menu_book Chapter 13

recording by malone essays book three by michel de montaigne translated by charles cotton of coaches it is very easy to verify that great authors when they write of causes not only make use of those they think to be the true causes but also of those they believe not to be so provided they have in them some beauty and invention they speak true and usefully enough if it be ingeniously we cannot make ourselves sure of the supreme cause and therefore crowd a great many together to see if it may not accidentally be amongst them namque unum dicere casam non sattis est verdum plures unde unatomen sit luc six seven o four do you ask me whence comes the custom of blessing those who sneeze we break wind three several ways that which sallies from below is too filthy

that which breaks out from the mouth carries with it some reproach of gluttony the third is sneezing which because it proceeds from the head and is without offence we give it this civil reception do not laugh at this distinction they say tis aristotle's i think i have seen in plutarch who of all the authors i know is he who has best mixed art with nature and judgment with knowledge his giving as a reason for the rising of the stomach in those who are at sea that it is occasioned by fear having first found out some reason by which he proves that fear may produce such an effect i who am very subject to it know well that this cause concerns not me and i know it not by argument but by necessary experience without instancing what has been told me that the same thing often happens in beasts especially hogs who are out of all apprehension of danger

and what an acquaintance of mine told me of himself that though very subject to it the disposition to vomit as three or four times gone off him being very afraid in a violent storm as it happened to that ancient peus vexabar quamut periculum mihi securritet seneca epistoli fifty three two i was never afraid upon the water nor indeed in any other peril and i have had enough before my eyes that would have sufficed if death be won so as to be astounded to lose my judgment fear springs sometimes as much from want of judgment as from want of courage all the dangers i have been in i have looked upon without winking with an open sound and entire sight and indeed a man must have courage to fear it formerly served me better than other help so to order and regulate my retreat that it was if not without fear nevertheless without affright and astonishment it was agitated indeed but not amazed or stupefied

great souls go yet much further and present to us flights not only steady and temperate but moreover lofty let us make a relation of that which alcibiades reports of socrates his fellow-in-arms i found him says he after the rout of our army him and lachez last among those who fled and considered him at my leisure and in security for i was mounted on a good horse and he on foot as he had fought i took notice in the first place how much judgment and resolution he showed in comparison of lachez and then the bravery of his march nothing different from his ordinary gait his sight firm and regular considering and judging what passed about him looking one while upon those and then upon others friends and enemies after such a manner as encouraged those and signified to the others that he would sell his life dear to any one who should attempt to take it from him and so they came off

for people are not willing to attack such kind of men but pursue those they see or are in a fright that is the testimony of this great captain which teaches us what we every day experience that nothing so much throws us into dangers as an inconsiderate eagerness of getting ourselves clear of them quo timorus minus est eo minus ferme pericli est when there is least to fear there is for the most part least danger livy twenty two five our people are to blame who say that such an one is afraid of death when they would express that he thinks of it and foresees it foresight is equally convenient in what concerns us whether good or ill to consider and judge of danger is in some sort the reverse to being astounded i do not find myself strong enough to sustain the force and impetuosity of this passion of fear nor of any other vehement passion whatever if i was once conquered and beaten down by it i should never rise again very sound

whoever should once make my soul lose her footing would never set her upright again she retastes and researches herself too profoundly and too much to the quick and therefore would never let the wound she had received heal and cicatrise it has been well for me that no sickness has yet discomposed her at every charge made upon me i preserve my utmost opposition and defense by which means the first that should rout me would keep me from ever rallying again i have no after game to play on which side soever the inundation breaks my banks i lie open and am drowned without remedy epicurus says that a wise man can never become a fool i have an opinion reversed of this sentence which is that he who has once been a very fool will never after be very wise god grants me cold according to my cloth and passions proportionable to the means i have to withstand them nature having laid me open on the one side has covered me on the other

having disarmed me of strength she has armed me with insensibility and an apprehension that is regular or if you will dull i cannot now long endure and when i was young could much less either coach litter or boat and hate all other riding but on horseback both in town and country but i can bear a litter worse than a coach and by the same reason a rough agitation upon the water whence fear is produced better than the motions of a calm at the little jerks of oars stealing the vessel from under us i find i know not how both my head and my stomach disordered neither can i endure to sit upon a tottering chair when the sail or current carries us equally or that we are towed the equal agitation does not disturb me at all tis an interrupted motion that offends me and most of all when most slow

i cannot otherwise express it the physicians have ordered me to squeeze and gird myself about the bottom of the belly with a napkin to remedy this evil which however i have not tried being accustomed to wrestle with my own defects and overcome them myself would my memory serve me i should not think my time ill spent in setting down here the infinite variety that history presents to us of the use of chariots in the surface of war various according to the nations and according to the age in my opinion of great necessity and effect so that it is a wonder that we have lost all knowledge of them i will only say this that very lately in our father's time the hungarians made very advantageous use of them against the turks having in every one of them a targeter and a musketeer and a number of hark bosses applied ready and loaded and all covered with a pavisade like a galliot

they formed the front of their battle with three thousand such coaches and after the cannon had played them made them all pour in their shot upon the enemy who had to swallow that volley before they tasted of the rest which was no little advance and that done these chariots charged into their squadrons to break them and open a way for the rest besides the use they might make of them to flank the soldiers in a place of danger when marching to the field or to cover a post and fortify it in haste in my time a gentleman on one of our frontiers unwieldy of body and finding no horse able to carry his weight having a quarrel rode through the country in a chariot of this fashion and found great convenience in it but let us leave these chariots of war as if their effeminacy had not been sufficiently known by better proofs the last kings of our first race travelled in a chariot drawn by four oxen mark antony was the first at rome who caused himself to be drawn in a coach by lions and a singing wench with him heliogabalus did since as much calling himself

the mother of the gods and also drawn by tigers taking upon him the person of the god bacchus he also sometimes harnessed two stags to his coach another time four dogs and another four naked wenches causing himself to be drawn by them in pomp stark naked too the emperor firmus caused his chariot to be drawn by ostriches of a prodigious size so that it seemed rather to fly than roll the strangeness of these inventions puts this other fancy in my head that it is a kind of pusillanimity in monarchs and a testimony that they do not sufficiently understand themselves what they are when they study to make themselves honored and to appear great by excessive expense it were indeed excusable in a foreign country but amongst their own subjects where they are in sovereign command and may do what they please it derogates from their dignity the most supreme degree of honor to which they can arrive

just as methinks it is superfluous in a private gentleman to go finely dressed at home his house his attendants and his kitchen sufficiently answer for him the advance that isocrates gives his king seems to be grounded upon reason that he should be splendid in plate and furniture forasmuch as it is an expense of duration that devolves on his successors and that he should avoid all magnificences that will in a short time be forgotten i loved to go fine when i was a younger brother for want of other ornament and it became me well there are some upon whom their rich clothes weep we have strange stories of the frugality of our kings about their own persons and in their gifts kings who are great in reputation valour and fortune demosthenes vehemently opposes the law of his city that assigned the public money for the pomp of their public plays and festivals he would that their greatness should be seen in numbers of ships well equipped and good armies well provided for

and there's good reason to condemn theophrastus who in his book on riches establishes a contrary opinion and maintains that sort of expense to be the true fruit of abundance they are delights says aristotle that only please the baser sort of the people and that vanish from the memory as soon as the people are sated with them and for which no serious and judicious man can have any esteem this money would in my opinion be much more royally as more profitably justly and durably laid out in ports havens walls and fortifications in sumptuous buildings churches hospitals colleges the reforming of streets and highways wherein pope gregory the thirteenth will leave a laudable memory to future times and wherein our queen catherine would too long posterity manifest her natural liberality and munificence did her means supply her affection fortune has done me a great despite in interrupting the noble structure of the pont neuf of our great city and depriving me of the hope of seeing it finished before i die

moreover it seems to subjects who are spectators of these triumphs that their own riches are exposed before them and that they are entertained at their own expense for the people are apt to presume of kings as we do of our servants that they are to take care to provide us all things necessary in abundance but not touch it themselves and therefore the emperor galba being pleased with a musician who played to him at supper called for his money-box and gave him a handful of crowns that he took out of it with these words this was not the public money but my own yet it so falls out that the people for the most part have reason on their side and that the princes feed their eyes with what they have need of to feed their bellies liberality itself is not in its true lustre in a sovereign hand private men have therein the most right for to take it exactly a king has nothing properly his own he owes himself to others

authority is not given in favor of the magistrate but of the people a superior is never made so for his own profit but for the profit of the inferior and a physician for the sick person and not for himself all magistracy as well as all art has its end out of itself wherefore the tutors of young princes who make it their business to impart in them this virtue of liberality and preach to them to deny nothing and to think nothing so well spent as what they give a doctrine that i have known and great credit in my time either have more particular regard to their own profit than to that of their master or ill understand to whom they speak it is too easy a thing to inculcate liberality on him who has as much as he will to practise it with at the expense of others and the estimate not being proportioned to the measure of the gift but to the measure of the means of him who gives it it comes to nothing in so mighty hands they find themselves prodigal before they can be reputed liberal and it is but a little recommendation in comparison with other royal virtues

and the only one as the tyrant dionysius said that suits well with tyranny itself i should rather teach him this verse of the ancient labourer he must scatter it abroad and not lay it on a heap in one place and that seeing that he is to give or to say better to pay and restore to so many people according as they have deserved he ought to be a loyal and discreet disposer if the liberality of a prince be without measure or discretion i had rather he were covetous royal virtue seems most to consist in justice and of all the parts of justice that best denotes a king which accompanies liberality for this they have particularly reserved to be performed by themselves whereas all other sorts of justice they remit to the administration of others an immoderate bounty is a very weak means to acquire for them good will it checks more people than it allures

quo in plures usus cis minus in multos uti posis quid auta mestotius quam quod libenter facios curare ut id diutius facere non by how much more you use it to many by so much less you will be in a capacity to use it to many more and what greater folly can there be than to order it so that what you would willingly do you cannot do longer cicero de o to fifteen and if it be conferred without due respect of merit it puts him out of countenance who receives it and is received ungraciously tyrants had been sacrificed to the hatred of the people by the hands of those very men they had unjustly advanced such kind of men as buffoons panders fiddlers and such ragamuffins thinking to assure to themselves the possession of benefits unduly received if they manifest to have him in hatred and disdain of whom they hold them and in this associate themselves to the common judgment and opinion

the subjects of a prince excessive in gifts grow excessive in asking and regulate their demands not by reason but by example we have seriously very often reasoned blush at our own impudence we are overpaid according to justice when the recompense equals our service for do we owe nothing of natural obligation to our princes if he bear our charges he does too much tis enough that he contribute to them the overplus is called benefit which cannot be exacted for the very name liberality sounds of liberty in our fashion it is never done we never reckon what we have received we are only for the future liberality wherefore the more a prince exhausts himself in giving the poorer he grows in friends how should he satisfy immoderate desires that still increase as they are fulfilled he who has his thoughts upon taking never thinks of what he has taken covetousness has nothing so properly and so much its own as ingratitude

the example of cyrus will not do amiss in this place to serve the kings of these times for a touchstone to know whether their gifts are well or ill bestowed and to see how much better that emperor conferred them than they do by which means they are reduced to borrow of unknown subjects and rather of them whom they have wronged than of them on whom they have conferred their benefits and so receive aids wherein there is nothing of gratuitous but the name croesus reproached him with his bounty and cast up to how much his treasure would amount if he had been a little closer handed he had a mind to justify his liberality and therefore sent despatches into all parts of the grandees of his dominions whom he had particularly advanced entreating every one of them to supply him with as much money as they could for a pressing occasion and to send him particulars of what each could advance

when all these answers were brought to him every one of his friends not thinking it enough barely to offer him so much as he had received from his bounty and adding to it a great deal of his own it appeared that the sum amounted to a great deal more than croesus reckoning whereupon cyrus i am not said he less in love with riches than other princes but rather a better husband you see with how small a venture i have acquired the inestimable treasure of so many friends and how much more faithful treasurers they are to me than mercenary men without obligation without affection and my money better laid up than in chests bringing upon me the hatred envy and contempt of other princes the emperors excused the superfluity of their plays and public spectacles by reason that their authority in some sort at least in outward appearance depended upon the will of the people of rome who time out of mind had been accustomed to be entertained and caressed with such shows and excesses but they were private citizens who had nourished this custom to gratify their fellow-citizens and companions and chiefly out of their own purses

by such profusion and magnificence it had quite another taste when the masters came to imitate it pecuniarum translatio a justis dominis ad alienus non debit liberalis cicero de ophic one fourteen philip seeing that his son went about by presents to gain the affection of the macedonians reprimanded him in a letter after this manner what hast thou a mind that thy subjects shall look upon thee as their cash-keeper and not as their king wilt thou tamper with them to win their affections do it then by the benefits of thy virtue and not by those of thy chest and yet it was doubtless a fine thing to bring and plant within the amphitheatre a great number of vast trees with all their branches and their full verdure representing a great shady forest disposed in excellent order and the first thousand follow deer to be killed and disposed of by the people the next day to cause a hundred great lions a hundred leopards and three hundred bears to be killed in his presence

and for the third day to make three hundred pair of gladiators fight it out to the last as the emperor probus did it was also very fine to see those vast amphitheatres all faced with marble without curiously wrought with figures and statues and within glittering with rare enrichments balthius ein gemis ein illite porticibus aure calpurnius eclogues seven forty seven all the sides of this vast space filled and environed from the bottom to the top with three or fourscore rows of seats all of marble also and covered with cushions exeot inquit si pudorest et de polvino surgot equestri cuius res legi non sufficit let him go out he said if he has any sense of shame and rise from the equestrian cushion whose estate does not satisfy the law juvenile three one fifty three where a hundred thousand men might sit at their ease and the place below where the games were played to make it by art first open and cleave in chasms representing caves that vomited out the beasts designed for the spectacle

and then secondly to be overflowed by a deep sea full of sea monsters and laden with ships of war to represent a naval battle and thirdly to make it dry and even again for the combat of the gladiators and for the fourth scene to have it strewn with vermilion grain and storax instead of sand there to make a solemn feast for all that infinite number of people the last act of one only day quotiesnus descendentis arenae videmus in partes rupteque voragine terrae e et eisdem saepe la tabris aurea cum crocio creverunt arbuta libro non solum nobis silvestria cernere monstra aequorios ego cum certante bes ursis spectavi vitulos et equorum nomine dignum sed deforme pecus quod in illo nascitur amni

how often have we seen the stage of the theatre descend and part asunder and from a chasm in the earth wild beasts emerge and then presently give birth to a grove of gilded trees that put forth blossoms of enamelled flowers nor yet of sylvan marvels alone had we sight i saw sea-cows fight with bears and a deformed sort of cattle we might call sea-horses calpurnius eclogues seven sixty four sometimes they made a high mountain advance itself covered with fruit trees and other leafy trees sending down rivulets of water from the top as from the mouth of a fountain otherwhiles a great ship was seen to come rolling in which opened and divided of itself and after having disgorged from the whole four or five hundred beasts for fight closed again and vanished without help at other times from the floor of this place they made spouts of perfumed water dart from their streams upward and so high as to sprinkle all that infinite multitude

to defend themselves from the injuries of the weather they had that vast place one while covered over with purple curtains of needlework and by and by with silk of one or another color which they drew off or on in a moment as they had a mind quam viss non modico colliant spectacula sole v'ella reducuntur cum venet hermogenes the curtains though the sun should scorch the spectators are drawn in when hermogenes appears martial twelve twenty nine fifteen the network also that was set before the people to defend them from violence of these turned-out beasts was woven of gold auro coque torta refulgant retia the woven nets are refulgent with gold calpurnius ubi supra if there be anything excusable in such excesses as these it is where the novelty and invention create more wonder than the expense even in these vanities we discover how fertile those ages were in other kind of wits than those of ours

it is with this sort of fertility as with all other products of nature not that she there and then employed her utmost force we do not go we rather run up and down and whirl this way and that we turn back the way we came i am afraid our knowledge is weak in all senses we neither see far forward nor far backward our understanding comprehends little and lives but a little while tis short both in extent of time and extent of matter vicere fortes ant agamemnon a molti sed omnes illacrimabiles urgentur ignotique longa nocte many brave men lived before agamemnon but all are pressed by the long night unmourned and unknown horace odes four nine twenty five et superbellum thebanum et funera troiae non alias ali quoque res che canere poetae why before the theban war and the destruction of troy have not other poets sung other events

lucretius five three twenty seven and the narratives of solon of what he had learned from the egyptian priests touching the long life of their estate and their manner of learning and preserving foreign histories is not methinks a testimony to be refused in this consideration si in terminatum in omnes partes magnitudinum regionum videremus et temporum in quam se iniciens animus et intendens ita late longeque peregrinatur ut nullam oram ultimi vidiat in qua possed insistere in haec immensitate infinita vis inumerabilium automorum could we see on all parts the unlimited magnitude of regions and of times upon which the mind being intent could wander so far and wide that no limit is to be seen in which it can bound its eye we should in that infinite immensity discover an infinite force of innumerable atoms though all that has arrived by report of our knowledge of times past should be true

and known by some one person it would be less than nothing in comparison of what is unknown and of this same image of the world which glides away whilst we live upon it how wretched and limited is the knowledge of the most curious not only of particular events which fortune often renders exemplary and of great concern but of the state of great governments and nations a hundred more escape us than ever come to our knowledge we make a mighty business of the invention of artillery and printing which other men at other end of the world in china had a thousand years ago did we but see as much of the world as we do not see we should perceive we may well believe a perpetual multiplication and vicissitude of forms there is nothing single and rare in respect of nature but in respect of our knowledge which is a wretched foundation whereon to ground our rules and that represents to us a very false image of things

as we nowadays vainly conclude the declension and decrepitude of the world by the arguments we extract from our own weakness and decay quadio est affecta aetas ephitiquetelus our age is feeble and the earth less fertile luc to one thousand one hundred fifty one so did he vainly conclude as to its birth and youth by the vigor he observed in the wits of his time abounding in novelties and the invention of divers arts verum ut opinor habet novitatem summa recensque natures mundi neque pridem exordia coipet quaretiam quaidam nunc artes expoliuntur nunc etiam augaescunt nunc aditer na vigiiis sunt but as i am of opinion the whole of the world is of recent origin nor had its commencement in remote times wherefore it is that some arts are still being refined and some just on the increase at present many additions are being made to shipping

the five three thirty one our world has lately discovered another and who will assure us that it is the last of its brothers since the daemons the sybils and we ourselves have been ignorant of this till now as large well peopled and fruitful as this whereon we live and yet so raw and childish that we are still teaching it its a b c tis not above fifty years since it knew neither letters weights measures vestments corn nor vines it was then quite naked in the mother's lap and only lived upon what she gave it if we rightly conclude of our end and this poet of the youthfulness of that age of his that other world will only enter into the light when this of ours shall make its exit the universe will fall into paralysis one member will be useless the other in vigor i am very much afraid that we have greatly precipitated its declension and ruin by our contagion

and that we have sold it opinions and our arts at a very dear rate it was an infant world and yet we have not whipped and subjected it to our discipline by the advantage of our natural worth and force neither have we won it by our justice and goodness nor subdued it by our magnanimity most of their answers and the negotiations we have had with them witnessed that there were nothing behind us in pertinency and clearness of natural understanding the astonishing magnificence of the cities of cuzco and mexico and amongst many other things the garden of the king where all the trees fruits and plants according to the order and stature they have in a garden were excellently formed in gold as in his cabinet were all the animals bred upon his territory and in its seas and the beauty of their manufactures in jewels feathers cotton and painting gave ample proof that they were as little inferior to us in industry but as to what concerns devotion observance of the laws goodness liberality loyalty and plain dealing it was of use to us that we had not so much as they

for they have lost sold and betrayed themselves by this advantage over us end of section thirteen reading by milan