10

10. On restraining your will

[Montaigne justifies his two unremarkable periods as Mayor of Bordeaux. His ideal is that of a tranquil mind based on a sense of having fulfilled his moral obligations to Church, State, family and city, without excessive emotional involvement. Both Socratic ideals and Stoicism blend with his Christianity. The idea that wisdom begins ‘at home’, that is, with our own self, is Socratic. Montaigne supports his case with echoes of the previous chapter as well as a saying of the Holy Ghost’s and a petition from the Lord’s Prayer.]

[B] Compared with the common ran of men, few things touch me or, to speak more correctly, get a hold on me (it being reasonable for things to touch us provided that they do not take us over). I exercise great care to extend by reason and reflection this privileged lack of emotion, which is by nature well advanced in me. I am wedded to few things and so am passionate about few. My sight is clear but I fix it on only a few objectives; my perception is scrupulous and receptive, but I find things hard to grasp and my concentration is vague. I do not easily get involved. As far as possible I work entirely on my self, but even on that subject I prefer to rein back my emotion so as to stop it from plunging right in, since it is a subject which I possess at the mercy of Another – Fortune having more rights over it than I do.

I value health most highly: but it follows that I ought not to seek or desire even that so frenetically that I find illness unbearable. [C] We should follow the Mean between hatred of pain and love of pleasure: Plato prescribes a way of life midway between the two.1 [B] But there are emotions which drag me from myself and tie me up elsewhere: those I oppose with all my might. In my opinion we must lend ourselves to others but give ourselves to ourselves alone. Even if my will did find it easy to pawn and bind itself to others, I could not persevere: by nature and habit I am too fastidious for that:

fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus. [fleeing from obligations and born for untroubled leisure.]2

Stubborn earnest arguments which ended in victory for my opponent, as well as results which made me ashamed of my hot pursuit, might indeed most cruelly gnaw at me. If I were to then to bite back as others do my soul would never find the strength to support the alarms and commotions which attend those who embrace so much: it would straightway be put out of joint by such internal strife. If I am occasionally pressed into taking in hand some business foreign to me, then it is in hand that I promise to take it, not in lung nor in liver! I accept the burdens but I refuse to make them parts of my body. Take trouble over them: yes; get worked up about them: never. I look after them, but not like a broody hen. I have enough to do to order and arrange those pressing affairs of my own which lie within my veins and vitals without having a jostling crowd of other folk’s affairs lodged there and trampling all over me; I have enough to do to attend to matters which by nature belong to my own being without inviting in outsiders. Those who realize what they owe to themselves, and the great duties which bind themselves to themselves, discover that Nature has made that an ample enough charge and by no means a sinecure. Do not go far away: you have plenty to do ‘at home!’3 Men put themselves up for hire. Their talents are not for themselves but for those to whom they have enslaved themselves. They are never ‘at home’: their tenants are there! That widespread attitude does not please me. We should husband our soul’s freedom, never pawning it, save on occasions when it is proper to do so – which, if we judge soundly, are very few.

Just watch people who have been conditioned to let themselves be enraptured and carried away: they do it all the time, in small matters as in great, over things which touch them and those which touch them not at all. They become involved, indiscriminately, wherever there is a task [C] and obligations; [B] they are not alive without bustle and bother. [C] ‘in negotiis sunt negotii causa’. [They are busy so as to be busy.]4 The only reason why they seek occupations is to be occupied. It is not a case of wanting to move but of being unable to hold still, just as a rock shaken loose cannot arrest its fall until it lies on the bottom. For a certain type of man, being busy is a mark of competence and dignity. [B] Their minds seek repose in motion, like babes in a cradle. They can say that they are as useful to their friends as they are bothersome to themselves. Nobody gives his money away to others: everyone gives his time. We are never more profligate than with the very things over which avarice would be useful and laudable.

The complexion which I adopt is flat contrary to that. I keep within myself; such things as I do want I usually want mildly. And I want very few. I rarely become involved in anything; if I am busy I am calmly so. What others want or do, they want with all their will, frantically. There are so many awkward passages that the surest way is to glide rather lightly over the surface of this world. [C] We should slide over it, not get bogged down in it. [B] Pleasure itself is painful in its deeper reaches:

incedis per ignes Suppositos cineri doloso

[You are walking through fires hidden beneath treacherous ashes.]5

The Jurors of Bordeaux elected me mayor of their city when I was far from France, and even farther from such a thought. I declined; but I was brought to see that I was wrong, since the King had also interposed his command.6

It is an office which should seem all the more splendid for having no salary or reward other than the honour of doing it. It lasts two years, but can be extended by a second election. That very rarely happens. It did in my case; and to two others previously: some years ago to Monsieur de Lanssac and more recently to Monsieur de Biron, Marshal of France, to whose place I succeeded. My own place I yielded to another Marshal of France, Monsieur de Matignon, taking pride in such noble company:

[C] uterque bonus pads bellique minister. [both good officers in peace and war.]7

[B] By those particular circumstances which she contributed herself, Fortune decided to play a part in my preferment. Nor was it entirely vain, since Alexander [C] showed contempt for [B] the ambassadors8 of Corinth who offered him the citizenship of their city, but when they happened to explain that Bacchus and Hercules were also on the roll of honour he accepted it graciously.9

As soon as I arrived I spelled out my character faithfully and truly, just as I know myself to be – no memory, no concentration, no experience, no drive; no hatred either, no ambition, no covetousness, no ferocity – so that they should be told, and therefore know, what to expect from my service. And since the only thing which had spurred them to elect me was what they knew of my father and his honoured memory, I very clearly added that I would be most distressed if anything whatsoever were to make such inroads upon my will as the affairs of their city had made on my father’s while he was governing it in the very same situation to which I had been summoned. I can remember seeing him when I was a boy: an old man, cruelly troubled by the worries of office, forgetting the gentle atmosphere of his home (to which he had long been confined by the weakness of advancing years) as well as his estates and his health, thinking little of his own life (which he nearly lost, having been involved for them in long and arduous journeys). That was the kind of man he was: and his character arose from great natural goodness. Never was there a soul of man more charitable, more devoted to the people.

Such ways I praise in others: but do not like to follow them myself: not without some justification. He had heard it said that one should forget oneself on behalf of one’s neighbour and that, compared to the general, the individual is of no importance.

Most of the world’s rules and precepts do adopt such an attitude, driving us outside ourselves and hounding us into the forum in the interests of the public weal. They thought they were doing some fair deed by diverting us and withdrawing us from ourselves, taking it for granted that we were clinging too much to ourselves by a bond which was all too natural. And they left nothing to that purpose unsaid. It is no novelty that clever men should preach not things as they are but things such as might serve them. [C] Truth has its difficulties, its awkwardnesses and its incompatibilities with us. It is often necessary to deceive us so as to stop us from deceiving ourselves, hooding our eyes and dazzling our minds so as to train them and cure them. ‘Imperiti enim judicant, et qui frequenter in hoc ipsum fallendi sunt, ne errent.’ [Those who judge are inexperienced: they must needs be deceived precisely to stop them from going wrong.]10[B] When they tell us to prefer to ourselves three, four or fifty categories of objects, they are imitating the art of the bowman, who, so as to hit his target, raises his sights way above it. To straighten a piece of bent wood we bend it right over backwards.

I reckon that in the temple of Pallas (as can be seen to be the case in all other religions) there were open secrets, to be revealed to the people, and other hidden [C] higher [B] ones,11 to be revealed only to initiates. It is likely that the true degree of love which each man owes to himself is found among the latter: not. [C] false [B] love [C] which makes us embrace glory, knowledge, riches and such-like with an immoderate primary passion, as though they were members of our being, nor a love [B] which is easy-going and random, acting like ivy which cracks and destroys the wall which it clings to, but a healthy, measured love, as useful as it is pleasant. Whoever knows its duties and practises them is truly in the treasure-house of the Muses: he has reached the pinnacle of human happiness and of man’s joy. Such a man, knowing precisely what is due to himself, finds that his role includes frequenting men and the world; to do this he must contribute to society the offices and duties which concern him. [C] He who does not live a little for others hardly lives at all for himself: ‘Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse.’ [Know that a man who feels loving-friendship for himself does so for all men.]12 [B] The chief charge laid upon each one of us is his own conduct: [C] that is why we are here. [B] For example, any man who forgot to live a good and holy life himself, but who thought that he had fulfilled his duties by guiding and training others to do so, would be stupid: in exactly the same way, any man who gives up a sane and happy life in order to provide one for others makes (in my opinion) a bad and unnatural decision.

I have no wish that anyone should refuse to his tasks, when the need arises, his attention, his deeds, his words, or his sweat and blood:

non ipse pro charts amicis Aut patria timidus perire.

[personally I am not afraid of dying for Those whom I love dearly or for my country.]13

But it will be in the form of an incidental loan, his mind meanwhile remaining quiet and sane – not without activity but without distress, without passion. Straightforward action costs him so little that he can do it in his sleep. But it must be set in motion with discernment, for whereas the body accepts whatsoever is loaded upon it according to its real weight the mind expands it and makes it heavier, often to its own cost, giving it whatever dimensions it thinks fit. With different efforts and different straining of our wills we achieve similar things. One thing does not imply the other: for how many soldiers put themselves at risk every day in wars which they care little about, rushing into danger in battles the loss of which will not make them lose a night’s sleep: meanwhile another man in his own home and far from that danger (which he would never have dared to face) is more passionate about the outcome of the war, and has his soul in greater travail over it, than the soldier who is shedding his life-blood there. I have been able to engage in public duties without going even a nail’s breadth from myself, [C] and to give myself to others without taking myself away from me.

[B] Such a rough and violent desire is more of a hindrance than a help in carrying out our projects; it fills us with exasperation in the face of results which are slow to come or which turn against us, and with bitterness and suspicion towards those with whom we are negotiating. We can never control well any business which obsesses and controls us:

[C] male cuncta ministrat Impetus.

[violent impulses serve everything badly.]14

[B] Anyone who brings only his judgement and talents to the task sets about it more joyfully; totally at his ease, he feints, parries or plays for time as need arises; he can fail to strike home without torment or affliction, ready and intact for a fresh encounter; when he walks he always retains the bridle in his hands. In a man who is bemused by violent and tyrannical strain there can, of necessity, be seen a great deal of unwisdom and injudiciousness. The impetus of his desire carries him along: such a motion is rash and (unless Fortune contributes much) is hardly fruitful. When we punish any injuries which we have received, philosophy wants us to avoid choler, not so as to diminish our revenge but (on the contrary) so that its blows may be weightier and better aimed: philosophy considers violent emotion to be an impediment to that.15 [C] Choler does not simply confuse: of itself it tires the arms of those who inflict chastisement; its flames confound and exhaust their strength. [B] When you are in a dashing hurry, ‘festinatio tarda est’ [haste causes delay].16 Haste trips over its own feet, tangles itself up and comes to a halt. [C] ‘Ipsa se velocitas implicat.’ [The very haste ties you in knots.] [B] For example, from what I can see to be usually the case, covetousness knows no greater hindrance than itself: the more tense and vigorous it is, the less productive it is. It commonly snaps up riches more quickly when masked by some semblance of generosity.

A gentleman, an excellent fellow and one of my friends, nearly drove himself out of his mind by too much strain and passionate concern for the affairs of a prince, his master: yet that self-same master17 described himself to me as one who can see the weight of a setback as well as anyone else but who resolves to put up with it whenever there is no remedy; in other cases he orders all the necessary measures to be taken (which he can do promptly because of his quick intelligence) then quietly waits for the outcome. And indeed I have seen him doing it, remaining very cool in his actions and relaxed in his expression throughout some important and ticklish engagements. I find him greater and more able in ill fortune than in good; [C] his defeats are more glorious to him than his victories: his mortifications more glorious than his triumphs.

[B] Consider how even in vain and trivial pursuits such as chess or tennis matches, the keen and burning involvement of a rash desire at once throws your mind into a lack of discernment and your limbs into confusion: you daze yourself and tangle yourself up. A man who reacts with greater moderation towards winning or losing is always ‘at home’: the less he goads himself on, and the less passionate he is about the game, the more surely and successfully he plays it.

Moreover we impede our soul’s grip and her grasp by giving her too much to embrace. Some things should be merely shown to her; some affixed to her and others incorporated into her. The soul can see and know all things, but she should feed only on herself; she should be taught what properly concerns her, what goods and substances are properly hers. The Laws of Nature teach us what our just needs are. The wise first tell us that no man is poor by Nature’s standards and that, by opinion’s standards, every man is; they then finely distinguish between desires coming from Nature and those coming from the unruliness of our thoughts: those whose limits we can see are hers; those which flee before us and whose end we can never reach are our own. To cure poverty of possessions is easy: poverty of soul, impossible.18

[C] Nam si, quod satis est homini, id satis esse potesset, Hoc sat erat: nunc, cum hoc non est, qui credimus porro Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse?

[This would be enough, if enough could really be enough for any man. Since it never is, why should we believe that any wealth can glut my mind?]

When Socrates saw a great quantity of wealth (valuable jewels and ornaments) being borne in procession through the city, he exclaimed: ‘How many things there which I do not want!’ [B] Metrodorus lived on twelve ounces a day Epicurus on less; Metrocles slept among his sheep in the winter and, in summer, in the temple porticos; [C] ‘Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit.’ [What nature demands, she supplies.] Cleanthes lived by his hands and boasted that ‘Cleanthes, if he so wished, could support another Cleanthes.’19

[B] If what Nature precisely and basically requires for the preservation of our being is too little (and how little it is and how cheaply life can be sustained cannot be better expressed than by the following consideration: that it is so little that it escapes the grasp and blows of Fortune) then let us allow ourselves to take a little more: let us still call ‘nature’ the habits and endowments of each one of us; let us appraise ourselves and treat ourselves by that measure:20 let us stretch our appurtenances and our calculations as far as that. For as far as that, it does seem that we have a good excuse: custom is a second nature and no less powerful;21 [C] if I lack anything which I have become used to, I hold that I truly lack it. [B] I would just as soon (almost) that you took my life than have you restrict it or lop it much below the state in which I have lived it for so long. I am not suited any more to great changes nor to throwing myself into some new and unaccustomed way of life – not even a richer one. It is no longer the time to become different. And if some great stroke of luck should fall into my hands now, how sorry I would be that it did not come when I could have enjoyed it.

Quo mihi fortuna, si non conceditur uti? [What is a fortune to me if I am not able to use it?]22

[C] I would similarly regret any new inward attainment. It is almost better never to become a good man at all than to do so tardily, understanding how to live when you have no life ahead. I am on the way out: I would readily leave to one who comes later whatever wisdom I am learning about dealing with the world. I do not want even a good thing when it is too late to use it. Mustard after dinner! What use is knowledge to a man with no brain left? It is an insult and disfavour of Fortune to offer us presents which fill us with just indignation because they were lacking to us in due season. Take me no farther; I can go on no more. Of all the qualities which sufficiency possesses, endurance alone suffices. Try giving the capabilities of an outstanding treble to a chorister whose lungs are diseased, or [B] eloquence to a hermit banished to the deserts of Arabia! No art is required to decline. [C] At the finish of every task the ending makes itself known. My world is over: my mould has been emptied; I belong entirely to the past; I am bound to acknowledge that and to conform my exit to it. This I will say [‘95] to explain what I mean: [C] the recent suppression of ten days by the Pope has brought me so low that I really cannot wear it:23 I belong to those years when we computed otherwise: so ancient and long-established a custom claims me and summons me back to it. Since I cannot stand novelty even when corrective, I am constrained to be a bit of a heretic in this case. I grit my teeth, but my mind is always ten days ahead or ten days behind; it keeps muttering in my ears: ‘That adjustment concerns those not yet born.’

Although health – oh so sweet! – comes and finds me spasmodically, it is so as to bring me nostalgia, not right of possession. I no longer have anywhere to put it. Time is quitting me: without time there is no right of possession. What little value would I attribute to those great elective offices-of-state which are bestowed only on those who are on the way out! No one is concerned there with whether you will perform them properly but how short a time you have to fill them. From the moment of your entry they are thinking of your exit.

[B] Here, I am in short putting the finishing touches to a particular man, not making another one instead. By long accustoming this form of mine has passed into substance and my fortune into nature. So I maintain that each wretched one of us may be pardoned for reckoning as his whatever is comprised within the measure of custom, and also that, beyond those limits, there is nought but confusion. It is the widest extent that we can allow to our rights: the more we increase our needs and possessions the more we expose ourselves to adversities and to the blows of Fortune. The course run by our desires must be circumscribed and restricted to the narrow limits of the most accessible and contiguous pleasures. Moreover their course should be set not in a straight line terminating somewhere else but in a circle both the start and finish of which remain and terminate within ourselves after a short gallop round: any action carried through without such a return on itself – and I mean a quick and genuine one – is [C] wayward24 [B] and diseased: such are those of covetous and ambitious men and of so many others who dash towards a goal, careering ever on and on.

Most of our occupations are farcical: ‘Mundus universus exercet histrionem.’ [Everybody in the entire world is acting a part.]25 We should play our role properly, but as the role of a character which we have adopted. We must not turn masks and semblances into essential realities, nor adopted qualities into attributes of our self. We cannot tell our skin from our shimmy! [C] It is enough to plaster flour on our faces without doing it to our minds. [B] I know some who transubstantiate and metamorphose themselves into as many new beings and forms as the dignities which they assume: they are prelates down to their guts and livers and uphold their offices on their lavatory-seat. I cannot make them see the difference between hats doffed to them and those doffed to their commissions, their retinue or their mule.26 ‘Tantum se fortunae permittunt, etiam ut naturam dediscant.’ [They allow so much to their Fortune that they unlearn their own natures.]27 They puff up their souls and inflate their natural speech to the height of the magistrate’s bench.

The Mayor and Montaigne have always been twain, very clearly distinguished. Just because you are a lawyer or a financier you must not ignore the trickery there is in such vocations: a man of honour is not accountable for the crimes or stupidities of his profession, nor should they make him refuse to practise it; such is the custom of his country: and he gets something from it. We must make our living from the world and use it as it is. Yet even an Emperor’s judgement should be above his imperial sway, seeing it and thinking of it as an extraneous accessory. He should know how to enjoy himself independently of it, talking (at least to himself) as Tom, Dick or Harry.

I cannot get so deeply and totally involved. When my convictions make me devoted to one faction, it is not with so violent a bond that my understanding becomes infected by it. During the present confusion in this State of ours my own interest has not made me fail to recognize laudable qualities in our adversaries nor reprehensible ones among those whom I follow. [C] People worship everything on their own side: for most of what I see on mine I do not even make excuses. A good book does not lose its beauty because it argues against my cause. [B] Apart from the kernel of the controversy, I have remained balanced and utterly indifferent: [C] ‘Neque extra necessitates belli praecipuum odium gero.’ [And I act with no special hatred beyond what war requires.]28 [B] I congratulate myself for that: it is usual to fall into the opposite extreme: [C] ‘Utatur motu animi qui uti ratione non potest’ [If he cannot be reasonable, let him indulge his emotions!]

[B] Those who extend their anger and hatred beyond their concerns (as most men do) betray that their emotion arises from something else, from some private cause, just as when a man is cured of his ulcer but still has a fever that shows that it arises from some other and more secret origin. [C] The fact is that they feel no anger at all for the general cause in so far as it inflicts wounds on the interests of all men and on the State: they resent it simply because it bruises their private interest. That is why they goad themselves into a private passion which goes beyond public justice and reason: ‘Nam tarn omnia universi quam ea quae ad quemque pertinent singuli carpebant.’ [They did not carp about the terms as a whole but about how they affected them as individuals.]29

[B] I want us to win, but I am not driven mad if we do not. [C] I am firmly attached to the sanest of the parties, but I do not desire to be particularly known as an enemy of the others beyond what is generally reasonable. I absolutely condemn such defective arguments as, ‘He belongs to the League because he admires the grace of Monsieur de Guise’; ‘He is. Huguenot: the activity of the King of Navarre sends him into ecstasies’; ‘He finds such-and-such lacking in the manners of the King: at heart he is a traitor.’ I did not concede to the magistrate himself that he was right to condemn a book for having named a heretic among the best poets of the age.30 Should we be afraid to say that a thief has nice shins! [’95] Must a whore smell horrid? [C] In wiser ages did they revoke Marcus Manlius’ proud title Capitolinus, awarded him earlier as saviour of the liberty and religion of the State? Did they smother the memory of his generosity, of his feats of arms and the military honours awarded for his valour, because he subsequently hankered after kingship, to the prejudice of the laws of his land?31

Some start hating a barrister: by next morning they are saying that he is a poor speaker! (I have touched elsewhere on how zeal has driven decent men to similar errors. For my part I can easily say, ‘He does this wickedly, that virtuously.’) Similarly, when the outlook or the outcome of an event is unfavourable, they want each man to be blind and insensible towards his own party, and that our judgement and conviction should serve not the truth but to project our desires. I would rather err to the other extreme, for I fear that my desires may seduce me. Added to which I have a rather delicate mistrust of anything I desire. I have seen in my time amazing examples of the indiscriminate and prodigious facility which peoples have for letting their beliefs be led and their hopes be manipulated towards what has pleased and served their leaders, despite dozens of mistakes piled one upon another and despite illusions and deceptions. I am no longer struck with wonder at those who were led by the nose by the apish miracles of Apollonius and Mahomet:32 their thoughts and their minds had been stifled by their emotions. Their power of discernment could no longer admit anything save that which smiled upon them and favoured their cause.

I thought this had attained its highest degree in the first of our feverish factions: that other one, born subsequently, imitated it and surpasses it.33 From which I conclude that it is a quality inseparable from mass aberrations: all opinions tumble out after the first one, whipped along like waves in the wind. You do not belong if you can change your mind, if you do not bob along with all the rest. Yet we certainly do wrong to just parties when we would support them by trickery. I have always opposed that. It only works for sick minds: for sane ones there are surer ways (not merely more honourable ones) of sustaining courage and explaining setbacks.

[B] The heavens have never seen strife as grievous as that between Caesar and Pompey, and never will again. Yet I believe I can detect in both their fair, noble souls a great moderation towards each other. Their rivalry over honour and command did not sweep them into frenzied and indiscriminate hatred. Even in their harshest deeds I can discover some remnants of respect and good-will, which leads me to conclude that, had it been possible, each of them would have wished to achieve his ends without the downfall of his fellow rather than with it.

Between Marius and Sylla how different things were! Take warning.34 We should not dash so madly after our emotions and selfish interests. When I was young I resisted the advances of love as soon as I realized that it was getting too much hold over me; I took care that it was not so delightful to me that it finally took me by storm and held me captive entirely at its mercy: on all the other occasions upon which my will seizes too avidly I do the same: I lean in the opposite direction when I see it leaping in and wallowing in its own wine; I avoid so far fuelling the advance of its pleasure that I cannot retake it without loss and bloodshed.

There are souls which, through insensitivity, see only half of anything; they enjoy the good fortune of being less bruised by harmful events. That is a leprosy of the mind which has some appearance of sanity – and of such a sanity as philosophy does not entirely despise; for all that, it is not reasonable to call it wisdom, as we often do. There was a man in antiquity who for just such an affectation mocked Diogenes who, to assay his powers of endurance, went out stark naked and threw his arms round a snowman. He came across him in that attitude. ‘Feeling very cold just now?’ he asked. ‘Absolutely not,’ replied Diogenes. ‘In that case,’ continued the other, ‘what is there hard and exemplary, do you think, about hanging on out there?’35

To measure steadfastness we must know what is suffered. But let those souls which have to experience the adversities and injuries of Fortune in all their depth and harshness and which have to weigh them at their natural weight and taste them according to their natural bitterness employ their arts to avoid being involved in what causes them and to deflect their approaches. What was it that King Cotys did? He paid handsomely when some beautiful and ornate tableware was offered to him, but since it was unusually fragile he immediately smashed the lot, ridding himself in time of an easy occasion for anger against his servants.36

[C] I have likewise deliberately avoided confusion of interests; I have not sought properties adjoining those of close relatives or belonging to folk to whom I should be linked by close affection; from thence arise estrangements and dissension.

[B] I used to like games of chance with cards and dice. I rid myself of them long ago – for one reason only: whenever I lost, no matter what a good face I put on, I still felt a stab of pain. A man of honour, who must take it deeply to heart if he is insulted or given the lie [C] and not be one to accept some nonsense to pay and console him for his loss, [B] should avoid letting controversies grow as well as stubborn quarrels. I avoid like the plague morose men of gloomy complexions, and I do not engage in any discussions which I cannot treat without self-interest or emotion, unless compelled to do so by duty: [C] ‘Melius non incipient, quam desinent.’ [Better that they should never begin than to leave off.]37 [B] The safest way is to be prepared before the event. I am well aware that there have been sages who have adopted a different course: they were not afraid to sink their hooks deep, engaging themselves in several objectives. Those fellows are sure of their fortitude, beneath which they can shelter against all kinds of hostile events, wrestling against evils by the power of their endurance:

velut rupes vastum quœ prodit in œquor, Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto, Vim cunctam atque minas perfert cœlique marisque, Ipsa immota manens.

[as a cliff, jutting out into the vast expanse of ocean, exposed to furious winds and confronting the waves, braves the menaces of sea and sky and itself remains unmoved.]38

Let us not attempt to follow such examples: we shall never manage it. Such men have made up their minds to watch resolutely and unmoved the destruction of their country, which once held and governed all their affection.39 For common souls like ours there is too much strain, too much savagery in that. Cato gave up for his country the most noble life there ever was; little men like us should flee farther from the storm; we should see that there are no pains to feel, no pains to endure, dodging blows not parrying them. [C] When Zeno saw Chremonides, a young man whom he loved, coming to sit beside him, he jumped up. Cleanthes asked why. ‘I understand,’ he replied, ‘that when any part of the body starts to swell the doctors chiefly prescribe rest and forbid emotion.’40 [B] Socrates never says, ‘Do not surrender to the attraction of beauty; resist it; struggle against it.’ He says, ‘Flee it; run from its sight and from any encounter with it, as from a potent poison which can dart and strike you from afar.’ [C] And that good disciple of his, describing either fictionally or historically (though in my opinion more historically than fictionally) the rare perfections of Cyrus the Great, shows him distrusting his ability to resist the attractions of the heavenly beauty of his captive the illustrious Panthea: it was to a man who was less at liberty than he was that he gave the tasks of visiting her and guarding her.41 [B] And the Holy Ghost likewise says, ‘Ne nos inducas in tentationem.’ [Lead us not into temptation.]42 We pray, not that our reason may not be assailed and overcome by worldly desires, but that it may not even be assayed by them, that we be not led into a position where we have even merely to withstand the approaches, blandishments and temptations of sin, and we beseech our Lord to keep our consciences quiet, wholly and completely delivered from commerce with evil.43

[C] Those who say that they have got the better of their vindictive feelings or of some other species of blameworthy passion often speak truly of things as they are but not as they were. They are talking to us now that the causes behind their error have been advanced and promoted by themselves. But push farther back; summon those causes back to their first principles: there you will catch them napping. Do they expect their faults to be trivial just because they are older, and that the outcome of an unjust beginning should be just?

[B] Whoever would wish his country well (as I do) without getting ulcers about it or wasting away will, when he sees it threatening either to collapse in ruin or to continue in a no-less-ruinous state, be unhappy about it but not knocked senseless. O wretched ship of State, ‘hauled in different direction by the waves, the winds and the man at the wheel’:

in tarn diversa magister, Ventus et unda trahunt.44

Whoever does not gape after the favours of princes as something he cannot live without is not greatly stung by the coldness of their reception nor the fickleness of their wills. A man who does not brood over his children or his honours with. [C] slavish [B] propensity45 does not cease to live comfortably after he has lost them. Whoever acts well mainly for his own satisfaction is not much put out when he sees men judging his deeds contrary to his merit. A quarter of an ounce of endurance can provide for such discomforts. I find that the remedy which works for me is, from the outset, to purchase my freedom at the cheapest price I can get; I know that I have by this means escaped much travail and hardship. With very little effort I stop the first movement of my emotions, giving up whatever begins to weigh on me before it bears me off. [C] If you do not stop the start, you will never stop the race. If you cannot slam the door against your emotions you will never chase them out once they have got in. If you cannot struggle through the beginning, you will never get through the end; nor will you withstand the building’s fall, if you cannot stand its being shaken. ‘Etenim ipsœ se impellunt ubi semel a ratione discessum est; ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altutnque provehitur imprudens, nec repent locum consistendi.’ [Once they have departed from reason the emotions drive themselves on; their very weakness indulges itself, venturing imprudently on to the deep and finding no place in which it can heave to.]46

[B] I can feel in time the tiny breezes which come fondling me and rustling within me, as forerunners of gales: [C] ‘Animus, multo antequam opprimatur, quatitur.’ [The mind is lashed well before it is engulfed.]

[B] Ceu flamina prima Cum deprensa fremunt sylvis, et cœca volutant Murmura, venturos nautis prodentia ventos.

[Thus when the light breeze is pent up in the woodlands, it swirls about and makes a sullen roar, warning seamen that a storm is nigh.]47

How frequently have I done myself an evident injustice so as to avoid the risk of receiving a worse one from the judges after years of agony and of vile and base machinations which are more hostile to my nature than the rack or pyre. [C] ‘convenit a litibus quantum licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam quam licet, abhorrentem esse. Est enim non modo liberale, paululum nonnunquam de suo jure decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum.’ [It is seemly to avoid lawsuits as far as you should, and even a little bit further. It is not only gentlemanly to waive one’s rights a little it is sometimes also profitable.]48 If we were truly wise we should delight in it and boast about it, like the innocent son of a great house whom I heard happily welcoming each guest with, ‘Mother has just lost her case!’ as though her case were a cough or a fever or some other thing which it is grievous to have. Even such advantages as Fortune has favoured me with – namely kinships and ties with men who have supreme authority over matters of that kind – I have consciously striven hard to avoid exploiting to the detriment of anyone else or to inflate my rights beyond their rightful worth. In short [B] I am happy to say that I have spent all my days virgin of lawsuits (even though they have not failed frequently to offer themselves to my service on many a just pretext if only I would listen) and virgin of actions against me. So I shall soon have spent a long life without serious harm given or received, and without being called anything worse than my name: a rare gift of Heaven.

Our greatest commotions arise from laughable principles and causes. What ruin befell our last Duke of Burgundy because of an action against him for a cartload of sheep-skins. And was not the engraving on a seal the original and main cause of the most horrifying disaster that the fabric of this world has ever suffered?49 (For Pompey and Caesar are only side-shoots, consequent upon the first two rivals.) And in my own day I have seen the wisest heads in this Kingdom assembled with great ceremony and at great public expense to make treaties and agreements, while the details of them depended on sovereign chatter in the ladies’ drawing-room and on the inclination of some slip of a woman. [C] The poets understood that rightly enough when they put all Greece and Asia to fire and bloody strife for the sake of an apple.50

[B] Think why that man over there takes his sword and dagger and risks his life and honour; let him tell you the source of the quarrel: the occasion was so trivial that he cannot tell you of it without blushing. When it is starting to ferment, all you need is a little wisdom. Once you have embarked, all the hawsers pull tight: then, great precautions are needed, much more difficult and important ones.

[C] How much easier it is never to get in than to get yourself out! [B] We should act contrary to the reed which, when it first appears, throws up a long straight stem but afterwards, as though it were exhausted and had lost its wind, makes several dense nodules, as so many respites which indicate that it no longer has its original vigour and drive.51 We must rather begin gently and coolly, saving our breath for the encounter and our vigorous thrusts for finishing the job off. In their beginnings it is we who guide affairs and hold them in our power; but once they are set in motion, it is they which guide us and sweep us along and we who have to follow.

[C] Yet that does not mean that this stratagem of mine has relieved me of all difficulties or that I have not often found it very hard to master or bridle my emotions. They cannot always be restrained to the measure of their causes, and even their beginnings can be harsh and aggressive. Nevertheless there are fair savings to be derived from it, and some fruits too except by those whom no fruit can satisfy when no honour is to be had. For in truth such an action can only be valued by each man himself. You yourself are happier but you are not more esteemed, since you reformed yourself before you took to the floor, before the matter could be seen. However there is this as well: not merely in this case but in all other of life’s duties, the way of those who aim at honour is different indeed from that followed by those whose objective is the ordinate and reasonable.

[B] I find that some dash thoughtlessly and furiously into the lists only to slow down during the charge. Plutarch says that those who suffer from excessive diffidence readily and easily agree to anything but also readily break their word and go back on what they have said; so, similarly, anyone who enters lightly upon a quarrel is liable to be equally light in getting out of it.52 The same difficulty which stops me from broaching anything would spur me on once I was heated and excited. What a bad way to do it: once you are in, you must go on or burst! [C] ‘Undertake relaxedly,’ said Bias, ‘but pursue hotly.’53

[B] But what is even less tolerable, for want of wisdom we decline into want of bravery.

Today most settlements of our disputes are shameful and lying: we merely seek to save appearances, while betraying and disowning our true thoughts. We plaster over facts; we know how we said it and what we meant by it; the bystanders know it; so do our friends to whom we wished to prove our superiority. We disavow our thoughts at the expense of our frankness and our reputation for courage, seeking bolt-holes in falsehoods so as to reach a conciliation. We give the lie to ourselves in order to get out the fact that we gave the lie to somebody else. You ought not to be considering whether your gesture or words may be given a different meaning: from now on it is your true and honest meaning that you should be seeking to defend, no matter what the cost. At stake are your morality and your honour: those are not qualities for you to protect behind a mask. Let us leave such servile shifts and expediences to the chicanery of the law-courts. Every day I see excuses and reparations made to purge an indiscretion which seem uglier to me than the indiscretion itself. It would be better to offend your adversary afresh than to commit an offence against yourself by making him such a reparation as that. You were moved to anger when you defied him: now that you are cooler and more sensible, you are going to appease him and fawn on him! That way, you retreat further than you ever advanced. I reckon that nothing which a gentleman says can seem worse than the shame of his unsaying it under duress from authority: stubbornness in a gentleman is more pardonable than pusillanimity.

For me passions are as easy to avoid as hard to moderate: [C] ‘Abscinduntur facilius animo quam temperantur.’ [They are more easily cut out from the mind than tempered.]54

[B] If a man cannot attain to that noble Stoic impassibility, let him hide in the lap of this peasant insensitivity of mine. What Stoics did from virtue I teach myself to do from temperament. Storms lodge in the middle regions; philosophers and country bumpkins – the two extremes – meet in peace of mind and happiness.

Fœlix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. Fortunatus et ille Deos qui novit agrestes, Panaque, sylvanumque senem, nymphasque sorores.

[Blessed the man who can find out causes, who can trample down all fears of inexorable Fate and the howls of the close-fisted Underworld: blessed, too, he who knows the rustic gods, Pan, old Sylvanus and the sister nymphs.]55

The infancies of all things are feeble and weak. We must keep our eyes open at their beginnings; you cannot find the danger then because it is so small: once it has grown, you cannot find the cure. While chasing ambition I would have had to face, every day, thousands of irritations harder to digest than the difficulty I had in putting a stop to my natural inclination towards it.

jure perhorrui Late conspicuum tollere verticem.

[I was right to abhor raising my head and attracting attention.]56

All public deeds are liable to ambiguous and diverse interpretations since so many heads are judging them. Now about this municipal office of mine (and I am delighted to say a word about it, not that it is worth it but to show how I behave in such matters): some say that I bore myself as a man who shows too little passion and whose zeal was too slack. As far as appearances go, they were not all that wrong: I assay keeping my soul and my thoughts in repose: [C] ‘Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus’ [Always tranquil by nature, I now am also so by my age];57 [B] if they turn riotous from some deep and disturbing impression that, in truth, is against my intention. Yet from this natural languor of mine one should not draw evidence of incapacity (since lack of worry and lack of wit are two different things) and even less of ingratitude or of lack of appreciation towards those citizens who went to every available extreme to please me, both before and after they knew me – for they did far more for me in re-electing me to office than in electing me in the first place. I wish them all possible good: and indeed, if the occasion had arisen, there is nothing that I would have spared in their service. I bestirred myself as much for them as I do for myself. They are a fine people, good brave fighting-men, able therefore to accept discipline and obedience and to serve a good cause when well led.

People also say that my period of office passed without trace or mark. Good. They accuse me of being dilatory at a time when nearly everyone else was convicted of doing too much. I [C] paw the ground when my will bolts away with me: [B] but that trait58 is the enemy of perseverance. Should anyone wish to use me as I am, let him give me tasks which require vigour and frankness, as well as straightforward, brief and hazardous execution. I could do something then. But if it needs to be subtle, toilsome, clever and tortuous, better ask somebody else.

Not all important commissions are difficult. I would have been prepared to work a little harder had that been very necessary: I am capable of doing somewhat more than I do or like to do. To the best of my knowledge I never left undone any action that duty seriously required of me; but I readily overlooked those where ambition mingles with duty and uses it as a pretext it is those which, more often than not, fill men’s eyes and ears and please them; they are satisfied not with realities but appearances. If they do not hear a sound they think you are asleep! My own humours are opposed to noisy ones: I could certainly remain undisturbed while quelling a disturbance, and could punish a riot without losing my temper. Should I need a little choler and fire, then I borrow some to mask me. My manners are unabrasive, more insipid than sharp: I do not bring actions against an official who dozes, provided that those whom he administers can doze quietly with him. That is the way the laws doze.

Personally I favour an obscure mute life which slips by: [C] ‘neque submissam et abjectam, neque se efferentem’ [neither submissive and mean nor puffed up].59 [B] That is how my Fortune wills it: I was born into a family which has flowed on without brilliance or turbulence, one long remembered as being particularly ambitious for probity. Nowadays men are so conditioned to bustle and ostentation that we have lost the feel of goodness, moderation, even-temper, steadfastness and other such [C] quiet [B] and unpretentious60 qualities; rough objects make themselves felt: smooth ones can be handled without sensation. Illness is felt: good health, little or not at all; neither do we feel things which flatter us, compared with those which batter us.

If we postpone something which could be done in the council-chamber until it is done in the market-square, keeping back till noon something which could have been finished the night before, or if we are anxious to do personally something which a colleague could have done just as well, then we are acting for the sake of our own reputation and for private advantage, not for the Good. (That is what some barber-surgeons used to do in ancient Greece, performing their operations on a daïis in view of passers-by so as to enlarge their practices and the number of patients.)61 They think that good regulations can only be heard when announced with a fanfare.

Ambition is not a vice fit for little fellows or for enterprises such as ours. Alexander was told: ‘Your father will leave you wide dominions, peaceful and secure.’ But that lad wanted to rival his father’s victorious and righteous government.62 He had no wish to enjoy ruling the entire world undemandingly and peacefully. [C] (Alcibiades in Plato says he prefers to die young as a beautiful, rich, noble and exceedingly learned youth than to stay fixed in those qualities.)63

[B] Ambition is doubtless a pardonable malady in a strong and full soul such as Alexander’s. But when petty, dwarfish souls start aping them, believing that they can scatter their renown abroad by having judged one matter rightly or for having arranged the changing of the guard at the town gate, then the higher they hope to raise their heads the more they bare their arses. Such petty achievements have no body, no life; they start evaporating on the first man’s lips and never get from one street-corner to another. Have the effrontery to talk about them to your son or your manservant, like that old fellow who had nobody else to listen to his praises or to acknowledge his worth and so boasted to his chambermaid: ‘Oh, what a gallant and clever man you have for a master, Perrette!’64 If the worse comes to worst, talk about it to yourself, like a King’s Counsel I know who, having (with extreme exertion and extreme absurdity) disgorged a boatload of legal references, withdrew from the council-chamber to the court piss-house, where he was heard devoutly muttering through his teeth: ‘Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomine tuo da gloriam.’ [Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name be the glory.]65 If you cannot get it from somebody else’s purse, get it from your own!

Fame does not play the whore for so base a price. Those rare and exemplary deeds to which fame is due would not tolerate the company of such a countless mob of petty everyday actions. Marble can boast your titles as much as you like for having repaired a stretch of wall or cleaned up some public gutter, but men of sense will not. Renown does not ensue upon anything done well unless difficulty and unusualness are involved. Indeed, according to the Stoics, simple esteem is not due to every action born of virtue: they would not even faintly praise a man for having abstained from some sore-eyed old whore for temperance’ sake!66 [C] Those who already knew of the astonishing qualities of Scipio Africanus rejected the ‘glory’ which Panaetius gave him for refusing bribes: that glory was not his alone but belonged to his entire age.67

[B] We have pleasures appropriate to our station: let us not usurp those of greatness: ours are more natural and are the more solid and certain for being more humble. Let us reject ambition out of ambition, since we do not do so out of a sense of right and wrong; let us despise that base beggerly hunger for renown and honour which makes us solicit them from all kinds of people by abject means, no matter how vile the price: [C] ‘Quae est ista laus quae possit e macello peti?’ [What kind of praise is it that you can order from the butcher’s?]68 [B] To be honoured thus is a dishonour.

Let us learn to be no more avid for glory than we deserve. Boasting of every useful or blameless action is for men in whom such things are rare and unusual: they want them to be valued at what it cost them! The more glittering the deed the more I subtract from its moral worth, because of the suspicion aroused in me that it was exposed more for glitter than for goodness: goods displayed are already half-way to being sold. The most elegant deeds are those which slip from the doer’s hand nonchalantly and without fuss, and which some man of honour later picks out and saves from obscurity, bringing them to light for their own sake. [C] ‘Mihi quidem laudabiliora videntur omnia, quae sine venditatione et sine populo teste fiunt’ [Personally I always find more praiseworthy whatever is done without ostentation and without public witnesses] – says the vainest man in the world!69

[B] I had nothing to do except to preserve things and to keep them going; those are dull and unnoticeable tasks. There is a great deal of splendour in innovation, but that is under a ban nowadays when it is by novelties alone that we are oppressed, against novelties alone that we must defend ourselves. [C] Although it is less in the daylight, refraining from action is often more noble than action: what little I am worth is virtually all on that side. [B] In short, my opportunities while in office accorded with my temperament. I am most grateful to them for it. Is there any man who wants to be ill so as to provide work for his doctor? Ought we not to whip a doctor who hoped for the plague so as to practise his Art? Although that wicked humour is common enough, I have never hoped that trouble and distemper in this city might increase the glory and honour of my mayoralty. I put my shoulder loyally to the wheel to make things smooth and easy.

Even he who would not show me gratitude for the gentle and muted calm which accompanied my administration cannot at least deprive me of that share which does belong to me by title of my good fortune. And I am so made that I would as soon be fortunate as wise, owing my success simply to God’s grace rather than to the intervention of my labours. I had proclaimed most eloquently to the whole world my inadequacy for handling such public affairs. And I have something worse than that inadequacy: the fact that I hardly find it displeasing and, given the kind of life that I have sketched out for myself, that I hardly even attempt to cure it.

Now I was not satisfied, either, with my conduct of affairs: but I did achieve – more or less – what I promised myself I would, and I far exceeded what I promised to those whom I was dealing with, since I prefer to promise rather less than I can do and hope to do. I am sure I left no injury or hatred behind me: as for leaving any regret or desire for me, I do at least know that I never much [C] cared [B] for that.70

Mene huic confidere monstro, Mene salis placidi vultum fluctusque quietos Ignorare?

[Me! put faith in such a monster! Me! not realize that the sea simply happens to be calm and to look peaceful!]71