QVASI toutes les opinions que nous auons, sont prinses par authorité et à credit. Il n’y a point de mal. Nous ne sçaurions pirement choisir, que par nous, en vn siecle si foible. Cette image des discours de Socrates, que ses amis nous ont laissée, nous ne l’approuuons, que pour la reuerence de l’approbation publique. Ce n’est pas par nostre cognoissance: ils ne sont pas selon nostre vsage. S’il naissoit à cette heure, quelque chose de pareil, il est peu d’hommes qui le prisassent. Nous n’apperceuons les graces que pointues, bouffies, et enflées d’artifice. Celles qui coulent soubs la naïfueté, et la simplicité, eschappent aisément à vne veuë grossiere comme est la nostre.
Almost all the opinions we hold are taken on authority and on credit. There is no harm in that: we could not choose worse than by ourselves, in so feeble an age. That image of Socrates’ discourses which his friends have left us, we approve only out of reverence for public approval. It is not from our own knowledge: they are not in keeping with our usage. If something like them were born now, few men would prize it. We perceive graces only when they are pointed, puffed up and swollen with artifice. Those that flow beneath naturalness and simplicity easily escape a coarse sight like ours.
Elles ont vne beauté delicate et cachée: il faut la veuë nette et bien purgée, pour descouurir cette secrette lumiere. Est pas, la naïfueté, selon nous, germaine à la sottise, et qualité de reproche? Socrates faict mouuoir son ame, d’vn mouuement naturel et commun. Ainsi dict vn païsan, ainsi dict vne femme. Il n’a iamais en la bouche, que cochers, menuisiers, sauetiers et maisons. Ce sont inductions et similitudes, tirées des plus vulgaires et cogneuës actions des hommes: chacun l’entend. Sous vne si vile forme, nous n’eussions iamais choisi la noblesse et splendeur de ses conceptions admirables: nous qui estimons plates et basses, toutes celles que la doctrine ne releue; qui n’apperceuons la richesse qu’en montre et en pompe. Nostre monde n’est formé qu’à l’ostentation.
They have a delicate and hidden beauty; it takes a clear, well-purged sight to discover that secret light. Is not naturalness, in our view, akin to foolishness, and a quality to be reproached? Socrates makes his soul move with a natural and common motion. So says a peasant, so says a woman. He never has anything in his mouth but coachmen, joiners, cobblers and houses. These are inductions and similes drawn from the commonest and most familiar actions of men; everyone understands him. Under so humble a form we would never have picked out the nobility and splendor of his admirable conceptions—we who consider flat and low all those that learning does not elevate, who perceive richness only in display and pomp. Our world is formed only for ostentation.
Les hommes ne s’enflent que de vent: et se manient à bonds, comme les balons. Cettuy-cy ne se propose point des vaines fantasies. Sa fin fut, nous fournir de choses et de preceptes, qui reellement et plus ioinctement seruent à la vie: Seruare modum, finémque tenere, / Naturámque sequi. Il fut aussi tousiours vn et pareil. Et se monta, non par boutades, mais par complexion, au dernier poinct de vigueur. Ou pour mieux dire: il ne monta rien, mais rauala plustost et ramena à son poinct, originel et naturel, et luy soubmit la vigueur, les aspretez et les difficultez. Car en Caton, on void bien à clair, que c’est vne alleure tenduë bien loing au dessus des communes.
Men puff themselves up with nothing but wind, and move by leaps and bounds, like inflated balls. This man does not set himself vain fancies. His aim was to provide us with things and precepts that really and more directly serve life: To keep the mean, to hold to the limit, / And to follow nature. He was also always one and the same. And he rose to the highest point of vigor not by fits and starts but by temperament. Or rather, he raised nothing, but instead brought down and led back to his own original and natural level, and subjected to it, vigor, harshness and difficulties. For in Cato one sees quite clearly that it is a pace strained far above the common.
Aux braues exploits de sa vie, et en sa mort, on le sent tousiours monté sur ses grands cheuaux. Cettuy-cy ralle à terre: et d’vn pas mol et ordinaire, traicte les plus vtiles discours, et se conduict et à la mort et aux plus espineuses trauerses, qui se puissent presenter au train de la vie humaine. Il est bien aduenu, que le plus digne homme d’estre cogneu, et d’estre presenté au monde pour exemple, ce soit celuy duquel nous ayons plus certaine cognoissance. Il a esté esclairé par les plus clair-voyans hommes, qui furent onques. Les tesmoins que nous auons de luy, sont admirables en fidelité et en suffisance.
In the brave exploits of his life, and in his death, one feels him always mounted on his high horses. This man keeps to the ground, and at a gentle, ordinary pace treats the most useful subjects, and bears himself both toward death and toward the thorniest hardships that can arise in the course of human life. It has turned out well that the man most worthy to be known and to be held up to the world as an example should be the one of whom we have the most certain knowledge. He has been illuminated by the most clear-sighted men who ever lived. The witnesses we have of him are admirable in fidelity and in ability.
C’est grand cas, d’auoir peu donner tel ordre, aux pures imaginations d’vn enfant, que sans les alterer ou estirer, il en ait produict les plus beaux effects de nostre ame. Il ne la represente ny esleuée ni riche: il ne la represente que saine: mais certes d’vne bien allegre et nette santé. Par ces vulguaires ressorts et naturels: par ces fantasies ordinaires et communes: sans s’esmouuoir et sans se piquer, il dressa non seulement les plus reglées, mais les plus hautes et vigoureuses creances, actions et mœurs, qui furent onques. C’est luy, qui ramena du ciel, où elle perdoit son temps, la sagesse humaine, pour la rendre à l’homme: où est sa plus iuste et plus laborieuse besoigne.
It is a great thing to have been able to give such order to the pure imaginings of a child that, without altering or stretching them, he produced from them the finest effects of our soul. He represents it neither as elevated nor as rich; he represents it only as healthy, but certainly with a very lively and clean health. By these common and natural springs, by these ordinary and familiar notions, without getting agitated or worked up, he set up not only the most orderly but the loftiest and most vigorous beliefs, actions and morals that ever were. It is he who brought human wisdom back down from heaven, where it was wasting its time, to restore it to man, where its most proper and most laborious work lies.
Voyez-le plaider deuant ses iuges: voyez par quelles raisons, il esueille son courage aux hazards de la guerre, quels argumens fortifient sa patience, contre la calomnie, la tyrannie, la mort, et contre la teste de sa femme: il n’y a rien d’emprunté de l’art, et des sciences. Les plus simples y recognoissent leurs moyens et leur force: il n’est possible d’aller plus arriere et plus bas. Il a faict grand faueur à l’humaine nature, de montrer combien elle peut d’elle mesme.
See him plead before his judges; see by what reasons he rouses his courage to the hazards of war, what arguments fortify his patience against calumny, tyranny, death, and against his wife’s temper: there is nothing borrowed from art and the sciences. The simplest people recognize in it their own means and strength; it is impossible to go further back or lower. He has done human nature a great favor by showing how much it can do by itself.
Richer than we think
Natural wisdom is enough to live by; learning burdens us more than it helps.
Nous sommes chacun plus riche, que nous ne pensons: mais on nous dresse à l’emprunt, et à la queste: on nous duict à nous seruir plus de l’autruy, que du nostre. En aucune chose l’homme ne sçait s’arrester au poinct de son besoing. De volupté, de richesse, de puissance, il en embrasse plus qu’il n’en peut estreindre. Son auidité est incapable de moderation. Ie trouue qu’en curiosité de sçauoir, il en est de mesme: il se taille de la besoigne bien plus qu’il n’en peut faire, et bien plus qu’il n’en a affaire. Estendant l’vtilité du sçauoir, autant qu’est sa matiere.
Each of us is richer than we think; but we are trained to borrow and to beg; we are taught to use what belongs to others more than our own. In nothing does man know how to stop at the point of his need. Of pleasure, wealth, power, he takes up more than he can hold. His greed is incapable of moderation. I find it is the same with curiosity for knowledge: he cuts out for himself far more work than he can do, and far more than he has any use for, extending the utility of knowledge as far as its subject matter goes.
Vt omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus. Et Tacitus a raison, de louer la mere d’Agricola, d’auoir bridé en son fils, vn appetit trop bouillant de science.
As in all things, so in letters too, we suffer from intemperance. And Tacitus is right to praise Agricola’s mother for having curbed in her son an overheated appetite for learning.
C’est vn bien, à le regarder d’yeux fermes, qui a, comme les autres biens des hommes, beaucoup de vanité, et foiblesse propre et naturelle: et d’vn cher coust. L’acquisition en est bien plus hazardeuse, que de toute autre viande ou boisson. Car ailleurs, ce que nous auons achetté, nous l’emportons au logis, en quelque vaisseau, et là nous auons loy d’en examiner la valeur: combien, et à quelle heure, nous en prendrons. Mais les sciences, nous ne les pouuons d’arriuee mettre en autre vaisseau, qu’en nostre ame: nous les auallons en les achettans, et sortons du marché ou infects desia, ou amendez.
Looked at with a steady eye, it is a good that, like the other goods of men, has much vanity and weakness inherent in its nature; and it comes at a high cost. Acquiring it is far more hazardous than acquiring any other food or drink. For with anything else, what we have bought we carry home in some vessel, and there we are free to examine its worth: how much of it we will take, and when. But branches of knowledge we cannot, from the start, put into any vessel but our soul. We swallow them as we buy them, and we leave the market already either infected or improved.
Il y en a, qui ne font que nous empescher et charger, au lieu de nourrir: et telles encore, qui sous tiltre de nous guarir, nous empoisonnent. I’ay pris plaisir de voir en quelque lieu, des hommes par deuotion, faire vœu d’ignorance, comme de chasteté, de pauureté, de pœnitence. C’est aussi chastrer nos appetits desordonnez, d’esmousser cette cupidité qui nous espoinçonne à l’estude des liures: et priuer l’ame de cette complaisance voluptueuse, qui nous chatouille par l’opinion de science. Et est richement accomplir le vœu de pauureté, d’y ioindre encore celle de l’esprit. Il ne nous faut guere de doctrine, pour viure à nostre aise. Et Socrates nous apprend qu’elle est en nous, et la maniere de l’y trouuer, et de s’en ayder.
Some of them only hinder and burden us instead of nourishing us; and some, under the pretext of curing us, poison us. I have been pleased to see, somewhere, men who out of devotion took a vow of ignorance, as others do of chastity, poverty and penitence. It is also a way of gelding our unruly appetites to blunt this craving that goads us on to the study of books, and to deprive the soul of that voluptuous self-satisfaction which tickles us with the belief that we know something. And it is a rich fulfillment of the vow of poverty to add poverty of mind to it as well. We need little learning to live at our ease. And Socrates teaches us that it is in us, and how to find it there and make use of it.
Toute cette nostre suffisance, qui est au delà de la naturelle, est à peu pres vaine et superflue. C’est beaucoup si elle ne nous charge et trouble plus qu’elle ne nous sert. Paucis opus est litteris ad mentem bonam. Ce sont des excez fieureux de nostre esprit: instrument brouillon et inquiete. Recueillez vous, vous trouuerez en vous, les argumens de la Nature, contre la mort, vrais, et les plus propres à vous seruir à la necessité. Ce sont ceux qui font mourir vn paysan et des peuples entiers, aussi constamment qu’vn philosophe. Fusse ie mort moins allegrement auant qu’auoir veu les Tusculanes? I’estime que non. Et quand ie me trouue au propre, ie sens, que ma langue s’est enrichie, mon courage de peu.
All this ability of ours that goes beyond the natural kind is more or less vain and superfluous. We are doing well if it does not burden and trouble us more than it serves us. Little learning is needed for a sound mind. These are feverish excesses of our mind, a meddlesome and restless instrument. Collect yourself: you will find in yourself Nature’s arguments against death—true ones, and the best suited to serve you in your need. They are what make a peasant, and whole peoples, die as steadfastly as a philosopher. Would I have died less cheerfully before I had read the Tusculans? I think not. And when I come down to the point, I feel that my tongue has been enriched, my courage hardly at all.
Il est comme Nature me le forgea. Et se targue pour le conflict, non que d’vne marche naturelle et commune. Les liures m’ont serui non tant d’instruction que d’exercitation. Quoy, si la science, essayant de nous armer de nouuelles deffences, contre les inconueniens naturels, nous a plus imprimé en la fantasie, leur grandeur et leur poix, qu’elle n’a ses raisons et subtilitez, à nous en couurir? Ce sont voirement subtilitez: par où elle nous esueille souuent bien vainement. Les autheurs mesmes plus serrez et plus sages, voyez autour d’vn bon argument, combien ils en sement d’autres legers, et, qui y regarde de pres, incorporels. Ce ne sont qu’arguties verbales, qui nous trompent.
My courage is just as Nature forged it for me, and for the fight it shields itself only in the natural, common way. Books have served me not so much for instruction as for exercise. What if learning, in trying to arm us with new defenses against natural ills, has imprinted their magnitude and weight on our imagination more deeply than it has its arguments and subtleties to shield us from them? Subtleties they are indeed, and with them it often rouses us quite pointlessly. Even in the tightest and wisest authors, see how many other flimsy arguments they scatter around one good one—arguments which, if you look closely, have no body to them. They are mere verbal quibbles that deceive us.
Mais d’autant que ce peut estre vtilement, ie ne les veux pas autrement esplucher. Il y en a ceans assez de cette condition, en diuers lieux: ou par emprunt, ou par imitation. Si se faut il prendre vn peu garde, de n’appeller pas force, ce qui n’est que gentilesse: et ce, qui n’est qu’aigu, solide: ou bon, ce qui n’est que beau: quæ magis gustata quàm potata delectant. Tout ce qui plaist, ne paist pas, vbi non ingenij sed animi negotium agitur.
But since this may be done to some purpose, I do not want to pick them apart any further. There are enough of that sort in here, in various places, either borrowed or imitated. Still, we must take a little care not to call strength what is only elegance, or solid what is only sharp, or good what is only beautiful: things that delight more when sipped than when drunk down. Not everything that pleases nourishes, where the business at hand concerns not the wit but the soul.
A veoir les efforts que Seneque se donne pour se preparer contre la mort, à le voir suer d’ahan, pour se roider et pour s’asseurer, et se debattre si long temps en cette perche, i’eusse esbranlé sa reputation, s’il ne l’eust en mourant, tresuaillamment maintenuë. Son agitation si ardante, si frequente, montre qu’il estoit chaud et impetueux luy mesme. Magnus animus remissius loquitur, et securius. Non est alius ingenio, alius animo color. Il le faut conuaincre à ses despens. Et montre aucunement qu’il estoit pressé de son aduersaire. La façon de Plutarque, d’autant qu’elle est plus desdaigneuse, et plus destendue, elle est selon moy, d’autant plus virile et persuasiue. Ie croirois aysément, que son ame auoit les mouuemens plus asseurez, et plus reglez.
Seeing the efforts Seneca makes to prepare himself against death, seeing him sweat and strain to stiffen and reassure himself, and struggle so long on that perch, I would have shaken his reputation if he had not upheld it most valiantly in dying. His agitation, so ardent and so frequent, shows that he himself was hot-tempered and impetuous. A great soul speaks more calmly and more securely. The wit has not one color and the soul another. He must be convicted at his own expense. And it shows to some extent that he was hard pressed by his adversary. Plutarch’s way, being more disdainful and more relaxed, is in my view all the more manly and persuasive. I would readily believe that his soul had more assured and more orderly movements.
L’vn plus aigu, nous pique et nous eslance en sursaut: touche plus l’esprit. L’autre plus solide, nous informe, establit et conforte constamment: touche plus l’entendement. Celuy là rauit nostre iugement: cestuy-ci le gaigne. I’ay veu pareillement d’autres escrits, encore plus reuerez, qui en la peinture du combat qu’ils soustiennent contre les aiguillons de la chair, les representent si cuisants, si puissants et inuincibles, que nous mesmes, qui sommes de la voirie du peuple, auons autant à admirer l’estrangeté et vigueur incognuë de leur tentation, que leur resistance. A quoy faire nous allons gendarmant par ces efforts de la science?
The one, sharper, pricks us and makes us leap with a start; it touches the mind more. The other, more solid, informs us, settles us and comforts us steadily; it touches the understanding more. The former ravishes our judgment; the latter wins it. I have likewise seen other writings, even more revered, which, in depicting the struggle they put up against the goads of the flesh, represent those goads as so burning, so powerful and invincible, that we ourselves, who belong to the common refuse of the people, have as much cause to marvel at the strangeness and unheard-of vigor of their temptation as at their resistance. What is the point of our getting up in arms like this with these exertions of learning?
Peasants and death
Unlearned country people bear poverty, illness and death more steadily than philosophers.
Regardons à terre, les pauures gens que nous y voyons espandus, la teste panchante apres leur besongne: qui ne sçauent ny Aristote ny Caton, ny exemple ny precepte. De ceux-là, tire Nature tous les iours, des effects de constance et de patience, plus purs et plus roides, que ne sont ceux que nous estudions si curieusement en l’escole. Combien en vois ie ordinairement, qui mescognoissent la pauureté: combien qui desirent la mort, ou qui la passent sans alarme et sans affliction? Celui là qui fouït mon iardin, il a ce matin enterré son pere ou son fils. Les noms mesme, dequoy ils appellent les maladies, en addoucissent et amollissent l’aspreté.
Let us look down at the poor people we see scattered over the ground, heads bent over their work, who know neither Aristotle nor Cato, neither example nor precept. From them Nature draws every day deeds of constancy and patience purer and sterner than those we study so carefully in the schools. How many do I commonly see who take no notice of poverty? How many who long for death, or go through it without alarm or distress? The man who is digging my garden buried his father or his son this morning. Even the names they call diseases by sweeten and soften their harshness.
La phthysie, c’est la toux pour eux: la dysenterie, deuoyement d’estomach: vn pleuresis, c’est vn morfondement: et selon qu’ils les nomment doucement, ils les supportent aussi. Elles sont bien griefues, quand elles rompent leur trauail ordinaire: ils ne s’allitent que pour mourir. Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscuram et solertem scientiam versa est.
Consumption, for them, is a cough; dysentery, an upset stomach; pleurisy, a chill; and as they name them gently, so they bear them. They are serious indeed when they interrupt their usual work; they take to their beds only to die. That simple and open virtue has been turned into an obscure and clever science.
War on his doorstep
Civil war ravages his lands, and suspicion falls on him from both sides.
I’escriuois cecy enuiron le temps, qu’vne forte charge de nos troubles, se croupit plusieurs mois, de tout son poix, droict sur moy. I’auois d’vne part, les ennemis à ma porte: d’autre part, les picoreurs, pires ennemis, non armis, sed vitiis, certatur. Et essayois toute sorte d’iniures militaires, à la fois: Hostis adest dextra læuàque à parte timendus. / Vicinóque malo terret vtrumque latus. Monstrueuse guerre. Les autres agissent au dehors, ceste-cy encore contre soy: se ronge et se desfaict, par son propre venin. Elle est de nature si maligne et ruineuse, qu’elle se ruine quand et quand le reste: et se deschire et despece de rage.
I was writing this at about the time when a heavy load of our troubles settled for several months, with all its weight, right on top of me. On one side I had the enemy at my door; on the other, the marauders, worse enemies: the fight is waged not with arms but with vices. And I was experiencing every kind of military outrage at once: An enemy to be feared is at hand on the right and on the left, / And with harm close by he menaces both flanks. A monstrous war! Other wars act outward; this one acts against itself as well, eating away and destroying itself with its own poison. It is by nature so malignant and ruinous that it ruins itself along with everything else, and tears and rends itself in its fury.
Nous la voyons plus souuent, se dissoudre par elle mesme, que par disette d’aucune chose necessaire, ou par la force ennemie. Toute discipline la fuït. Elle vient guerir la sedition, et en est pleine. Veut chastier la desobeissance, et en montre l’exemple: et employee à la deffence des loix, faict sa part de rebellion à l’encontre des siennes propres. Où en sommes nous? Nostre medecine porte infection. Nostre mal s’empoisonne / Du secours qu’on luy donne. / Exuperat magis ægrescitque medendo. / Omnia fanda nefanda, malo permista furore, / Iustificam nobis mentem auertêre deorum.
We see it more often dissolve of itself than through scarcity of any necessity or through enemy force. All discipline flees from it. It comes to cure sedition and is full of it. It means to punish disobedience and sets the example of it; and, employed in defense of the laws, it plays its part in rebellion against its own. What have we come to? Our medicine carries infection. Our sickness is poisoned / By the help it is given. / It grows worse and sicker with the treatment. / Right and wrong, all confounded in our wicked frenzy, / Have turned from us the just will of the gods.
En ces maladies populaires, on peut distinguer sur le commencement, les sains des malades: mais quand elles viennent à durer, comme la nostre, tout le corps s’en sent, et la teste et les talons: aucune partie n’est exempte de corruption. Car il n’est air, qui se hume si gouluement: qui s’espande et penetre, comme faict la licence. Nos armees ne se lient et tiennent plus que par simant estranger: des François on ne sçait plus faire vn corps d’armee, constant et reglé. Quelle honte? Il n’y a qu’autant de discipline, que nous en font voir des soldats empruntez. Quant à nous, nous nous conduisons à discretion, et non pas du chef; chacun selon la sienne: il a plus affaire au dedans qu’au dehors.
In these epidemic diseases one can tell the healthy from the sick at the beginning; but when they come to last, as ours has, the whole body feels it, head and heels alike: no part is free from corruption. For there is no air that is breathed in so greedily, that spreads and penetrates so, as license. Our armies are bound and held together now only by foreign cement; out of Frenchmen no one knows any longer how to make a steady, disciplined army. What a disgrace! There is only as much discipline as borrowed soldiers show us. As for us, we conduct ourselves at our own discretion, not the commander’s—each at his own; the commander has more to deal with inside than outside.
C’est au commandement de suiure, courtizer, et plier: à luy seul d’obeïr: tout le reste est libre et dissolu. Il me plaist de voir, combien il y a de lascheté et de pusillanimité en l’ambition: par combien d’abiection et de seruitude, il luy faut arriuer à son but. Mais cecy me deplaist-il de voir, des natures debonnaires, et capables de iustice, se corrompre tous les iours, au maniement et commandement de cette confusion. La longue souffrance, engendre la coustume; la coustume, le consentement et l’imitation. Nous auions assez d’ames mal nées, sans gaster les bonnes et genereuses. Si que, si nous continuons, il restera mal-ayseement à qui fier la santé de cet estat, au cas que Fortune nous la redonne.
It is for the command to follow, to court and to bend; it alone has to obey; all the rest are free and dissolute. It pleases me to see how much cowardice and faintheartedness there is in ambition, and through how much abjection and servility it must reach its goal. But this it displeases me to see: good-natured characters, capable of justice, being corrupted every day in managing and commanding this chaos. Long toleration breeds custom; custom, consent and imitation. We had enough ill-born souls without spoiling the good and noble ones. So that, if we go on like this, there will hardly be anyone left to whom we can entrust the health of this state, should Fortune give it back to us.
Hunc saltem euerso iuuenem succurrere seclo, / Ne prohibete!
At least do not prevent this young man / From coming to the aid of a world turned upside down!
Qu’est deuenu cet ancien precepte: Que les soldats ont plus à craindre leur chef, que l’ennemy? Et ce merueilleux exemple: Qu’vn pommier s’estant trouué enfermé dans le pourpris du camp de l’armee Romaine, elle fut veuë l’endemain en desloger, laissant au possesseur, le comte entier de ses pommes, meures et delicieuses? I’aymeroy bien, que nostre ieunesse, au lieu du temps qu’elle employe, à des peregrinations moins vtiles, et apprentissages moins honorables, elle le mist, moitié à veoir de la guerre sur mer, sous quelque bon capitaine commandeur de Rhodes: moitié à recognoistre la discipline des armees Turkesques. Car elle a beaucoup de differences, et d’auantages sur la nostre. Cecy en est: que nos soldats deuiennent plus licentieux aux expeditions: là, plus retenus et craintifs.
What has become of that ancient precept, that soldiers should fear their commander more than the enemy? And of that marvelous example: when an apple tree was found enclosed within the bounds of a Roman army’s camp, the army was seen the next day moving off and leaving the owner the full count of his apples, ripe and delicious? I would much like our young men, instead of spending their time on less useful travels and less honorable apprenticeships, to put half of it into seeing war at sea under some good captain, a Knight Commander of Rhodes, and half into studying the discipline of the Turkish armies. For it differs from ours in many ways and has many advantages over it. This is one: our soldiers become more licentious on campaign; theirs, more restrained and fearful.
Car les offenses ou larrecins sur le menu peuple, qui se punissent de bastonades en la paix, sont capitales en la guerre. Pour vn œuf prins sans payer, ce sont de conte prefix, cinquante coups de baston. Pour toute autre chose, tant legere soit elle, non necessaire à la nourriture, on les empale, ou decapite sans deport. Ie me suis estonné, en l’histoire de Selim, le plus cruel conquerant qui fut onques, veoir, que lors qu’il subiugua l’Ægypte, les beaux iardins d’autour de la ville de Damas, tous ouuers, et en terre de conqueste, son armee campant sur le lieu mesmes, furent laissés vierges des mains des soldats, parce qu’ils n’auoient pas eu le signe de piller.
For offenses or thefts against the common people, which are punished with a beating in peacetime, are capital crimes in war. For an egg taken without paying, the fixed count is fifty strokes of the stick. For anything else, however slight, that is not needed for food, they are impaled or beheaded without delay. I was astonished to see, in the history of Selim, the cruelest conqueror that ever was, that when he subjugated Egypt, the fine gardens around the city of Damascus—wide open, in conquered land, with his army camped on the very spot—were left untouched by the soldiers’ hands, because they had not been given the signal to plunder.
Mais est-il quelque mal en vne police, qui vaille estre combatu par vne drogue si mortelle? Non pas, disoit Fauonius, l’vsurpation de la possession tyrannique d’vne republique. Platon de mesme ne consent pas qu’on face violence au repos de son païs, pour le guerir: et n’accepte pas l’amendement qui trouble et hazarde tout, et qui couste le sang et ruine des citoyens. Establissant l’office d’vn homme de bien, en ce cas, de laisser tout là: seulement prier Dieu qu’il y porte sa main extraordinaire. Et semble sçauoir mauuais gré à Dion son grand amy, d’y auoir vn peu autrement procedé. I’estois Platonicien de ce costé là, avant que ie sçeusse qu’il y eust de Platon au monde.
But is there any ill in a government worth fighting with so deadly a drug? Not even, said Favonius, the usurpation of a commonwealth by a tyrant’s seizure. Plato likewise does not consent to doing violence to the peace of one’s country in order to cure it, and does not accept the reform that disturbs and endangers everything and costs the citizens their blood and their ruin. He lays down that the duty of a good man, in that case, is to leave everything be, and only pray God to set his extraordinary hand to it. And he seems to bear a grudge against Dion, his great friend, for having proceeded somewhat differently. I was a Platonist on this point before I knew there was any Plato in the world.
Et si ce personnage, doit purement estre refusé de nostre consorce: (luy, qui par la sincerité de sa conscience, merita enuers la faueur diuine, de penetrer si auant en la Chrestienne lumiere, au trauers des tenebres publiques, du monde de son temps,) ie ne pense pas, qu’il nous sie bien, de nous laisser instruire à vn payen. Combien c’est d’impieté, de n’atendre de Dieu, nul secours simplement sien, et sans nostre cooperation.
And if this man is to be flatly excluded from our fellowship (he who, through the sincerity of his conscience, deserved divine favor to penetrate so far into the Christian light through the general darkness of the world of his time), I do not think it becomes us to let ourselves be taught by a pagan how impious it is to expect from God no help that is simply his own, without our cooperation.
Ie doubte souuent, si entre tant de gens, qui se meslent de telle besoigne, nul s’est rencontré, d’entendement si imbecille, à qui on aye en bon escient persuadé, qu’il alloit vers la reformation, par la derniere des difformations: qu’il tiroit vers son salut, par les plus expresses causes que nous ayons de tres certaine damnation: que renuersant la police, le magistrat, et les loix, en la tutelle desquelles Dieu l’a colloqué: remplissant de haines parricides, les courages fraternels: appellant à son ayde, les diables et les furies: il puisse apporter secours à la sacrosaincte douceur et iustice, de la loy diuine.
I often wonder whether, among so many people who meddle in such business, there has been anyone of so feeble an understanding as to have been seriously persuaded that he was moving toward reformation by the worst of deformations; that he was heading for his salvation by the most explicit causes we have of most certain damnation; that by overturning the government, the magistracy and the laws under whose protection God has placed him, by filling brotherly hearts with parricidal hatreds, by calling the devils and the Furies to his aid, he could bring help to the sacrosanct gentleness and justice of the divine law.
L’ambition, l’auarice, la cruauté, la vengeance, n’ont point assez de propre et naturelle impetuosité: amorçons-les et les attisons, par le glorieux titre de iustice et deuotion. Il ne se peut imaginer vn pire estat des choses, qu’où la meschanceté vient à estre legitime: et prendre auec le congé du magistrat, le manteau de la vertu: Nihil in speciem fallacius quàm praua religio, vbi deorum numen prætenditur sceleribus. L’extreme espece d’iniustice, selon Platon, c’est que, ce qui est iniuste, soit tenu pour iuste.
Ambition, avarice, cruelty and vengeance do not have enough impetuosity of their own: let us bait them and fan them with the glorious title of justice and devotion. No worse state of affairs can be imagined than where wickedness becomes legitimate and, with the magistrate’s leave, puts on the cloak of virtue: Nothing is more deceptive in appearance than a depraved religion, where the will of the gods is made a cloak for crimes. The extreme form of injustice, according to Plato, is for what is unjust to be held just.
Le peuple y souffrit bien largement lors, non les dommages presens seulement, Vndique totis / Vsque adeo turbatur agris, mais les futurs aussi. Les viuans y eurent à patir, si eurent ceux qui n’estoient encore nays. On le pilla, et moy par consequent, iusques à l’esperance: luy rauissant tout ce qu’il auoit à s’apprester à viure pour longues annees, Quæ nequeunt secum ferre aut abducere, perdunt; / Et cremat insontes turba scelesta casas. / Muris nulla fides, squallent populatibus agri.
The people suffered greatly then, not only the present damage, such turmoil there is / Everywhere, in all the fields, but the future damage as well. The living had to suffer from it, and so did those not yet born. They plundered the people—and me, consequently—right down to their hope, robbing them of everything they had laid by to live on for many years: What they cannot carry or drive off, they destroy; / And the criminal mob burns innocent cottages. / Walls give no security; the fields lie waste from the raids.
Outre cette secousse, i’en souffris d’autres. I’encourus les inconueniens, que la moderation apporte en telles maladies. Ie fus pelaudé à toutes mains. Au Gibelin i’estois Guelphe, au Guelphe Gibelin. Quelqu’vn de mes poetes dict bien cela, mais ie ne sçay où c’est. La situation de ma maison, et l’accointance des hommes de mon voisinage, me presentoient d’vn visage: ma vie et mes actions d’vn autre. Il ne s’en faisoit point des accusations formées: car il n’y auoit où mordre. Ie ne desempare iamais les loix: et qui m’eust recherché, m’en eust deu de reste. C’estoient suspicions muettes, qui couroient sous main, ausquelles il n’y a iamais faute d’apparence, en vn meslange si confus, non plus que d’espris ou enuieux ou ineptes.
Besides this shock, I suffered others. I incurred the troubles that moderation brings in such diseases. I was mauled on every side. To the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, to the Guelph a Ghibelline. One of my poets puts it well, but I do not know where. The location of my house and my acquaintance with the men of my neighborhood presented me in one light, my life and my actions in another. No formal accusations were made, for there was nothing to bite on. I never abandon the laws, and anyone who had investigated me would have ended up in my debt. They were silent suspicions circulating underhand, which never lack some plausibility in so confused a mixture—any more than there is ever a lack of envious or foolish minds.
I’ayde ordinairement aux presomptions iniurieuses, que la Fortune seme contre moy: par vne façon, que i’ay dés tousiours, de fuyr à me iustifier, excuser et interpreter: estimant que c’est mettre ma conscience en compromis, de playder pour elle. Perspicuitas enim argumentatione eleuatur. Et comme, si chacun voyoit en moy, aussi cler que ie fay: au lieu de me tirer arriere de l’accusation, ie m’y auance; et la renchery plustost, par vne confession ironique et moqueuse: si ie ne m’en tais tout à plat, comme de chose indigne de response. Mais ceux qui le prennent pour vne trop hautaine confiance, ne m’en veulent gueres moins de mal, que ceux, qui le prennent pour foiblesse d’vne cause indefensible.
I usually lend a hand to the damaging presumptions that Fortune sows against me, through a habit I have always had of shunning to justify, excuse or explain myself, for I think that to plead for my conscience is to put it up for arbitration. For clarity is diminished by argument. And as if everyone could see into me as clearly as I do, instead of drawing back from the accusation I step forward to meet it, and rather heighten it with an ironic, mocking confession—unless I keep flatly silent about it, as a thing unworthy of an answer. But those who take this for overweening confidence bear me hardly less ill will than those who take it for the weakness of an indefensible cause.
Nommeement les grands, enuers lesquels faute de sommission, est l’extreme faute. Rudes à toute iustice, qui se cognoist, qui se sent: non demise, humble et suppliante. I’ay souuent heurté à ce pillier. Tant y a que de ce qui m’aduint lors, vn ambitieux s’en fust pendu: si eust faict vn auaritieux. Ie n’ay soing quelconque d’acquerir. Sit mihi quod nunc est, etiam minus; vt mihi viuam / Quod superest æui, si quid superesse volent dij. Mais les pertes qui me viennent par l’iniure d’autruy, soit larrecin, soit violence, me pincent, enuiron comme vn homme malade et gehenné d’auarice. L’offence a sans mesure plus d’aigreur, que n’a la perte. Mille diuerses sortes de maux accoururent à moy à la file.
Especially the great, with whom lack of submission is the ultimate fault. They are harsh toward any justice that knows itself and feels its own worth, and is not submissive, humble and suppliant. I have often bumped against this pillar. Be that as it may, over what happened to me then an ambitious man would have hanged himself; so would a greedy one. I have no concern whatever for acquiring. Let me have what I have now, or even less, and live for myself / What remains of my life, if the gods will that any remain. But losses that come to me through another’s wrongdoing, whether theft or violence, pinch me much as they would a man sick and tortured with avarice. The offense is immeasurably more bitter than the loss. A thousand different kinds of ills came rushing at me one after another.
Ie les eusse plus gaillardement soufferts, à la foule. Ie pensay desia, entre mes amis, à qui ie pourrois commettre vne vieillesse necessiteuse et disgratiee. Apres auoir rodé les yeux par tout, ie me trouuay en pourpoint. Pour se laisser tomber à plomb, et de si haut, il faut que ce soit entre les bras d’vne affection solide, vigoureuse et fortunee. Elles sont rares, s’il y en a. En fin ie cogneus que le plus seur, estoit de me fier à moy-mesme de moy, et de ma necessité. Et s’il m’aduenoit d’estre froidement en la grace de la Fortune, que ie me recommandasse de plus fort à la mienne: m’attachasse, regardasse de plus pres à moy.
I would have borne them more cheerfully all together in a crowd. I was already considering which of my friends I could entrust with a needy and unfortunate old age. After casting my eyes all around, I found myself stripped bare. To let oneself fall straight down, and from such a height, one must fall into the arms of a solid, vigorous and fortunate affection. Such are rare, if there are any. In the end I realized that the safest course was to trust myself with myself and with my need; and that if I happened to stand coldly in Fortune’s favor, I should commend myself more strongly to my own, cling to myself, look more closely to myself.
En toutes choses les hommes se iettent aux appuis estrangers, pour espargner les propres: seuls certains et seuls puissans, qui sçait s’en armer. Chacun court ailleurs, et à l’aduenir, d’autant que nul n’est arriué à soy. Et me resolus, que c’estoient vtiles inconueniens: d’autant premierement qu’il faut aduertir à coups de foyt, les mauuais disciples, quand la raison n’y peut assez, comme par le feu et violence des coins, nous ramenons vn bois tortu à sa droicteur. Ie me presche, il y a si long temps, de me tenir à moy, et separer des choses estrangeres: toutesfois, ie tourne encores tousiours les yeux à costé. L’inclination, vn mot fauorable d’vn grand, vn bon visage, me tente.
In all things men throw themselves on outside supports to spare their own, which alone are sure and alone powerful, for one who knows how to arm himself with them. Everyone runs elsewhere, and into the future, because no one has arrived at himself. And I concluded that these were useful misfortunes: first, because bad pupils must be warned with strokes of the whip when reason is not enough, just as with fire and the force of wedges we bring a crooked piece of wood back to straightness. I have been preaching to myself for so long to hold on to myself and keep apart from outside things; yet I still keep turning my eyes aside. A great man’s goodwill, a favorable word from him, a kindly look, tempts me.
Dieu sçait s’il en est cherté en ce temps, et quel sens il porte. I’oys encore sans rider le front, les subornemens qu’on me faict, pour me tirer en place marchande: et m’en deffens si mollement, qu’il semble, que ie souffrisse plus volontiers d’en estre vaincu. Or à vn esprit si indocile, il faut des bastonnades: et faut rebattre et reserrer, à bons coups de mail, ce vaisseau qui se desprent, se descout, qui s’eschappe et desrobe de soy. Secondement, que cet accident me seruoit d’exercitation, pour me preparer à pis: si moy, qui et par le benefice de la Fortune, et par la condition de mes mœurs, esperois estre des derniers, venois à estre des premiers attrappé de cette tempeste.
God knows whether there is any shortage of those these days, and what meaning such things carry! I still listen without a frown to the inducements offered me to draw me into the marketplace, and I defend myself against them so feebly that it seems I would rather willingly let myself be won over. Now a mind so unteachable needs beatings; and this vessel that is coming apart, coming unstitched, slipping away and escaping from itself, must be hammered back and tightened with good blows of the mallet. Secondly, this misfortune served me as an exercise to prepare me for worse, in case I, who through the kindness of Fortune and the nature of my character hoped to be among the last, should come to be among the first caught by this storm.
M’instruisant de bonne heure, à contraindre ma vie, et la renger pour vn nouuel estat. La vraye liberté c’est pouuoir toute chose sur soy. Potentissimus est qui se habet in potestate. En vn temps ordinaire et tranquille, on se prepare à des accidens moderez et communs: mais en cette confusion, où nous sommes depuis trente ans, tout homme François, soit en particulier, soit en general, se voit à chaque heure, sur le poinct de l’entier renuersement de sa fortune. D’autant faut-il tenir son courage fourny de prouisions plus fortes et vigoureuses. Sçachons gré au sort, de nous auoir faict viure en vn siecle, non mol, languissant, ny oisif. Tel qui ne l’eust esté par autre moyen, se rendra fameux par son malheur.
It taught me early to constrain my life and set it in order for a new condition. True freedom is to have power over oneself in all things. Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. In ordinary, peaceful times one prepares for moderate and common mishaps; but in this confusion we have been in for thirty years, every Frenchman, whether individually or collectively, sees himself at every hour on the verge of the complete overthrow of his fortune. All the more must we keep our courage stocked with stronger and more vigorous provisions. Let us be grateful to fate for having made us live in an age that is not soft, languid or idle. Many a man who would not have become famous by any other means will make himself famous by his misfortune.
Comme ie ne ly guere és histoires, ces confusions, des autres estats, sans regret de ne les auoir peu mieux considerer present. Ainsi faict ma curiosité, que ie m’aggree aucunement, de veoir de mes yeux, ce notable spectacle de nostre mort publique, ses symptomes et sa forme. Et puis que ie ne la sçaurois retarder, suis content d’estre destiné à y assister, et m’en instruire. Si cherchons nous euidemment de recognoistre en ombre mesme, et en la fable des Theatres, la montre des ieux tragiques de l’humaine fortune. Ce n’est pas sans compassion de ce que nous oyons: mais nous nous plaisons d’esueiller nostre desplaisir, par la rareté de ces pitoyables euenemens. Rien ne chatouille, qui ne pince.
Just as I rarely read in histories of such upheavals in other states without regretting that I could not have observed them better in person, so my curiosity makes me take some satisfaction in seeing with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its symptoms and its form. And since I could not delay it, I am content to be destined to witness it and learn from it. Indeed we plainly seek to see, even in shadow and in the fictions of the theater, the representation of the tragic play of human fortune. It is not without compassion for what we hear; but we take pleasure in arousing our distress through the rarity of these pitiful events. Nothing tickles that does not pinch.
Et les bons historiens, fuyent comme vne eaue dormante, et mer morte, des narrations calmes: pour regaigner les seditions, les guerres, où ils sçauent que nous les appellons. Ie doute si ie puis assez honnestement aduouër, à combien vil prix du repos et tranquillité de ma vie, ie l’ay plus de moitié passee en la ruine de mon pays. Ie me donne vn peu trop bon marché de patience, és accidens qui ne me saisissent au propre: et pour me plaindre à moy, regarde non tant ce qu’on m’oste, que ce qui me reste de sauue, et dedans et dehors. Il y a de la consolation, à escheuer tantost l’vn, tantost l’autre, des maux qui nous guignent de suitte, et assenent ailleurs, autour de nous.
And good historians shun calm narratives like stagnant water and a dead sea, to get back to seditions and wars, where they know we are calling them. I doubt whether I can decently admit at how low a cost to the repose and tranquility of my life I have spent more than half of it amid the ruin of my country. I get my patience a little too cheaply in misfortunes that do not seize me personally; and when I come to complain to myself, I look not so much at what is taken from me as at what remains safe, both within and without. There is some consolation in dodging, now one, now another, of the ills that keep eyeing us one after another and land their blows elsewhere, all around us.
Aussi, qu’en matiere d’interests publiques, à mesure, que mon affection est plus vniuersellement espandue, elle en est plus foible. Ioinct qu’il est vray à demy, Tantum ex publicis malis sentimus, quantum ad priuatas res pertinet. Et que la santé, d’où nous partismes estoit telle, qu’elle soulage elle mesme le regret, que nous en deurions auoir. C’estoit santé, mais non qu’à la comparaison de la maladie, qui l’a suyuie. Nous ne sommes cheus de gueres haut. La corruption et le brigandage, qui est en dignité et en office, me semble le moins supportable. On nous volle moins iniurieusement dans vn bois, qu’en lieu de seureté.
Also, in matters of public interest, the more widely my affection is spread, the weaker it is. Add that it is half true that we feel public misfortunes only insofar as they touch our private affairs. And that the health from which we started was such that it itself eases the regret we ought to feel for it. It was health, but only by comparison with the sickness that followed it. We have not fallen from very high. Corruption and brigandage that hold rank and office seem to me the least bearable. Being robbed in a wood is less of an outrage than being robbed in a place of safety.
C’estoit vne iointure vniuerselle de membres gastez en particulier à l’enuy les vns des autres: et la plus part, d’vlceres enuieillis, qui ne receuoient plus, ny ne demandoient guerison.
It was a general assemblage of limbs, each rotten in its own way, vying with one another, and most of them with inveterate ulcers that no longer admitted or asked for a cure.
Ce croulement donq m’anima certes plus, qu’il ne m’atterra, à l’aide de ma conscience, qui se portoit non paisiblement seulement, mais fierement; et ne trouuois en quoy me plaindre de moy. Aussi, comme Dieu n’enuoye iamais non plus les maux, que les biens tous purs aux hommes, ma santé tint bon ce temps-là, outre son ordinaire. Et ainsi que sans elle ie ne puis rien, il est peu de choses, que ie ne puisse auec elle. Elle me donna moyen d’esueiller toutes mes prouisions, et de porter la main au deuant de la playe, qui eust passé volontiers plus outre. Et esprouuay en ma patience, que i’auois quelque tenue contre la Fortune: et qu’à me faire perdre mes arçons, il falloit vn grand heurt.
So this collapse certainly roused me more than it crushed me, with the help of my conscience, which bore itself not only peacefully but proudly; and I found nothing to reproach myself with. Also, since God never sends men evils, any more than goods, that are wholly unmixed, my health held up during that time better than usual. And just as without it I can do nothing, there are few things I cannot do with it. It enabled me to rouse all my reserves and to put my hand up against the wound, which might well have gone deeper. And I found, by testing my patience, that I had some grip against Fortune, and that it would take a heavy blow to knock me out of the saddle.
Ie ne le dis pas, pour l’irriter à me faire vne charge plus vigoureuse. Ie suis son seruiteur: ie luy tends les mains. Pour Dieu qu’elle se contente. Si ie sens ses assaux? si fais. Comme ceux que la tristesse accable et possede, se laissent pourtant par interualles tastonner à quelque plaisir, et leur eschappe vn sousrire: ie puis aussi assez sur moy, pour rendre mon estat ordinaire, paisible, et deschargé d’ennuyeuse imagination: mais ie me laisse pourtant à boutades, surprendre des morsures de ces malplaisantes pensees, qui me batent, pendant que ie m’arme pour les chasser, ou pour les luicter. Voicy vn autre rengregement de mal, qui m’arriua à la suitte du reste.
I do not say this to provoke her into charging me more vigorously. I am her servant; I hold out my hands to her. For God’s sake, let her be satisfied! Do I feel her assaults? I certainly do. Just as those overwhelmed and possessed by sadness still let themselves be touched at intervals by some pleasure, and a smile escapes them, so I have enough power over myself to make my ordinary state peaceful and free of distressing thoughts; but still I let myself be caught off guard now and then by the bites of these unpleasant thoughts, which strike me while I am arming myself to drive them away or wrestle with them. Here is another aggravation of my troubles that came to me on the heels of the rest.
The plague
Plague drives his household from home, and the dying peasants show him true resolution.
Et dehors et dedans ma maison, ie fus accueilly d’vne peste, vehemente au prix de toute autre. Car comme les corps sains sont subiects à plus griefues maladies, d’autant qu’ils ne peuuent estre forcez que par celles-là: aussi mon air tressalubre, où d’aucune memoire, la contagion, bien que voisine, n’auoit sçeu prendre pied, venant à s’empoisonner, produisit des effects estranges. Mista senum et iuuenum densantur funera, nullum / Sæua caput Proserpina fugit. I’euz à souffrir cette plaisante condition, que la veue de ma maison m’estoit effroyable. Tout ce qui y estoit, estoit sans garde, et à l’abandon de qui en auoit enuie. Moy qui suis si hospitalier, fus en tres penible queste de retraicte, pour ma famille.
Both outside and inside my house I was greeted by a plague more violent than any other. For just as healthy bodies are subject to more serious diseases, because only those can overcome them, so my very healthy air, where within anyone’s memory the contagion, though close by, had never been able to gain a foothold, produced strange effects when it came to be poisoned. The funerals of old and young crowd thick together; no head / Does cruel Proserpina pass by. I had to endure this pleasant predicament: the sight of my house filled me with dread. Everything in it was unguarded and abandoned to anyone who wanted it. I, who am so hospitable, was put to a very painful search for a refuge for my household.
Vne famille esgaree, faisant peur à ses amis, et à soy-mesme, et horreur où qu’elle cherchast à se placer: ayant à changer de demeure, soudain qu’vn de la trouppe commençoit à se douloir du bout du doigt. Toutes maladies sont alors prises pour peste: on ne se donne pas le loysir de les recognoistre. Et c’est le bon: que selon les regles de l’art, à tout danger qu’on approche, il faut estre quarante iours en transe de ce mal: l’imagination vous exerceant cependant à sa mode, et enfleurant vostre santé mesme. Tout cela m’eust beaucoup moins touché, si ie n’eusse eu à me ressentir de la peine d’autruy, et seruir six mois miserablement, de guide à cette carauane.
A household gone astray, frightening its friends and itself, and causing horror wherever it tried to settle, having to change lodgings as soon as one of the band began to feel a pain in the tip of a finger. All illnesses are then taken for plague; no one takes the time to identify them. And the best of it is that, by the rules of medicine, whenever you come near any danger you must spend forty days in dread of the disease, your imagination meanwhile working on you in its own way and making even your health feverish. All this would have affected me much less if I had not had to feel the sufferings of others and serve wretchedly for six months as guide to this caravan.
Car ie porte en moy mes preseruatifs, qui sont, resolution et souffrance. L’apprehension ne me presse guere: laquelle on craint particulierement en ce mal. Et si estant seul, ie l’eusse voulu prendre, c’eust esté vne suitte, bien plus gaillarde et plus esloignee. C’est vne mort, qui ne me semble des pires. Elle est communément courte, d’estourdissement, sans douleur, consolee par la condition publique: sans ceremonie, sans deuil, sans presse. Mais quant au monde des enuirons, la centiesme partie des ames ne se peut sauuer. Videas desertáque regna / Pàstorum, et longè saltus latéque vacantes. En ce lieu, mon meilleur reuenu est manuel. Ce que cent hommes trauailloient pour moy, chauma pour long temps.
For I carry my preservatives within me: resolution and endurance. Apprehension, which is particularly feared in this disease, hardly troubles me. And if I had been alone and had wanted to take flight, it would have been a much more cheerful flight, and much farther away. It is a death that does not seem to me among the worst. It is usually short, a stupor, without pain, consoled by the common lot, without ceremony, without mourning, without a crowd. But as for the people round about, not one soul in a hundred could be saved. You would see the shepherds’ realms deserted, / And the pastures empty far and wide. In this place my best income comes from manual labor. What a hundred men worked for me lay idle for a long time.
Or lors, quel exemple de resolution ne vismes nous, en la simplicité de tout ce peuple? Generalement, chacun renonçoit au soing de la vie. Les raisins demeurerent suspendus aux vignes, le bien principal du pays: tous indifferemment se preparans et attendans la mort, à ce soir, ou au lendemain: d’vn visage et d’vne voix si peu effroyee, qu’il sembloit qu’ils eussent compromis à cette necessité, et que ce fust vne condemnation vniuerselle et ineuitable. Elle est tousiours telle. Mais à combien peu, tient la resolution au mourir? La distance et difference de quelques heures: la seule consideration de la compagnie, nous en rend l’apprehension diuerse.
Now what an example of resolution did we not see then in the simplicity of all these people! Generally, everyone gave up caring for life. The grapes, the chief wealth of the region, remained hanging on the vines; all alike were preparing for and awaiting death that evening or the next day, with faces and voices so little frightened that it seemed they had come to terms with this necessity, and that it was a universal and inevitable sentence. It always is. But on how little does resolution in dying depend! The gap and difference of a few hours, the mere thought of company, changes our apprehension of it.
Voyez ceux-cy: pour ce qu’ils meurent en mesme mois: enfans, ieunes, vieillards, ils ne s’estonnent plus, ils ne se pleurent plus. I’en vis qui craignoient de demeurer derriere, comme en vne horrible solitude. Et n’y cogneu communément, autre soing que des sepultures: il leur faschoit de voir les corps espars emmy les champs, à la mercy des bestes: qui y peuplerent incontinent. Comment les fantasies humaines se descouppent! Les Neorites, nation qu’Alexandre subiugua, iettent les corps des morts au plus profond de leurs bois, pour y estre mangez. Seule sepulture estimee entr’eux heureuse. Tel sain faisoit desia sa fosse: d’autres s’y couchoient encore viuans. Et vn maneuure des miens, auec ses mains, et ses pieds, attira sur soy la terre en mourant.
Look at these people: because they are dying in the same month—children, young people, old people—they are no longer stunned, they no longer weep for themselves. I saw some who were afraid of being left behind, as in a horrible solitude. And generally I saw no concern among them but for burial: it grieved them to see the bodies scattered across the fields at the mercy of the animals, which promptly swarmed there. How differently human notions are cut! The Neorites, a nation that Alexander subjugated, throw the bodies of the dead into the depths of their woods to be eaten there—the only burial they consider happy. One man, still healthy, was already digging his grave; others lay down in theirs while still alive. And one of my laborers, as he was dying, pulled the earth over himself with his hands and feet.
Estoit ce pas s’abrier pour s’endormir plus à son aise? D’vne entreprise en hauteur aucunement pareille à celle des soldats Romains, qu’on trouua apres la iournee de Cannes, la teste plongee dans des trous, qu’ils auoient faicts et comblez de leurs mains, en s’y suffoquant. Somme toute vne nation fut incontinent par vsage, logee en vne marche, qui ne cede en roideur à aucune resolution estudiee et consultee.
Was that not tucking himself in to sleep more comfortably? An undertaking somewhat comparable in loftiness to that of the Roman soldiers who were found after the battle of Cannae with their heads plunged into holes they had dug and filled in with their own hands, suffocating themselves in them. In short, a whole nation was promptly brought by habit to a pitch that yields in firmness to no studied and deliberated resolution.
La plus part des instructions de la science, à nous encourager, ont plus de montre que de force, et plus d’ornement que de fruict. Nous auons abandonné Nature, et luy voulons apprendre sa leçon: elle, qui nous menoit si heureusement et si seurement. Et ce pendant, les traces de son instruction, et ce peu qui par le benefice de l’ignorance, reste de son image, empreint en la vie de cette tourbe rustique d’hommes impollis: la science est contrainte, de l’aller tous les iours empruntant, pour en faire patron à ses disciples, de constance, d’innocence, et de tranquillité. Il fait beau voir, que ceux-cy plains de tant de belle cognoissance, ayent à imiter cette sotte simplicité: et à l’imiter, aux premieres actions de la vertu.
Most of learning’s instructions for encouraging us have more show than force, and more ornament than fruit. We have abandoned Nature and want to teach her her lesson—she who guided us so happily and so surely. And meanwhile the traces of her teaching, and the little of her image that, thanks to ignorance, remains imprinted on the life of this rustic crowd of unpolished men—these learning is forced to go borrowing every day, to make of them a model of constancy, innocence and tranquility for its pupils. It is a fine thing to see these men, full of so much fine knowledge, having to imitate this foolish simplicity, and to imitate it in the very first actions of virtue;
Et que nostre sapience, apprenne des bestes mesmes, les plus vtiles enseignemens, aux plus grandes et necessaires parties de nostre vie. Comme il nous faut viure et mourir, mesnager nos biens, aymer et esleuer nos enfans, entretenir iustice. Singulier tesmoignage de l’humaine maladie: et que cette raison qui se manie à nostre poste, trouuant tousiours quelque diuersité et nouuelleté, ne laisse chez nous aucune trace apparente de la Nature. Et en ont faict les hommes, comme les parfumiers de l’huile: ils l’ont sophistiquee de tant d’argumentations, et de discours appellez du dehors, qu’elle en est deuenue variable, et particuliere à chacun: et a perdu son propre visage, constant, et vniuersel.
and to see our wisdom learn from the very beasts the most useful teachings for the greatest and most necessary parts of our life: how we should live and die, manage our property, love and raise our children, maintain justice. A singular testimony to human sickness; and proof that this reason, which we handle as we please, always finding some diversity and novelty, leaves in us no visible trace of Nature. And men have done with Nature as perfumers do with oil: they have adulterated her with so many arguments and reasonings brought in from outside that she has become variable and particular to each person, and has lost her own constant and universal face.
Et nous faut en chercher tesmoignage des bestes, non subiect à faueur, corruption, ny à diuersité d’opinions. Car il est bien vray, qu’elles mesmes ne vont pas tousiours exactement dans la route de Nature, mais ce qu’elles en desuoyent, c’est si peu, que vous en apperceuez tousiours l’orniere. Tout ainsi que les cheuaux qu’on meine en main, font bien des bonds, et des escapades, mais c’est à la longueur de leurs longes: et suyuent neantmoins tousiours les pas de celuy qui les guide: et comme l’oiseau prend son vol, mais sous la bride de sa filiere.
And we must seek testimony of her from the beasts, testimony not subject to favor, corruption or diversity of opinions. For it is quite true that they themselves do not always go exactly along Nature’s road; but they stray from it so little that you can always see the rut. Just as horses led by hand do plenty of bucking and breaking away, but only to the length of their halters, and still always follow the steps of the one leading them; and as the hawk takes flight, but under the restraint of its tether line.
Forethought of ills
Rehearsing misfortunes torments more than suffering them; nature will teach us to die.
Exilia, tormenta, bella, morbos, naufragia meditare, vt nullo sis malo tyro. A quoy nous sert cette curiosité, de preoccuper tous les inconueniens de l’humaine nature, et nous preparer auec tant de peine à l’encontre de ceux mesme, qui n’ont à l’auanture point à nous toucher? (Parem passis tristitiam facit, pati posse. Non seulement le coup, mais le vent et le pet nous frappe). Ou comme les plus fieureux, car certes c’est fieure, aller dés à cette heure vous faire donner le fouët, par ce qu’il peut aduenir, que Fortune vous le fera souffrir vn iour: et prendre vostre robe fourree dés la S. Iean, pour ce que vous en aurez besoing à Noel?
Meditate on exile, torture, war, disease, shipwreck, so that you may be a novice to no misfortune. What good does it do us, this eagerness to anticipate all the ills of human nature and to prepare ourselves with so much trouble even against those that may perhaps never touch us? (The possibility of suffering makes us as sad as those who suffer. Not only the blow, but the wind and the fart of it strike us.) Or, like the most feverish—for it certainly is a fever—to go and have yourself whipped right now because it may happen that Fortune will make you suffer it one day, and to put on your fur-lined gown on Saint John’s Day in June because you will need it at Christmas?
Iettez vous à l’experience de tous les maux qui vous peuuent arriuer, nommement des plus extremes: esprouuez vous là, disent-ils, asseurez vous là. Au rebours; le plus facile et plus naturel, seroit en descharger mesme sa pensee. Ils ne viendront pas assez tost, leur vray estre ne nous dure pas assez, il faut que nostre esprit les estende et les allonge, et qu’auant la main il les incorpore en soy, et s’en entretienne, comme s’ils ne poisoient pas raisonnablement à nos sens.
“Throw yourselves into the experience of all the ills that can befall you, especially the most extreme,” they say; “test yourselves there, make yourselves secure there.” On the contrary: the easiest and most natural thing would be to unburden even our thoughts of them. They will not come soon enough; their real existence does not last long enough for us; our mind must stretch them out and lengthen them, absorb them into itself beforehand and dwell on them, as if they did not weigh heavily enough on our senses.
Ils poiseront assez, quand ils y seront (dit vn des maistres, non de quelque tendre secte, mais de la plus dure) cependant fauorise toy: croy ce que tu aimes le mieux: que te sert il d’aller recueillant et preuenant ta male fortune: et de perdre le present, par la crainte du futur: et estre dés cette heure miserable, par ce que tu le dois estre auec le temps? Ce sont ses mots. La science nous faict volontiers vn bon office, de nous instruire bien exactement des dimensions des maux. Curis acuens mortalia corda. Ce seroit dommage, si partie de leur grandeur eschappoit à nostre sentiment et cognoissance.
“They will weigh enough when they are here,” says one of the masters—not of some soft sect, but of the hardest. “Meanwhile, favor yourself; believe what you like best. What good does it do you to go gathering up and anticipating your ill fortune, to lose the present for fear of the future, and to be miserable now because you are bound to be so in time?” Those are his words. Learning certainly does us a fine service by instructing us very precisely in the dimensions of our ills. Sharpening mortal hearts with cares. It would be a pity if any part of their magnitude escaped our feeling and knowledge.
Il est certain, qu’à la plus part, la preparation à la mort, a donné plus de torment, que n’a faict la souffrance. Il fut iadis veritablement dict, et par vn bien iudicieux autheur: Minus afficit sensus fatigatio, quàm cogitatio. Le sentiment de la mort presente, nous anime par fois de soy mesme, d’vne prompte resolution, de ne plus euiter chose du tout ineuitable. Plusieurs gladiateurs se sont veus au temps passé, apres auoir couardement combattu, aualler courageusement la mort; offrans leur gosier au fer de l’ennemy, et le conuians. La veue esloignee de la mort aduenir, a besoing d’vne fermeté lente, et difficile par consequent à fournir. Si vous ne sçauez pas mourir, ne vous chaille.
It is certain that for most people preparing for death has caused more torment than undergoing it. It was truly said long ago, and by a very judicious author: Exertion affects the senses less than brooding does. The sense of death at hand sometimes inspires us of itself with a prompt resolution no longer to avoid what is utterly inevitable. Many gladiators were seen in times past who, after fighting like cowards, swallowed death courageously, offering their throats to the enemy’s sword and inviting it. The distant prospect of death to come requires a slow firmness, and one therefore hard to sustain. If you do not know how to die, never mind.
Nature vous en informera sur le champ, plainement et suffisamment; elle fera exactement cette besongne pour vous, n’en empeschez vostre soing. Incertam frustra, mortales, funeris horam / Quæritis, et qua sit mors aditura via. / Pœna minor certam subito perferre ruinam, / Quod timeas grauius sustinuisse diu. Nous troublons la vie par le soing de la mort, et la mort par le soing de la vie. L’vne nous ennuye, l’autre nous effraye. Ce n’est pas contre la mort, que nous nous preparons, c’est chose trop momentanee. Vn quart d’heure de passion sans consequence, sans nuisance, ne merite pas des preceptes particuliers. A dire vray, nous nous preparons contre les preparations de la mort.
Nature will teach you on the spot, fully and adequately; she will do this job for you exactly; do not trouble yourself about it. In vain, mortals, you seek the uncertain hour / Of your end, and by what road death will come. / It is less pain to suffer a sudden, certain ruin / Than to endure for long what you fear. We trouble life with concern about death, and death with concern about life. The one distresses us, the other frightens us. It is not against death that we prepare ourselves; that is too momentary a thing. A quarter of an hour of suffering, without consequence and without harm, does not deserve special precepts. To tell the truth, we are preparing ourselves against the preparations for death.
La philosophie nous ordonne, d’auoir la mort tousiours deuant les yeux, de la preuoir et considerer auant le temps: et nous donne apres, les regles et les precautions, pour prouuoir à ce, que cette preuoyance, et cette pensee ne nous blesse. Ainsi font les medecins qui nous iettent aux maladies, afin qu’ils ayent où employer leurs drogues et leur art. Si nous n’auons sçeu viure, c’est iniustice de nous apprendre à mourir et difformer la fin de son total. Si nous auons sçeu viure, constamment et tranquillement, nous sçaurons mourir de mesme. Ils s’en venteront tant qu’il leur plaira. Tota philosophorum vita commentatio mortis est. Mais il m’est aduis, que c’est bien le bout, non pourtant le but de la vie.
Philosophy orders us to keep death always before our eyes, to foresee it and consider it ahead of time, and then gives us rules and precautions to see to it that this foresight and this thought do not wound us. That is what physicians do who throw us into illnesses so that they will have something to use their drugs and their skill on. If we have not known how to live, it is unjust to teach us how to die and to make the end out of keeping with the whole. If we have known how to live steadfastly and tranquilly, we will know how to die the same way. They may boast about it as much as they like: The whole life of philosophers is a meditation on death. But it seems to me that death is indeed the end of life, yet not its aim.
C’est sa fin, son extremité, non pourtant son obiect. Elle doit estre elle mesme à soy, sa visee, son dessein. Son droit estude est se regler, se conduire, se souffrir. Au nombre de plusieurs autres offices, que comprend le general et principal chapitre de sçauoir viure, est cet article de sçauoir mourir. Et des plus legers, si nostre crainte ne luy donnoit poids.
It is its end, its extremity, yet not its object. Life should be its own aim, its own purpose. Its proper study is to regulate itself, guide itself, bear with itself. Among the many other duties comprised in the general and principal chapter of knowing how to live is this article of knowing how to die—and one of the lightest, if our fear did not give it weight.
A les iuger par l’vtilité, et par la verité naifue, les leçons de la simplicité, ne cedent gueres à celles que nous presche la doctrine au contraire. Les hommes sont diuers en sentiment et en force: il les faut mener à leur bien, selon eux: et par routes diuerses. Quò me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes. Ie ne vy iamais paysan de mes voisins, entrer en cogitation de quelle contenance, et asseurance, il passeroit cette heure derniere. Nature luy apprend à ne songer à la mort, que quand il se meurt. Et lors il y a meilleure grace qu’Aristote: lequel la mort presse doublement, et par elle, et par vne si longue premeditation.
Judged by their usefulness and by their natural truth, the lessons of simplicity hardly yield to those that learning preaches to us to the contrary. Men differ in feeling and in strength; they must be led to their good according to what they are, and by different roads. Wherever the storm drives me, I put in as a guest. I never saw any peasant among my neighbors start pondering with what countenance and assurance he would pass that last hour. Nature teaches him not to think about death except when he is dying. And then he does it with better grace than Aristotle, whom death presses doubly, both by itself and by such long premeditation.
Pourtant fut-ce l’opinion de Cæsar, que la moins premeditee mort, estoit la plus heureuse, et plus deschargee. Plus dolet quàm necesse est, qui antê dolet quàm necesse est. L’aigreur de cette imagination, naist de nostre curiosité. Nous nous empeschons tousiours ainsi: voulans deuancer et regenter les prescriptions naturelles. Ce n’est qu’aux docteurs, d’en disner plus mal, tous sains, et se renfroigner de l’image de la mort. Le commun, n’a besoing ny de remede ny de consolation, qu’au heurt, et au coup. Et n’en considere qu’autant iustement qu’il en souffre. Est-ce pas ce que nous disons, que la stupidité, et faute d’apprehension, du vulgaire, luy donne cette patience aux maux presens, et cette profonde nonchalance des sinistres accidens futurs?
That is why it was Caesar’s opinion that the least premeditated death was the happiest and the least burdened. He suffers more than necessary who suffers before it is necessary. The bitterness of this imagining springs from our curiosity. This is how we always encumber ourselves, wanting to anticipate and lord it over nature’s prescriptions. It is only for learned doctors to dine the worse for it while in perfect health, and to scowl at the image of death. Ordinary people need neither remedy nor consolation except at the impact, at the blow, and they consider it exactly as much as they suffer from it. Is that not what we say: that the stupidity and lack of apprehension of the common people give them this patience in present ills and this profound unconcern about sinister future events?
Que leur ame pour estre plus crasse, et obtuse, est moins penetrable et agitable? Pour Dieu s’il est ainsi, tenons d’ores en auant escole de bestise. C’est l’extreme fruit, que les sciences nous promettent, auquel ceste-cy conduict si doucement ses disciples.
That their souls, being coarser and duller, are less easily penetrated and stirred? For God’s sake, if that is so, let us from now on hold a school of stupidity. It is the ultimate fruit that the sciences promise us, and this school leads its pupils to it so gently.
Socrates’ defense
Montaigne paraphrases Socrates’ plea to his judges as a model of natural simplicity.
Nous n’aurons pas faute de bons regens, interpretes de la simplicité naturelle. Socrates en sera l’vn. Car de ce qu’il m’en souuient, il parle enuiron en ce sens, aux iuges qui deliberent de sa vie: I’ay peur, messieurs, si ie vous prie de ne me faire mourir, que ie m’enferre en la delation de mes accusateurs; qui est: Que ie fais plus l’entendu que les autres: comme ayant quelque cognoissance plus cachee, des choses qui sont au dessus et au dessous de nous. Ie sçay que ie n’ay ni frequenté, ny recogneu la mort, ni n’ay veu personne qui ait essayé ses qualitez, pour m’en instruire.
We will not lack good teachers to interpret natural simplicity. Socrates will be one. For, as far as I remember, he speaks roughly to this effect to the judges deliberating on his life: I am afraid, gentlemen, that if I beg you not to put me to death, I will entangle myself in the charge my accusers bring, which is that I set myself up as knowing more than others, as having some more hidden knowledge of things above and below us. I know that I have neither frequented nor explored death, nor seen anyone who has tested its qualities so as to instruct me about it.
Ceux qui la craignent presupposent la cognoistre: quant à moy, ie ne sçay ny quelle elle est, ny quel il faict en l’autre monde. A l’auanture est la mort chose indifferente, à l’auanture desirable. Il est à croire pourtant, si c’est vne transmigration d’vne place à autre, qu’il y a de l’amendement, d’aller viure auec tant de grands personnages trespassez: et d’estre exempt d’auoir plus affaire à iuges iniques et corrompus. Si c’est vn aneantissement de nostre estre, c’est encore amendement d’entrer en vne longue et paisible nuit. Nous ne sentons rien de plus doux en la vie, qu’vn repos et sommeil tranquille, et profond sans songes.
Those who fear it presuppose that they know it; as for me, I know neither what it is nor what things are like in the other world. Perhaps death is a thing indifferent, perhaps a thing desirable. It is to be believed, however, that if it is a migration from one place to another, there is improvement in going to live with so many great men who have passed away, and in being exempt from having anything more to do with unjust and corrupt judges. If it is an annihilation of our being, it is still an improvement to enter a long and peaceful night. We feel nothing sweeter in life than a tranquil rest and a sleep deep and without dreams.
Les choses que ie sçay estre mauuaises, comme d’offencer son prochain, et desobeir au superieur, soit Dieu, soit homme, ie les euite soigneusement: celles desquelles ie ne sçay, si elles sont bonnes ou mauuaises, ie ne les sçaurois craindre. Si ie m’en vay mourir, et vous laisse en vie: les Dieux seuls voyent, à qui, de vous ou de moy, il en ira mieux. Parquoy pour mon regard, vous en ordonnerez, comme il vous plaira. Mais selon ma façon de conseiller les choses iustes et vtiles, ie dy bien, que pour vostre conscience vous ferez mieux de m’eslargir, si vous ne voyez plus auant que moy en ma cause.
The things I know to be bad, such as wronging one’s neighbor and disobeying one’s superior, whether God or man, I carefully avoid; those I do not know to be good or bad, I could not fear. If I go off to die and leave you alive, the gods alone see which of us, you or I, will fare better. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, you will decide as you please. But, in keeping with my way of advising what is just and useful, I do say that for the sake of your conscience you will do better to set me free, unless you see further into my case than I do.
Et iugeant selon mes actions passees, et publiques, et priuees, selon mes intentions, et selon le profit, que tirent tous les iours de ma conuersation tant de nos citoyens, ieunes et vieux, et le fruit, que ie vous fay à tous, vous ne pouuez duëment vous descharger enuers mon merite, qu’en ordonnant, que ie sois nourry, attendu ma pauureté, au Prytanee, aux despens publiques: ce que souuent ie vous ay veu à moindre raison, octroyer à d’autres. Ne prenez pas à obstination ou desdaing, que, suyuant la coustume, ie n’aille vous suppliant et esmouuant à commiseration.
And judging by my past actions, both public and private, by my intentions, by the profit that so many of our citizens, young and old, draw every day from my conversation, and by the benefit I bring to you all, you cannot duly acquit yourselves toward my deserts except by ordering that, in view of my poverty, I be fed in the Prytaneum at public expense—which I have often seen you grant to others on lesser grounds. Do not take it for obstinacy or disdain that I do not, following custom, go about beseeching you and moving you to pity.
I’ay des amis et des parents, n’estant, comme dict Homere, engendré ny de bois, ny de pierre non plus que les autres: capables de se presenter, avec des larmes, et le dueil: et ay trois enfans esplorez, dequoy vous tirer à pitié. Mais ie feroy honte à nostre ville, en l’aage que ie suis, et en telle reputation de sagesse, que m’en voyci en preuention, de m’aller desmettre à si lasches contenances. Que diroit-on des autres Atheniens? I’ay tousiours admonnesté ceux qui m’ont ouy parler, de ne racheter leur vie, par vne action deshonnete.
I have friends and relatives—for I was not, as Homer says, begotten of wood or stone any more than others are—who are capable of appearing in tears and mourning; and I have three weeping children with whom to move you to pity. But I would bring shame on our city, at my age and with such a reputation for wisdom that I stand accused because of it, if I stooped to such base displays. What would people say of the other Athenians? I have always admonished those who have heard me speak not to buy back their lives by a dishonorable act.
Et aux guerres de mon pays à Amphipolis, à Potidee, à Delie, et autres où ie me suis trouué, i’ay montré par effect, combien i’estoy loing de garantir ma seureté par ma honte. D’auantage i’interesserois vostre deuoir, et vous conuierois à choses laydes: car ce n’est pas à mes prieres de vous persuader: c’est aux raisons pures et solides de la iustice. Vous auez iuré aux Dieux d’ainsi vous maintenir. Il sembleroit, que ie vous vousisse soupçonner et recriminer, de ne croire pas, qu’il y en aye. Et moy mesme tesmoigneroy contre moy, de ne croire point en eux, comme ie doy: me deffiant de leur conduicte, et ne remettant purement en leurs mains mon affaire.
And in my country’s wars, at Amphipolis, at Potidaea, at Delium and others where I was present, I showed in deed how far I was from securing my safety by my shame. Moreover, I would be compromising your duty and inviting you to ugly acts; for it is not for my entreaties to persuade you, but for the pure and solid reasons of justice. You have sworn to the gods to conduct yourselves thus. It would seem that I wanted to suspect you and accuse you of not believing that there are any. And I would be bearing witness against myself that I do not believe in them as I should, by distrusting their guidance and not placing my case simply in their hands.
Ie m’y fie du tout: et tiens pour certain, qu’ils feront en cecy, selon qu’il sera plus propre à vous et à moy. Les gens de bien ny viuans, ny morts, n’ont aucunement à se craindre des Dieux. Voyla pas vn playdoyé puerile, d’vne hauteur inimaginable et employé en quelle necessité? Vrayement ce fut raison, qu’il le preferast à celuy, que ce grand orateur Lysias, auoit mis par escrit pour luy: excellemment façonné au stile iudiciaire: mais indigne d’vn si noble criminel. Eust on ouï de la bouche de Socrates vne voix suppliante? Cette superbe vertu, eust elle calé, au plus fort de sa montre?
I trust in them entirely, and hold it certain that in this matter they will do what is most fitting for you and for me. Good men, whether living or dead, have nothing whatever to fear from the gods. Is that not a childlike plea, of unimaginable loftiness—and used in what an extremity! Truly it was right that he should prefer it to the one the great orator Lysias had written out for him, excellently fashioned in the judicial style but unworthy of so noble a defendant. Would anyone have heard a pleading voice from the mouth of Socrates? Would that proud virtue have struck its sails at the height of its display?
Et sa riche et puissante nature, eust elle commis à l’art sa defense: et en son plus haut essay, renoncé à la verité et naïueté, ornemens de son parler, pour se parer du fard, des figures, et feintes, d’vne oraison apprinse? Il feit tressagement, et selon luy, de ne corrompre vne teneur de vie incorruptible, et vne si saincte image de l’humaine forme, pour allonger d’vn an sa decrepitude: et trahir l’immortelle memoire de cette fin glorieuse. Il deuoit sa vie, non pas à soy, mais à l’exemple du monde. Seroit ce pas dommage publique, qu’il eust acheuee d’vne oysiue et obscure façon? Certes vne si nonchallante et molle consideration de sa mort, meritoit que la posterité la considerast d’autant plus pour luy.
And would his rich and powerful nature have entrusted its defense to art, and in its supreme trial renounced truth and naturalness, the ornaments of his speech, to deck itself out with the makeup, the figures and the feints of a memorized oration? He acted very wisely, and true to himself, in not corrupting an incorruptible tenor of life and so holy an image of human form in order to prolong his decrepitude by a year, and in not betraying the immortal memory of that glorious end. He owed his life not to himself but to the example of the world. Would it not have been a public loss if he had ended it in an idle and obscure way? Certainly so unconcerned and easy a consideration of his own death deserved that posterity should consider it all the more on his behalf.
Ce qu’elle fit. Et il n’y a rien en la iustice si iuste, que ce que la Fortune ordonna pour sa recommandation. Car les Atheniens eurent en telle abomination ceux, qui en auoient esté cause, qu’on les fuyoit comme personnes excommuniees. On tenoit pollu tout ce, à quoy ils auoient touché: personne à l’estuue ne lauoit auec eux, personne ne les saluoit ni accointoit: si qu’en fin ne pouuant plus porter cette haine publique, ils se pendirent eux mesmes.
And so it did. And there is nothing in justice so just as what Fortune ordained to honor his memory. For the Athenians held those who had caused his death in such abomination that people shunned them like excommunicated persons. Everything they had touched was held polluted; no one would bathe with them at the baths, no one greeted them or had any dealings with them; so that in the end, unable to bear this public hatred any longer, they hanged themselves.
Si quelqu’vn estime, que parmy tant d’autres exemples que i’auois à choisir pour le seruice de mon propos, és dits de Socrates, i’aye mal trié cestuy-cy: et qu’il iuge, ce discours estre esleué au dessus des opinions communes: ie l’ay faict à escient: car ie iuge autrement. Et tiens que c’est vn discours, en rang, et en naïfueté bien plus arriere, et plus bas, que les opinions communes. Il represente en vne hardiesse inartificielle et securité enfantine la pure et premiere impression et ignorance de nature. Car il est croyable, que nous auons naturellement crainte de la douleur; mais non de la mort, à cause d’elle. C’est vne partie de nostre estre, non moins essentielle que le viure.
Someone may think that, of all the examples I could have chosen from the sayings of Socrates to serve my purpose, I picked this one badly, and judge that this reasoning rises above common opinion. I did it deliberately, for I judge otherwise. I hold that, in rank and in naturalness, it is a reasoning that stands much further back and lower than common opinion. With an artless boldness and a childlike assurance, it shows nature’s pure and first impression, and nature’s ignorance. For it is believable that we naturally fear pain, but not death for its own sake. Death is a part of our being no less essential than living.
A quoy faire, nous en auroit Nature engendré la haine et l’horreur, veu qu’elle luy tient rang de tres-grande vtilité, pour nourrir la succession et vicissitude de ses ouurages? Et qu’en cette republique vniuerselle, elle sert plus de naissance et d’augmentation, que de perte ou ruyne: Sic rerum summa nouatur: / Mille animas vna necata dedit. La deffaillance d’vne vie, est le passage à mille autres vies. Nature a empreint aux bestes, le soing d’elles et de leur conseruation. Elles vont iusques-là, de craindre leur empirement: de se heurter et blesser: que nous les encheuestrions et battions, accidents subiects à leur sens et experience. Mais que nous les tuions, elles ne le peuuent craindre, ny n’ont la faculté d’imaginer et conclurre la mort.
Why would Nature have bred in us a hatred and horror of it, when it is so very useful to her in sustaining the succession and alternation of her works? And when, in this universal commonwealth, it serves birth and increase more than loss or ruin: Thus the sum of things is renewed: / One life put to death has given a thousand. The failing of one life is the passage to a thousand other lives. Nature has imprinted on animals the care of themselves and of their preservation. They go so far as to fear being impaired: knocking and hurting themselves, our haltering and beating them, accidents within the reach of their senses and experience. But they cannot fear that we will kill them, nor do they have the faculty to imagine death or reason their way to it.
Si dit-on encore qu’on les void, non seulement la souffrir gayement: la plus-part des cheuaux hannissent en mourant, les cygnes la chantent: mais de plus, la rechercher à leur besoing; comme portent plusieurs exemples des elephans.
And yet it is said that they are seen not only to bear it cheerfully (most horses neigh as they die, and swans sing it), but also to seek it out when they need to, as many examples of elephants show.
Borrowed flowers
He admits his book gathers other men’s flowers, though he borrows far less than he could.
Outre ce, la façon d’argumenter, de laquelle se sert icy Socrates, est-elle pas admirable esgallement, en simplicité et en vehemence? Vrayment il est bien plus aisé, de parler comme Aristote, viure comme Cæsar, qu’il n’est aisé de parler et viure comme Socrates. Là, loge l’extreme degré de perfection et de difficulté: l’art n’y peut ioindre. Or nos facultez ne sont pas ainsi dressées. Nous ne les essayons, ny ne les cognoissons: nous nous inuestissons de celles d’autruy, et laissons chomer les nostres. Comme quelqu’vn pourroit dire de moy: que i’ay seulement faict icy vn amas de fleurs estrangeres, n’y ayant fourny du mien, que le filet à les lier.
Besides, the way of arguing that Socrates uses here: is it not equally admirable for its simplicity and its force? Truly it is much easier to speak like Aristotle and live like Caesar than to speak and live like Socrates. There lies the extreme degree of perfection and of difficulty; art cannot reach it. Now our faculties are not trained that way. We neither try them out nor know them; we clothe ourselves in other people’s and let our own lie idle. Someone might say of me, for instance, that here I have merely made a heap of other people’s flowers, supplying nothing of my own but the thread to tie them.
Certes i’ay donné à l’opinion publique, que ces parements empruntez m’accompaignent: mais ie n’entends pas qu’ils me couurent, et qu’ils me cachent: c’est le rebours de mon dessein. Qui ne veux faire montre que du mien et de ce qui est mien par nature. Et si ie m’en fusse creu, à tout hazard, i’eusse parlé tout fin seul. Ie m’en charge de plus fort, tous les iours, outre ma proposition et ma forme premiere, sur la fantasie du siecle: et par oisiueté. S’il me messied à moy, comme ie le croy, n’importe: il peut estre vtile à quelque autre. Tel allegue Platon et Homere, qui ne les vid onques: et moy, ay prins des lieux assez, ailleurs qu’en leur source.
It is true that I have yielded to public opinion in letting these borrowed ornaments go along with me; but I do not mean them to cover me and hide me. That is the reverse of my design, since I want to show nothing but what is my own, and mine by nature. If I had trusted myself, I would have taken the risk and spoken entirely on my own. Every day I load myself with them more heavily, beyond my intention and my original form, to suit the fancy of the age, and out of idleness. If it does not become me, as I believe, no matter: it may be useful to someone else. Some people quote Plato and Homer who never set eyes on them; and I have taken plenty of passages from places other than their source.
Sans peine et sans suffisance, ayant mille volumes de liures, autour de moy, en ce lieu où i’escris, i’emprunteray presentement s’il me plaist, d’vne douzaine de tels rauaudeurs, gens que ie ne fueillette guere, dequoy esmailler le traicté de la Physionomie. Il ne faut que l’epitre liminaire d’vn Allemand pour me farcir d’allegations: et nous allons quester par là vne friande gloire, à piper le sot monde. Ces pastissages de lieux communs, dequoy tant de gents mesnagent leur estude, ne seruent guere qu’à subiects communs: et seruent à nous montrer, non à nous conduire: ridicule fruict de la science, que Socrates exagite si plaisamment contre Euthydemus.
Without effort and without ability, having a thousand volumes around me in this place where I write, I could borrow right now, if I pleased, from a dozen such patchers of old cloth (people I hardly ever leaf through) enough to enamel this treatise on Physiognomy. All it takes is the prefatory epistle of some German to stuff me with quotations; and that is how we go begging for a toothsome glory, to fool the silly world. These hodgepodges of commonplaces, with which so many people husband their studies, are hardly any use except for commonplace subjects. They serve to show us off, not to guide us: a ridiculous fruit of learning, which Socrates mocks so amusingly in his exchange with Euthydemus.
I’ay veu faire des liures de choses, ny iamais estudiées ny entenduës: l’autheur commettant à diuers de ses amis sçauants, la recherche de cette-cy, et de cette autre matiere, à le bastir: se contentant pour sa part, d’en auoir proietté le dessein, et lié par son industrie, ce fagot de prouisions incogneuës: au moins est sien l’ancre, et le papier. Cela, c’est achetter, ou emprunter vn liure, non pas le faire. C’est apprendre aux hommes, non qu’on sçait faire vn liure, mais, ce dequoy ils pouuoient estre en doute, qu’on ne le sçait pas faire. Vn president se ventoit où i’estois, d’auoir amoncelé deux cens tant de lieux estrangers, en vn sien arrest presidental. En le preschant, il effaçoit la gloire qu’on luy en donnoit.
I have seen books made about things their authors had never studied or understood. The author hands over to various learned friends the research on this subject and that, to build it up, and contents himself with having drawn up the plan and bound together, by his own ingenuity, this bundle of provisions unknown to him. At least the ink and the paper are his. That is buying or borrowing a book, not making one. It teaches people not that you know how to make a book but, on a point they might have been in doubt about, that you do not. A presiding judge boasted in my presence of having piled up two hundred and some passages from other authors in one of his presidential rulings. By proclaiming it, he wiped out the glory people gave him for it.
Pusillanime et absurde venterie à mon gré, pour vn tel subiect et telle personne. Ie fais le contraire: et parmy tant d’emprunts, suis bien aise d’en pouuoir desrober quelqu’vn: le desguisant et difformant à nouueau seruice. Au hazard, que ie laisse dire, que c’est par faute d’auoir entendu son naturel vsage, ie luy donne quelque particuliere adresse de ma main, à ce qu’il en soit d’autant moins purement estranger. Ceux-cy mettent leurs larrecins en parade et en conte. Aussi ont-ils plus de credit aux loix que moy. Nous autres naturalistes, estimons, qu’il y aye grande et incomparable preference, de l’honneur de l’inuention, à l’honneur de l’allegation.
A petty and absurd boast, to my taste, for such a subject and such a person. I do the opposite. Among so many borrowings, I am very glad when I can steal one, disguising and reshaping it for new service. At the risk of letting people say that it is because I failed to understand its natural use, I give it some particular twist of my own hand, so that it may be that much less purely foreign. These people put their thefts on parade and on record; so they stand better with the law than I do. We naturalists consider that the honor of invention is greatly and incomparably to be preferred to the honor of quotation.
Si i’eusse voulu parler par science, i’eusse parlé plustost. I’eusse escrit du temps plus voisin de mes estudes, que i’auois plus d’esprit et de memoire. Et me fusse plus fié à la vigueur de cet aage là, qu’à cettuy-cy, si i’eusse voulu faire mestier d’escrire. Et quoy, si cette faueur gratieuse, que la Fortune m’a n’aguere offerte par l’entremise de cet ouurage, m’eust peu rencontrer en telle saison au lieu de celle-cy; où elle est egallement desirable à posseder, et preste à perdre? Deux de mes cognoissans, grands hommes en cette faculté, ont perdu par moitié, à mon aduis, d’auoir refusé de se mettre au iour, à quarante ans, pour attendre les soixante. La maturité a ses deffaux, comme la verdeur, et pires.
If I had wanted to speak from learning, I would have spoken sooner. I would have written at a time closer to my studies, when I had more wit and memory; and if I had wanted to make a profession of writing, I would have trusted the vigor of that age more than this one. And what if this gracious favor that Fortune has lately offered me through this work had come my way in that season, instead of this one, when it is as desirable to possess as it is ready to be lost? Two of my acquaintances, great men in this field, lost half their worth, in my opinion, by refusing to go before the public at forty so as to wait for sixty. Maturity has its defects, as greenness does, and worse ones.
Et autant est la vieillesse incommode à cette nature de besongne, qu’à toute autre. Quiconque met sa decrepitude soubs la presse, faict folie, s’il espere en espreindre des humeurs, qui ne sentent le disgratié, le resueur et l’assoupy. Nostre esprit se constipe et s’espessit en vieillissant. Ie dis pompeusement et opulemment l’ignorance, et dis la science maigrement et piteusement. Accessoirement cette-cy, et accidentalement: celle-là expressément, et principallement. Et ne traicte à poinct nommé de rien, que du rien: ny d’aucune science, que de celle de l’inscience. I’ay choisi le temps, où ma vie, que i’ay à peindre, ie l’ay toute deuant moy: ce qui en reste, tient plus de la mort.
And old age is as ill-suited to this kind of work as to any other. Whoever puts his decrepitude under the press is a fool if he hopes to squeeze out of it juices that do not smack of the dismal, the dreamy and the drowsy. Our mind gets constipated and thickens as it ages. I speak of ignorance pompously and lavishly, and of learning meagerly and pitifully: of learning secondarily and incidentally, of ignorance expressly and principally. And I deal specifically with nothing but nothing, and with no knowledge but the knowledge of unknowing. I have chosen the time when the life I have to portray lies entirely before me; what remains of it has more to do with death.
Et de ma mort seulement, si ie la rencontrois babillarde, comme font d’autres, donrois-ie encores volontiers aduis au peuple, en deslogeant.
And as for my death, if I found it talkative, as others do, I would still gladly give people notice of it as I moved out.
Beauty and the face
Socrates’ ugliness hid a beautiful soul; beauty is powerful, but faces are poor guarantees.
Socrates a esté vn exemplaire parfaict en toutes grandes qualitez. I’ay despit, qu’il eust rencontré vn corps si disgratié, comme ils disent, et si disconuenable à la beauté de son ame, luy si amoureux et si affolé de la beauté. Nature luy fit iniustice. Il n’est rien plus vray-semblable, que la conformité et relation du corps à l’esprit.
Socrates was a perfect model in all great qualities. It vexes me that he met with a body so ill-favored, as they say, and so ill-matched to the beauty of his soul: he who was so in love with beauty, so mad about it. Nature did him an injustice. Nothing is more likely than that the body should match and correspond to the mind.
Ipsi animi, magni refert, quali in corpore locati sint: multa enim è corpore existunt, quæ acuant mentem: multa, quæ obtundant. Cettuy-cy parle d’vne laideur desnaturée, et difformité de membres: mais nous appellons laideur aussi, vne mesauenance au premier regard, qui loge principallement au visage: et nous desgoute par le teint, vne tache, vne rude contenance, par quelque cause souuent inexplicable, en des membres pourtant bien ordonnez et entiers. La laideur, qui reuestoit vne ame tres-belle en la Boittie, estoit de ce predicament. Cette laideur superficielle, qui est toutesfois la plus imperieuse, est de moindre preiudice à l’estat de l’esprit: et a peu de certitude en l’opinion des hommes. L’autre, qui d’vn plus propre nom, s’appelle difformité plus substantielle, porte plus volontiers coup iusques au dedans.
It matters greatly to the mind itself in what kind of body it is lodged; for many things arise from the body to sharpen the mind, and many to blunt it. This writer is speaking of an unnatural ugliness and deformity of limbs. But we also call ugliness an unattractiveness at first sight, which lies chiefly in the face and puts us off by the complexion, a blemish, a rough bearing, often for some inexplicable reason, in limbs that are nevertheless well ordered and whole. The ugliness that clothed a very beautiful soul in La Boétie was of this kind. This superficial ugliness, though it is the most imperious, does less harm to the state of the mind, and carries little certainty in people’s opinion. The other, more properly called deformity, being more substantial, more readily strikes home to the inside.
Non pas tout soulier de cuir bien lissé, mais tout soulier bien formé, montre l’interieure forme du pied. Comme Socrates disoit de la sienne, qu’elle en accusoit iustement, autant en son ame, s’il ne l’eust corrigée par institution. Mais en le disant, ie tiens qu’il se mocquoit, suiuant son vsage: et iamais ame si excellente, ne se fit elle-mesme.
Not every shoe of well-polished leather, but every well-shaped shoe, shows the inner shape of the foot. So Socrates said of his ugliness that it accurately revealed as much in his soul, had he not corrected it by education. But in saying so, I think he was joking, as was his habit; never did so excellent a soul make itself.
Ie ne puis dire assez souuent, combien i’estime la beauté, qualité puissante et aduantageuse. Il l’appelloit, vne courte tyrannie: et Platon, le priuilege de nature. Nous n’en auons point qui la surpasse en credit. Elle tient le premier rang au commerce des hommes. Elle se presente au deuant: seduict et preoccupe nostre iugement, auec grande authorité et merueilleuse impression. Phryné perdoit sa cause, entre les mains d’vn excellent aduocat, si, ouurant sa robbe, elle n’eust corrompu ses iuges, par l’esclat de sa beauté. Et ie trouue, que Cyrus, Alexandre, Cæsar, ces trois maistres du monde, ne l’ont pas oubliée à faire leurs grands affaires. Non a pas le premier Scipion. Vn mesme mot embrasse en Grec le bel et le bon. Et le S.
I cannot say often enough how highly I value beauty, a powerful and advantageous quality. Socrates called it a short-lived tyranny, and Plato the privilege of nature. We have no quality that surpasses it in credit. It holds the first rank in human dealings. It steps forward in front; it seduces and prejudges our judgment with great authority and a wondrous impression. Phryne would have lost her case, in the hands of an excellent advocate, had she not opened her robe and corrupted her judges with the radiance of her beauty. And I find that Cyrus, Alexander and Caesar, those three masters of the world, did not forget it in conducting their great affairs. Nor did the first Scipio. In Greek a single word embraces the beautiful and the good. And the Holy
Esprit appelle souuent bons, ceux qu’il veut dire beaux. Ie maintiendroy volontiers le rang des biens, selon que portoit la chanson, que Platon dit auoir esté triuiale, prinse de quelque ancien poëte: La santé, la beauté, la richesse. Aristote dit, appartenir aux beaux, le droict de commander: et quand il en est, de qui la beauté approche celle des images des Dieux, que la veneration leur est pareillement deuë. A celuy qui luy demandoit, pourquoy plus long temps, et plus souuent, on hantoit les beaux: Cette demande, feit-il, n’appartient à estre faicte, que par vn aueugle. La plus-part et les plus grands philosophes, payerent leur escholage, et acquirent la sagesse, par l’entremise et faueur de leur beauté.
Spirit often calls good those it means to call beautiful. I would gladly keep the ranking of goods given in the song that Plato says was commonly sung, taken from some ancient poet: health, beauty, wealth. Aristotle says that the right to command belongs to the beautiful, and that when there are people whose beauty approaches that of the images of the gods, veneration is likewise due to them. To someone who asked him why people spent more time, and more often, with the beautiful, he said: “That is a question only a blind man would ask.” Most philosophers, and the greatest, paid for their schooling and acquired wisdom through the help and favor of their beauty.
Non seulement aux hommes qui me seruent, mais aux bestes aussi, ie la considere à deux doigts pres de la bonté.
Not only in the men who serve me but in animals too, I consider it within two fingers of goodness.
Si me semble-il, que ce traict et façon de visage, et ces lineaments, par lesquels on argumente aucunes complexions internes, et nos fortunes à venir, est chose qui ne loge pas bien directement et simplement, soubs le chapitre de beauté et de laideur. Non plus que toute bonne odeur, et serenité d’air, n’en promet pas la santé: ny toute espesseur et puanteur, l’infection, en temps pestilent. Ceux qui accusent les dames, de contre-dire leur beauté par leurs mœurs, ne rencontrent pas tousiours. Car en vne face qui ne sera pas trop bien composée, il peut loger quelque air de probité et de fiance. Comme au rebours, i’ay leu par fois entre deux beaux yeux, des menasses d’vne nature maligne et dangereuse.
Yet it seems to me that the cast and shape of the face, and the features from which people infer certain inner dispositions and our future fortunes, do not fall very directly and simply under the heading of beauty and ugliness. Any more than every pleasant smell and every clear sky promises health, or every heaviness and stench promises infection, in time of plague. Those who accuse ladies of belying their beauty by their character do not always hit the mark. For a face that is not very well composed may harbor an air of honesty and trustworthiness; just as, conversely, I have sometimes read between two beautiful eyes the threat of a malignant and dangerous nature.
Il y a des physionomies fauorables: et en vne presse d’ennemis victorieux, vous choisirez incontinent parmy des hommes incogneus, l’vn plustost que l’autre, à qui vous rendre et fier vostre vie: et non proprement par la consideration de la beauté.
There are favorable physiognomies. In a crowd of victorious enemies, among men you do not know, you will immediately choose one rather than another to surrender to and entrust your life to, and not strictly on account of beauty.
C’est vne foible garantie que la mine, toutesfois elle a quelque consideration. Et si i’auois à les foyter, ce seroit plus rudement, les meschans qui dementent et trahissent les promesses que Nature leur auoit plantées au front. Ie punirois plus aigrement la malice, en vne apparence debonnaire. Il semble qu’il y ait aucuns visages heureux, d’autres malencontreux. Et crois, qu’il y a quelque art, à distinguer les visages debonnaires des niais, les seueres des rudes, les malicieux des chagrins, les desdaigneux des melancholiques, et telles autres qualitez voisines. Il y a des beautez, non fieres seulement, mais aigres: il y en a d’autres douces, et encores au delà, fades. D’en prognostiquer les auantures futures, ce sont matieres que ie laisse indecises.
Looks are a weak guarantee; still, they count for something. If I had to whip the wicked, I would whip more harshly those who belie and betray the promises that Nature had planted on their brows. I would punish malice more severely in a kindly appearance. It seems that some faces are lucky and others unlucky. And I believe there is some skill in telling kindly faces from simple ones, stern from rough, malicious from sullen, disdainful from melancholy, and other such neighboring qualities. There are beauties that are not only proud but sour; there are others that are sweet, and beyond that, insipid. As for foretelling future events from them, those are matters I leave undecided.
Goodness from nature
Goodness should grow from nature and reason, not from hope and fear.
I’ay pris, comme i’ay dict ailleurs, bien simplement et cruëment, pour mon regard, ce precepte ancien: Que nous ne sçaurions faillir à suiure Nature: que le souuerain precepte, c’est de se conformer à elle. Ie n’ay pas corrigé comme Socrates, par la force de la raison, mes complexions naturelles: et n’ay aucunement troublé par art, mon inclination. Ie me laisse aller, comme ie suis venu. Ie ne combats rien. Mes deux maistresses pieces viuent de leur grace en paix et bon accord: mais le laict de ma nourrice a esté, Dieu mercy, mediocrement sain et temperé.
As I have said elsewhere, I have taken quite simply and crudely, for my own part, this ancient precept: that we cannot go wrong in following Nature, that the sovereign precept is to conform to her. I have not, like Socrates, corrected my natural dispositions by force of reason, nor in any way disturbed my inclination by art. I let myself go as I came. I fight nothing. My two chief parts live of their own accord in peace and good harmony; but my nurse’s milk was, thank God, reasonably healthy and temperate.
Diray-ie cecy en passant: que ie voy tenir en plus de prix qu’elle ne vaut, qui est seule quasi en vsage entre nous, certaine image de preud’hommie scholastique, serue des preceptes, contraincte soubs l’esperance et la crainte? Ie l’aime telle que loix et religions, non facent, mais parfacent, et authorisent: qui se sente dequoy se soustenir sans aide: née en nous de ses propres racines, par la semence de la raison vniuerselle, empreinte en tout homme non desnaturé. Cette raison, qui redresse Socrates de son vicieux ply, le rend obeïssant aux hommes et aux Dieux, qui commandent en sa ville: courageux en la mort, non parce que son ame est immortelle, mais parce qu’il est mortel.
May I say this in passing? I see a certain image of school-taught goodness held in higher esteem than it is worth, though it is almost the only kind in use among us: a slave to precepts, held down by hope and fear. I love goodness of the kind that laws and religions do not make but perfect and authorize; that feels it has the means to stand without help; that is born in us from its own roots, from the seed of universal reason imprinted in every man who is not unnatural. This reason, which straightens Socrates out of his vicious bent, makes him obedient to the men and gods who command in his city, and courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal but because he is mortal.
Ruineuse instruction à toute police, et bien plus dommageable qu’ingenieuse et subtile, qui persuade aux peuples, la religieuse creance suffire seule, et sans les mœurs, à contenter la diuine iustice. L’vsage nous faict veoir, vne distinction enorme, entre la deuotion et la conscience.
It is a ruinous teaching for any government, and much more harmful than it is ingenious and subtle, that persuades peoples that religious belief alone, without morals, is enough to satisfy divine justice. Experience shows us an enormous difference between devotion and conscience.
Saved by his face
Twice his open face and frank speech disarmed men who meant to seize him.
I’ay vne apparence fauorable, et en forme et en interpretation. Quid dixi habere me? Imò habui Chreme! / Heu tantùm attriti corporis ossa vides! Et qui faict vne contraire montre à celle de Socrates. Il m’est souuent aduenu, que sur le simple credit de ma presence, et de mon air, des personnes qui n’auoient aucune cognoissance de moy, s’y sont grandement fiées, soit pour leurs propres affaires, soit pour les miennes. Et en ay tiré és païs estrangers des faueurs singulieres et rares. Mais ces deux experiences, valent à l’auanture, que ie les recite particulierement. Vn quidam delibera de surprendre ma maison et moy. Son art fut, d’arriuer seul à ma porte, et d’en presser vn peu instamment l’entrée.
I have a favorable appearance, both in its features and in how it is read. Did I say I have? No, I had, Chremes! / Alas, you see only the bones of a worn-out body! And it makes the opposite impression to Socrates’. It has often happened that people who did not know me at all have relied on me greatly, on the mere credit of my presence and my air, whether in their own affairs or in mine. And in foreign countries I have obtained singular and rare favors from it. But the following two experiences are perhaps worth telling in detail. A certain fellow made a plan to take my house and me by surprise. His trick was to arrive alone at my gate and press rather urgently to be let in.
Ie le cognoissois de nom, et auois occasion de me fier de luy, comme de mon voisin et aucunement mon allié. Ie luy fis ouurir comme ie fais à chacun. Le voicy tout effroyé, son cheual hors d’haleine, fort harassé. Il m’entretint de cette fable: Qu’il venoit d’estre rencontré à vne demie lieuë de là, par vn sien ennemy, lequel ie cognoissois aussi, et auois ouy parler de leur querelle: que cet ennemy luy auoit merueilleusement chaussé les esperons: et qu’ayant esté surpris en desarroy et plus foible en nombre, il s’estoit ietté à ma porte à sauueté. Qu’il estoit en grand peine de ses gens, lesquels il disoit tenir pour morts ou prins. I’essayay tout naïfuement de le conforter, asseurer, et refreschir.
I knew him by name, and had reason to trust him as my neighbor and in some degree my relation by marriage. I had the gate opened for him, as I do for everyone. There he is, all terrified, his horse out of breath, very worn out. He regaled me with this tale: that he had just been set upon half a league away by an enemy of his, whom I also knew (I had heard about their quarrel); that this enemy had chased him hard; and that, having been caught in disarray and outnumbered, he had thrown himself at my gate for safety. He was very worried about his men, he said, whom he believed dead or captured. I quite innocently tried to comfort, reassure and refresh him.
Tantost apres, voila quatre ou cinq de ses soldats, qui se presentent en mesme contenance, et effroy, pour entrer: et puis d’autres, et d’autres encores apres, bien equippez, et bien armez: iusques à vingt cinq ou trante, feignants auoir leur ennemy aux talons. Ce mystere commençoit à taster mon soupçon. Ie n’ignorois pas en quel siecle ie viuois, combien ma maison pouuoit estre enuiée, et auois plusieurs exemples d’autres de ma cognoissance, à qui il estoit mes-aduenu de mesme. Tant y a, que trouuant qu’il n’y auoit point d’acquest d’auoir commencé à faire plaisir, si ie n’acheuois, et ne pouuant me deffaire sans tout rompre; ie me laissay aller au party le plus naturel et le plus simple, comme ie fais tousiours: commendant qu’ils entrassent.
Soon after, here come four or five of his soldiers, with the same bearing and the same fright, asking to come in; then others, and still others after them, well equipped and well armed, up to twenty-five or thirty, pretending to have their enemy at their heels. This mystery began to stir my suspicion. I knew very well what age I was living in, and how much my house might be coveted, and I knew several people of my acquaintance to whom the same misfortune had happened. Be that as it may, finding that there was nothing to be gained by beginning to do a kindness if I did not finish it, and unable to get out of it without breaking off entirely, I let myself go along the most natural and simplest course, as I always do, and ordered that they be let in.
Aussi à la verité, ie suis peu deffiant et soupçonneux de ma nature. Ie panche volontiers vers l’excuse, et l’interpretation plus douce. Ie prens les hommes selon le commun ordre, et ne croy pas ces inclinations peruerses et desnaturées, si ie n’y suis forcé par grand tesmoignage; non plus que les monstres et miracles. Et suis homme en outre, qui me commets volontiers à la Fortune, et me laisse aller à corps perdu, entre ses bras. Dequoy iusques à cette heure i’ay eu plus d’occasion de me louër, que de me plaindre. Et l’ay trouuée et plus auisée, et plus amie de mes affaires, que ie ne suis.
Besides, to tell the truth, I am by nature not very distrustful or suspicious. I readily lean toward excuse and the gentler interpretation. I take men according to the common order, and I do not believe in perverse and unnatural inclinations unless strong evidence forces me to, any more than in monsters and miracles. Moreover, I am a man who readily commits himself to Fortune and throws himself headlong into her arms. So far I have had more cause to congratulate myself on this than to complain. I have found her both wiser and better disposed toward my affairs than I am.
Il y a quelques actions en ma vie, desquelles on peut iustement nommer la conduite difficile; ou, qui voudra, prudente. De celles-là mesmes, posez, que la tierce partie soit du mien, certes les deux tierces sont richement à elle. Nous faillons, ce me semble, en ce que nous ne nous fions pas assez au ciel de nous. Et pretendons plus de nostre conduite, qu’il ne nous appartient. Pourtant fouruoyent si souuent nos desseins. Il est enuieux de l’estenduë, que nous attribuons aux droicts de l’humaine prudence, au preiudice des siens. Et nous les racourcit d’autant plus, que nous les amplifions.
There are some actions in my life whose conduct may justly be called difficult, or, if you like, prudent. Even of those, suppose a third is my own: the other two thirds are certainly and richly hers. We go wrong, it seems to me, in not entrusting ourselves enough to heaven, and in claiming more for our own conduct than is our due. That is why our plans so often go astray. Heaven is jealous of the scope we give to the rights of human prudence at the expense of its own, and it cuts them down for us all the more, the more we enlarge them.
Ceux-cy se tindrent à cheual, en ma cour: le chef auec moy dans ma sale, qui n’auoit voulu qu’on establast son cheual, disant auoir à se retirer incontinent qu’il auroit eu nouuelles de ses hommes. Il se veid maistre de son entreprinse: et n’y restoit sur ce poinct, que l’execution. Souuent depuis il a dict, car il ne craignoit pas de faire ce conte, que mon visage, et ma franchise, luy auoient arraché la trahison des poings. Il remonte à cheual, ses gens ayants continuellement les yeux sur luy, pour voir quel signe il leur donneroit: bien estonnez de le voir sortir et abandonner son aduantage.
These men stayed on horseback in my courtyard. The leader was with me in my hall; he had refused to have his horse stabled, saying he would have to leave as soon as he had news of his men. He saw himself master of his enterprise, and at that point nothing remained but the execution. He has often said since (for he was not afraid to tell this story) that my face and my frankness had wrested the treachery from his grip. He gets back on his horse, his men keeping their eyes on him constantly to see what signal he would give them, and quite stunned to see him ride out and abandon his advantage.
Vne autre fois, me fiant à ie ne sçay quelle treue, qui venoit d’estre publiée en nos armées, ie m’acheminay à vn voyage, par païs estrangement chatoüilleux. Ie ne fus pas si tost esuenté, que voila trois ou quatre caualcades de diuers lieux pour m’attraper. L’vne me ioignit à la troisieme iournée: où ie fus chargé par quinze ou vingt Gentils-hommes masquez, suiuis d’vne ondée d’argoulets. Me voila pris et rendu, retiré dans l’espais d’vne forest voisine, desmonté, deualizé, mes cofres fouillez, ma boite prise, cheuaux et esquipage dispersé à nouueaux maistres. Nous fusmes long temps à contester dans ce halier, sur le faict de ma rançon: qu’ils me tailloient si haute, qu’il paroissoit bien que ie ne leur estois guere cogneu.
Another time, trusting to some truce or other that had just been proclaimed in our armies, I set out on a journey through strangely ticklish country. No sooner had word of me got out than three or four troops of horsemen set off from various places to catch me. One of them overtook me on the third day, and I was charged by fifteen or twenty masked gentlemen, followed by a wave of mounted arquebusiers. There I am, taken and surrendered, led into the thick of a nearby forest, unhorsed, robbed, my chests searched, my money box taken, my horses and gear shared out among new masters. We spent a long time arguing in that thicket over my ransom, which they set so high that it was quite plain they hardly knew who I was.
Ils entrerent en grande contestation de ma vie. De vray, il y auoit plusieurs circonstances, qui me menassoyent du danger où i’en estois. Tunc animis opus, Ænea, tunc pectore firmo. Ie me maintins tousiours sur le tiltre de ma trefue, à leur quitter seulement le gain qu’ils auoient faict de ma despouille, qui n’estoit pas à mespriser, sans promesse d’autre rançon.
They fell into a great argument over my life. And in truth there were several circumstances that showed me the danger I was in. Then was the time for courage, Aeneas, then for a steady heart. I kept standing on the terms of my truce, offering to leave them only what they had gained by stripping me, which was not to be despised, with no promise of any other ransom.
Apres deux ou trois heures, que nous eusmes esté là, et qu’ils m’eurent faict monter sur vn cheual, qui n’auoit garde de leur eschapper, et commis ma conduicte particuliere à quinze ou vingt harquebusiers, et dispersé mes gens à d’autres, ayant ordonné qu’on nous menast prisonniers, diuerses routes, et moy desia acheminé à deux ou trois harquebusades de là, Iam prece Pollucis, iam Castoris implorata: voicy vne soudaine et tres-inopinée mutation qui leur print. Ie vis reuenir à moy le chef, auec paroles plus douces: se mettant en peine de rechercher en la trouppe mes hardes escartées, et me les faisant rendre, selon qu’il s’en pouuoit recouurer, iusques à ma boite.
We had been there two or three hours; they had put me on a horse that had no chance of getting away from them, assigned fifteen or twenty arquebusiers to guard me in particular, and split my people among others, with orders to take us away as prisoners by different roads; and I was already two or three arquebus shots away, after prayers to Pollux, after pleas to Castor, when suddenly a most unexpected change came over them. I saw the leader come back to me with gentler words, taking pains to search through the troop for my scattered belongings and having them returned to me, as far as they could be recovered, right down to my money box.
Le meilleur present qu’ils me firent, ce fut en fin ma liberté: le reste ne me touchoit gueres en ce temps-là. La vraye cause d’vn changement si nouueau, et de ce rauisement, sans aucune impulsion apparente, et d’vn repentir si miraculeux, en tel temps, en vne entreprinse pourpensée et deliberée, et deuenue iuste par l’vsage, (car d’arriuée ie leur confessay ouuertement le party duquel i’estois, et le chemin que ie tenois) certes ie ne sçay pas bien encores quelle elle est. Le plus apparent qui se demasqua, et me fit cognoistre son nom, me redist lors plusieurs fois, que ie deuoy cette deliurance à mon visage, liberté, et fermeté de mes parolles, qui me rendoient indigne d’vne telle mes-aduenture, me demanda asseurance d’vne pareille.
The best present they gave me, in the end, was my freedom; the rest hardly mattered to me at the time. The true cause of so novel a change, of this second thought without any apparent impulse, of so miraculous a repentance at such a time, in an enterprise planned and deliberate and made legitimate by common practice (for at the outset I openly admitted to them which party I belonged to and which road I was taking): truly I still do not quite know what it was. The most prominent of them, who took off his mask and told me his name, said to me several times then that I owed my deliverance to my face and to the freedom and firmness of my words, which made me undeserving of such a misadventure; and he asked me to pledge him the same in return.
Il est possible, que la bonté diuine se voulut seruir de ce vain instrument pour ma conseruation. Elle me deffendit encore lendemain d’autres pires embusches, desquelles ceux-cy mesme m’auoient aduerty. Le dernier est encore en pieds, pour en faire le conte: le premier fut tué il n’y a pas long temps.
It is possible that divine goodness chose to use this vain instrument for my preservation. It protected me again the next day from other, worse ambushes, of which these very men had warned me. The leader of the second band is still on his feet to tell the story; the man in the first was killed not long ago.
Si mon visage ne respondoit pour moy, si on ne lisoit en mes yeux, et en ma voix, la simplicité de mon intention, ie n’eusse pas duré sans querelle, et sans offence, si long temps: auec cette indiscrette liberté, de dire à tort et à droict, ce qui me vient en fantasie, et iuger temerairement des choses. Cette façon peut paroistre auec raison inciuile, et mal accommodée à nostre vsage: mais outrageuse et malitieuse, ie n’ay veu personne qui l’en ait iugée: ny qui se soit piqué de ma liberté, s’il l’a receuë de ma bouche. Les paroles redites, ont comme autre son, autre sens. Aussi ne hay-ie personne.
If my face did not answer for me, if people did not read the simplicity of my intentions in my eyes and my voice, I would not have lasted so long without quarrels and without giving offense, given this indiscreet freedom of mine to say, rightly or wrongly, whatever comes into my head, and to judge things rashly. This manner may reasonably seem uncivil and ill-suited to our customs; but I have never seen anyone judge it outrageous or malicious, nor anyone take offense at my freedom if he heard it from my own mouth. Words repeated have, as it were, a different sound and a different sense. Besides, I hate nobody.
Et suis si lasche à offencer, que pour le seruice de la raison mesme, ie ne le puis faire. Et lors que l’occasion m’a conuié aux condemnations criminelles, i’ay plustost manqué à la iustice. Vt magis peccari nolim, quàm satis animi ad vindicanda peccata habeam. On reprochoit, dit-on, à Aristote, d’auoir esté trop misericordieux enuers vn meschant homme: I’ay esté de vray, dit-il, misericordieux enuers l’homme, non enuers la meschanceté. Les iugements ordinaires, s’exasperent à la punition par l’horreur du meffaict. Cela mesme refroidit le mien. L’horreur du premier meurtre, m’en faict craindre vn second. Et la laideur de la premiere cruauté m’en faict abhorrer toute imitation.
And I am so slack at giving offense that I cannot do it even in the service of reason. When occasion has called me to pass criminal sentences, I have rather fallen short of justice. So that I would rather sins were not committed than have the heart to punish them. Aristotle, they say, was reproached for having been too merciful to a wicked man. “I have indeed been merciful,” he said, “to the man, not to the wickedness.” Ordinary judgments are stirred to punish by the horror of the crime. That very horror cools mine. The horror of the first murder makes me fear a second; and the ugliness of the first cruelty makes me abhor any imitation of it.
A moy, qui ne suis qu’escuyer de trefles, peut toucher, ce qu’on disoit de Charillus Roy de Sparte: Il ne sçauroit estre bon, puis qu’il n’est pas mauuais aux meschans. Ou bien ainsi: car Plutarque le presente en ces deux sortes, comme mille autres choses diuersement et contrairement: Il faut bien qu’il soit bon, puis qu’il l’est aux meschants mesme. De mesme qu’aux actions legitimes, ie me fasche de m’y employer, quand c’est enuers ceux qui s’en desplaisent: aussi à dire verité, aux illegitimes, ie ne fay pas assez de conscience, de m’y employer, quand c’est enuers ceux qui y consentent.
To me, who am only the jack of clubs, may apply what was said of Charillus, king of Sparta: “He cannot be good, since he is not bad to the wicked.” Or else this way, for Plutarch gives it both ways, as he gives a thousand other things in different and contrary forms: “He must indeed be good, since he is good even to the wicked.” Just as, in lawful actions, I am reluctant to take part when it is against people who dislike it, so too, to tell the truth, in unlawful ones I am not scrupulous enough about taking part when it is with people who consent to it.