LA foiblesse de nostre condition, fait que les choses en leur simplicité et pureté naturelle ne puissent pas tomber en nostre vsage. Les elemens que nous iouyssons, sont alterez: et les metaux de mesme, et l’or, il le faut empirer par quelque autre matiere, pour l’accommoder à nostre seruice. Ny la vertu ainsi simple, qu’Ariston et Pyrrho, et encore les Stoiciens faisoient fin de la vie, ny a peu seruir sans composition: ny la volupté Cyrenaique et Aristippique. Des plaisirs, et biens que nous auons, il n’en est aucun exempt de quelque meslange de mal et d’incommodité: Medio de fonte leporum / Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat. Nostre extreme volupté a quelque air de gemissement, et de plainte.
The weakness of our condition means that things in their natural simplicity and purity cannot come into our use. The elements we enjoy are altered; so are the metals; and gold itself must be debased with some other substance to fit it for our service. Neither virtue in the simple form that Ariston and Pyrrho, and the Stoics too, made the end of life has been able to serve us without admixture, nor the pleasure of the Cyrenaics and Aristippus. Of all the pleasures and goods we have, there is none free from some mixture of evil and discomfort: From the very fountain of delights / Something bitter rises, to torment us among the flowers themselves. Our extreme pleasure has something of the air of groaning and lament.
Diriez vous pas qu’elle se meurt d’angoisse? Voire quand nous en forgeons l’image en son excellence, nous la fardons d’epithetes et qualitez maladifues, et douloureuses: langueur, mollesse, foiblesse, deffaillance, morbidezza, grand tesmoignage de leur consanguinité, et consubstantialité. La profonde ioye a plus de seuerité, que de gayeté. L’extreme et plein contentement, plus de rassis que d’enioué. Ipsa felicitas, se nisi temperat, premit. L’aise nous masche. C’est ce que dit vn verset Grec ancien, de tel sens: Les Dieux nous vendent tous les biens qu’ils nous donnent: c’est à dire, ils ne nous en donnent aucun pur et parfaict, et que nous n’achetions au prix de quelque mal.
Wouldn’t you say it is dying of anguish? Indeed, when we forge its image at its finest, we paint it with sickly and painful epithets and qualities: languor, softness, weakness, faintness, morbidezza—strong evidence of their kinship and common substance. Deep joy has more seriousness than gaiety. Extreme and complete contentment has more calm than playfulness. Happiness itself, unless it tempers itself, crushes us. Ease chews us up. That is what an ancient Greek verse says, in this sense: The gods sell us all the goods they give us. That is to say, they give us none pure and perfect, none that we do not buy at the price of some evil.
Le trauail et le plaisir, tres-dissemblables de nature, s’associent pourtant de ie ne sçay quelle ioincture naturelle. Socrates dit, que quelque Dieu essaya de mettre en masse, et confondre la douleur et la volupté: mais, que n’en pouuant sortir, il s’aduisa de les accouppler au moins par la queuë. Metrodorus disoit qu’en la tristesse, il y a quelque alliage de plaisir. Ie ne sçay s’il vouloit dire autre chose; mais moy, i’imagine bien, qu’il y a du dessein, du consentement, et de la complaisance, à se nourrir en la melancholie. Ie dis outre l’ambition, qui s’y peut encore mesler: il y a quelque ombre de friandise et delicatesse, qui nous rit et qui nous flatte, au giron mesme de la melancholie.
Toil and pleasure, very unlike in nature, are nonetheless joined by some natural link I cannot explain. Socrates says that some god tried to knead pain and pleasure into one mass and fuse them, but, unable to manage it, decided at least to couple them by the tail. Metrodorus said that in sadness there is some alloy of pleasure. I do not know whether he meant something else; but for my part I can well imagine that there is intent, consent and self-indulgence in feeding on melancholy. I mean that, besides ambition, which may also mingle in it, there is some shadow of daintiness and delicacy that smiles on us and flatters us in the very lap of melancholy.
Y a-il pas des complexions qui en font leur aliment? Est quædam flere voluptas. Et dit vn Attalus en Seneque, que la memoire de noz amis perdus nous aggrée comme l’amer au vin trop vieil: Minister veteris, puer, falerni / Ingere mi calices amariores: et comme des pommes doucement aigres. Nature nous descouure cette confusion. Les peintres tiennent, que les mouuemens et plis du visage, qui seruent au pleurer, seruent aussi au rire. De vray, auant que l’vn ou l’autre soyent acheuez d’exprimer, regardez à la conduitte de la peinture, vous estes en doubte, vers lequel c’est qu’on va. Et l’extremité du rire se mesle aux larmes. Nullum sine auctoramento malum est.
Are there not temperaments that make it their food? There is a certain pleasure in weeping. And a certain Attalus in Seneca says that the memory of our lost friends pleases us as bitterness does in wine that is too old: Boy, you who pour the old Falernian, / Fill my cups with the more bitter wine—and like sweetly sour apples. Nature reveals this mixture to us. Painters hold that the movements and folds of the face that serve for weeping serve also for laughing. Indeed, before either one is fully expressed, look at how the painting proceeds: you are in doubt which way it is heading. And the extreme of laughter mingles with tears. No evil is without its compensation.
Quand i’imagine l’homme assiegé de commoditez desirables: mettons le cas, que touts ses membres fussent saisis pour tousiours, d’vn plaisir pareil à celuy de la generation en son poinct plus excessif: ie le sens fondre soubs la charge de son aise: et le voy du tout incapable de porter vne si pure, si constante volupté, et si vniuerselle. De vray il fuit, quand il y est, et se haste naturellement d’en eschapper, comme d’vn pas, où il ne se peut fermir, où il craind d’enfondrer.
When I imagine a man besieged by desirable comforts—let us suppose that all his limbs were seized forever by a pleasure like that of generation at its most extreme point—I feel him melting under the burden of his ease, and I see him wholly incapable of bearing so pure, so constant and so universal a pleasure. Indeed, he flees it when he is in it, and naturally hastens to escape from it, as from ground where he cannot stand firm, where he fears he will sink.
Quand ie me confesse à moy religieusement, ie trouue que la meilleure bonté que i’aye, a quelque teinture vicieuse. Et crains que Platon en sa plus nette vertu (moy qui en suis autant sincere et loyal estimateur, et des vertus de semblable marque, qu’autre puisse estre) s’il y eust escouté de pres (et il y escoutoit de pres) il y eust senty quelque ton gauche, de mixtion humaine: mais ton obscur, et sensible seulement à soy. L’homme en tout et par tout, n’est que rappiessement et bigarrure. Les loix mesmes de la iustice, ne peuuent subsister sans quelque meslange d’iniustice. Et dit Platon, que ceux-là entreprennent de couper la teste de Hydra, qui pretendent oster des loix toutes incommoditez et inconueniens.
When I confess myself to myself scrupulously, I find that the best goodness I have has some tinge of vice. And I fear that Plato, in his purest virtue (I who am as sincere and loyal an admirer of it, and of virtues of that stamp, as anyone can be), if he had listened closely (and he did listen closely), would have heard in it some false note of human admixture—but an obscure note, perceptible only to himself. Man, in everything and everywhere, is nothing but patchwork and motley. The very laws of justice cannot subsist without some mixture of injustice. And Plato says that those who claim to remove all drawbacks and disadvantages from the laws are trying to cut off the Hydra’s head.
Omne magnum exemplum habet aliquid ex iniquo, quod contra singulos vtilitate publica rependitur, dit Tacitus.
Every great example has in it something unjust, which is compensated, at the expense of individuals, by the public good, says Tacitus.
Minds too sharp for affairs
Overly subtle minds manage business badly; ordinary, blunter minds succeed better at practical life.
Il est pareillement vray, que pour l’vsage de la vie, et seruice du commerce public, il y peut auoir de l’excez en la pureté et perspicacité de noz esprits. Cette clarté penetrante, a trop de subtilité et de curiosité. Il les faut appesantir et esmousser, pour les rendre plus obeissans à l’exemple et à la pratique; et les espessir et obscurcir, pour les proportionner à cette vie tenebreuse et terrestre. Pourtant se trouuent les esprits communs et moins tendus, plus propres et plus heureux à conduire affaires. Et les opinions de la philosophie esleuées et exquises, se trouuent ineptes à l’exercice. Cette pointue viuacité d’ame, et cette volubilité soupple et inquiete, trouble nos negotiations.
It is likewise true that, for the practice of life and the service of public dealings, there can be excess in the purity and sharpness of our minds. That penetrating clarity has too much subtlety and curiosity. Our minds must be weighed down and blunted to make them more obedient to example and practice, and thickened and darkened to fit them to this murky, earthly life. That is why common, less strained minds turn out to be more fit and more successful at conducting affairs, and the lofty, exquisite opinions of philosophy turn out to be unsuited to practice. This sharp liveliness of soul, this supple, restless volubility, disturbs our negotiations.
Il faut manier les entreprises humaines, plus grossierement et superficiellement; et en laisser bonne et grande part, pour les droits de la Fortune. Il n’est pas besoin d’esclairer les affaires si profondement et si subtilement. On s’y perd à la consideration de tant de lustres contraires et formes diuerses, volutantibus res inter se pugnantes, obtorpuerant animi.
Human undertakings must be handled more roughly and superficially, and a good large share of them left to the rights of Fortune. There is no need to shine a light into affairs so deeply and so subtly. One gets lost considering so many contrary lights and different forms: as they turned over these conflicting matters, their minds were numbed.
C’est ce que les anciens disent de Simonides: par ce que son imagination luy presentoit sur la demande que luy auoit faict le Roy Hieron, pour à laquelle satisfaire il auoit eu plusieurs iours de pensement, diuerses considerations, aiguës et subtiles: doubtant laquelle estoit la plus vray-semblable, il desespera du tout de la verité.
That is what the ancients say of Simonides. On the question King Hiero had put to him—to answer which he had taken several days of thought—his imagination presented him with various sharp and subtle considerations; and doubting which was the most probable, he despaired of the truth altogether.
Qui en recherche et embrasse toutes les circonstances, et consequences, il empesche son eslection. Vn engin moyen, conduit esgallement, et suffit aux executions, de grand, et de petit poix. Regardez que les meilleurs mesnagers, sont ceux qui nous sçauent moins dire comme ils le sont; et que ces suffisans conteurs, n’y font le plus souuent rien qui vaille. Ie sçay vn grand diseur, et tres excellent peintre de toute sorte de mesnage, qui a laissé bien piteusement, couler par ses mains, cent mille liures de rente.
Whoever seeks out and embraces all the circumstances and consequences of a matter hampers his choice. A middling mind proceeds evenly and is adequate to carrying out affairs of great and small weight. Notice that the best managers are those who can least tell us how they do it, and that those able talkers most often achieve nothing worthwhile. I know a great talker, a most excellent describer of every kind of household management, who has very pitifully let a hundred thousand livres of income slip through his hands.
I’en sçay vn autre, qui dit, qu’il consulte mieux qu’homme de son conseil, et n’est point au monde vne plus belle montre d’ame, et de suffisance, toutesfois aux effects, ses seruiteurs trouuent, qu’il est tout autre; ie dy sans mettre le malheur en conte.
I know another who says he gives better counsel than any man in his council, and there is no finer display of mind and ability in the world; yet in practice his servants find him quite another man—and I say this without counting his bad luck.