custom.

for to what friend dare you intrust your griefs, who, if he does not laugh at them, will not make use of the

occasion to get a share of the quarry? The sharps, as well as the sweets of marriage, are kept secret by the

wise; and among its other troublesome conditions this to a prating fellow, as I am, is one of the chief, that

custom has rendered it indecent and prejudicial to communicate to any one all that a man knows and all that a

To give women the same counsel against jealousy, would be so much time lost; their very being is so made

up of suspicion, vanity, and curiosity, that to cure them by any legitimate way is not to be hoped. They often

recover of this infirmity by a form of health much more to be feared than the disease itself; for as there are

enchantments that cannot take away the evil, but by throwing it upon another, they also willingly transfer this

fever to their husbands, when they shake it off themselves. And yet I know not, to speak truth, whether a man

can suffer worse from them than their jealousy; 'tis the most dangerous of all their conditions, as the head is

of all their members. Pittacus used to say, that every one had his trouble, and that his was the jealous head of

his wife; but for which he should think himself perfectly happy. A mighty inconvenience, sure, which could

poison the whole life of so just, so wise, and so valiant a man; what must we other little fellows do? The

senate of Marseilles had reason to grant him his request who begged leave to kill himself that he might be

delivered from the clamor of his wife; for 'tis a mischief that is never removed but by removing the whole

piece; and that has no remedy but flight or patience, though both of them very hard. He was, methinks, an

understanding fellow who said, 'twas a happy marriage between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Let us also consider whether the great and violent severity of obligation we enjoin them, does not produce

two effects contrary to our design: namely, whether it does not render the pursuants more eager to attack, and

the women more easy to yield. For as to the first, by raising the value of the place we raise the value and the

desire of the conquest. Might it not be Venus herself, who so cunningly enhanced the price of her

merchandise, by making the laws her bawds; knowing how insipid a delight it would be that was not

heightened by fancy and hardness to achieve? In short, 'tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces, as Flaminius'

host said. Cupid is a roguish god, who makes it his sport to contend with devotion and justice: 'tis his glory

As to the second point; should we not be less cuckolds, if we less feared to be so? according to the humor of

What better interpretation can we make of Messalina's behavior? She, at first, made her husband a cuckold in

private, as in the common use: but, bringing her business about with too much ease, by reason of her

husband's stupidity, she soon scorned that way, and presently fell to making open love, to own her lovers, and

to favor and entertain them in the sight of all: she would make him know and see how she used him. This

animal, not to he roused with all this, and rendering her pleasures dull and flat by his too stupid facility, by

which he seemed to authorize and make them lawful; what does she? Being the wife of a living and healthful

emperor, and at Rome, the theater of the world, in the face of the sun, and with solemn ceremony, and to

Silius, who had long before enjoyed her, she publicly marries herself one day that her husband was gone out

of the city. Does it not seem as if she was going to become chaste by her husband's negligence? or that she

sought another husband who might sharpen her appetite by his jealousy, and who by watching should incite

her? But the first difficulty she met with was also the last: this beast suddenly roused: these sleepy, sluggish

sort of men are often the most dangerous; I have found by experience, that this extreme toleration, when it

comes to dissolve, produces the most severe revenge; for taking fire on a sudden, anger and fury being

he put her to death, and with her a great number of those with whom she had intelligence, and even one of

them who could not help it, and whom she had caused to be forced to her bed with scourges.

What Virgil says of Venus and Vulcan, Lucretius had better expressed of a stolen enjoyment between her and

When I consider this rejicit, pascit, inhians, molli, fovet, medullas, labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and that noble

circumfusa, mother of the gentle infusus; I contemn those little quibbles and verbal allusions that have been

since in use. Those worthy people stood in need of no subtilty to disguise their meaning; their language is

downright, and full of natural and continued vigor; they are all epigram; not only the tail, but the head, body,

and feet. There is nothing forced, nothing languishing, but everything keeps the same pace: "Contextus totus

virilis est; non sunt circa flosculos occupati." 'Tis not a soft eloquence, and without offense only; 'tis nervous

and solid, that does not so much please, as it fills and ravishes the greatest minds. When I see these brave

forms of expression, so lively, so profound, I do not say that 'tis Well said, but Well thought. 'Tis the

sprightliness of the imagination that swells and elevates the words: "Pectus est quod disertum facit." Our

people call language, judgment, and fine words, full conceptions. This painting is not so much carried on by

dexterity of hand, as by having the object more vividly imprinted in the soul. Gallus speaks simply, because

he conceives simply: Horace does not content himself with a superficial expression; that would betray him;

he sees farther and more clearly into things; his mind breaks into and rummages all the magazine of words

and figures wherewith to express himself, and he must have them more than ordinary because his conception

is so. Plutarch says, that he sees the Latin tongue by the things: 'tis here the same; the sense illuminates and

produces the words, no more words of air, but of flesh and bone; they signify more than they say. Moreover,

those who are not well skilled in a language, present some image of this; for in Italy, I said whatever I had a

mind to in common discourse, but in more serious talk, I durst not have trusted myself with an idiom that I

could not wind and turn out of its ordinary pace; I would have a power of introducing something of my own.

The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off language; not so much by innovating it, as by

putting it to more vigorous and various services, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to them. They do

not create words, but they enrich their own, and give them weight and signification by the uses they put them

to, and teach them unwonted notions, but withal, ingeniously and discreetly. And how little this talent is

given to all, is manifest by the many French scribblers of this age; they are bold and proud enough not to

follow the common road, but want of invention and discretion ruins them; there is nothing seen in their

writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style, with cold and absurd disguises, which instead of

elevating, depress the matter; provided they can but trick themselves out with new words, they care not what

they signify; and to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave the old one, very often more

There is stuff enough in our language, but there is a defect in cutting out; for there is nothing that might not

be made out of our terms of hunting and war, which is a fruitful soil to borrow from; and forms of speaking,

like herbs, improve and grow stronger by being transplanted. I find it sufficiently abundant, but not

sufficiently pliable and vigorous; it commonly quails under a powerful conception; if you would maintain the

dignity of your style, you will often perceive it to flag and languish under you, and there Latin steps in to its

relief, as Greek does to others. Of some of these words I have just picked out we do not so easily discern the

energy, by reason that the frequent use of them has in some sort abased their beauty, and rendered it common;

as in our ordinary language there are many excellent phrases and metaphors to be met with, of which the

beauty is withered by age, and the color is sullied by too common handling; but that nothing lessens the relish

to an understanding man, nor does it derogate from the glory of those ancient authors who, 'tis likely, first

The sciences treat of things too refinedly, after an artificial, very different from the common and natural way.

My page makes love, and understands it; but read to him Leo Hebraeus and Ficinus, where they speak of

love, its thoughts and actions, he understands it not. I do not find in Aristotle most of my ordinary motions;

they are there covered and disguised in another robe for the use of the schools. Well may they speed; but

were I of the trade, I would as much naturalize art as they artify nature. Let us let Bembo and Equicola alone.

When I write, I can very well spare both the company and the remembrance of books, lest they should

interrupt my progress; and also, in truth, the best authors too much bumble and discourage me; I am very

much of the painter's mind, who, having represented cocks most wretchedly ill, charged all his boys not to

suffer any natural cock to come into his shop; and had rather need to give myself a little luster, of the

invention of Antigenides the musician, who, when he was to sing or play, took care beforehand that the

auditory should, either before or after, be glutted with some other ill musicians. But I can hardly be without

Plutarch; he is so universal, and so full, that upon all occasions, and what extravagant subject soever you take

in hand, he will still be at your elbow and hold out to you a liberal and not to be exhausted hand of riches and

embellishments. It vexes me that he is so exposed to be the spoil of those who are conversant with him: I can

And also for this design of mine 'tis convenient for me to write at home, in a wild country, where I have

nobody to assist or relieve me; where I hardly see a man who understands the Latin of his Pater noster, and of

French as little, if not less. I might have it better elsewhere, but then the work would have been less my own;

and its principal end and perfection is to be exactly mine. I readily correct an accidental error, of which I am

full, as I run carelessly on; but for my ordinary and constant imperfections, it were a kind of treason to put

them out. When another tells me, or that I say to myself, "Thou art too thick of figures: this is a word of

Gascon growth: that is a dangerous phrase (I do not reject any of those that are used in the common streets of

France; they who would fight custom with grammar are fools); this is an ignorant discourse: this is a

paradoxical discourse; that is going too far: thou makest thyself too merry at times: men will think thou

sayest a thing in good earnest which thou only speakest in jest." "Yes," say I, "but I correct the faults of

inadvertence, not those of custom. Do I not talk at the same rate throughout? Do I not represent myself to the

life? 'Tis enough that I have done what I designed; all the world knows me in my book, and my book in me."

Now I have an apish, imitating quality; when I used to write verses (and I never made any but Latin) they

evidently discovered the poet I had last read, and some of my first essays have a little exotic taste: I speak

something another kind of language at Paris than I do at Montaigne. Whoever I steadfastly look upon easily

leaves some impression of his upon me; whatever I consider I usurp, whether a foolish countenance, a

disagreeable look, or a ridiculous way of speaking; and vices most of all, because they seize and stick to me,

and will not leave hold without shaking. I swear more by imitation than by complexion: a murderous

imitation, like that of the apes so terrible both in stature and strength, that Alexander met with in a certain

country of the Indies, and which he would have had much ado any other way to have subdued; but they

afforded him the means by that inclination of theirs to imitate whatever they saw done; for by that, the

hunters were taught to put on shoes in their sight, and to tie them fast with many knots, and to muffle up their

heads in caps all composed of running nooses, and to seem to anoint their eyes with glue; so did those poor

beasts employ their imitation to their own ruin: they glued up their own eyes, haltered and bound themselves.

The other faculty of playing the mimic, and ingeniously acting the words and gestures of another, purposely

to make people merry and to raise their admiration, is no more in me than in a stock. When I swear my own

oath 'tis only, by God! of all oaths the most direct. They say that Socrates swore by the dog; Zeno had for his

oath the same interjection at this time in use among the Italians, Cappari; Pythagoras swore by water and air.

I am so apt, without thinking of it, to receive these superficial impressions, that if I have Majesty or Highness

in my mouth three days together, they come out instead of Excellency and Lordship eight days after; and

what I say today in sport and fooling I shall say the same tomorrow seriously. Wherefore, in writing, I

more unwillingly undertake beaten arguments, lest I should handle them at another's expense. Every subject

is equally fertile to me: a fly will serve the purpose, and 'tis well if this I have in hand has not been

undertaken at the recommendation of as flighty a will. I may begin with that which pleases me best, for the

But my soul displeases me in that it ordinarily produces its deepest and most airy conceits and which please

me best, when I least expect or study for them, and which suddenly vanish, having, at the instant, nothing to

apply them to; on horseback, at table, and in bed: but most on horseback, where I am most given to think. My

speaking is a little nicely jealous of silence and attention: if I am talking my best, who ever interrupts me,

stops me. In traveling, the necessity of the way will often put a stop to discourse; besides which I, for the

most part, travel without company fit for regular discourses, by which means I have all the leisure I would to

entertain myself. It falls out as it does in my dreams; while dreaming I recommend them to my memory (for I

am apt to dream that I dream), but, the next morning, I may represent to myself of what complexion they

were, whether gay, or sad, or strange, but what they were, as to the rest, the more I endeavor to retrieve them,

the deeper I plunge them in oblivion. So of thoughts that come accidentally into my head, I have no more but

a vain image remaining in my memory; only enough to make me torment myself in their quest to no purpose.

Well, then, laying books aside, and more simply and materially speaking, I find, after all, that LOVE is

nothing else but the thirst of enjoying the object desired; or Venus any other thing than the pleasure of

discharging one's vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in discharging other parts, that either by

immoderation or indiscretion become vicious. According to Socrates, love is the appetite of generation, by

the mediation of beauty. And when I consider the ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd,

crackbrained, wild motions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage, the countenance

inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of love, and then that austere air, so grave, severe,

ecstatic, in so wanton an action; that our delights and our excrements are promiscuously shuffled together;

and that the supreme pleasure brings along with it, as in pain, fainting and complaining; I then believe it to be

and that it was in mockery that nature has ordered the most agitative of actions and the most common, to

make us equal and to put fools and wise men, beasts and us, on a level. Even the most contemplative and

prudent man, when I imagine him in this posture, I hold him an impudent fellow to pretend to be prudent and

They who banish serious imaginations from their sports, do, says one, like him who dares not adore the statue

of a saint, if not covered with a veil. We eat and drink, indeed, as beasts do; but these are not actions that

obstruct the functions of the soul, in these we maintain our advantage over them; this other action subjects all

other thought, and by its imperious authority makes an ass of all Plato's divinity and philosophy; and yet there

is no complaint of it. In everything else a man may keep some decorum, all other operations submit to the

rules of decency; this cannot so much as in imagination appear other than vicious or ridiculous: find out, if

you can, therein any serious and discreet procedure. Alexander said, that he chiefly knew himself to be mortal

by this act, and sleeping; sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of the soul; the familiarity with women

likewise dissipates and exhausts them: doubtless 'tis a mark, not only of our original corruption, but also of

On the one side, nature pushes us on to it, having fixed the most noble, useful, and pleasant of all her

functions to this desire; and, on the other side, leaves us to accuse and avoid it, as insolent and indecent, to

blush at it, and to recommend abstinence. Are we not brutes, to call that work brutish which begets us?

People of so many differing religions have concurred in several proprieties, as sacrifices, lamps, burning

incense, fasts, and offerings; and among others, in the condemning this act; all opinions tend that way,

besides the widespread custom of circumcision, which may be regarded as a punishment. We have,

peradventure, reason to blame ourselves for being guilty of so foolish a production as man, and to call the act,

and the parts that are employed in the act, shameful (mine, truly, are now shameful and pitiful). The

Essenians, of whom Pliny speaks, kept up their country for several ages without either nurse or babyclouts,

by the arrival of strangers who, following this pretty humor, came continually to them: a whole nation being

resolute, rather to hazard a total extermination, than to engage themselves in female embraces, and rather to

lose the succession of men, than to beget one. 'Tis said, that Zeno never had to do with a woman but once in

his life, and then out of civility, that he might not seem too obstinately to disdain the sex. Every one avoids

seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; to destroy him, a spacious field is sought out, in the face of

the sun; but, to make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can; 'tis a man's duty to withdraw

himself bashfully from the light to create; but 'tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to

destroy what we have made; the one is injury, the other favor; for Aristotle says that to do any one a kindness,

in a certain phrase of his country, is to kill him. The Athenians, to couple the disgrace of these two actions,

having to purge the isle of Delos, and to justify themselves to Apollo, interdicted at once all birth and burials

There are some nations that will not be seen to eat. I know a lady, and of the best quality, who has the same

opinion, that chewing disfigures the face, and takes away much from the ladies' grace and beauty; and

therefore unwillingly appears at a public table with an appetite; and I know a man also, who cannot endure to

see another eat, nor himself to be seen eating; and who is more shy of company when putting in than when

putting out. In the Turkish empire, there are a great number of men, who to excel others, never suffer

themselves to be seen when they make their repast; who never have any more than one a week; who cut and

mangle their faces and limbs; who never speak to any one; fanatic people who think to honor their nature by

disnaturing themselves; who value themselves upon their contempt of themselves, and purport to grow better

by being worse. What monstrous animal is this, that is a horror to himself, to whom his delights are grievous,

and withdraw them from the sight of other men; who avoid health and cheerfulness, as dangerous and

prejudicial qualities. Not only many sects, but many peoples, curse their birth, and bless their death; and there

is a place where the sun is abominated, and darkness adored. We are only ingenious in using ourselves ill; 'tis

the real quarry our intellects fly at; and intellect, when misapplied, is a dangerous tool!

Alas, poor man! thou hast enough inconveniences that are inevitable, without increasing them by thine own

invention; and art miserable enough by nature, without being so by art; thou hast real and essential

deformities enough, without forging those that are imaginary. Dost thou think thou art too much at ease,

unless half thy ease is uneasy? dost thou find that thou hast not performed all the necessary offices that nature

has enjoined thee, and that she is idle in thee, if thou dost not oblige thyself to other and new offices? Thou

dost not stick to infringe her universal and undoubted laws; but stickest to thy own special and fantastic rules,

and by how much more particular, uncertain, and contradictory they are, by so much thou employest thy

whole endeavor in them; the laws of thy parish occupy and bind thee; those of God and the world concern

thee not. Run but a little over the examples of this kind; thy life is full of them.

While the verses of these two poets treat so reservedly and discreetly of wantonness as they do, methinks they

discover it much more openly. Ladies cover their necks with network, priests cover several sacred things, and

painters shadow their pictures to give them greater luster: and 'tis said that the sun and wind strike more

violently by reflection than in a direct line. The Egyptian wisely answered him who asked him what he had

under his cloak; "it is hid under my cloak," said he, "that thou mayest not know what it is:" but there are

certain other things that people hide only to show them. Hear this fellow who speaks plainer,

methinks, I am eunuched with the expression. Let Martial turn up Venus' coats as high as he may, he cannot

show her so naked; he, who says all that is to be said, gluts and disgusts us. He who is afraid to express

himself, draws us on to guess at more than is meant; there is treachery in this sort of modesty, and specially

when they half open, as these do, so fair a path to imagination. Both the action and description should relish

The more respectful, more timorous, more coy, and secret love of the Spaniards and Italians pleases me. I

know not who of old wished his throat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he

swallowed: it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous pleasure, especially in such natures as

mine that have the fault of being too prompt. To stay its flight and delay it with preambles; all things a

glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favor and recompense between them. Were it not an excellent piece

of thrift in him who could dine on the steam of the roast? 'Tis a passion that mixes with very little solid

essence, far more vanity and feverish raving; and we should serve and pay it accordingly. Let us teach the

ladies to set a better value and esteem upon themselves, to amuse and fool us: we give the last charge at the

first onset; the French impetuosity will still show itself; by spinning out their favors, and exposing them in

small parcels, even miserable old age itself will find some little share of reward, according to its worth and

merit. He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins nothing unless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no

pleasure in the chase but in the quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more steps and

degrees there are, so much higher and more honorable is the uppermost seat; we should take a pleasure in

being conducted to it, as in magnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasant

galleries, and many windings. This disposition of things would turn to our advantage; we should there longer

stay and longer love; without hope and without desire we proceed not worth a pin. Our conquest and entire

possession is what they ought infinitely to dread: when they wholly surrender themselves up to the mercy of

our fidelity and constancy they run a mighty hazard; they are virtues very rare and hard to be found; the

And Thrasonides, a young man of Greece, was so in love with his passion that, having gained a mistress'

consent, he refused to enjoy her, that he might not by fruition quench and stupefy the unquiet ardor of which

he was so proud, and with which he so fed himself. Dearness is a good sauce to meat: do but observe how

much the manner of salutation, particular to our nation, has, by its faculties, made kisses, which Socrates says

are so powerful and dangerous for the stealing of hearts, of no esteem. It is a nauseous custom and injurious

for the ladies, that they must be obliged to lend their lips to every fellow who has three footmen at his heels,

and we ourselves do not get much by it; for as the world is divided, for three beautiful women we must kiss

threescore ugly ones; and to a tender stomach, like those of my age, an ill kiss overpays a good one.

In Italy they passionately court even their common women who sell themselves for money, and justify the

doing so by saying, "that there are degrees of fruition, and that by such service they would procure for

themselves that which is most entire; the women sell nothing but their bodies; the will is too free and too

much its own to be exposed to sale." So that these say, 'tis the will they undertake; and they have reason. 'Tis

indeed the will that we are to serve and gain by wooing. I abhor to imagine mine, a body without affection:

and this madness is, methinks, cousingerman to that of the boy, who would needs pollute the beautiful

statue of Venus, made by Praxiteles; or that of the furious Egyptian, who violated the dead carcass of a

woman he was embalming: which was the occasion of the law then made in Egypt, that the corpses of

beautiful young women, of those of good quality, should be kept three days before they should be delivered

to those whose office it was to take care for the interment. Periander did more wonderfully, who extended his

conjugal affection (more regular and legitimate) to the enjoyment of his wife Melissa after she was dead.

Does it not seem a lunatic humor in the Moon, seeing she could no otherwise enjoy her darling Endymion, to

lay him for several months asleep, and to please herself with the fruition of a boy, who stirred not but in his

sleep? I likewise say that we love a body without a soul or sentiment when we love a body without its

consent and concurring desire. All enjoyments are not alike: there are some that are etic and languishing: a

thousand other causes besides good will may procure us this favor from the ladies; this is not a sufficient

testimony of affection: treachery may lurk there, as well as elsewhere: they sometimes go to't by halves,

I know some who had rather lend that than their coach, and who only impart themselves that way. You are to

examine whether your company pleases them upon any other account, or, as some strongchined groom, for

What? have we not seen one in these days of ours who made use of this act for the purpose of a most horrid

Such as know Italy will not think it strange if, for this subject, I seek not elsewhere for examples; for that

nation may be called the regent of the world in this. They have more generally handsome and fewer ugly

women than we: but for rare and excellent beauties we have as many as they. I think the same of their

intellects: of those of the common sort, they have evidently far more: brutishness is immeasurably rarer there;

but in individual characters, of the highest form, we are nothing indebted to them. If I should carry on the

comparison, I might say, as touching valor, that, on the contrary, it is, to what it is with them, common and

natural with us; but sometimes we see them possessed of it to such a degree as surpasses the greatest

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 distant acquaintance with a stranger is as

capital an offense as the most intimate; so that all approaches being rendered necessarily substantial, and

seeing that all comes to one account, they have no hard choice to make; and when they have broken down the

fence, we may safely presume they get on fire. "Luxuria ipsis vinculis, sicut fera bestia, irritata, deinde

the desire of company is allayed by giving it a little liberty. We are pretty much in the same case: they are

extreme in constraint, we in license. 'Tis a good custom we have in France, that our sons are received into the

best families, there to be entertained and bred up pages, as in a school of nobility; and 'tis looked upon as a

discourtesy and an affront to refuse this to 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 allowed them a greater liberty. There should be moderation in these 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 withal that she who comes off with flying colors from a school of liberty, brings with her

whereon to repose more confidence than she who comes away sound from a severe and strict school.

Our fathers dressed up their daughters' looks in bashfulness and fear (their courage and desires being the

same); we ours in confidence and assurance; we understand nothing of the matter; we must leave it to the

Sarmatian women, who may not live with a man till with their own hands they have first killed another in

battle. For me, who have no other title left me to these things but by the ears, 'tis sufficient if, according to the

privilege of my age, they retain me for one of their counsel. I advise them then, and us men too, to

abstinence; but if the age we live in will not endure it, at least modesty and discretion. For, as in the story of

Aristippus who, speaking to some young men who blushed to see him go into a scandalous house, said: "The

vice is in not coming out, not in going in," let her who has no care of her conscience, have yet some regard to

her reputation; and though she be rotten within, let her carry a fair outside at least.

I commend a gradation and delay in bestowing their favors: Plato declares that, in all sorts of love, facility

and promptness are forbidden to the defendant. 'Tis a sign of eagerness, which they ought to disguise with all

the art they have, so rashly, wholly, and handoverhead to surrender themselves. In carrying themselves

orderly and measuredly in the granting their last favors, 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 did. To say the truth, according to the law that nature has imposed 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 at times and uncertain; they are always fit for

the encounter, that they may be always ready when we are so, "Pati natoe." And whereas she has ordered that

our appetites shall be manifest by a prominent demonstration, she would have theirs to be hidden and

concealed within. and has furnished them with parts improper for ostentation, and simply defensive. Such

proceedings as this that follows must be left to the Amazonian license: Alexander marching his army through

Hyrcania, Thalestris, queen of the Amazons, came with three hundred light horse of her own sex, well

mounted and armed, having left the remainder of a very great army that followed her, behind the neighboring

mountains, to give him a visit; where she publicly and in plain terms told him that the fame of his valor 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 enterprises: and that finding him so handsome, young, and vigorous, she, who was also perfect in all

those qualities, advised that they might lie 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 returned her thanks for all the rest, but to give leisure for the accomplishment of her last demand,

he detained her thirteen days in that place, which were spent in royal feasting and jollity, for the welcome of

We are, almost throughout, unjust judges of their actions, as they are of ours; I confess the truth when it

makes against me, as well as when 'tis on my side. 'Tis an abominable intemperance that pushes them on so

often to change, and that will not let them limit their affection to any one person whatever; as is evident in

that goddess, to whom are attributed so many changes and so many lovers. But 'tis true withal, that 'tis

contrary to the nature of love, if it be not violent; and contrary to the nature of violence, if it be constant. And

they who wonder, exclaim, and keep such a clutter to find out the causes of this frailty of theirs, as unnatural

and not to be believed, how comes it to pass they do not discern how often they are themselves guilty of the

same, without any astonishment or miracle at all? It would, peradventure, be more strange to see the passion

fixed; 'tis not a simply corporeal passion; if there be no end to avarice and ambition, there is doubtless no

more in desire; it still lives after satiety; and 'tis impossible to prescribe either constant satisfaction, or end; it

ever goes beyond possession. And by that means inconstancy, peradventure, is in some sort more pardonable

in them than in us: they may plead, as well as we, the inclination to variety and novelty common to us both;

and secondly, without us, that they buy a pig in a poke: Joan, queen of Naples, caused her first husband

Andreasso to be hanged at the bars of her window in a halter of gold and silk, woven with her own hand,

because in matrimonial performances she neither found his parts nor abilities answer the expectation she had

conceived from his stature, beauty, youth, and activity, by which she had been caught and deceived. They

may say, there is more pains required in doing than in suffering; and so they are on their part always at least

provided for necessity, whereas on our part it may fall out otherwise. For this reason it was that Plato wisely

made a law, that before marriage, to determine of the fitness of persons, the judges should see the young men

who pretended to it stripped stark naked, and the women but to the girdle only. When they come to try us,

'Tis not enough that a man's will be good; weakness and in. sufficiency lawfully break a marriage,

why not? and according to her own standard, an amorous intelligence, more licentious and active,

But it is not great impudence to offer our imperfections and imbecilities, where we desire to please and leave

a good opinion and esteem of ourselves? For the little that I am able to do now,

Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable, without rendering it ridiculous too. I hate

to see it, for one poor inch of pitiful vigor which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and set out itself

with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a true flame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and

bubble and then in a moment so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertain only to the

flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardor you

think in you, for it will certainly leave you in the lurch at your greatest need; but rather transfer it to some

Who can stay till the morning without dying for shame to behold the disdain of the fair eyes of her who

has never had the satisfaction and the glory of having cudgeled them till they were weary, with the vigorous

performance of one heroic night. When I have observed any one to be vexed with me, I have not presently

accused her levity, but have been in doubt, if I had not reason rather to complain of nature; she has doubtless

and done me a most enormous injury. Every member I have, as much one as another, is equally my own, and

I universally owe my entire picture to the public. The wisdom of my instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in

essence: disdaining to introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the catalogue of its

real duties; all natural, general, and constant, of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but

illegitimate. We are sure to have the vices of appearance, when we shall have had those of essence: when we

have done with these, we run full drive upon the others, if we find it must be so; for there is danger that we

shall fancy new offices, to excuse our negligence toward the natural ones and to confound them; and to

manifest this, is it not seen that in places where faults are crimes, crimes are but faults; that in nations where

the laws of decency are most rare and most remiss, the primitive laws of common reason are better observed:

the innumerable multitude of so many duties stifling and dissipating our care. The application of ourselves to

light and trivial things diverts us from those that are necessary and just. Oh, how these superficial men take

an easy and plausible way in comparison of ours! These are shadows wherewith we palliate and pay one

another; but we do not pay, but inflame the reckoning toward that great Judge who tucks up our rags and

tatters above our shameful parts, and stickles not to view us all over, even to our inmost and most secret

ordures: it were a useful decency of our maidenly modesty, could it keep him from this discovery. In fine,

whoever could reclaim man from so scrupulous a verbal superstition, would do the world no great disservice.

Our life is divided between folly and prudence: whoever will write of it but what is reverend and canonical,

will leave above the onehalf behind. I do not excuse myself to myself; and if I did, it should rather be for my

excuses that I would excuse myself, than for any other fault: I excuse myself of certain humors, which I think

more strong in number than those that are on my side. In consideration of which, I will further say this (for I

desire to please every one, though it will be hard to do, "esse unum hominen accommodatum ad tantam

morum ac sermonum et voluntatum varietatem,") that they ought not to condemn me for what I make

authorities, received and approved by so many ages, to utter: and that there is no reason that for want of

rhyme, they should refuse me the liberty they allow even to churchmen of our nation and time, and these

besides how many others. I love modestly, and 'tis not out of judgment that I have chosen this scandalous

way of speaking; 'tis nature that has chosen it for me. I commend it not, no more than other forms that are

contrary to common use: but I excuse it, and by circumstances both general and particular, alleviate its

But to proceed. Whence, too, can proceed that usurpation of sovereign authority you take upon you over the

so that you presently assume the interest, coldness, and authority of a husband? 'Tis a free contract: why do

you not then keep to it, as you would have them do? there is no prescription upon voluntary things. 'Tis

against the form, but it is true withal, that I in my time have conducted this bargain as much as the nature of it

would permit, as conscientiously and with as much color of justice, as any other contract; and that I never

pretended other affection than what I really had, and have truly acquainted them with its birth, vigor, and

declination, its fits and intermissions: a man does not always hold on at the same rate. I have been so sparing

of my promises, that I think I have been better than my word. They have found me faithful even to service of

their inconstancy, a confessed and sometimes multiplied inconstancy. I never broke with them while I had

any hold at all, and what occasion soever they have given me, never broke with them to hatred or contempt;

for such privacies, though obtained upon never so scandalous terms, do yet oblige to some good will. I have

sometimes, upon their tricks and evasions, discovered a little indiscreet anger and impatience; for I am

naturally subject to rash emotions, which though light and short, often spoil my market. At any time they

have consulted my judgment, I never stuck to give them sharp and paternal counsels, and to pinch them to the

quick. If I have left them any cause to complain of me, 'tis rather to have found in me, in comparison of the

modern use, a love foolishly conscientious, than anything else. I have kept my word in things wherein I might

easily have been dispensed; they sometimes surrendered themselves with reputation, and upon articles that

they were willing enough should be broken by the conqueror. I have, more than once, made pleasure in its

greatest effort strike to the interest of their honor; and where reason importuned me, have armed them against

myself; so that they ordered themselves more decorously and securely by my rules, when they frankly

referred themselves to them, than they would have done by their own. I have ever, as much as I could, wholly

taken upon myself alone the hazard of our assignations, to acquit them; and have always contrived our

meetings after the hardest and most unusual manner, as less suspected, and, moreover, in my opinion, more

accessible. They are chiefly more open, where they think they are most securely shut; things least feared are

least interdicted and observed; one may more boldly dare what nobody thinks you dare, which by its

difficulty becomes easy. Never had any man his approaches more impertinently generative; this way of

loving is more according to discipline: but how ridiculous it is to our people, and how ineffectual, who better

knows than I? yet I shall not repent me of it; I have nothing there more to lose;

'tis now time to speak out. But as I might, peradventure, say to another, "Thou talkest idly, my friend; the

on the contrary, also, if it were for me to begin again, certainly it should be by the same method and the same

progress, how fruitless soever it might be to me; folly and insufficiency are commendable in an

incommendable action; the farther I go from their humor in this, I approach so much nearer to my own. As to

the rest, in this traffic, I did not suffer myself to be totally carried away; I pleased myself in it, but did not

forget myself; I retained the little sense and discretion that nature has given me, entire for their service and

my own; a little emotion, but no dotage. My conscience, also, was engaged in it, even to debauch and

licentiousness; but, as to ingratitude, treachery, malice, and cruelty, never. I would not purchase the pleasure

of this vice at any price, but content myself with its proper and simple cost: "Nullum intra se vitium est." I

almost equally hate a stupid and slothful laziness, as I do a toilsome and painful employment; this pinches,

the other lays me asleep. I like wounds as well as bruises, and cuts as well as dry blows. I found in this

commerce, when I was the most able for it, a just moderation between these extremes. Love is a sprightly,

lively, and gay agitation; I was neither troubled nor afflicted with it, but heated, and, moreover, disordered; a

man must stop there; it hurts nobody but fools. A young man asked the philosopher Panetius, if it was

becoming a wise man to be in love? "Let the wise man look to that," answered he, "but let not thou and I,

who are not so, engage ourselves in so stirring and violent an affair, that enslaves us to others, and renders us

contemptible to ourselves." He said true, that we are not to intrust a thing so precipitous in itself, to a soul that

has not wherewithal to withstand its assaults and disprove practically the saying of Agesilaus, that prudence

and love cannot live together. 'Tis a vain employment, 'tis true, unbecoming, shameful, and illegitimate; but

carried on after this manner, I look upon it as wholesome, and proper to enliven a drowsy soul, and to rouse

up a heavy body; and, as an experienced physician, I would prescribe it to a man of my form and condition,

as soon as any other recipe whatever, to rouse and keep him in vigor till well advanced in years, and to defer

the approaches of age. While we are but in the suburbs, and that the pulse yet beats,

we have need to be solicited and tickled by some such nipping incitation as this. Do but observe what youth,

vigor, and gayety it inspired Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking of an

amorous object: "Leaning," said he, "my shoulder to her shoulder, and my head to hers, as we were reading

together in a book, I felt, without dissembling, a sudden sting in my shoulder like the biting of a flea, which I

still felt above five days after, and a continual itching crept into my heart." So that merely the accidental

touch, and of a shoulder, heated and altered a soul cooled and enervated by age, and the strictest liver of all

mankind. And, pray, why not? Socrates was a man, and would neither be, nor seem, any other thing.

Philosophy does not contend against natural pleasures, provided they be moderate: and only preaches

moderation, not a total abstinence; the power of its resistance is employed against those that are adulterate

and strange. Philosophy says that the appetites of the body ought not to be augmented by the mind, and

ingeniously warns us not to stir up hunger by saturity; not to stuff, instead of merely filling, the belly; to

avoid all enjoyments that may bring us to want; and all meats and drinks that bring thirst and hunger: as, in

the service of love, she prescribes us to take such an object as may simply satisfy the body's need, and does

not stir the soul, which ought only barely to follow and assist the body, without mixing in the affair. But have

I not reason to hold, that these precepts, which, indeed, in my opinion, are somewhat over strict, only concern

a body in its best plight; and that in a body broken with age, as in a weak stomach, 'tis excusable to warm and

support it by art, and by the mediation of the fancy, to restore the appetite and cheerfulness it has lost of

May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison, that is purely either corporeal or

spiritual; and that we injuriously break up a man alive; and that it seems but reasonable that we should carry

ourselves as favorably, at least, toward the use of pleasure as we do toward that of pain? Pain was (for

example) vehement even to perfection in the souls of the saints by penitence: the body had there naturally a

share by the right of union, and yet might have but little part in the cause; and yet are they not contented that

it should barely follow and assist the afflicted soul; they have afflicted itself with grievous and special

torments, to the end that by emulation of one another the soul and body might plunge man into misery by so

much more salutiferous as it is more severe. In like manner, is it not injustice, in bodily pleasures, to subdue

and keep under the soul, and say that it must therein be dragged along as to some enforced and servile

obligation and necessity? 'Tis rather her part to hatch and cherish them, there to present herself, and to invite

them, the authority of ruling belonging to her; as it is also her part, in my opinion, in pleasures that are proper

to her, to inspire and infuse into the body all the sentiment it is capable of, and to study how to make them

sweet and useful to it. For it is good reason, as they say, that the body should not pursue its appetites to the

prejudice of the mind; but why is it not also reason that the mind should not pursue hers to the prejudice of

I have no other passion to keep me in breath. What avarice, ambition, quarrels, lawsuits do for others who,

like me, have no particular vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me

vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure my countenance, so that the grimaces

of old age, those deformed and dismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon sound

and wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved and esteemed, clearing my mind of the despair

of itself and of its use, and redintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesome thoughts,

a thousand melancholic humors that idleness and the ill posture of our health loads us withal at such an age;

would warm again, in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up the chin, and a little

stretch out the nerves, the vigor and gayety of life of that poor man who is going full drive toward his ruin.

But I very well understand that it is a commodity hard to recover: by weakness and long experience our taste

is become more delicate and nice; we ask most when we bring least, and are harder to choose when we least

deserve to be accepted; and knowing ourselves for what we are, we are less confident and more distrustful;

nothing can assure us of being beloved, considering our condition and theirs. I am out of countenance to see

To what end should we go insinuate our misery amid their gay and sprightly humor?

They have strength and reason on their side; let us give way; we have nothing to do there: and these blossoms

of springing beauty suffer not themselves to be handled by such benumbed hands nor dealt with by mere

material means, for, as the old philosopher answered one who jeered him because he could not gain the favor

of a young girl he made love to, "Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese." It is a commerce that

requires relation and correspondence; the other pleasures we receive may be acknowledged by recompenses

of another nature, but this is not to be paid but with the same kind of coin. In earnest, in this sport, the

pleasure I give more tickles my imagination than that they give me; now, he has nothing of generosity in him

who can receive pleasure where he confers none it must needs be a mean soul that will owe all, and can be

content to maintain relations with persons to whom he is a continual charge; there is no beauty, grace, nor

privacy so exquisite that a gentleman ought to desire at this rate. If they can only be kind to us out of pity, I

had much rather die than live upon charity. I would have right to ask, in the style wherein I heard them beg in

Italy: "Fate ben per voi," or after the manner that Cyrus exhorted his soldiers, "Who loves himself let him

follow me." "Consort yourself," some one will say to me, "with women of your own condition, whom like

fortune will render more easy to your desire." Oh ridiculous and insipid composition!

Xenophon lays it for an objection and an accusation against Menon, that he never made love to any but old

women. For my part, I take more pleasure in but seeing the just and sweet mixture of two young beauties, or

only in meditating on it in my fancy, than myself in acting second in a piteous and imperfect conjunction; I

leave that fantastic appetite to the Emperor Galba, who was only for old curried flesh; and to this poor

Among chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties; Hemon, a young fellow of Chios, thinking by

fine dressing to acquire the beauty that nature had denied him, came to the philosopher Arcesilaus and asked

him if it was possible for a wise man to be in love "Yes," replied he, "provided it be not with a farded and

adulterated beauty like thine." Ugliness of a confessed antiquity is to me less old and less ugly than another

that is polished and plastered up. Shall I speak it, without the danger of having my throat out? love, in my

opinion, is not properly and naturally in its season, but in the age next to childhood;

nor beauty neither; for whereas Homer extends it so far as to the budding of the beard, but to himself has

remarked this as rare; and the reason why the Sophist Bion so pleasantly called the first appearing hairs of

adolescence Aristogitons and Harmodiuses is sufficiently known. I find it in virility already in some sort a

and Marguerite, queen of Navarre, like a woman, very far extends the advantage of women, ordaining that it

is time at thirty years old, to convert the title of fair into that of good. The shorter authority we give to love

over our lives 'tis so much the better for us. Do but observe his port; 'tis a beardless boy. Who knows not

how, in his school they proceed contrary to all order; study, exercise, and usage are there ways for

insufficiency; there novices rule; "Amor ordinem nescit." Doubtless his conduct is much more graceful when

mixed with inadvertency and trouble; miscarriages and ill successes give him point and grace; provided it be

sharp and eager, 'tis no great matter whether it be prudent or no; do but observe how he goes reeling, tripping,

and playing: you put him in the stocks when you guide him by art and wisdom; and he is restrained of his

As to the rest, I often hear the women set out this intelligence as entirely spiritual, and disdain to put the

interest the senses there have into consideration; everything there serves; but I can say that I have often seen

that we have excused the weakness of their understandings in favor of their outward beauty, but have never

yet seen that in favor of mind, how mature and full soever, any of them would hold out a hand to a body that

was never so little in decadence. Why does not some one of them take it into her head to make that noble

practical bargain between body and soul, purchasing a philosophical and spiritual intelligence and generation

at the price of her thighs, which is the highest price she can get for them? Plato ordains in his laws that he

who has performed any signal and advantageous exploit in war may not be refused during the whole

expedition, his age or ugliness notwithstanding, a kiss or any other amorous favor from any woman whatever.

What he thinks to be so just in recommendation of military valor, why may it not be the same in

recommendation of any other good quality? and why does not some woman take a fancy to possess over her

To conclude this notable commentary, which has escaped from me in a torrent of babble, a torrent sometimes

I say that males and females are cast in the same mold, and that, education and usage excepted, the difference

is not great. Plato indifferently invites both the one and the other to the society of all studies, exercises, and

vocations, both military and civil, in his commonwealth; and the philosopher Antisthenes rejected all

distinction between their virtue and ours. It is much more easy to accuse one sex than to excuse the other; 'tis

IT IS very easy to verify, that great authors, when they write of causes, not only make use of those they think

to be the true causes, but also of those they believe not to be so, provided they have in them some beauty and

invention: they speak true and usefully enough, if it be ingeniously. We cannot make ourselves sure of the

supreme cause, and therefore clutter a great many together, to see if it may not accidentally be among them,

Will you ask me, whence comes the custom of blessing those who sneeze? we break wind three several ways;

that which sallies from below is too filthy; that which breaks out from the mouth carries with it some

reproach of having eaten too much; the third eruption is sneezing, which because it proceeds from the head,

and is without offense, we give it this civil reception: do not laugh at this distinction; for they say 'tis

I think I have read in Plutarch (who of all the authors I ever conversed with is he who has best mixed art with

nature, and judgment with knowledge), his giving as a reason for the rising of the stomach in those who are at

sea, that it is occasioned by fear; having first found out some reason by which he proves that fear may

produce such an effect. I, who am very subject to it, know well that this cause concerns not me; and know it,

not by argument, but by necessary experience. Without instancing what has been told me, that the same thing

often happens in beasts, especially hogs who are out of all apprehension of danger; and what an acquaintance

of mine told me of himself that, though very subject to it, the disposition to vomit has three of four times

gone off him, being very afraid in a violent storm, as it happened to that ancient, "Pejus vexabar, quam ut

periculum mihi succurreret;" I was never afraid upon the water, nor, indeed, in any other peril (and I have had

enough before my eyes that would have sufficed, if death be one), so as to be astounded and to lose my

judgment. Fear springs sometimes as much from want of judgment as from want of courage. All the dangers I

have been in I have looked upon without winking, with an open, sound, and entire sight; and, indeed, a man

must have courage to fear. It formerly served me better than other help, so to order and regulate my retreat,

that it was, if not without fear, nevertheless without affright and astonishment; it was agitated, indeed, but not

amazed or stupefied. Great souls go yet much farther, and present to us flights, not only steady and temperate,

but moreover lofty. Let us make a relation of that which Alcibiades reports of Socrates, his fellow in arms: "I

found him," says he, "after the rout of our army, him and Lachez, last among those who fled, and considered

him at my leisure and in security, for I was mounted upon a good horse, and he on foot, as he had fought. I

took notice, in the first place, how much judgment and resolution he showed, in comparison of Lachez, and

then the bravery of his march, nothing different from his ordinary gait; his sight firm and regular, considering

and judging what passed about him, looking one while upon those, and then upon others, friends and

enemies, after such a manner as encouraged those, and signified to the others that he would sell his life dear

to any one who should attempt to take it from him, and so they came off; for people are not willing to attack

such kind of men, but pursue those they see are in a fright." This is the testimony of this great captain, which

teaches us, what we every day see, that nothing so much throws us into dangers as an inconsiderate eagerness

of getting ourselves clear of them: "Quo timoris minus est, eo minus ferme periculi est." Our people are to

blame who say that such a one is afraid of death, when they would express that he thinks of it and foresees it:

foresight is equally convenient in what concerns us, whether good or ill. To consider and judge of danger, is,

in some sort, the reverse to being astounded. I do not find myself strong enough to sustain the force and

impetuosity of this passion of fear nor of any other vehement passion whatever: if I was once conquered and

beaten down by it, I should never rise again very sound. Whoever should once make my soul lose her footing,

would never set her upright again: she retastes and researches herself too profoundly, and too much to the

quick, and therefore would never let the wound she had received heal and cicatrize. It has been well for me

that no sickness has yet discomposed her: at every charge made upon me, I preserve my utmost opposition

and defense; by which means the first that should rout me would keep me from rallying again. I have no

aftergame to play: on which side soever the inundation breaks my banks, I lie open, and am drowned

without remedy. Epicurus says, that a wise man can never become a fool; I have an opinion reverse to this

sentence, which is that he who has once been a very fool, will never after be very wise. God grants me cold

according to my cloth, and passions proportionable to the means I have to withstand them: nature having laid

me open on the one side, has covered me on the other; having disarmed me of strength, she has armed me

I cannot now long endure (and when I was young could much less) either coach, litter, or boat, and hate all

other riding but on horseback, both in town and country. But I can bear a litter worse than a coach; and, by

the same reason, a rough agitation upon the water, whence fear is produced, better than the motions of a calm.

At the little jerks of oars, stealing the vessel from under us, I find, I know not how, both my head and my

stomach disordered: neither can I endure to sit upon a tottering chair. When the sail or the current carries us

equally, or that we are towed, the equal agitation does not disturb me at all: 'tis an interrupted motion that

offends me, and, most of all when most slow: I cannot otherwise express it. The physicians have ordered me

to squeeze and gird myself about the bottom of the belly with a napkin to remedy this evil; which however I

have not tried, being accustomed to wrestle with my own defects, and overcome them myself.

Would my memory serve me, I should not think my time ill spent in setting down here the infinite variety

that history presents us of the use of coaches in the service of war: various, according to the nations, and

according to the age; in my opinion, of great necessity and effect; so that it is a wonder that we have lost all

knowledge of them. I will only say this, that very lately, in our fathers' time, the Hungarians made very

advantageous use of them against the Turks; having in every one of them a targetter and a musketeer, and a

number of harquebuses piled ready and loaded, and all covered with a pavesade like a galliot. They formed

the front of their battle with three thousand such coaches, and after the cannon had played, made them all

pour in their shot upon the enemy, who had to swallow that volley before they tasted of the rest, which was

no little advance; and that done, these chariots charged into their squadrons to break them and open a way for

the rest: besides the use they might make of them to flank the soldiers in a place of danger when marching to

the field, or to cover a post, and fortify it in haste. In my time, a gentleman on one of our frontiers, unwieldly

of body, and finding no horse able to carry his weight, having a quarrel, rode through the country in a chariot

of this fashion, and found great convenience in it. But let us leave these chariots of war.

As if their effeminacy had not been sufficiently known by better proofs, the last kings of our first race

traveled in a chariot drawn by four oxen. Marc Antony was the first at Rome who caused himself to be drawn

Heliogabalus did since as much, calling himself Cybele, the mother of the gods; and also drawn by tigers,

taking upon him the person of the god Bacchus; he also sometimes harnessed two stags to his coach, another

time four dogs, and another, four naked wenches, causing himself to be drawn by them in pomp, stark naked

too. The Emperor Firmus caused his chariot to be drawn by ostriches of a prodigious size, so that it seemed

The strangeness of these inventions puts this other fancy in my head: that it is a kind of pusillanimity in

monarchs, and a testimony that they do not sufficiently understand themselves what they are, when they

study to make themselves honored and to appear great by excessive expense: it were indeed excusable in a

foreign country, but among their own subjects, where they are in sovereign command, and may do what they

please, it derogates from their dignity the most supreme degree of honor to which they can arrive: just as,

methinks, it is superfluous in a private gentleman to go finely dressed at home; his house, his attendants, and

his kitchen, sufficiently answer for him. The advice that Isocrates gives his king, seems to be grounded upon

reason; that he should be splendid in plate and furniture; forasmuch as it is an expense of duration that

devolves on his successors; and that he should avoid all magnificences that will in a short time be forgotten. I

loved to go fine when I was a younger brother, for want of other ornament; and it became me well: there are

some upon whom their rich clothes weep. We have strange stories of the frugality of our kings about their

own persons and in their gifts: kings who were great in reputation, valor, and fortune. Demosthenes

vehemently opposes the law of his city that assigned the public money for the pomp of their public plays and

festivals: he would that their greatness should be seen in numbers of ships well equipped, and good armies

well provided for; and there is good reason to condemn Theophrastus who, in his Book on Riches, establishes

a contrary opinion, and maintains that sort of expense to be the true fruit of abundance. They are delights,

says Aristotle, that only please the baser sort of the people, and that vanish from the memory so soon as the

people are sated with them, and for which no serious and judicious man can have any esteem. This money

would, in my opinion, be much more royally, as more profitably, justly, and durably, laid out in ports,

havens, walls, and fortifications; in sumptuous buildings, churches, hospitals, colleges, the reforming of

streets and highways; wherein Pope Gregory XIII. will leave a laudable memory to future times: and wherein

our Queen Catherine would to long posterity manifest her natural liberality and munificence, did her means

supply her affection. Fortune has done me a great despite, in interrupting the noble structure of the

PontNeuf of our great city, and depriving me of the hope of seeing it finished before I die.

Moreover, it seems to the subjects, who are spectators of these triumphs, that their own riches are exposed

before them, and that they are entertained at their own expense: for the people are apt to presume of kings, as

we do of our servants, that they are to take care to provide us all things necessary in abundance, but not touch

it themselves: and therefore the Emperor Galba, being pleased with a musician who played to him at supper,

called for his money box, and gave him a handful of crowns that he took out of it, with these words: "This is

not the public money, but my own." Yet it so falls out that the people, for the most part, have reason on their

side, and that the princes feed their eyes with what they have need of to fill their bellies.

Liberality itself is not in its true luster in a sovereign hand: private men have therein the most right: for, to

take it exactly, a king has nothing properly his own; he owes himself to others: authority is not given in favor

of the magistrate, but of the people; a superior is never made so for his own profit, but for the profit of the

inferior, and a physician for the sick person, and not for himself: all magistracy, as well as all art, has its end

out of itself: "Nulla ars in se versatur:" wherefore the tutors of young princes, who make it their business to

imprint in them this virtue of liberality, and preach to them to deny nothing and to think nothing so well spent

as what they give (a doctrine that I have known in great credit in my time), either have more particular regard

to their own profit than to that of their master, or ill understand to whom they speak. It is too easy a thing to

inculcate liberality on him who has as much as he will to practice it with at the expense of others; and, the

estimate not being proportioned to the measure of the gift but to the measure of the means of him who gave

it, it comes to nothing in so mighty hands; they find themselves prodigal, before they can be reputed liberal.

And it is but a little recommendation, in comparison with other royal virtues: and the only one, as the tyrant

Dionysius said, that suits well with tyranny itself. I should rather teach him this verse of the ancient laborer,

he must scatter it abroad, and not lay it on a heap, in one place: and that, seeing he is to give, or, to say better,

to pay and restore to so many people according as they have deserved, he ought to be a loyal and discreet

disposer. If the liberality of a prince be without measure or discretion, I had rather he were covetous.

Royal virtue seems most to consist in justice; and of all the parts of justice that best denotes a king which

accompanies liberality, for this they have particularly reserved to be performed by themselves, whereas all

other sorts of justice they remit to the administration of others. An immoderate bounty is a very weak means

to acquire for them good will; it checks more people than it allures: "Quo in plures usus sis, minus in multos

uti possis.... Quid autem est stultius, quam, quod libenter facias, curare ut id diutius facere non possis;" and if

it be conferred without due respect of merit, it puts him out of countenance who receives it, and is received

ungraciously. Tyrants have been sacrificed to the hatred of the people by the hands of those very men they

have unjustly advanced; such kind of men thinking to assure to themselves the possession of benefits unduly

received, if they manifest to have him in hatred and disdain of whom they hold them, and in this associate

The subjects of a prince excessive in gifts grow excessive in asking, and regulate their demands, not by

reason, but by example. We have, seriously, very often reason to blush at our own impudence: we are

overpaid, according to justice, when the recompense equals our service, for do we owe nothing of natural

obligation to our princes? If he bear our charges, he does too much; 'tis enough that he contribute to them: the

overplus is called benefit, which cannot be exacted: for the very name Liberality sounds of Liberty.

There is no end on't, as we use it; we never reckon what we have received; we are only for the future

liberality: wherefore, the more a prince exhausts himself in giving, the poorer he grows in friends. How shall

he satisfy immoderate desires, that still increase as they are fulfilled? He who has his thoughts upon taking,

never thinks of what he has taken; covetousness has nothing so properly and so much its own as ingratitude.

The example of Cyrus will not do amiss in this place, to serve the kings of these times for a touchstone to

know whether their gifts are well or ill bestowed, and to see bow much better that emperor conferred them

than they do, by which means they are reduced to borrow of unknown subjects, and rather of them whom

they have wronged, than of them on whom they have conferred their benefits, and so receive aids, wherein

there is nothing of gratuitous but the name. Croesus reproached him with his bounty, and cast up to how

much his treasure would amount if he had been a little closerhanded. He had a mind to justify his liberality,

and therefore sent dispatches into all parts to the grandees of his dominions whom he had particularly

advanced, entreating every one of them to supply him with as much money as they could, for a pressing

occasion, and to send him particulars of what each could advance. When all these answers were brought to

him, every one of his friends, not thinking it enough barely to offer him so much as he had received from his

bounty, and adding to it a great deal of his own, it appeared that the sum amounted to a great deal more than

Croesus' reckoning. Whereupon Cyrus: "I am not," said he, "less in love with riches than other princes, but

rather a better husband; you see with how small a venture I have acquired the inestimable treasure of so many

friends, and how much more faithful treasurers they are to me than mercenary men without obligation or

affection would be: and my money better laid up than in chests, bringing upon me the hatred, envy, and

The emperors excused the superfluity of their plays and public spectacles by reason that their authority in

some sort (at least in outward appearance) depended upon the will of the people of Rome, who time out of

mind, had been accustomed to be entertained and caressed with such shows and excesses. But they were

private citizens, who had nourished this custom to gratify their fellowcitizens and companions (and chiefly

out of their own purses) by such profusion and magnificence; it had quite another taste when the masters

came to imitate it: "Pecuniarum translatio a justis dominis ad a lienosnon debet liberalis videri." Philip,

seeing that his son went about by presents to gain the affection of the Macedonians, reprimanded him in a

letter after this manner; "What! hast thou a mind that thy subjects shall look upon thee as their cashkeeper

and not as their king? Wilt thou tamper with them to win their affections? Do it, then, by the benefits of thy

And yet it was, doubtless, a fine thing to bring and plant within the amphitheater a great number of vast trees,

with all their branches in their full verdure, representing a great shady forest, disposed in excellent order; and,

the first day, to throw into it a thousand ostriches and a thousand stags, a thousand boars and a thousand

fallowdeer, to be killed and disposed of by the people: the next day to cause a hundred great lions, a

hundred leopards, and three hundred bears to be killed in his presence; and for the third day, to make three

hundred pair of gladiators fight it out to the last, as the Emperor Probus did. It was also very fine to see those

vast amphitheaters, all faced with marble without, curiously wrought with figures and statues, and the inside

all the sides of this vast space filled and environed, from the bottom to the top, with three or four score rows

where a hundred thousand men might sit at their ease: and the place below, where the games were played, to

make it, by art, first open and cleave in chasms, representing caves that vomited out the beasts designed for

the spectacle; and then, secondly, to be overflowed by a deep sea, full of sea monsters, and laden with ships

of war, to represent a naval battle: and, thirdly, to make it dry and even again for the combat of the gladiators;

and, for the fourth scene, to have it strown with vermilion grain and storax, instead of sand, there to make a

solemn feast for all that infinite number of people; the last act of one only day.

Sometimes they made a high mountain advance itself, covered with fruit trees and other leafy trees, sending

down rivulets of water from the top, as from the mouth of a fountain; otherwhiles, a great ship was seen to

come rolling in, which opened and divided of itself, and after having disgorged from the hold four or five

hundred beasts for fight, closed again, and vanished without help. At other times, from the floor of this place,

they made spouts of perfumed water dart their streams upward, and so high as to sprinkle all that infinite

multitude. To defend themselves from the injuries of the weather, they had that vast place one while covered

over with purple curtains of needlework, and by and by with silk of one or another color, which they drew off

The network also that was set before the people to defend them from the violence of these turned out beasts,

If there be anything excusable in such excesses as these, it is where the novelty and invention create more

wonder than the expense; even in these vanities, we discover how fertile those ages were in other kind of wits

than these of ours. It is with this sort of fertility, as with all other products of nature; not that she there and

then employed her utmost force: we do not go; we rather run up and down, and whirl this way and that; we

turn back the way we came. I am afraid our knowledge is weak in all senses; we neither see far forward nor

far backward: our understanding comprehends little, and lives but a little while; 'tis short both in extent of

And the narrative of Solon, of what he had got out of the Egyptian priests, touching the long life of their state,

and their manner of learning and preserving foreign histories, is not, methinks, a testimony to be slighted

upon this consideration. "Si interminatam in omnes partes magnitudinem regionum videremus, et temporum,

in quam se injiciens animus et intendens, ita late longeque peregrinatur, ut nullam oram ultimi videat, in qua

possit insistere: in haec immensitate... infinita vis innumerabili umappareret formarum." Though all that has

arrived, by report, of our knowledge of times past should be true, and known by some one person, it would be

less than nothing in comparison of what is unknown. And of this same image of the world, which glides away

while we live upon it, how wretched and limited is the knowledge of the most curious; not only of particular

events, which fortune often renders exemplary and of great concern, but of the state of great governments and

nations, a hundred more escape us than ever come to our knowledge. We make a mighty business of the

invention of artillery and printing, which other men at the other end of the world, in China, had a thousand

years ago. Did we but see as much of the world as we do not see, we should perceive, we may well believe, a

perpetual multiplication and vicissitude of forms. There is nothing single and rare in respect of nature, but in

respect of our knowledge, which is a wretched foundation whereon to ground our rules, and that represents to

us a very false image of things. As we nowadays vainly conclude the declension and decrepitude of the

so did he vainly conclude as to its birth and youth, by the vigor he observed in the wits of his time, abounding

Our world has lately discovered another (and who can assure us that it is the last of its brothers, since the

Daemons, the Sybils, and we ourselves have been ignorant of this till now?) as large, well peopled, and

fruitful, as this whereon we live; and yet so raw and childish, that we are still teaching it its A B C; 'tis not

above fifty years since it knew neither letters, weights, measures, vestments, corn nor vines; it was then quite

naked in the mother's lap, and only lived upon what she gave it. If we rightly conclude of our ends, and this

poet of the youthfulness of that age of his, that other world will only enter into the light when this of ours

shall make its exit; the universe will fall into paralysis; one member will be useless, the other in vigor. I am

very much afraid that we have greatly precipitated its declension and ruin by our contagion; and that we have

sold it our opinions and our arts at a very dear rate. It was an infant world, and yet we have not whipped and

subjected it to our discipline, by the advantage of our natural worth and force, neither have we won it by our

justice and goodness, nor subdued it by our magnanimity. Most of their answers, and the negotiations we

have had with them, witness that they were nothing behind us in pertinency and clearness of natural

understanding. The astonishing magnificence of the cities of Cusco and Mexico, and among many other

things, the garden of the king, where all the trees, fruits, and plants, according to the order and stature they

have in a garden, were excellently formed in gold; as, in his cabinet, were all the animals bred upon his

territory and in its seas; and the beauty of their manufactures, in jewels, feathers, cotton, and painting, gave

ample proof that they were as little inferior to us in industry. But as to what concerns devotion, observance of

the laws, goodness, liberality, loyalty, and plain dealing, it was of use to us that we had not so much as they;

As to boldness and courage, stability, constancy against pain, hunger, and death, I should not fear to oppose

the examples I find among them, to the most famous examples of elder times, that we find in our records on

this side of the world. For, as to those who subdued them, take but away the tricks and artifices they practiced

to gull them, and the just astonishment it was to those nations, to see so sudden and unexpected an arrival of

men with beards, differing in language, religion, shape, and countenance, from so remote a part of the world,

and where they had never heard there was any habitation, mounted upon great unknown monsters, against

those who had not only never seen a horse, but had never seen any other beast trained up to carry a man or

any other loading; shelled in a hard and shining skin, with a cutting and glittering weapon in his hand, against

them, who, out of wonder at the brightness of a lookingglass or a knife, would truck great treasures of gold

and pearl; and who had neither knowledge, nor matter with which, at leisure, they could penetrate our steel:

to which may be added the lightning and thunder of nobis silvestria cernere monstra