14

14. That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them

[The [A] text of this chapter (in which Montaigne reflects on standard philosophical arguments, especially Stoic paradoxes on pain and death) seems to date from about 1572. Later additions make it more personal and, after his own experience of pain and distress, weaken the force of the Classical commonplaces. Already in germ here are arguments developed in ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’ and the final chapter, ‘On experience’. The moral concerns are restricted to the domain of philosophy, a domain in which revealed religion properly has no part to play.]

[A] There is an old Greek saying that men are tormented not by things themselves but by what they think about them.1 If that assertion could be proved to be always true everywhere it would be an important point gained for the comforting of our wretched human condition. For if ills can only enter us through our judgement it would seem to be in our power either to despise them or to deflect them towards the good: if the things actually do throw themselves on our mercy why do we not act as their masters and accommodate them to our advantage? If what we call evil or torment are only evil or torment insofar as our mental apprehension endows them with those qualities then it lies within our power to change those qualities. And if we did have such a choice and were free from constraint we would be curiously mad to pull in the direction which hurts us most, endowing sickness, poverty or insolence with a bad and bitter taste when we could give them a pleasant one, Fortune simply furnishing us with the matter and leaving it to us to supply the form. Let us see whether a case can be made for what we call evil not being an evil in itself or (since it amounts to the same) whether at least it is up to us to endow it with a different savour and aspect.

If the original essence of the thing which we fear could confidently lodge itself within us by its own authority it would be the same in all men. For all men are of the same species and, in varying degrees, are all furnished with the same conceptual tools and instruments of judgement. But the diversity of the opinion which we have of such things clearly shows that they enter us only by means of compromises: one man in a thousand may perhaps lodge them within himself in their true essence, but when the others do so they endow them with a new and contrary essence.

Our main enemies are held to be death, poverty and pain. Yet everyone knows that death, called the dreadest of all dreadful things, is by others called the only haven from life’s torments, our natural sovereign good, the only guarantor of our freedom, the common and ready cure of all our ills;2 some await it trembling and afraid: others [C] bear it more easily than life.3 [B] One man complains that death is too available:4

Mors, utinam pavidos vita subducere nolles, Sed virtus te sola daret.

[O Death! Would that thou didst scorn to steal the coward’s life; would that only bravery could win thee.]

But leaving aside such boasting valour, Theodorus replied to Lysimachus who was threatening to kill him, ‘Quite an achievement, that, matching the force of a poisonous fly!’5 We find that most of the philosophers either deliberately went to meet death or else hastened and helped it along. [A] And how many of the common people6 can we see, led forth not merely to die but to die a death mixed with disgrace and grievous torments, yet showing such assurance (some out of stubbornness, others from a natural simplicity) that we may perceive no change in their normal behaviour: they settle their family affairs and commend themselves to those they love, singing their hymns, preaching and addressing the crowd – indeed even including a few jests and drinking the health of their acquaintances every bit as well as Socrates did. When one man was being led to the gallows he asked not to be taken through such-and-such a street: there was a tradesman there who might arrest him for an old debt! Another asked the executioner not to touch his throat: he was ticklish and did not want to burst out laughing! When the confessor promised another man that he would sup that day at table with Our Lord, he said, ‘You go instead: I’m on a fast.’ Yet another asked for a drink; when the executioner drank of it first, he declined to drink after him – ‘for fear of the pox’! And everybody knows that tale of the man of Picardy who was on the scaffold when they showed him a young woman who was prepared to marry him to save his life (as our laws sometimes allow): he gazed at her, noticed that she had a limp, and said, ‘Run up the noose: she’s lame!’ A similar story is told of a man in Denmark, who was condemned to be beheaded: they offered him similar terms, but he refused the young woman they brought because she had sagging jowls and a pointed nose.7 In Toulouse when a manservant was accused of heresy, the only justification he would give for his belief was to refer to that of his master, a young undergraduate who was in gaol with him: he preferred to die rather than accept that his master could be mistaken. When King Louis XI took Arras, many of the citizens let themselves be hanged rather than cry ‘Long live the King.’8

[C] Even today in the Kingdom of Narsinga the wives of their priests are buried alive with their dead husbands. All other wives are burned alive at their husbands’ funeral, not merely with constancy but with gaiety. And when they cremate the body of their dead king, all his wives and concubines, his favourites and a multitude of dignatories and servants of every kind, trip so lightly towards the pyre to cast themselves into it with their master that they apparently hold it an honour to be his comrades in death.9

[A] Among the lowly souls of Fools, some have been found who refused to give up clowning even in death. When the hangman sent one of them swinging from the rope he cried out his regular catch-phrase: ‘Let her run with the wind.’ Another jester lay dying on a palliasse in front of the fire; the doctor asked him where it hurt: ‘Between that bench and this fire,’ he replied. And when the priest was about to administer the last rites and was fumbling about to anoint his feet (which were all twisted up and retracted), ‘You will find them,’ he said, ‘at the end of my legs!’ When exhorted to charge someone to intercede with God, he inquired, ‘Is anyone going to see Him?’ When the other replied, ‘You will soon, if God so wishes,’ he exclaimed: ‘Now, if I could only get there by tomorrow evening, I…’ – ‘Just think about your intercessions,’ continued the other; ‘You will be there soon enough.’ – ‘In that case I had better wait,’ he said, ‘and deliver my intercessions in person.’10

I have heard my father tell how places were taken and retaken so many times in our recent wars in Milan that the people became weary of so many changes of fortune and firmly resolved to die: a tally of at least twenty-five heads of family took their own lives in one single week. That incident was similar to what occurred in the city of the Xanthians who, besieged by Brutus, rushed out headlong, men, women and children, with so furious an appetite for death that to achieve it they omitted nothing that is usually done to avoid it; Brutus was able to save but a tiny number.11

[C] Any opinion is powerful enough for somebody to espouse it at the cost of his life. The first article in that fair oath that Greece swore – and kept – in the war against the Medes was that every man would rather exchange life for death than Persian laws for Greek ones. In the wars of the Turks and the Greeks how many men can be seen preferring to accept the cruellest of deaths rather than to renounce circumcision for baptism?

That is an example which all religions are capable of. When the Kings of Castile banished the Jews from their lands, King John of Portugal sold them sanctuary in his territories at eight crowns a head, on condition that they would have to leave by a particular day when he would provide vessels to transport them to Africa. The day duly arrived after which they were to remain as slaves if they had not obeyed: but too few ships were provided; those who did get aboard were treated harshly and villanously by the sailors who, apart from many other indignities, delayed them at sea, sailing this way and that until they had used up all their provisions and were forced to buy others from them at so high a price and over so long a period that they were set ashore with the shirts they stood up in. When the news of this inhuman treatment reached those who had remained behind, most resolved to accept slavery; a few pretended to change religion. When Emmanuel, [’95] John’s successor, [C] came to the throne he first set them all free; then he changed his mind, giving them time to void his kingdom and assigning three ports for their embarkation. When the good-will he had shown in granting them their freedom had failed to convert them to Christianity, he hoped (said Bishop Osorius, the best Latin historian of our times) that they would be brought to it by the hardship of having to expose themselves as their comrades had done to thievish seamen and of having to abandon a land to which they had grown accustomed and where they had acquired great wealth, in order to cast themselves into lands foreign and unknown. But finding his hopes deceived and the Jews determined to make the crossing, he withdrew two of the ports he had promised in order that the length and difficulty of the voyage would make some of them think again – or perhaps it was to pile them all together in one place so as the more easily to carry out his design, which was to tear all the children under fourteen from their parents and to transport them out of sight and out of contact, where they could be taught our religion. This deed is said to have produced a dreadful spectacle, as the natural love of parents and children together with their zeal for their ancient faith rebelled against this harsh decree: it was common to see fathers and mothers killing themselves or – an even harsher example – throwing their babes down wells out of love and compassion in order to evade that law. Meanwhile the allotted time ran out: they had no resources, so returned to slavery. Some became Christians: even today a century later few Portuguese trust in their sincerity or in that of their descendants, even though the constraints of custom and of long duration are as powerful counsellors as any other.12 Cicero says: ‘Quoties non modo ductores nostri sed universi etiam exercitus ad non dubiam mortem concurrerunt?’ [How often have not only our generals but entire armies charged to their death?]13 [B] I witnessed one of my friends energetically pursuing death with a real passion, rooted in his mind by many-faceted arguments which I could not make him renounce; quite irrationally, with a fierce, burning hunger, he seized upon the first death which presented itself with a radiant nimbus of honour.

[A] In our own times there are many examples of even children killing themselves for fear of some slight setback. (In this connection one of the Ancients said, ‘What shall we not go in fear of if we fear what cowardice itself has chosen for its refuge?’)14 If I were to thread together a long list of people of all sorts, of both sexes and of all schools of thought, who even in happier times have awaited death with constancy or have willingly sought it – not merely to fly from the ills of this life but in some cases simply to fly from a sense of being glutted with life and in others from hope of a better mode of being elsewhere – I would never complete it: they are so infinite in number that, in truth, I would find it easier to list those who did fear death. One case only: the philosopher Pyrrho happened to be aboard ship during a mighty storm; to those about him whom he saw most terrified he pointed out an exemplary pig, quite unconcerned with the storm; he encouraged them to imitate it.15 Dare we conclude that the benefit of reason (which we praise so highly and on account of which we esteem ourselves to be lords and masters of all creation) was placed in us for our torment? What use is knowledge if, for its sake, we lose the calm and repose which we would enjoy without it and if it makes our condition worse than that of Pyrrho’s pig? Intelligence was given us for our greater good: shall we use it to bring about our downfall by fighting against the design of Nature and the order of the Universe, which require each creature to use its faculties and resources for its advantage?

Fair enough, you may say: your rule applies to death, but what about want? And what have you to say about pain which [C] Aristippus, Hieronymus and16 [A] the majority of sages judge to be the [C] ultimate [A] evil?17 Even those who denied this in words accepted it in practice: Possidonius was tormented in the extreme by an acutely painful illness; Pompey came to see him and apologized for having picked on so inappropriate a time for hearing him discourse on philosophy: ‘God forbid,’ said Possidonius, ‘that pain should gain such a hold over me as to hinder me from expounding philosophy or talking about it.’ And he threw himself into the theme of contempt for pain. Meanwhile pain played her part and pressed hard upon him. At which he cried, ‘Pain, do your worst! I will never say you are an evil!’18 A great fuss is made about this story, but what does it imply about his contempt for pain? He is arguing about words: if those stabbing pangs do not trouble him, why does he break off what he was saying? Why does he think it so important not to call pain an evil?

All is not in the mind in his case. We can hold opinions about other things: here the role is played by definite knowledge. Our very senses are judges of that:

Qui nisi sunt veri, ratio quoque falsa sit omnis. [If they are not true, then reason itself is totally false.]19

Are we to make our flesh believe that lashes from leather thongs merely tickle it, or make our palate believe that bitter aloes is vin de Graves? In this matter, Pyrrho’s pig is one of us: it may not fear death, but beat it and it squeals and cries. Are we to force that natural universal and inherent characteristic which can be seen in every living creature under heaven: namely, that pain causes trembling? The very trees seem to shudder beneath the axe.

The act of dying is the matter of a moment: it is felt only by our powers of reason:

Aut fuit, aut veniet, nihil est praesentis in illa; [Death either was or is to come: nothing of the present is in her;]20

Morsque minus poenae quam mora mortis habet.

[There is less pain in Death than in waiting for Death.]

Thousands of beasts and men are dead before they are threatened. In truth, what [C] we say we [A] chiefly fear21 in death is what usually precedes it: pain.

[C] Yet if we are to believe a holy Father of the Church, ‘Malam mortem non facit, nisi quod sequitur mortem.’ [Death is no evil, except on account of what follows it.]22 And I would maintain with greater likelihood that neither what precedes it nor what follows it appertains to death. Our self-justifications are false: I find from experience that it is our inability to suffer the thought of dying which makes us unable to suffer the pain of it, and that the pain we do suffer is twice as grievous since it threatens us with death. But as reason condemns our cowardice in fearing something so momentary, so unavoidable, so incapable of being felt as death is, we seize upon a more pardonable pretext.

We do not put on the danger list any painful ailment which comports no danger apart from the pain itself. Since toothache or gout, however painful, are not fatal nobody really counts them as illnesses. So let us concede that where dying is concerned we are chiefly concerned with the pain, [A] just as in poverty there is nothing to fear except the fact that it throws us into the embrace of pain by the thirst, hunger, cold and heat and the sleepless watches that we are made to suffer.

And so let us concern ourselves only with pain. I grant that pain is the worst disaster that can befall our being. I willingly do so, for, of all men in the world. I am the most ill-disposed toward pain and [C] flee23 [A] it all the more for having had little acquaintance with it, thank God. But it lies within us not to destroy pain but at least to lessen it by patient suffering and, even if the body be disturbed by it, still to keep our reason and our soul well-tempered.

If this were not so, what could have brought us to respect manly courage, valour, fortitude, greatness of soul and determination? If there were no pain to defy, how could they play their part? ‘Avida est periculi virtus’. [Manly courage is avid for danger.]24 If we did not have to sleep rough, endure in full armour the midday sun, make a meal of horseflesh or donkey, watch as they cut us open to extract a bullet buried between our bones, allow ourselves to be stitched up again, cauterized and poked about, how could we ever acquire that superiority which we aspire to have over the common people? Fleeing pain and evil is not at all what the sages counsel – they say that among indifferent actions it is more desirable to perform the one which causes us most trouble. [C] ‘Non enim hilaritate, nec lascivia, nec risu, aut joco comite levitatis, sed saepe etiam tristes firmitate et constantia sunt beati.’ [For happiness is to be found not in gaiety, pleasure, laughing, nor in levity the comrade of jesting: those are happy, often in sadness, who are constant and steadfast.]25 [A] That was why it was impossible to convince our forebears that conquests made by force of arms at the hazard of war were not superior to those safely won by intrigues and plotting:

Laetius est quoties magno sibi constat honestum.

[Whenever virtue costs us dear, our joy is greater.]26

In addition, it ought to console us that, by Nature, ‘if pain is violent it is short; if long, light’ – [C] ‘si gravis brevis, si longus levis.’27 [A] You will not feel it for long if you feel it grievously: either it will quench itself or quench you, which amounts to the same thing.28 [C] If you find it unbearable, it will bear you away. ‘Memineris maximos morte finiri; parvos multa habere intervalla requietis; mediocrum nos esse dominos: ut si tolerabiles sint feramus, sin minus, e vita, quum ea non placeat, tanquam e theatro exeamus.’ [Remember that the greatest pains are ended by death, the smaller ones allow us periods of repose; and we are masters of the moderate ones, so that if they are bearable we shall be able to bear them; if they are not, when life fails to please us, we may make our exit as from the theatre.]29

[A] What causes us to be so impatient of suffering is that we are not used to finding our [C] principal [A] happiness in the soul, [C] nor to concentrating enough on her, who alone is the sovereign Lady of our actions and of our mode of being. The body knows only differences of degree: otherwise it is of one uniform disposition: but the soul can be diversified into all manner of forms; she reduces all bodily sensations and all physical accidents to herself and to whatever her own state may be. That is why we must study her, inquire into her and arouse in her her almighty principles. No reasoning power, no commandment, no force can override her inclination or her choice. She is capable of inclining a thousand ways: let us endow her with an inclination which conduces to our rest and conversation: then we are not only protected from any shocks but, if it pleases her, we are delighted and flattered by those pains and shocks.

All things indifferently can be turned to profit by the soul: even errors and dreams can serve her as matter to be loyally used to protect us and to make us contented. It can easily be seen that what gives their edge to pain and pleasure is the hone of our mind. The beasts, since they leave them to the body while leading the mind by the nose, have feelings which are free, natural and therefore virtually the same in all species, as we can see from the similarity of their reactions. If we were to refrain from disturbing the jurisdiction which our members rightly have in such matters, it is to be believed that we would be better off and that Nature has endowed them with a just and moderate temperament towards pleasure and pain. Nature, being equal and common to all, cannot fail to be just. But since we have unslaved ourselves from Nature’s law and given ourselves over to the vagrant liberty of our mental perceptions, the least we can do is to help ourselves by making them incline towards the most agreeable direction. Plato is afraid of our bitter enslavement to pain and to pleasure, since they too firmly bind and shackle our souls to our bodies; I, on the contrary, because they release them and strike them free. [A] Just as30 an enemy is made fiercer by our flight, so pain too swells with pride as we quake before her. If we withstand her she will make a compact on far better terms. We must brace ourselves against her. By backing away in retreat we beckon her on, drawing upon ourselves the very collapse which we are threatened by. [C] When tense, the body is firmer against attacks; so is the soul.

[A] But let us to come to those examples (which are proper hunting for weak-backed men like me) in which we find that it is with pain as with precious stones which take on brighter or duller hues depending on the foil in which they are set: pain only occupies as much space as we make for her. Saint Augustine says, ‘Tantum doluerunt quantum doloribus se inseruerunt.’ [The more they dwelt on suffering, the more they felt it.]31 We feel the surgeon’s scalpel ten times more than a cut from a sword in the heat of battle. The pangs of childbirth are reckoned to be great by doctors and by God himself;32 many social conventions are there to help us to get through them: yet there are whole nations who take no heed of them. To say nothing of the women of Sparta, what difference does childbirth make to the wives of the Swiss guards in our infantry, except that today you can see them plodding after their husbands, bearing on their back the child they bore yesterday in their belly? And Gypsy women (not real Egyptians; but ones recruited from among ourselves) go and personally bathe their newborn infants in the nearest stream and then wash themselves. [C] Apart from the many sluts who daily conceive and deliver their children in secret, there was that good wife of the Roman patrician Sabinus who (for the sake of others) gave birth to twins and endured the labouring pains, alone, without help, without a word and without a groan.33

[A] Why, a little Spartan boy had stolen a fox: [C] (Spartans were more afraid of being mocked for having botched a theft than we are of being punished for one): [A] he stuffed it34 under his cloak and rather than betray himself let it gnaw into his belly. Another lad was carrying incense for the sacrifice when a live coal fell up his sleeve: he let it burn through to the bone so as not to disturb the ceremony. When, according to their educational practices, an assay was made of the bravery of boys at the age of seven, many let themselves be flogged to death rather than change their expressions. [C] Cicero saw crowds fighting each other with feet, fists and teeth, till they collapsed with exhaustion rather than admit defeat. ‘Nunquam naturam mos vinceret: est enim ea semper invicta; sed nos umbris, deliciis, otio, languore, desidia animum infecimus; opinionibus maloque more delinitum mollivimus.’ [Never could habit conquer Nature: Nature is unconquerable; yet we have corrupted our souls with unrealities, luxuries, leisure, idleness, listlessness and sloth; we have made them soft with opinions and evil habits.]35

[A] Everyone knows the story of Scaevola who had slipped into the enemy’s camp to kill their leader: having failed in this attempt he thought of a strange way to complete his task and deliver his country: not only did he confess his purpose to Porsenna (the king he sought to kill) but added that he had a great number of Roman accomplices within the camp; to show what sort of man he was, a brazier was brought in: he suffered his arm to be grilled and roasted: he stood watching it until that enemy himself, in horror, ordered the brazier removed.36

What about that man who would not condescend to break off reading his book when they cut him open? And what of that other man who persisted in laughing at the ills done to him and in mocking them until his incensed and cruel torturers, having vainly invented new torments and increased them one after another, had to admit that he was the winner?37

‘But then, he was a philosopher’ – Yes, but when one of Caesar’s gladiators suffered his wounds to be probed and cut open he kept on laughing.38 [C] ‘Quis mediocris gladiator ingemuit; quis vultum mutavit unquam? Quis non modo stetit, verum etiam decubuit turpiter? Quis cum decubuisset, ferrum recipere jussus, contraxit?’ [What quite ordinary gladiator has ever made a groan? Which has ever changed his expression? Which has ever behaved shamefully whether still on his feet or beaten to the ground? And having fallen, which of them ever withdrew his neck when ordered to receive the sword?]39

[A] Women can be brought in to this as well. Who has not heard of that woman of Paris who had herself flayed alive merely to acquire a fresh colour from a new skin? Women have been known to have good sound teeth extracted so as to rearrange them in a better order or in the hope of making their voices softer or fuller. How many examples of contempt for pain does that sex supply! Provided they can hope to enhance their beauty, what do they fear? What can they not do?

[B] Vellere queis cura est albos a stirpe capillos, Et faciem dempta pelle referre novam.

[Their labour consists in plucking out white hairs and scraping off skin to put on a new face.]40

[A] I have known women who swallowed sand and ashes, specifically striving to ruin their digestions in order to acquire a pallid hue. And to appear slim in the Spanish fashion what tortures will they suffer, with corsets and braces cutting into the living flesh under their ribs – sometimes even dying from it.

[C] Many peoples in our own times commonly inflict deliberate wounds on themselves to give credit to their oaths – our own King tells of several memorable examples of this which he saw in Poland and in which he was involved.41 I know some men who imitated that in France; apart from which I personally saw a girl who, to prove the earnestness of her promises as well as her constancy, took the pin she wore in her hair and jabbed herself four or five times in the arm, breaking the skin and bleeding herself in good earnest. The Turks sport great scars for their ladies; to make the marks permanent they immediately apply hot irons to their wounds to staunch the blood and form the scab, keeping them there an incredible time. Those who have seen it have written sworn depositions about it for me. Why, you can find Turks any day who will make a deep gash in their arms or their thighs for a mere ten aspers.42

[A] I am pleased to find martyrs nearer to hand where we need them more: Christendom provides us with plenty. Following the guidance of our Holy Ensample many, from devotion, have taken up the cross. From a most reliable witness we learn that Saint Louis, when king, wore a hair-shirt until his confessor gave him a dispensation in his old age; every Friday he made his priest flog his shoulders with five iron chains, which, for this purpose, he always bore about with him in a box.43 Guillaume, our last Duke of Guyenne (father of that Aliénor who transmitted the Duchy to the houses of France and England) throughout the last ten or twelve years of his life, as a penance, continuously wore an armoured breast-plate under a monk’s cloak.44 Count Foulk of Anjou went all the way to Jerusalem to be scourged by two of his manservants as he stood with a rope round his neck before Our Lord’s Sepulchre.45 And in various places on Good Fridays do we not still find many men and women flagellating themselves, tearing into their flesh and cutting it to the bone? I have often seen it: there was no trickery. Since they wear masks some are said to witness to another’s devotion in return for cash, showing an even greater contempt for pain in that the spur of devotion is greater than the spur of avarice.

[C] With calm faces, betraying no signs of grief, Quintus Maximus buried his son the Consul; Marcus Cato buried his son the Praetor elect; and Lucius Paulus, both of his sons within a few days of each other. Some time ago I said (as a quip) that one particular man had even cheated God of his justice: in one day three of his grown-up sons met violent deaths – which we may believe to have been sent to him as a bitter chastisement; yet he took it almost as a blessing.46 I myself have lost two or three children, not without grief but without brooding over it; but they were still only infants. Yet hardly anything which can befall men cuts them more to the quick. I have observed several other misfortunes which commonly cause great affliction, but which I would hardly notice if they happened to me – and when they have done so I have been so contemptuous of some which other people consider to be hideous that I would prefer not to boast of it in public without managing a blush: ‘Ex quo intelligitur non in natura, sed in opinione esse aegritudinem.’ [From which we may learn that grief lies not in nature but opinion.]47

[B] Opinion is a bold and immoderate advocate. Who ever sought security and repose as avidly as Alexander and Caesar sought insecurity and hardships? Teres, the father of Sitalces, used to say that when he was not waging war he felt that there was no difference between him and his stable-boy.48

[C] When Cato the Consul sought to secure a number of Spanish towns, many of their citizens killed themselves simply because he forbade them to bear arms: ‘ferox gens nullam vitam rati sine armis esse’ [a fierce people who thought not to bear arms was not to live].49

[B] How many do we know of who have fled from the sweetness of a calm life at home among people they knew in order to undergo the horrors of uninhabitable deserts, throwing themselves into conditions abject, vile and despised by the world, delighting in them and going so far as to prefer them!50

Cardinal Borromeo who recently died in Milan was surrounded by debauchery; everything incited him to it: his rank, his immense wealth, the atmosphere of Italy and his youth; yet he maintained a way of life so austere that the same garment served him winter and summer; he slept only on a palliasse; any time left over after the duties of his office he spent on his knees studying, with some bread and water set beside his book – which was all the food he ever took and the only time he did so.

I have even met men who have knowingly secured profit and preferment from letting themselves be cuckolded – yet that very word terrifies many.

Sight may not be the most necessary of our senses but it is the most pleasurable; the most useful and pleasurable of our limbs are those which serve to beget us, yet quite a few men have been seized with a mortal hatred for them simply because they do afford us such pleasure: they rejected them because of their value and worth; the man who plucked out his own eyes held the same opinion.51

[C] An abundance of children is a blessing for the greater, saner, part of mankind: I and a few others find blessings in a lack of them. When Thales was asked why he did not get married, he replied that he did not want to leave any descendants.52

That it is our opinion which confers value can be seen from those many things which we do not even bother to look at when making our judgements, looking, rather, at ourselves: we consider neither their intrinsic qualities nor the uses they can be put to but only what it cost us to procure them – as if that were a part of their substance: in their case value consists not in what they give to us but in what we gave for them. While on this subject, I realize that where our expenditure is concerned we are good at keeping accounts: our outgoings cost us so much trouble, and we value them precisely because they do so; our opinion will never allow itself to be undervalued. What gives value to a diamond is its cost; to virtue, its difficulty; to penance, its suffering; to medicines their bitter taste.

[B] To attain poverty one man cast his golden coins into that self-same sea which others ransack to net and catch riches.53 Epicurus said that being rich does not alleviate our worries: it changes them.54 And truly it is not want that produces avarice but plenty. I would like to tell you my experience of this. Since I grew up I have known three changes of circumstance: the first period (which lasted about twenty years) I spent with only a sporadic income, being at the orders of other people and dependent upon their help; I had no fixed allowance; nothing was laid down for me. I spent my money all the more easily and cheerfully precisely because it depended on the casualness of fortune. I have never lived better: never once did I find my friends’ purses closed to me, since I had convinced myself that none of my other wants exceeded my wanting to pay back loans on the agreed date. Seeing the efforts I made to do so, the terms were extended hundreds of times; I acquired thereby a somewhat spurious reputation for punctilious husbandry. It is in my nature to like paying my debts, as though I were casting off my shoulders that very image of slavery, a weighty burden; in addition I experience a certain pleasure in satisfying others and behaving justly. I make an exception however for the kind of repayments which involve haggling and bargaining: unless I can find somebody to do that job for me I wrongly and disgracefully put it off as long as possible, fearing the sort of quarrel which is totally incompatible with my humour and my mode of speaking. There is nothing I hate more than bargaining. It is a pure exchange of trickery and effrontery: after hours of arguing and haggling both sides go back on their pledged word to gain a few pence more. So I was always at a disadvantage when asking for a loan: I had no wish to make my request in person and relied on letters – a chancy business which is lacking in drive and actually encourages a refusal. Arrangements for my needs I used to leave light-heartedly to the stars – more freely than I later did to my own foresight and good sense.

Most thrifty people reckon that living in such uncertainty must be horrible. In the first place they fail to realize that most people have to do so. And how many honourable men have cast all their security overboard (and still do so) seeking favourable winds from Prince or Fortune? To become Caesar, Caesar borrowed a million in gold over and above what he possessed.55 And how many merchants begin trading by selling up their farms and dispatching it all to the Indies,

Tot per impotentia freta!

[Over so many raging seas!]56

And even now, in the present dearth of charity, countless thousands of religious houses live properly, expecting every day from the bounty of Heaven whatever they need for dinner.

In the second place, people fail to realize that they base themselves on a certainty which is hardly less uncertain and chancy than chance itself. I can see Want lurking beyond an income of two thousand crowns as readily as if she were right beside me. [C] Fate57 [B] can make a thousand breaches for poverty to find a way into our riches; [C] often there is no intermediate state between the highest and the lowest fortunes:

Fortuna vitrea est: tunc cum splendet frangitur.

[Fortune is glass: it glitters, then it shatters.]58

[B] Fate can send our dykes and ramparts a-toppling arse over tip; moreover I find that need, for a thousand diverse reasons, can make a home with those who have possessions as often as with those who have none; she is even perhaps less troublesome when she dwells with us alone than when we meet her accompanied by all our riches. [C] Riches are more a matter of ordinate living than of income: ‘Faber est suae quisque fortunae.’ [By each man is his fortune wrought.]59 [B] And it seems to me that a rich man who is worried, busy and under necessary obligations is more wretched than a man who is simply poor. [C] ‘In divitiis inopes, quod genus egestatis gravissimum est.’ [Poverty amidst riches is the most grievous form of want.]60 The greatest and richest of princes are regularly driven to extreme necessity by poverty and lack of cash: for what necessity is more extreme than that which turns them into tyrants, unjustly usurping the property of their subjects?

[B] In my second stage [C] I did have money. Becoming attached to it61 [B] I soon set aside savings which were considerable for a man of my station, never reckoning a man to have anything except what was over and above his regular outgoings and never believing that he should count on what he hopes to get, however clear that hope may be. ‘What if such-and-such a mishap occurred,’ I would say, ‘and took me by surprise?’ Then, as a result of these vain and vicious thoughts I would ingeniously strive to provide against all eventualities with what I had saved and put aside. I had a reply ready for anyone who maintained that the number of mishaps was infinitely great: ‘I provided against some if not against all.’ None of this happened without painful anxiety. [C] I made a secret of it: I, who dare talk so much about myself, never talked truthfully about my money – like those rich who act poor and those poor who act rich, their consciences dispensed from witnessing truly to what they own.

What ridiculous and shameful wisdom! [B] Was I setting out on a journey? I never thought I had made adequate provision. The heavier my money the heavier my worries, wondering as I did whether the roads were safe and then about the trustworthiness of the men in charge of my baggage; like others that I know, I was only happy about it when I had it before my eyes. When I left my strong-box at home, what thoughts and suspicions I had, sharp thorny ones and, what is worse, ones I could tell nobody about. My mind forever dwelt on it. [C] When you tot it all up, there is more trouble in keeping money than in acquiring it. [B] And even if I did not actually do all I have just said, stopping myself from doing so cost me dear. I got little profit out of my savings: [C] I had more to spend, but the spending weighed [B] no less heavily on me, for as Bion said, when it comes to plucking out hairs, it hurts the balding no less than the hairy:62 once you have grown used to having a pile of a certain size and have set your mind on doing so, you can no longer use it: [C] you do not even want to slice a bit off the top. [B] It is the kind of structure – so it seems to you – that would tumble down if you even touched it. For you to broach it, Necessity must have you by the throat. Formerly I would pawn my furniture and sell my horse far less unwillingly and with less regret than I would ever have made a breech in that beloved purse which I kept in reserve. The danger lies in its not being easy to place definite limits on such desires – [C] limits are hard to discover for things which seem good – [B] and so to know when to stop saving. You go on making your pile bigger, increasing it from one sum to another until, like a peasant, you deprive yourself of the enjoyment of your own goods: your enjoyment consists in hoarding and never actually using it. [C] If this is ‘using’ money, then the richest in cash are the guards on the walls and gates of a goodly city! To my way of thinking, any man with money is a miser.

Plato ranks physical or human goods thus: health, beauty, strength, wealth. And wealth, he says, is not blind but extremely clear-sighted when enlightened by wisdom.63

[B] The Younger Dionysius acted elegantly in this regard.64 They told him that one of the men in his city of Syracuse had buried a hidden treasure. He commanded him to bring it to him. Which he did, secretly keeping back a part which he went off to spend in another city, where he lost his taste for hoarding money and began to live more expensively. When Dionysius learned of this he sent him the remainder of his treasure, saying that he willingly returned it now he had learned how to use it.

I remained like this for [C] a few years; then some good daemon or other [B] cast me out65 of it most usefully – like that man of Syracuse – and scattered all my parsimony to the winds, when the joyful undertaking of a certain very expensive journey sent all those silly notions tumbling down.

That is how I dropped into a third way of life which – and I say what I really feel – is far more enjoyable, certainly, and also more orderly: I make my income and my expenditure run along in tandem: sometimes one pulls ahead, sometimes the other, but only drawing slightly apart. I live from day to day, pleased to be able to satisfy my present, ordinary needs: extraordinary ones could never be met by all the provision in the world.

[C] And it is madness to expect that Fortune will ever supply us with enough weapons to use against herself. We have to fight with our own weapons: fortuitous ones will let us down at the crucial moment. [B] If I do save up now, it is only because I hope to use the money soon – not to purchase lands [C] that I have no use for [B] but to purchase pleasure. [C] ‘Non esse cupidum pecunia est, non esse emacem vectigal est.’ [Not to want means money: not to spend means income.]66 [B] I have no fear, really, that I shall lack anything: nor [C] have I any wish for more. ‘Divitiarum fructus est in copia, copiam declarat satietas.’ [The fruit of riches consists in abundance: abundance is shown by having enough.] [B] I particularly congratulate myself that this amendment of life should have come to me at an age which is naturally inclined to avarice, so ridding me of a vice67 – the most ridiculous of all human madnesses – which is so common among the old.

[C] Pheraulas had experienced both kinds of fortune: he found that an increase in goods did not mean an increased appetite for eating, drinking, sleeping or lying with his wife; on the other hand he did find that the importunate cares of running his estates pressed heavy on his shoulders (as it does on mine); he decided to make one of his loyal friends happy – a poor young man always on the track of riches: he made him a present of all his own wealth, which was extremely great, as well as of everything which was daily accruing to him from the generosity of his good master Cyrus and also from the wars: the condition he made was that the young man should undertake to maintain him and feed him as an honoured guest and friend. Thus they lived thereafter in great happiness, both equally pleased with the change in their circumstances.68

That is a course I would heartily love to imitate! And I greatly praise the lot of an old Bishop whom I know to have so purely and simply entrusted his purse, his revenue and his expenditures to a succession of chosen servants, that he has let many long years flow by, as ignorant as an outsider of the financial affairs of his own household.69 Trust in another’s goodness is no light testimony to one’s own: that is why God looks favourably on it. And where that Bishop is concerned I know no household which is run more smoothly nor more worthily than his.

Blessed is the man who has ordered his needs to so just a measure that his riches suffice them without worrying him or taking up his time, and without the spending and the gathering breaking into his other pursuits which are quiet, better suited and more to his heart.

[B] So ease or indigence depend on each man’s opinion: wealth, fame and health all have no more beauty and pleasure than he who has them lends to them. [C] For each man good or ill is as he finds. The man who is happy is not he who is believed to be so but he who believes he is so: in that way alone does belief endow itself with true reality.

Neither good nor ill is done to us by Fortune: she merely offers us the matter and the seeds: our soul, more powerful than she is, can mould it or sow them as she pleases, being the only cause and mistress of our happy state or our unhappiness. [B] Whatever comes to us from outside takes its savour and its colour from our internal attributes, just as our garments warm us not with their heat but ours, which they serve to preserve and sustain. Shelter a cold body under them and it will draw similar services from them for its coldness: that is how we conserve snow and ice.70 [A] Study to the lazy, like abstinence from wine to the drunkard, is torture; frugal living to the seeker after pleasure, like exercise to the languid idle man, is torment: so too for everything else. Things are not all that painful nor harsh in themselves: it is our weakness, our slackness, which makes them so. To judge great and lofty things we need a mind which is like them: otherwise we attribute to them the viciousness which belongs to ourselves. A straight oar seems bent in water. It is not only seeing which counts: how we see counts too.71

Come on then. There are so many arguments persuading men in a variety of ways to despise death and to endure pain: why do we never find a single one which applies to ourselves? Thoughts of so many different kinds have persuaded others: why cannot we each find the one that suits our own disposition? If a man cannot stomach a strong purgative and root out his malady, why cannot he at least take a lenitive and relieve it? [C] ‘Opinio est quædam effeminata ac levis, nec in dolore magis, quam eadem in voluptate: qua, cum liquescimus fluimusque mollitia, apis aculeum sine clamore ferre non possumus. Totum in eo est, ut tibi imperes.’ [As much in pain as in pleasure, our opinions are trivial and womanish: we have been melted and dissolved by wantonness; we cannot even endure the sting of a bee without making a fuss. Above all we must gain mastery over ourselves.]72 [A] We cannot evade Philosophy by immoderately pleading our human frailty and the sharpness of pain: Philosophy is merely constrained to [C] have recourse to her unanswerable counter-plea: [A] ‘Living in necessity is bad: but at least there is no necessity that you should go on doing so.’73 [C] No one suffers long, save by his own fault. If a man has no heart for either living or dying; if he has no will either to resist or to run away: what are we to do with him?