IL n’est desir plus naturel que le desir de cognoissance. Nous essayons tous les moyens qui nous y peuuent mener. Quand la raison nous faut, nous y employons l’experience. Per varios vsus artem experientia fecit: / Exemplo monstrante viam. Qui est vn moyen de beaucoup plus foible et plus vil. Mais la verité est chose si grande, que nous ne deuons desdaigner aucune entremise qui nous y conduise. La raison a tant de formes, que nous ne sçauons à laquelle nous prendre. L’experience n’en a pas moins. La consequence que nous voulons tirer de la conference des euenemens, est mal seure, d’autant qu’ils sont tousiours dissemblables. Il n’est aucune qualité si vniuerselle, en cette image des choses, que la diuersité et varieté.
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge. We try every means that can lead us to it. When reason fails us, we use experience: Through various trials experience created art, / Example showing the way. It is a much weaker and humbler means. But truth is so great a thing that we must not disdain any channel that leads us to it. Reason has so many forms that we do not know which one to take hold of. Experience has no fewer. The inference we try to draw from comparing events is unreliable, because they are always unlike. In this image of things, no quality is so universal as diversity and variety.
Et les Grecs, et les Latins, et nous, pour le plus expres exemple de similitude, nous seruons de celuy des œufs. Toutesfois il s’est trouué des hommes, et notamment vn en Delphes, qui recognoissoit des marques de difference entre les œufs, si qu’il n’en prenoit iamais l’vn pour l’autre. Et y ayant plusieurs poules, sçauoit iuger de laquelle estoit l’œuf. La dissimilitude s’ingere d’elle-mesme en nos ouurages, nul art peut arriuer à la similitude. Ny Perrozet ny autre, ne peut si soigneusement polir et blanchir l’enuers de ses cartes, qu’aucuns ioueurs ne les distinguent, à les voir seulement couler par les mains d’vn autre. La ressemblance ne faict pas tant, vn, comme la difference faict, autre.
The Greeks, the Latins and we ourselves all use eggs as the most telling example of likeness. Yet there have been men, notably one at Delphi, who could recognize marks of difference between eggs, so that he never took one for another; and when there were several hens, he could tell which one an egg came from. Dissimilarity intrudes of itself into our works; no art can achieve similarity. Neither Perrozet nor anyone else can polish and whiten the backs of his cards so carefully that some players cannot tell them apart just by watching them slip through another player’s hands. Resemblance does not make things one so much as difference makes them other.
Nature s’est obligée à ne rien faire autre, qui ne fust dissemblable.
Nature has bound herself to make nothing that is not unlike everything else.
Laws and interpretation
Multiplying laws and glosses breeds more doubt and more lawsuits, not fewer.
Pourtant, l’opinion de celuy-là ne me plaist guere, qui pensoit par la multitude des loix, brider l’authorité des iuges, en leur taillant leurs morceaux. Il ne sentoit point, qu’il y a autant de liberté et d’estenduë à l’interpretation des loix, qu’à leur façon. Et ceux-là se moquent, qui pensent appetisser nos debats, et les arrester, en nous r’appellant à l’expresse parolle de la Bible. D’autant que nostre esprit ne trouue pas le champ moins spatieux, à contre-roller le sens d’autruy, qu’à representer le sien: et comme s’il y auoit moins d’animosité et d’aspreté à gloser qu’à inuenter. Nous voyons, combien il se trompoit.
That is why I hardly like the opinion of the man who thought he could curb the authority of judges by a multitude of laws, cutting up their portions for them. He did not perceive that there is as much freedom and latitude in interpreting laws as in making them. And those people are making fun of us who think they can reduce and halt our disputes by calling us back to the express words of the Bible: as if our mind did not find as wide a field in checking someone else’s meaning as in presenting its own, and as if there were less animosity and bitterness in glossing than in inventing. We can see how mistaken he was.
Car nous auons en France, plus de loix que tout le reste du monde ensemble; et plus qu’il n’en faudroit à regler tous les mondes d’Epicurus: Vt olim flagitijs, sic nunc legibus laboramus: et si auons tant laissé à opiner et decider à nos iuges, qu’il ne fut iamais liberté si puissante et si licencieuse. Qu’ont gaigné nos legislateurs à choisir cent mille especes et faicts particuliers, et y attacher cent mille loix? Ce nombre n’a aucune proportion, auec l’infinie diuersité des actions humaines. La multiplication de nos inuentions, n’arriuera pas à la variation des exemples.
For we have more laws in France than all the rest of the world put together, and more than would be needed to govern all the worlds of Epicurus: As once we suffered from crimes, so now we suffer from laws. And yet we have left so much to our judges’ opinion and decision that there was never a liberty so powerful and so licentious. What have our legislators gained by singling out a hundred thousand particular kinds of cases and facts and attaching a hundred thousand laws to them? That number bears no proportion to the infinite diversity of human actions. Multiplying our inventions will never catch up with the variety of cases.
Adioustez y en cent fois autant: il n’aduiendra pas pourtant, que des euenemens à venir, il s’en trouue aucun, qui en tout ce grand nombre de milliers d’euenemens choisis et enregistrez, en rencontre vn, auquel il se puisse ioindre et apparier, si exactement, qu’il n’y reste quelque circonstance et diuersité, qui requiere diuerse consideration de iugement. Il y a peu de relation de nos actions, qui sont en perpetuelle mutation, auec les loix fixes et immobiles. Les plus desirables, ce sont les plus rares, plus simples, et generales. Et encore crois-ie, qu’il vaudroit mieux n’en auoir point du tout, que de les auoir en tel nombre que nous auons. Nature les donne tousiours plus heureuses, que ne sont celles que nous nous donnons.
Add a hundred times as many: still it will not happen that any future event finds, among all those many thousands of events selected and recorded, one that it can be joined and matched with so exactly that there does not remain some circumstance or difference requiring a different judgment. There is little relation between our actions, which are in perpetual change, and fixed, immovable laws. The most desirable laws are the fewest, the simplest and the most general. And even so, I believe it would be better to have none at all than to have them in such numbers as we do. Nature always gives happier ones than those we give ourselves.
Tesmoing la peinture de l’aage doré des poëtes: et l’estat où nous voyons viure les nations, qui n’en ont point d’autres. En voila, qui pour tous iuges, employent en leurs causes, le premier passant, qui voyage le long de leurs montaignes. Et ces autres, eslisent le iour du marché, quelqu’vn d’entr’eux, qui sur le champ decide tous leurs proces. Quel danger y auroit-il, que les plus sages vuidassent ainsi les nostres, selon les occurrences, et à l’œil; sans obligation d’exemple, et de consequence? A chaque pied son soulier. Le Roy Ferdinand, enuoyant des colonies aux Indes, prouueut sagement qu’on n’y menast aucuns escholiers de la jurisprudence: de crainte, que les proces ne peuplassent en ce nouueau monde.
Witness the poets’ picture of the golden age, and the state in which we see nations live that have no laws but hers. Here are some who, for their only judge, use in their disputes the first passerby traveling along their mountains. And these others choose one of their number on market day, who decides all their lawsuits on the spot. What danger would there be in having the wisest settle ours in the same way, case by case and by eye, without being bound by precedent and consequence? For each foot its own shoe. King Ferdinand, when he sent colonists to the Indies, wisely provided that no students of law should be taken there, for fear that lawsuits would breed in that new world.
Comme estant science de sa nature, generatrice d’altercation et diuision, iugeant auec Platon, que c’est vne mauuaise prouision de païs, que iurisconsultes, et medecins.
He regarded it as a science that by its very nature breeds altercation and division, and judged with Plato that lawyers and physicians are a poor stock for a country.
Pourquoy est-ce, que notre langage commun, si aisé à tout autre vsage, deuient obscur et non intelligible, en contract et testament: et que celuy qui s’exprime si clairement, quoy qu’il die et escriue, ne trouue en cela, aucune maniere de se declarer, qui ne tombe en doute et contradiction?
Why is it that our common language, so easy for every other use, becomes obscure and unintelligible in contracts and wills, and that a man who expresses himself so clearly in whatever he says or writes can find no way of stating his meaning in these that does not fall into doubt and contradiction?
Si ce n’est, que les Princes de cet art s’appliquans d’vne peculiere attention, à trier des mots solemnes, et former des clauses artistes, ont tant poisé chasque syllabe, espluché si primement chasque espece de cousture, que les voila enfrasquez et embrouillez en l’infinité des figures, et si menuës partitions: qu’elles ne peuuent plus tomber soubs aucun reglement et prescription, ny aucune certaine intelligence: Confusum est quidquid vsque in puluerem sectum est. Qui a veu des enfans, essayans de renger à certain nombre, vne masse d’argent vif: plus ils le pressent et pestrissent, et s’estudient à le contraindre à leur loy, plus ils irritent la liberté de ce genereux metal: il fuit à leur art, et se va menuisant et esparpillant, au delà de tout conte.
Unless it is that the princes of this art, applying themselves with special care to picking solemn words and framing artful clauses, have weighed every syllable and examined every kind of seam so minutely that they are now tangled and muddled in an infinity of figures and in such fine distinctions that these can no longer come under any rule or prescription, or any definite understanding. Whatever is cut up into dust is confused. Whoever has seen children trying to divide a mass of quicksilver into a set number of parts knows that the more they press and knead it and strive to force it to their law, the more they provoke the freedom of this noble metal: it eludes their skill and keeps breaking up and scattering beyond all count.
C’est de mesme; car en subdiuisant ces subtilitez, on apprend aux hommes d’accroistre les doubtes: on nous met en train, d’estendre et diuersifier les difficultez: on les allonge, on les disperse. En semant les questions et les retaillant, on faict fructifier et foisonner le monde, en incertitude et en querelle. Comme la terre se rend fertile, plus elle est esmiée et profondement remuée. Difficultatem facit doctrina. Nous doutions sur Vlpian, et redoutons encore sur Bartolus et Baldus. Il falloit effacer la trace de cette diuersité innumerable d’opinions: non point s’en parer, et en entester la posterité. Ie ne sçay qu’en dire: mais il se sent par experience, que tant d’interpretations dissipent la verité, et la rompent.
It is the same here: by subdividing these subtleties, people are taught to multiply doubts; we are set on the road to extending and diversifying difficulties; we lengthen them, we scatter them. By sowing questions and pruning them, we make the world bear fruit and teem with uncertainty and quarrels, just as the earth grows more fertile the more finely it is broken up and the more deeply it is turned. Learning creates difficulty. We had doubts about Ulpian, and we have doubts all over again about Bartolus and Baldus. The traces of this countless diversity of opinions should have been wiped out, not paraded as ornaments and drummed into posterity’s heads. I do not know what to say about it; but experience makes us feel that so many interpretations dissipate the truth and break it.
Aristote a escrit pour être entendu; s’il ne l’a peu, moins le fera vn moins habille: et vn tiers, que celuy qui traicte sa propre imagination. Nous ouurons la matiere, et l’espandons en la destrempant. D’vn subiect nous en faisons mille: et retombons en multipliant et subdiuisant, à l’infinité des atomes d’Epicurus. Iamais deux hommes ne iugerent pareillement de mesme chose. Et est impossible de voir deux opinions semblables exactement: non seulement en diuers hommes, mais en mesme homme, à diuerses heures. Ordinairement ie trouue à doubter, en ce que le commentaire n’a daigné toucher. Ie bronche plus volontiers en païs plat: comme certains cheuaux, que ie cognois, qui choppent plus souuent en chemin vny.
Aristotle wrote to be understood. If he could not manage it, a less able man will manage it even less, and a third party less than the man who was treating his own ideas. We open up the matter and spread it out by diluting it. Out of one subject we make a thousand, and by multiplying and subdividing we end up in the infinity of Epicurus’s atoms. Never did two men judge the same thing alike. And it is impossible to find two opinions exactly alike, not only in different men but in the same man at different times. I usually find something to doubt in what the commentary has not deigned to touch. I stumble more readily on flat ground, like certain horses I know that trip more often on a smooth road.
Qui ne diroit que les gloses augmentent les doubtes et l’ignorance, puis qu’il ne se voit aucun liure, soit humain, soit diuin, sur qui le monde s’embesongne, duquel l’interpretation face tarir la difficulté? Le centiesme commentaire, le renuoye à son suiuant, plus espineux, et plus scabreux, que le premier ne l’auoit trouué. Quand est-il conuenu entre nous, ce liure en a assez, il n’y a meshuy plus que dire? Cecy se voit mieux en la chicane. On donne authorité de loy à infinis docteurs, infinis arrests, et à autant d’interpretations. Trouuons nous pourtant quelque fin au besoin d’interpreter? s’y voit-il quelque progrez et aduancement vers la tranquillité?
Who would not say that glosses increase doubt and ignorance, since there is no book, human or divine, that the world busies itself with whose interpretation makes the difficulty dry up? The hundredth commentary hands it on to the next one thornier and more rugged than the first had found it. When have we ever agreed among ourselves: this book has had enough, there is nothing more to say about it now? This is best seen in legal wrangling. We give the authority of law to countless doctors, countless rulings and as many interpretations. Do we find any end, for all that, to the need to interpret? Is there any progress or advance toward tranquility to be seen?
nous faut-il moins d’aduocats et de iuges, que lors que cette masse de droict, estoit encore en sa premiere enfance? Au contraire, nous obscurcissons et enseuelissons l’intelligence. Nous ne la descouurons plus, qu’à la mercy de tant de clostures et barrieres. Les hommes mescognoissent la maladie naturelle de leur esprit. Il ne faict que fureter et quester; et va sans cesse, tournoyant, bastissant, et s’empestrant, en sa besongne: comme nos vers à soye, et s’y estouffe. Mus in pice. Il pense remarquer de loing, ie ne sçay quelle apparence de clarté et verité imaginaire: mais pendant qu’il y court, tant de difficultez luy trauersent la voye, d’empeschemens et de nouuelles questes, qu’elles l’esgarent et l’enyurent.
Do we need fewer lawyers and judges than when this mass of law was still in its first infancy? On the contrary, we obscure and bury understanding. We can no longer reach it except at the mercy of so many fences and barriers. Men do not recognize the natural sickness of their mind. It does nothing but ferret and search, and goes on endlessly circling, building and entangling itself in its own work, like our silkworms, and suffocates in it. A mouse in pitch. It thinks it can make out in the distance some sort of glimmer of light and imaginary truth; but while it runs toward it, so many difficulties, obstacles and new quests cross its path that they lead it astray and make it drunk.
Non guere autrement, qu’il aduint aux chiens d’Esope, lesquels descouurans quelque apparence de corps mort flotter en mer, et ne le pouuans approcher, entreprindrent de boire cette eau, d’asseicher le passage, et s’y estoufferent. A quoy se rencontre, ce qu’vn Crates disoit des escrits de Heraclitus, qu’ils auoient besoin d’vn lecteur bon nageur, afin que la profondeur et pois de sa doctrine, ne l’engloutist et suffoquast.
It is not much different from what happened to Aesop’s dogs. Spotting what looked like a dead body floating in the sea, and being unable to get near it, they set about drinking up the water to dry a path to it, and choked. This fits with what one Crates said of the writings of Heraclitus: that they needed a reader who was a good swimmer, so that the depth and weight of his doctrine would not swallow him up and drown him.
Ce n’est rien que foiblesse particuliere, qui nous faict contenter de ce que d’autres, ou que nous-mesmes auons trouué en cette chasse de cognoissance: vn plus habile ne s’en contentera pas. Il y a tousiours place pour vn suiuant, ouy et pour nous mesmes, et route par ailleurs. Il n’y a point de fin en nos inquisitions. Nostre fin est en l’autre monde. C’est signe de racourcissement d’esprit, quand il se contente: ou signe de lasseté. Nul esprit genereux, ne s’arreste en soy. Il pretend tousiours, et va outre ses forces. Il a des eslans au delà de ses effects. S’il ne s’auance, et ne se presse, et ne s’accule, et ne se choque et tourneuire, il n’est vif qu’à demy.
It is nothing but individual weakness that makes us content with what others, or we ourselves, have found in this hunt for knowledge; an abler man will not be content with it. There is always room for a successor, yes, and for ourselves, and a road somewhere else. There is no end to our inquiries; our end is in the other world. It is a sign of a shrunken mind when the mind is content, or a sign of weariness. No noble mind stops within itself; it is always reaching and goes beyond its strength; its leaps outrun its achievements. If it does not push forward, press on, back itself into a corner, collide and wheel about, it is only half alive.
Ses poursuites sont sans terme, et sans forme. Son aliment, c’est admiration, chasse, ambiguité. Ce que declaroit assez Apollo, parlant tousiours à nous doublement, obscurement et obliquement: ne nous repaissant pas, mais nous amusant et embesongnant. C’est vn mouuement irregulier, perpetuel, sans patron et sans but. Ses inuentions s’eschauffent, se suiuent, et s’entreproduisent l’vne l’autre. Ainsi voit-on en vn ruisseau coulant, / Sans fin l’vne eau, apres l’autre roulant, / Et tout de rang, d’vn eternel conduict; / L’vne suit l’autre, et l’vne l’autre fuit. / Par cette-cy, celle-là est poussée, / Et cette-cy, par l’autre est deuancée: / Tousiours l’eau va dans l’eau, et tousiours est ce / Mesme ruisseau, et tousiours eau diuerse.
Its pursuits are without limit and without form. Its food is wonder, the chase, ambiguity. Apollo made this plain enough by always speaking to us in double, obscure and oblique terms, not feeding us but amusing and occupying us. It is an irregular, perpetual motion, without model and without goal. Its inventions excite one another, follow one another and give birth to one another. So in a running stream we see / One water rolling after another without end, / All in order, in an eternal course; / One follows another, and one flees another. / By this one, that one is pushed along, / And this one by the other is outrun: / Always water flows into water, and always it is / The same stream, and always different water.
Il y a plus affaire à interpreter les interpretations, qu’à interpreter les choses: et plus de liures sur les liures, que sur autre subiect. Nous ne faisons que nous entregloser. Tout fourmille de commentaires: d’autheurs, il en est grand cherté. Le principal et plus fameux sçauoir de nos siecles, est-ce pas sçauoir entendre les sçauants? Est-ce pas la fin commune et derniere de touts estudes? Nos opinions s’entent les vnes sur les autres. La premiere sert de tige à la seconde: la seconde à la tierce. Nous eschellons ainsi de degré en degré. Et aduient de là, que le plus haut monté, a souuent plus d’honneur, que de merite. Car il n’est monté que d’vn grain, sur les espaules du penultime.
There is more work in interpreting interpretations than in interpreting things, and more books about books than about any other subject. We do nothing but gloss one another. Everything swarms with commentaries; of authors there is a great shortage. Is not the principal and most celebrated learning of our times the learning to understand the learned? Is that not the common and final goal of all study? Our opinions are grafted onto one another. The first serves as stock for the second, the second for the third. So we climb from rung to rung. And so it happens that the man who has climbed highest often has more honor than merit, for he has climbed only a grain’s height above the shoulders of the one before him.
Combien souuent, et sottement à l’auanture, ay-ie estendu mon liure à parler de soy? Sottement, quand ce ne seroit que pour cette raison: Qu’il me deuoit souuenir, de ce que ie dy des autres, qui en font de mesmes. Que ces œillades si frequentes à leurs ouurages, tesmoignent que le cœur leur frissonne de son amour, et les rudoyements mesmes, desdaigneux dequoy ils le battent, que ce ne sont que mignardises, et affetteries, d’vne faueur maternelle. Suiuant Aristote, à qui, et se priser et se mespriser, naissent souuent de pareil air d’arrogance.
How often, and perhaps how foolishly, have I stretched my book to talk about itself? Foolishly, if only for this reason: I ought to have remembered what I say of others who do the same, that these frequent fond glances at their works show that their hearts quiver with love for them, and that even the disdainful roughness with which they beat them is nothing but the coddling and affectation of a mother’s fondness. As Aristotle has it, prizing oneself and despising oneself often spring from the same air of arrogance.
Car mon excuse: Que ie doy auoir en cela plus de liberté que les autres, d’autant qu’à poinct nommé, i’escry de moy, et de mes escrits, comme de mes autres actions: que mon theme se renuerse en soy: ie ne sçay, si chacun la prendra.
As for my excuse, that I ought to have more freedom in this than others, since I write expressly about myself and my writings as about my other actions, and my theme turns back upon itself: I do not know whether everyone will accept it.
I’ay veu en Allemagne, que Luther a laissé autant de diuisions et d’altercations, sur le doubte de ses opinions, et plus, qu’il n’en esmeut sur les escritures sainctes. Nostre contestation est verbale. Ie demande que c’est que nature, volupté, cercle, et substitution. La question est de parolles, et se paye de mesme. Vne pierre c’est vn corps: mais qui presseroit: Et corps qu’est-ce? substance: et substance quoy? ainsi de suitte: acculeroit en fin le respondant au bout de son Calepin. On eschange vn mot pour vn autre mot, et souuent plus incogneu. Ie sçay mieux que c’est qu’homme, que ie ne sçay que c’est animal, ou mortel, ou raisonnable. Pour satisfaire à vn doute, ils m’en donnent trois. C’est la teste d’Hydra.
I have seen in Germany that Luther has left behind as many divisions and altercations over the doubtful meaning of his opinions as he stirred up over the Holy Scriptures, and more. Our disputes are about words. I ask what nature, pleasure, circle and substitution are. The question is one of words, and is paid in the same coin. A stone is a body. But if someone pressed: “And what is a body?” “Substance.” “And what is substance?” and so on, he would end up driving the respondent to the last page of his Calepino. One word is exchanged for another, and often for one less known. I know better what man is than I know what animal is, or mortal, or rational. To settle one doubt, they give me three: it is the Hydra’s head.
Socrates demandoit à Memnon, que c’estoit que vertu: Il y a, dist Memnon, vertu d’homme et de femme, de magistrat et d’homme priué, d’enfant et de vieillart. Voicy qui va bien, s’escria Socrates: nous estions en cherche d’vne vertu, tu nous en apporte vn exaim. Nous communiquons vne question, on nous en redonne vne ruchée. Comme nul euenement et nulle forme, ressemble entierement à vne autre, aussi ne differe l’vne de l’autre entierement. Ingenieux meslange de Nature. Si nos faces n’estoient semblables, on ne sçauroit discerner l’homme de la beste: si elles n’estoient dissemblables, on ne sçauroit discerner l’homme de l’homme. Toutes choses se tiennent par quelque similitude. Tout exemple cloche. Et la relation qui se tire de l’experience, est tousiours defaillante et imparfaicte.
Socrates asked Meno what virtue was. “There is,” said Meno, “the virtue of a man and of a woman, of a magistrate and of a private person, of a child and of an old man.” “That’s splendid!” cried Socrates. “We were looking for one virtue, and you bring us a whole swarm.” We put forward one question, and we are handed back a hiveful. Just as no event and no form entirely resembles another, so none entirely differs from another. An ingenious blend of Nature’s. If our faces were not alike, we could not tell man from beast; if they were not unlike, we could not tell man from man. All things hold together by some likeness. Every example limps. And the correspondence drawn from experience is always defective and imperfect.
On ioinct toutesfois les comparaisons par quelque bout. Ainsi seruent les loix; et s’assortissent ainsin, à chacun de nos affaires, par quelque interpretation destournée, contrainte et biaise.
Still, we join our comparisons together at some end. That is how laws serve, and that is how they are fitted to each of our affairs: by some roundabout, forced and slanted interpretation.
The injustice of justice
Courts condemn the innocent and serve forms over truth; laws are obeyed because they are laws.
Puisque les loix ethiques, qui regardent le deuoir particulier de chacun en soy, sont si difficiles à dresser: comme nous voyons qu’elles sont: ce n’est pas merueille, si celles qui gouuernent tant de particuliers, le sont d’auantage. Considerez la forme de cette iustice qui nous regit; c’est vn vray tesmoignage de l’humaine imbecillité: tant il y a de contradiction et d’erreur. Ce que nous trouuons faueur et rigueur en la iustice: et y en trouuons tant, que ie ne sçay si l’entre-deux s’y trouue si souuent: ce sont parties maladiues, et membres iniustes, du corps mesmes et essence de la iustice.
Since ethical laws, which concern each person’s individual duty in himself, are so hard to frame, as we see they are, it is no wonder if those that govern so many individuals are harder still. Consider the form of this justice that rules us: it is a true testimony to human weakness, so full is it of contradiction and error. What we find to be favor and severity in justice (and we find so much of both that I do not know whether the middle way is found there as often) are diseased parts and unjust members of the very body and essence of justice.
Des païsans, viennent de m’aduertir en haste, qu’ils ont laissé presentement en vne forest qui est à moy, vn homme meurtry de cent coups, qui respire encores, et qui leur a demandé de l’eau par pitié, et du secours pour le sousleuer. Disent qu’ils n’ont osé l’approcher, et s’en sont fuis, de peur que les gens de la iustice ne les y attrapassent: et comme il se faict de ceux qu’on rencontre pres d’vn homme tué, ils n’eussent à rendre conte de cet accident, à leur totale ruyne: n’ayans ny suffisance, ny argent, pour deffendre leur innocence. Que leur eussé-ie dict? Il est certain, que cet office d’humanité, les eust mis en peine.
Some peasants have just come in haste to tell me that a moment ago, in a forest of mine, they left a man battered with a hundred blows, still breathing, who begged them for water out of pity and for help to lift him up. They say they did not dare go near him and ran away, for fear that the officers of the law would catch them there and that, as happens to people found near a murdered man, they would have to answer for this incident, to their utter ruin, having neither the ability nor the money to defend their innocence. What could I have said to them? It is certain that this act of humanity would have got them into trouble.
Combien auons nous descouuert d’innocens auoir esté punis: ie dis sans la coulpe des iuges; et combien en y a-il eu, que nous n’auons pas descouuert? Cecy est aduenu de mon temps. Certains sont condamnez à la mort pour vn homicide; l’arrest sinon prononcé, au moins conclud et arresté. Sur ce poinct, les iuges sont aduertis par les officiers d’vne cour subalterne, voisine, qu’ils tiennent quelques prisonniers, lesquels aduoüent disertement cet homicide, et apportent à tout ce faict, vne lumiere indubitable. On delibere, si pourtant on doit interrompre et differer l’execution de l’arrest donné contre les premiers. On considere la nouuelleté de l’exemple, et sa consequence, pour accrocher les iugemens: Que la condemnation est iuridiquement passée; les iuges priuez de repentance.
How many innocent people have we discovered to have been punished, and I mean without any fault on the judges’ part? And how many more have there been whom we have not discovered? This happened in my time. Certain men are condemned to death for a homicide. The sentence, if not yet pronounced, has at least been reached and settled. At this point the judges are informed by the officers of a lower court nearby that they are holding some prisoners who openly confess to this homicide and cast an unmistakable light on the whole affair. The judges deliberate whether they ought nonetheless to interrupt and postpone the execution of the sentence passed on the first men. They consider the novelty of the precedent and what it would mean for holding up judgments. The condemnation has been passed in due legal form, and judges are denied any right to change their minds.
Somme, ces pauures diables sont consacrez aux formules de la iustice. Philippus, ou quelque autre, prouueut à vn pareil inconuenient, en cette maniere. Il auoit condamné en grosses amendes, vn homme enuers vn autre, par vn iugement resolu. La verité se descouurant quelque temps apres, il se trouua qu’il auoit iniquement iugé. D’vn costé estoit la raison de la cause: de l’autre costé la raison des formes iudiciaires. Il satisfit aucunement à toutes les deux, laissant en son estat la sentence, et recompensant de sa bourse, l’interest du condamné. Mais il auoit affaire à vn accident reparable; les miens furent pendus irreparablement. Combien ay-ie veu de condemnations, plus crimineuses que le crime?
In short, these poor devils are offered up to the formulas of justice. Philip, or someone else, dealt with a similar difficulty in this way. He had condemned a man, by a final judgment, to pay heavy damages to another. When the truth came out some time later, it turned out that he had judged unjustly. On one side stood the justice of the case; on the other, the logic of judicial forms. He satisfied both to some extent: he left the sentence as it stood and made good the condemned man’s loss out of his own purse. But he was dealing with a mishap that could be repaired. My men were hanged beyond repair. How many condemnations have I seen that were more criminal than the crime?
Tout cecy me faict souuenir de ces anciennes opinions: Qu’il est force de faire tort en detail, qui veut faire droict en gros; et iniustice en petites choses, qui veut venir à chef de faire iustice és grandes: Que l’humaine iustice est formée au modelle de la medecine, selon laquelle, tout ce qui est vtile est aussi iuste et honneste. Et de ce que tiennent les Stoïciens, que Nature mesme procede contre iustice, en la plus-part de ses ouurages. Et de ce que tiennent les Cyrenaïques, qu’il n’y a rien iuste de soy: que les coustumes et loix forment la iustice. Et les Theodoriens, qui trouuent iuste au sage le larrecin, le sacrilege, toute sorte de paillardise, s’il cognoist qu’elle luy soit profitable.
All this reminds me of those ancient opinions. One is that whoever wants to do right on the whole must do wrong in the details, and whoever wants to succeed in doing justice in great things must do injustice in small ones. Another is that human justice is formed on the model of medicine, by which everything useful is also just and honorable. Then there is what the Stoics hold, that Nature herself goes against justice in most of her works. There is what the Cyrenaics hold, that nothing is just in itself and that customs and laws make justice. And there are the Theodorians, who think theft, sacrilege and every kind of lechery just for the wise man, if he knows it to be profitable to him.
Il n’y a remede. I’en suis là, comme Alcibiades, que ie ne me representeray iamais, que ie puisse, à homme qui decide de ma teste: où mon honneur, et ma vie, depende de l’industrie et soing de mon procureur, plus que de mon innocence. Ie me hazarderois à vne telle iustice, qui me recogneust du bien faict, comme du mal faict: où i’eusse autant à esperer, qu’à craindre. L’indemnité n’est pas monnoye suffisante, à vn homme qui faict mieux, que de ne faillir point. Nostre iustice ne nous presente que l’vne de ses mains; et encore la gauche. Quiconque il soit, il en sort auecques perte.
There is no remedy. I am in the same position as Alcibiades: I will never, if I can help it, put myself in the hands of a man who is to decide on my head, where my honor and my life depend more on the skill and diligence of my attorney than on my innocence. I would take my chances with a justice that took account of my good deeds as well as my bad ones, where I had as much to hope for as to fear. Going unpunished is not sufficient payment for a man who does better than merely not doing wrong. Our justice holds out only one of its hands to us, and the left one at that. Whoever a man may be, he comes out of it the loser.
En la Chine, duquel royaume la police et les arts, sans commerce et cognoissance des nostres, surpassent nos exemples, en plusieurs parties d’excellence: et duquel l’histoire m’apprend, combien le monde est plus ample et plus diuers, que ny les anciens, ny nous, ne penetrons: les officiers deputez par le Prince, pour visiter l’estat de ses prouinces, comme ils punissent ceux, qui maluersent en leur charge, ils remunerent aussi de pure liberalité, ceux qui s’y sont bien portez outre la commune sorte, et outre la necessité de leur deuoir: on s’y presente, non pour se garantir seulement, mais pour y acquerir: ny simplement pour estre payé, mais pour y estre estrené.
Consider China. Its government and arts, without any dealings with ours or knowledge of them, surpass our examples in several kinds of excellence, and its history teaches me how much wider and more varied the world is than either the ancients or we can fathom. There the officers sent by the Prince to inspect the state of his provinces punish those who abuse their office, and they also reward, out of pure liberality, those who have conducted themselves better than the common run and beyond what their duty required. People present themselves to these officers not merely to protect themselves but to gain something, and not simply to be paid but to receive a gift.
Nul iuge n’a encore, Dieu mercy, parlé à moy comme iuge, pour quelque cause que ce soit, ou mienne, ou tierce, ou criminelle, ou ciuile. Nulle prison m’a receu, non pas seulement pour m’y promener. L’imagination m’en rend la veuë mesme du dehors, desplaisante. Ie suis si affady apres la liberté, que qui me deffendroit l’accez de quelque coin des Indes, i’en viurois aucunement plus mal à mon aise. Et tant que ie trouueray terre, ou air ouuert ailleurs, ie ne croupiray en lieu, où il me faille cacher.
No judge, thank God, has yet spoken to me as a judge, in any case whatever, my own or another’s, criminal or civil. No prison has ever received me, not even for a stroll. The very thought of one makes even the sight of its outside unpleasant to me. I am so infatuated with liberty that if anyone barred me from some corner of the Indies, I would live somewhat less at ease for it. And as long as I can find earth or open air elsewhere, I will not lie stagnating in a place where I have to hide.
Mon Dieu, que mal pourroy-ie souffrir la condition, où ie vois tant de gens, clouez à vn quartier de ce royaume, priuez de l’entrée des villes principales, et des courts, et de l’vsage des chemins publics, pour auoir querellé nos loix. Si celles que ie sers, me menassoient seulement le bout du doigt, ie m’en irois incontinent en trouuer d’autres, où que ce fust. Toute ma petite prudence, en ces guerres ciuiles où nous sommes, s’employe à ce, qu’elles n’interrompent ma liberté d’aller et venir.
My God, how badly I would bear the condition in which I see so many people! They are nailed to one district of this kingdom, barred from entering the principal cities and the courts and from using the public roads, for having quarreled with our laws. If the laws I serve threatened so much as the tip of my finger, I would immediately go off and find others, wherever it might be. All my little prudence, in these civil wars we are in, goes into keeping them from interrupting my freedom to come and go.
Or les loix se maintiennent en credit, non par ce qu’elles sont iustes, mais par ce qu’elles sont loix. C’est le fondement mystique de leur authorité: elles n’en ont point d’autre. Qui bien leur sert. Elles sont souuent faictes par des sots. Plus souuent par des gens, qui en haine d’equalité ont faute d’equité. Mais tousiours par des hommes, autheurs vains et irresolus. Il n’est rien si lourdement, et largement fautier, que les loix: ny si ordinairement. Quiconque leur obeit par ce qu’elles sont iustes, ne leur obeyt pas iustement par où il doit. Les nostres Françoises, prestent aucunement la main, par leur desreiglement et deformité, au desordre et corruption, qui se voit en leur dispensation, et execution.
Now laws keep their credit not because they are just, but because they are laws. That is the mystical foundation of their authority; they have no other. And it serves them well. They are often made by fools. More often they are made by people who, out of hatred of equality, are wanting in equity. But always by men, vain and irresolute authors. There is nothing so grossly and widely faulty as the laws, nor so regularly. Whoever obeys them because they are just does not obey them for the right reason. Our French laws, by their irregularity and deformity, rather lend a hand to the disorder and corruption that can be seen in the way they are administered and carried out.
Studying myself
Self-study is his physics and metaphysics, and it teaches him his own fallibility.
Le commandement est si trouble, et inconstant, qu’il excuse aucunement, et la desobeissance, et le vice de l’interpretation, de l’administration, et de l’obseruation. Quel que soit donq le fruict que nous pouuons auoir de l’experience, à peine seruira beaucoup à nostre institution, celle que nous tirons des exemples estrangers, si nous faisons si mal nostre profit, de celle, que nous auons de nous mesme, qui nous est plus familiere: et certes suffisante à nous instruire de ce qu’il nous faut. Ie m’estudie plus qu’autre subiect. C’est ma metaphysique, c’est ma physique.
The command is so muddled and inconsistent that it partly excuses both disobedience and faults of interpretation, administration and observance. Whatever fruit, then, we can draw from experience, the experience we take from foreign examples will hardly do much for our education if we make such poor use of the experience we have of ourselves. That experience is more familiar to us, and certainly sufficient to teach us what we need. I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics; that is my physics.
Qua Deus hanc mundi temperet arte domum: / Qua venit exoriens, qua deficit, vnde coactis / Cornibus in plenum menstrua luna redit: / Vnde salo superant venti, quid flamine captet / Eurus, et in nubes vnde perennis aqua: / Sit ventura dies mundi quæ subruat arces, / Quærite quos agitat mundi labor. En cette vniuersité, ie me laisse ignoramment et negligemment manier à la loy generale du monde. Ie la sçauray assez, quand ie la sentiray. Ma science ne luy peut faire changer de routte. Elle ne se diuersifiera pas pour moy: c’est folie de l’esperer. Et plus grande folie, de s’en mettre en peine: puis qu’elle est necessairement semblable, publique, et commune.
By what art God governs this house of the world; / whence the moon comes rising, where it wanes, how with its horns / drawn together it returns each month to the full; / whence the winds prevail over the sea, what the east wind / seeks with its blast, and whence the clouds draw their unceasing water; / whether a day will come to topple the citadels of the world— / inquire, you who are tormented by the toil of knowing the world. In this universe I let myself be handled, ignorantly and negligently, by the general law of the world. I shall know it well enough when I feel it. My knowledge cannot make it change its course. It will not vary for my sake; it is folly to hope so. And it is greater folly to trouble oneself about it, since it is necessarily uniform, public and common.
La bonté et capacité du gouuerneur nous doit à pur et à plein descharger du soing de gouuernement. Les inquisitions et contemplations philosophiques, ne seruent que d’aliment à nostre curiosité. Les philosophes, auec grande raison, nous renuoyent aux regles de Nature. Mais elles n’ont que faire de si sublime cognoissance. Ils les falsifient, et nous presentent son visage peint, trop haut en couleur, et trop sophistiqué: d’où naissent tant de diuers pourtraits d’vn subiect si vniforme. Comme elle nous a fourny de pieds à marcher, aussi a elle de prudence à nous guider en la vie. Prudence non tant ingenieuse, robuste et pompeuse, comme celle de leur inuention: mais à l’aduenant, facile, quiete et salutaire.
The goodness and capacity of the governor ought to relieve us purely and fully of the care of governing. Philosophical inquiries and contemplations serve only to feed our curiosity. The philosophers, with good reason, refer us to the rules of Nature. But those rules have no need of such sublime knowledge. The philosophers falsify them and show us Nature’s face painted, too high in color and too elaborately made up; hence so many different portraits of so uniform a subject. As she has given us feet to walk with, so has she given us prudence to guide us through life. It is not a prudence as ingenious, robust and pompous as the one they invented, but correspondingly easy, quiet and wholesome.
Et qui faict tresbien ce que l’autre dit: en celuy, qui a l’heur, de sçauoir l’employer naïuement et ordonnément: c’est à dire naturellement. Le plus simplement se commettre à Nature, c’est s’y commettre le plus sagement. O que c’est vn doux et mol cheuet, et sain, que l’ignorance et l’incuriosité, à reposer vne teste bien faicte.
And it does very well what the other only talks about, in the man who has the good fortune to know how to use it simply and in good order, that is to say, naturally. To commit oneself to Nature most simply is to commit oneself to her most wisely. Oh, what a soft, gentle and wholesome pillow ignorance and incuriosity are for resting a well-made head!
I’aymerois mieux m’entendre bien en moy, qu’en Ciceron. De l’experience que i’ay de moy, ie trouue assez dequoy me faire sage, si i’estoy bon escholier. Qui remet en sa memoire l’excez de sa cholere passee, et iusques où cette fieure l’emporta, voit la laideur de cette passion, mieux que dans Aristote, et en conçoit vne haine plus iuste. Qui se souuient des maux qu’il a couru, de ceux qui l’ont menassé, des legeres occasions qui l’ont remué d’vn estat à autre, se prepare par là, aux mutations futures, et à la recognoissance de sa condition. La vie de Cæsar n’a point plus d’exemple, que la nostre pour nous. Et emperiere, et populaire: c’est tousiours vne vie, que tous accidents humains regardent.
I would rather understand myself well by studying myself than by studying Cicero. In the experience I have of myself I find enough to make me wise, if I were a good scholar. Whoever recalls the excess of his past anger, and how far that fever carried him away, sees the ugliness of this passion better than in Aristotle and conceives a more justified hatred of it. Whoever remembers the ills he has run into, those that have threatened him, and the slight occasions that have shifted him from one state to another, prepares himself by that for future changes and for recognizing his own condition. Caesar’s life holds no more of an example for us than our own. Imperial or common, it is always a life exposed to all human accidents.
Escoutons y seulement: nous nous disons, tout ce, dequoy nous auons principalement besoing. Qui se souuient de s’estre tant et tant de fois mesconté de son propre iugement: est-il pas vn sot, de n’en entrer pour iamais en deffiance? Quand ie me trouue conuaincu par la raison d’autruy, d’vne opinion fauce; ie n’apprens pas tant, ce qu’il m’a dit de nouueau, et cette ignorance particuliere: ce seroit peu d’acquest: comme en general i’apprens ma debilité, et la trahison de mon entendement: d’où ie tire la reformation de toute la masse. En toutes mes autres erreurs, ie fais de mesme: et sens de cette regle grande vtilité à la vie. Ie ne regarde pas l’espece et l’indiuidu, comme vne pierre où i’aye bronché.
Let us only listen: we tell ourselves everything we chiefly need. Whoever remembers having been mistaken in his own judgment so many, many times, is he not a fool if he does not distrust it ever after? When I find myself convinced of a false opinion by another man’s reasoning, what I learn is not so much the new thing he has told me and my ignorance on this particular point; that would be small gain. What I learn is my weakness in general and the treachery of my understanding, and from that I draw a reform of the whole mass. I do the same with all my other errors, and I find this rule of great use in life. I do not look on the particular kind and instance as just a stone I have tripped over.
I’apprens à craindre mon alleure par tout, et m’attens à la regler. D’apprendre qu’on a dit ou fait vne sottise, ce n’est rien que cela. Il faut apprendre, qu’on n’est qu’vn sot. Instruction bien plus ample, et importante. Les faux pas, que ma memoire m’a fait si souuent, lors mesme qu’elle s’asseure le plus de soy, ne se sont pas inutilement perduz. Elle a beau me iurer à cette heure et m’asseurer: ie secoüe les oreilles: la premiere opposition qu’on faict à son tesmoignage, me met en suspens. Et n’oserois me fier d’elle, en chose de poix: ny la garentir sur le faict d’autruy.
I learn to fear my footing everywhere, and I set about regulating it. To learn that one has said or done something foolish is nothing. One must learn that one is nothing but a fool, a far fuller and more important lesson. The false steps my memory has so often made me take, even when it was surest of itself, have not been wasted. It may swear and assure me all it likes now; I shake my ears. The first objection raised against its testimony leaves me in doubt. I would not dare trust it in a matter of weight, nor vouch for it where someone else is concerned.
Et n’estoit, que ce que ie fay par faute de memoire, les autres le font encore plus souuent, par faute de foy, ie prendrois tousiours en chose de faict, la verité de la bouche d’vn autre, plustost que de la mienne. Si chacun espioit de pres les effects et circonstances des passions qui les regentent, comme i’ay faict de celle à qui i’estois tombé en partage: il les verroit venir: et rallentiroit vn peu leur impetuosité et leur course. Elles ne nous sautent pas tousiours au collet d’vn prinsault, il y a de la menasse et des degrez.
And were it not that what I do from lack of memory, others do still more often from lack of good faith, I would always take the truth in matters of fact from another man’s mouth rather than from my own. If each man watched closely the effects and circumstances of the passions that rule him, as I have done with the one whose share I fell to, he would see them coming and would slow their violence and their course a little. They do not always leap at our throats in a single bound; there are warnings and stages.
Fluctus vti primó cœpit cùm albescere vento, / Paulatim sese tollit mare, et altius vndas / Erigit, inde imo consurgit ad æthera fundo. Le iugement tient chez moy vn siege magistral, au moins il s’en efforce soigneusement. Il laisse mes appetis aller leur train: et la haine et l’amitié, voire et celle que ie me porte à moy mesme, sans s’en alterer et corrompre. S’il ne peut reformer les autres parties selon soy, au moins ne se laisse il pas difformer à elles: il faict son ieu à part.
As when a wave first begins to whiten under the wind, / little by little the sea swells and lifts its waves higher, / then rises from its lowest depths up to the sky. In me judgment holds a magisterial seat; at least it carefully tries to. It lets my appetites go their way, hatred and friendship alike, even the friendship I bear myself, without being altered and corrupted by them. If it cannot reform the other parts to its own pattern, at least it does not let itself be deformed by them. It plays its game apart.
L’aduertissement à chacun de se cognoistre, doit estre d’vn important effect, puisque ce Dieu de science et de lumiere le fit planter au front de son temple: comme comprenant tout ce qu’il auoit à nous conseiller. Platon dict aussi, que prudence n’est autre chose, que l’execution de cette ordonnance: et Socrates, le verifie par le menu en Xenophon. Les difficultez et l’obscurité, ne s’apperçoyuent en chacune science, que par ceux qui y ont entree. Car encore faut il quelque degré d’intelligence, à pouuoir remarquer qu’on ignore: et faut pousser à vne porte, pour sçauoir qu’elle nous est close.
The advice that each man should know himself must have an important effect, since that god of knowledge and light had it planted on the front of his temple, as containing all he had to counsel us. Plato also says that prudence is nothing other than carrying out this command, and Socrates proves it point by point in Xenophon. The difficulties and obscurities of any science are perceived only by those who have gained entry to it. For it still takes some degree of intelligence to be able to notice that one is ignorant, and one must push at a door to know that it is closed to us.
D’où naist cette Platonique subtilité, que ny ceux qui sçauent, n’ont à s’enquerir, d’autant qu’ils sçauent: ny ceux qui ne sçauent, d’autant que pour s’enquerir, il faut sçauoir, dequoy on s’enquiert. Ainsin, en cette cy de se cognoistre soy-mesme: ce que chacun se voit si resolu et satisfaict, ce que chacun y pense estre suffisamment entendu, signifie que chacun n’y entend rien du tout, comme Socrates apprend à Euthydeme. Moy, qui ne fais autre profession, y trouue vne profondeur et varieté si infinie, que mon apprentissage n’a autre fruict, que de me faire sentir, combien il me reste à apprendre.
From this comes that Platonic subtlety: neither those who know need inquire, since they know, nor those who do not know, since to inquire one must know what one is inquiring about. So it is with this matter of knowing oneself. The fact that each man seems to himself so resolved and satisfied, and thinks himself expert enough in it, means that no one understands anything about it at all, as Socrates teaches Euthydemus. I, who profess nothing else, find in it a depth and variety so infinite that my apprenticeship bears no other fruit than to make me feel how much I still have to learn.
A ma foiblesse si souuent recognuë, ie dois l’inclination que i’ay à la modestie: à l’obeïssance des creances qui me sont prescrites: à vne constante froideur et moderation d’opinions: et la haine de cette arrogance importune et quereleuse, se croyant et fiant toute à soy, ennemie capitale de discipline et de verité. Oyez les regenter. Les premieres sottises qu’ils mettent en auant, c’est au style qu’on establit les religions et les loix. Nihil est turpius, quàm cognitioni et perceptioni assertionem approbationémque præcurrere. Aristarchus disoit, qu’anciennement, à peine se trouua-il sept sages au monde: et que de son temps à peine se trouuoit-il sept ignorans. Aurions nous pas plus de raison que luy, de le dire en nostre temps?
To my weakness, so often recognized, I owe my inclination to modesty, to obedience to the beliefs prescribed to me, and to a constant coolness and moderation in my opinions. I owe it also my hatred of that importunate and quarrelsome arrogance which believes and trusts wholly in itself, the mortal enemy of learning and of truth. Listen to them laying down the law. The very first follies they come out with are delivered in the style in which religions and laws are established. Nothing is more shameful than for assertion and approval to run ahead of knowledge and perception. Aristarchus said that in ancient times there were scarcely seven wise men to be found in the world, and that in his own time there were scarcely seven ignorant ones. Would we not have more reason than he to say so in our time?
L’affirmation et l’opiniastreté, sont signes exprez de bestise. Cestuy-ci aura donné du nez à terre, cent fois pour vn iour: le voyla sur ses ergots, aussi resolu et entier que deuant. Vous diriez qu’on luy a infus depuis, quelque nouuelle ame, et vigueur d’entendement. Et qu’il luy aduient, comme à cet ancien fils de la terre, qui reprenoit nouuelle fermeté, et se renforçoit par sa cheute. Cui cum tetigere parentem, / Iam defecta vigent renouato robore membra. Ce testu indocile, pense-il pas reprendre vn nouuel esprit, pour reprendre vne nouuelle dispute? C’est par mon experience, que i’accuse l’humaine ignorance. Qui est, à mon aduis, le plus seur party de l’escole du monde.
Assertiveness and obstinacy are express signs of stupidity. This fellow will have fallen flat on his nose a hundred times in a day, and there he is, up on his spurs again, as resolute and unbending as before. You would think someone had since poured into him a new soul and a new vigor of understanding, and that it is with him as with that ancient son of the earth who regained his firmness and grew stronger by his fall: Whose limbs, when they touched their mother, / exhausted as they were, grew strong again with renewed vigor. Does this unteachable, stubborn man not think he takes on a new mind when he takes up a new argument? It is from my own experience that I accuse human ignorance, which is, in my opinion, the surest position in the school of the world.
Ceux qui ne la veulent conclure en eux, par vn si vain exemple que le mien, ou que le leur, qu’ils la recognoissent par Socrates, le maistre des maistres. Car le philosophe Antisthenes, à ses disciples, Allons, disoit-il, vous et moy ouyr Socrates. Là ie seray disciple auec vous. Et soustenant ce dogme, de sa secte Stoïque, que la vertu suffisoit à rendre vne vie plainement heureuse, et n’ayant besoin de chose quelconque, sinon de la force de Socrates, adioustoit-il.
Those who will not reach this conclusion in themselves from so vain an example as mine or their own, let them recognize it through Socrates, the master of masters. For the philosopher Antisthenes used to say to his disciples: “Let us go, you and I, and hear Socrates. There I shall be a disciple with you.” And upholding the dogma of his Stoic sect, that virtue was enough to make a life fully happy and in need of nothing whatever, he would add: “except the strength of Socrates.”
Judging others, advising kings
Long self-observation helps him read his friends; kings most need someone to tell them the truth.
Cette longue attention que i’employe à me considerer, me dresse à iuger aussi passablement des autres. Et est peu de choses, dequoy ie parle plus heureusement et excusablement. Il m’aduient souuent, de voir et distinguer plus exactement les conditions de mes amis, qu’ils ne font eux mesmes. I’en ay estonné quelqu’vn, par la pertinence de ma description: et l’ay aduerty de soy. Pour m’estre dés mon enfance, dressé à mirer ma vie dans celle d’autruy, i’ay acquis vne complexion studieuse en cela. Et quand i’y pense, ie laisse eschaper autour de moy peu de choses qui y seruent: contenances, humeurs, discours. I’estudie tout: ce qu’il me faut fuïr, ce qu’il me faut suyure. Ainsin à mes amis, ie descouure par leurs productions, leurs inclinations internes.
This long attention I devote to considering myself trains me to judge others fairly well too, and there are few things I speak about more successfully and more defensibly. It often happens that I see and distinguish my friends’ characters more exactly than they do themselves. I have astonished more than one by the aptness of my description and shown him things about himself. Having trained myself from childhood to mirror my life in that of others, I have acquired a studious bent in this. And when I put my mind to it, I let few things that serve this purpose slip by me: bearing, temperament, talk. I study everything: what I must avoid, what I must follow. So I reveal to my friends, from what they show outwardly, their inner inclinations.
Non pour renger cette infinie varieté d’actions si diuerses et si descouppees, à certains genres et chapitres, et distribuer distinctement mes partages et diuisions, en classes et regions cognuës, Sed neque quàm multæ species, et nomina quæ sint, / Est numerus. Les sçauans parlent, et denotent leurs fantasies, plus specifiquement, et par le menu. Moy, qui n’y voy qu’autant que l’vsage m’en informe, sans regle, presente generalement les miennes, et à tastons. Comme en cecy: Ie prononce ma sentence par articles descousus: c’est chose qui ne se peut dire à la fois, et en bloc. La relation, et la conformité, ne se trouuent point en telles ames que les nostres, basses et communes.
I do not do it to arrange this infinite variety of such diverse and disconnected actions into fixed kinds and chapters, or to distribute my lots and divisions neatly into known classes and regions: But how many kinds there are, and what their names, / there is no counting. The learned speak and set down their notions more specifically and in detail. I, who see into the matter only as far as practice informs me, without rule, present mine in general terms and gropingly. As here: I pronounce my opinion in disjointed articles; it is something that cannot be said all at once and in a block. Coherence and consistency are not to be found in souls as low and common as ours.
La sagesse est vn bastiment solide et entier, dont chaque piece tient son rang et porte sa marque. Sola sapientia in se tota conuersa est. Ie laisse aux artistes, et ne sçay s’ils en viennent à bout, en chose si meslee, si menue et fortuite, de renger en bandes, cette infinie diuersité de visages; et arrester nostre inconstance, et la mettre par ordre. Non seulement ie trouue malaysé, d’attacher nos actions les vnes aux autres: mais chacune à part soy, ie trouue malaysé, de la designer proprement, par quelque qualité principale: tant elles sont doubles et bigarrees à diuers lustres.
Wisdom is a solid and complete building, each piece of which keeps its place and bears its mark. Wisdom alone is wholly turned in upon itself. I leave it to the professionals, and I do not know whether they will succeed in a thing so mixed, so minute and so fortuitous, to sort this infinite diversity of aspects into groups, to pin down our inconstancy and set it in order. Not only do I find it hard to link our actions to one another; I find it hard to designate each one, taken by itself, properly by some principal quality, so double and motley are they, seen in different lights.
Ce qu’on remarque pour rare, au Roy de Macedoine, Perseus, que son esprit, ne s’attachant à aucune condition, alloit errant par tout genre de vie: et representant des mœurs, si essorees et vagabondes qu’il n’estoit cogneu ny de luy ny d’autre, quel homme ce fust, me semble à peu pres conuenir à tout le monde. Et par dessus tous, i’ay veu quelque autre de sa taille, à qui cette conclusion s’appliqueroit plus proprement encore, ce croy-ie. Nulle assiette moyenne: s’emportant tousiours de l’vn à l’autre extreme, par occasions indiuinables: nulle espece de train, sans trauerse, et contrarieté merueilleuse: nulle faculté simple: si que le plus vray-semblablement qu’on en pourra feindre vn iour, ce sera, qu’il affectoit, et estudioit de se rendre cogneu, par estre mescognoissable.
It is noted as a rare thing in Perseus, King of Macedonia, that his mind, attaching itself to no one condition, went wandering through every kind of life, and showed a character so flighty and vagrant that neither he nor anyone else knew what sort of man he was. This seems to me to fit almost everyone. And above all I have seen another man of his stature to whom this conclusion would apply still more properly, I believe. No middle position; always swinging from one extreme to the other for reasons no one could guess; no course of any kind without twists and astonishing contradictions; no single faculty. So the most plausible thing that will one day be imagined about him is that he affected and studied to make himself known by being unknowable.
Il faict besoin d’oreilles bien fortes, pour s’ouyr franchement iuger. Et par ce qu’il en est peu, qui le puissent souffrir sans morsure: ceux qui se hazardent de l’entreprendre enuers nous, nous montrent vn singulier effect d’amitié. Car c’est aimer sainement, d’entreprendre à blesser et offencer, pour profiter. Ie trouue rude de iuger celuy là, en qui les mauuaises qualitez surpassent les bonnes. Platon ordonne trois parties, à qui veut examiner l’ame d’vn autre, science, bienueillance, hardiesse.
It takes very strong ears to hear oneself judged frankly. And because there are few who can bear it without being stung, those who venture to undertake it with us show us a singular act of friendship. For it is a healthy love that sets out to wound and offend in order to do good. I find it hard to judge a man in whom the bad qualities outweigh the good. Plato prescribes three qualities for anyone who would examine another’s soul: knowledge, goodwill, boldness.
Quelquefois on me demandoit, à quoy i’eusse pensé estre bon, qui se fust aduisé de se seruir de moy, pendant que i’en auois l’aage: Dum melior vires sanguis dabat, æmula necdum / Temporibus geminis canebat sparsa senectus. A rien, fis-ie. Et m’excuse volontiers de ne sçauoir faire chose, qui m’esclaue à autruy. Mais i’eusse dit ses veritez à mon maistre, et eusse contrerollé ses mœurs, s’il eust voulu. Non en gros, par leçons scholastiques, que ie ne sçay point, et n’en vois naistre aucune vraye reformation, en ceux qui les sçauent. Mais les obseruant pas à pas, à toute opportunité: et en iugeant à l’œil, piece à piece, simplement et naturellement. Luy faisant voir quel il est en l’opinion commune: m’opposant à ses flatteurs.
I was sometimes asked what I would have thought myself good for, if someone had taken it into his head to make use of me while I was still of an age for it: While better blood gave me strength, and envious old age / had not yet sprinkled white over both my temples. “For nothing,” I said. And I readily excuse myself for not knowing how to do anything that would make me a slave to another. But I would have told my master the truth about himself and kept watch on his conduct, if he had wanted it. Not wholesale, through scholastic lessons, which I do not know, and from which I see no true reform arise in those who do. But by observing his conduct step by step, at every opportunity, judging it by eye, piece by piece, simply and naturally, making him see what he is in common opinion, standing up to his flatterers.
Il n’y a nul de nous, qui ne valust moins que les Roys, s’il estoit ainsi continuellement corrompu, comme ils sont, de cette canaille de gens. Comment, si Alexandre, ce grand et Roy et philosophe, ne peut s’en deffendre? I’eusse eu assez de fidelité, de iugement, et de liberté, pour cela. Ce seroit vn office sans nom; autrement il perdroit son effect et sa grace. Et est vn roolle qui ne peut indifferemment appartenir à tous. Car la verité mesme, n’a pas ce priuilege, d’estre employee à toute heure, et en toute sorte: son vsage tout noble qu’il est, a ses circonscriptions, et limites.
There is not one of us who would not be worth less than kings if he were continually corrupted, as they are, by that rabble. How could it be otherwise, when even Alexander, that great king and philosopher, could not defend himself against them? I would have had enough loyalty, judgment and freedom for the task. It would be an office without a name; otherwise it would lose its effect and its grace. And it is a role that cannot belong indiscriminately to everyone. For truth itself does not have the privilege of being used at any hour and in any manner. Its use, noble as it is, has its bounds and limits.
Il aduient souuent, comme le monde est, qu’on la lasche à l’oreille du Prince, non seulement sans fruict, mais dommageablement, et encore iniustement. Et ne me fera lon pas accroire, qu’vne sainte remonstrance, ne puisse estre appliquee vitieusement: et que l’interest de la substance, ne doyue souuent ceder à l’interest de la forme. Ie voudrois à ce mestier, vn homme contant de sa fortune, Quod sit, esse velit, nihilque malit: et nay de moyenne fortune. D’autant, que d’vne part, il n’auroit point de crainte de toucher viuement et profondement le cœur du maistre, pour ne perdre par là, le cours de son auancement. Et d’autre part, pour estre d’vne condition moyenne, il auroit plus aysee communication à toute sorte de gens.
It often happens, the world being what it is, that truth is let slip into the Prince’s ear not only fruitlessly but harmfully, and unjustly besides. And no one will make me believe that a holy remonstrance cannot be applied wrongly, or that the interest of substance must not often give way to the interest of form. For this trade I would want a man content with his fortune, Who would wish to be what he is, and prefer nothing else, and born of middling fortune. For on the one hand he would not hold back from touching his master’s heart keenly and deeply for fear of losing his chances of advancement. And on the other, being of middling condition, he would have easier communication with all sorts of people.
Ie le voudroy à vn homme seul: car respandre le priuilege de cette liberté et priuauté à plusieurs, engendreroit vne nuisible irreuerence. Ouy, et de celuy là, ie requerroy sur tout la fidelité du silence.
I would want this given to one man only, for spreading the privilege of such freedom and familiarity among several would breed a harmful irreverence. Yes, and from that man I would require above all the loyalty of silence.
Vn Roy n’est pas à croire, quand il se vante de sa constance, à attendre le rencontre de l’ennemy, pour sa gloire: si pour son profit et amendement, il ne peut souffrir la liberté des parolles d’vn amy, qui n’ont autre effort, que de luy pincer l’ouye: le reste de leur effect estant en sa main. Or il n’est aucune condition d’homme, qui ait si grand besoing, que ceux-là, de vrais et libres aduertissemens.
A king is not to be believed when he boasts of his steadfastness in awaiting the enemy’s attack for the sake of his glory, if for his own profit and improvement he cannot bear a friend’s free words, which have no other force than to sting his ears, the rest of their effect being in his own hands. Now there is no condition of men that needs true and free admonitions as much as kings do.
Ils soutiennent vne vie publique, et ont à agreer à l’opinion de tant de spectateurs, que comme on a accoustumé de leur taire tout ce qui les diuertit de leur route, ils se trouuent sans le sentir, engagez en la haine et detestation de leurs peuples, pour des occasions souuent, qu’ils eussent peu euiter, à nul interest de leurs plaisirs mesme, qui les en eust aduisez et redressez à temps. Communement leurs fauorits regardent à soy, plus qu’au maistre. Et il leur va de bon: d’autant qu’à la verité, la plus part des offices de la vraye amitié, sont enuers le souuerain, en vn rude et perilleux essay.
They sustain a public life and have to please the opinion of so many spectators that, since people are in the habit of keeping quiet before them about anything that might turn them from their course, they find themselves, without noticing it, caught up in the hatred and detestation of their peoples. Often this is for reasons they could have avoided at no cost even to their pleasures, if someone had warned them and set them right in time. Their favorites commonly look out for themselves more than for their master. And they do well by it, since in truth most of the offices of true friendship toward a sovereign are a rough and perilous trial.
De maniere, qu’il y fait besoin, non seulement de beaucoup d’affection et de franchise, mais encore de courage.
So what is needed is not only a great deal of affection and frankness, but courage as well.
My experience of health
Distrusting medicine, Montaigne describes the habits by which he has kept his health.
En fin, toute cette fricassee que ie barbouille ici, n’est qu’vn registre des essais de ma vie: qui est pour l’interne santé exemplaire assez, à prendre l’instruction à contrepoil. Mais quant à la santé corporelle, personne ne peut fournir d’experience plus vtile que moy: qui la presente pure, nullement corrompue et alteree par art, et par opination. L’experience est proprement sur son fumier au subiect de la medecine, où la raison luy quitte toute la place. Tybere disoit, que quiconque auoit vescu vingt ans, se deuoit respondre des choses qui luy estoient nuisibles ou salutaires, et se sçauoir conduire sans medecine.
In the end, all this hodgepodge I am scribbling here is only a record of the trials of my life. For inner health it is exemplary enough, if one takes its lessons the other way round. But as for bodily health, no one can furnish more useful experience than I, who present it pure, in no way corrupted or altered by art or by opinion. In the matter of medicine, experience is truly on its own dunghill, where reason yields it the whole field. Tiberius used to say that anyone who had lived twenty years ought to be able to answer for himself about what was harmful or wholesome to him, and to know how to manage himself without medicine.
Et le pouuoit auoir apprins de Socrates: lequel conseillant à ses disciples soigneusement, et comme vn tres principal estude, l’estude de leur santé, adioustoit, qu’il estoit malaisé, qu’vn homme d’entendement, prenant garde à ses exercices à son boire et à son manger, ne discernast mieux que tout medecin, ce qui luy estoit bon ou mauuais. Si fait la medecine profession d’auoir tousiours l’experience, pour touche de son operation. Ainsi Platon auoit raison de dire, que pour estre vray medecin, il seroit necessaire que celuy qui l’entreprendroit, eust passé par toutes les maladies, qu’il veut guerir, et par tous les accidens et circonstances dequoy il doit iuger. C’est raison qu’ils prennent la verole, s’ils la veulent sçauoir penser. Vrayement ie m’en fierois à celuy là.
He may have learned this from Socrates. Socrates earnestly advised his disciples to study their health as a most important study, and added that it was hard for a man of understanding who paid attention to his exercise, his drinking and his eating not to discern better than any physician what was good or bad for him. And indeed medicine professes always to use experience as the touchstone of its practice. So Plato was right to say that to be a true physician, whoever took it up would need to have gone through all the illnesses he wants to cure, and all the accidents and circumstances he has to judge. It is only reasonable that physicians should catch the pox if they want to know how to treat it. That is a physician I would truly trust.
Car les autres nous guident, comme celuy qui peint les mers, les escueils et les ports, estant assis, sur sa table, et y faict promener le modele d’vn nauire en toute seurté. Iettez-le à l’effect, il ne sçait par où s’y prendre. Ils font telle description de nos maux, que faict vn trompette de ville, qui crie vn cheual ou vn chien perdu, tel poil, telle hauteur, telle oreille: mais presentez le luy, il ne le cognoit pas pourtant.
For the others guide us like a man who paints seas, reefs and harbors while sitting at his table, and moves a model ship about on it in perfect safety. Throw him into the real thing, and he does not know where to begin. They describe our ills the way a town crier cries a lost horse or dog: such a coat, such a height, such ears. But bring the animal to him, and he still does not recognize it.
Pour Dieu, que la medecine me face vn iour quelque bon et perceptible secours, voir comme ie crieray de bonne foy, Tandem efficaci do manus scientiæ! Les arts qui promettent de nous tenir le corps en santé, et l’ame en santé, nous promettent beaucoup: mais aussi n’en est-il point, qui tiennent moins ce qu’elles promettent. Et en nostre temps, ceux qui font profession de ces arts entre nous, en montrent moins les effects que tous autres hommes. On peut dire d’eux, pour le plus, qu’ils vendent les drogues medecinales: mais qu’ils soient medecins, cela ne peut on dire. I’ay assez vescu, pour mettre en comte l’vsage, qui m’a conduict si loing. Pour qui en voudra gouster: i’en ay faict l’essay, son eschançon.
For God’s sake, let medicine some day give me some real and perceptible help, and see how I will cry out in good faith: At last I surrender to an effective science! The arts that promise to keep the body in health and the soul in health promise us a great deal; but there are none that keep their promises less. And in our time those among us who profess these arts show their results less than any other men. The most one can say of them is that they sell medicinal drugs; that they are physicians, one cannot say. I have lived long enough to give an account of the habits that have brought me so far. For anyone who wants a taste of them, I have tried them first, as their cupbearer.
En voyci quelques articles, comme la souuenance me les fournira. Ie n’ay point de façon, qui ne soit allee variant selon les accidents. Mais i’enregistre celles, que i’ay plus souuent veu en train: qui ont eu plus de possession en moy iusqu’à cette heure.
Here are some articles of it, as my memory supplies them. I have no habit that has not kept varying with circumstances. But I record those I have most often seen at work, which have had the strongest hold on me up to now.
Ma forme de vie, est pareille en maladie comme en santé: mesme lict, mesmes heures, mesmes viandes me seruent, et mesme breuuage. Ie n’y adiouste du tout rien, que la moderation du plus et du moins, selon ma force et appetit. Ma santé, c’est maintenir sans destourbier mon estat accoustumé. Ie voy que la maladie m’en desloge d’vn costé: si ie crois les medecins, ils m’en destourneront de l’autre: et par fortune, et par art, me voyla hors de ma routte. Ie ne crois rien plus certainement que cecy: que ie ne sçauroy estre offencé par l’vsage des choses que i’ay si long temps accoustumees. C’est à la coustume de donner forme à nostre vie, telle qu’il luy plaist, elle peult tout en cela.
My way of life is the same in sickness as in health: the same bed, the same hours, the same food serve me, and the same drink. I add nothing at all to it except moderation in the more or the less, according to my strength and appetite. For me, health means keeping my accustomed state undisturbed. I see that sickness dislodges me from it on one side; if I believe the physicians, they will turn me away from it on the other; and so, by fortune and by art, I am thrown off my course. I believe nothing more firmly than this: that I cannot be harmed by using things I have been accustomed to for so long. It is for custom to give our life whatever form it pleases; in this it can do everything.
C’est le breuuage de Circé, qui diuersifie nostre nature, comme bon luy semble. Combien de nations, et à trois pas de nous, estiment ridicule la craincte du serein, qui nous blesse si apparemment: et nos bateliers et nos paysans s’en moquent. Vous faites malade vn Alleman, de le coucher sur vn matelas: comme vn Italien sur la plume, et vn François sans rideau et sans feu. L’estomach d’vn Espagnol, ne dure pas à nostre forme de manger, ny le nostre à boire à la Souysse. Vn Allemand me feit plaisir à Auguste, de combattre l’incommodité de nos fouyers, par ce mesme argument, dequoy nous nous seruons ordinairement à condamner leurs poyles.
It is Circe’s potion, which varies our nature as it sees fit. How many nations, even three steps away from us, think ridiculous our fear of the evening damp, which so plainly harms us; and our boatmen and peasants laugh at it. You make a German ill by putting him to bed on a mattress, as you make an Italian ill on a feather bed and a Frenchman without curtains and without a fire. A Spaniard’s stomach cannot stand our way of eating, nor ours drinking in the Swiss manner. A German at Augsburg amused me by attacking the inconvenience of our fireplaces with the very argument we usually use to condemn their stoves.
Car à la verité, cette chaleur croupie, et puis la senteur de cette matiere reschauffée, dequoy ils sont composez, enteste la plus part de ceux qui n’y sont experimentez: moy non. Mais au demeurant, estant cette chaleur egale, constante et vniuerselle, sans lueur, sans fumée, sans le vent que l’ouuerture de nos cheminées nous apporte, elle a bien par ailleurs, dequoy se comparer à la nostre. Que n’imitons nous l’architecture Romaine? Car on dit, qu’anciennement, le feu ne se faisoit en leurs maisons que par le dehors, et au pied d’icelles: d’où s’inspiroit la chaleur à tout le logis, par les tuyaux practiquez dans l’espais du mur, lesquels alloient embrassant les lieux qui en deuoient estre eschauffez.
For in truth that stagnant heat, and then the smell of the heated material the stoves are made of, gives a headache to most people who are not used to them, though not to me. But otherwise, since this heat is even, constant and spread throughout, without glare, without smoke, without the draft that the opening of our chimneys lets in, it bears comparison with ours on other counts. Why do we not imitate Roman architecture? For they say that in ancient times the fire in their houses was made only outside, at the foot of the house, and from there the heat was breathed into the whole dwelling through pipes built into the thickness of the walls, which ran around the rooms that were to be heated.
Ce que i’ay veu clairement signifié, ie ne sçay où, en Seneque. Cestuy-cy, m’oyant louër les commoditez, et beautez de sa ville: qui le merite certes: commença à me plaindre, dequoy i’auois à m’en eslongner. Et des premiers inconueniens qu’il m’allega, ce fut la poisanteur de teste, que m’apporteroient les cheminées ailleurs. Il auoit ouï faire cette plainte à quelqu’vn, et nous l’attachoit, estant priué par l’vsage de l’apperceuoir chez luy. Toute chaleur qui vient du feu, m’affoiblit et m’appesantit. Si disoit Euenus, que le meilleur condiment de la vie, estoit le feu. Ie prens plustost toute autre façon d’eschaper au froid.
I have seen this clearly indicated somewhere in Seneca, I don’t know where. This German, hearing me praise the conveniences and beauties of his city, which certainly deserves it, began to pity me for having to leave it. And among the first drawbacks he cited was the heaviness of head that the fireplaces elsewhere would give me. He had heard someone make this complaint and was pinning it on us, since habit kept him from noticing it at home. All heat that comes from a fire weakens me and makes me heavy. And yet Evenus said that fire was the best seasoning of life. I prefer any other way of escaping the cold.
Nous craignons les vins au bas: en Portugal, cette fumée est en delices, et est le breuuage des Princes. En somme, chasque nation a plusieurs coustumes et vsances, qui sont non seulement incognues, mais farouches et miraculeuses à quelque autre nation. Que ferons nous à ce peuple, qui ne fait recepte que de tesmoignages imprimez, qui ne croit les hommes s’ils ne sont en liure, ny la verité, si elle n’est d’aage competant? Nous mettons en dignité nos sottises, quand nous les mettons en moule. Il y a bien pour luy, autre poix, de dire; ie l’ay leu: que si vous dictes: ie l’ay ouy dire.
We are wary of wine from the bottom of the cask; in Portugal that heady flavor is a delight and the drink of princes. In short, each nation has many customs and usages that are not only unknown but strange and astonishing to some other nation. What are we to do with people who accept only printed testimony, who do not believe men unless they are in a book, nor truth unless it is of a respectable age? We dignify our follies when we put them into print. For such people it carries quite another weight to say “I have read it” than to say “I have heard it said.”
Mais moy, qui ne mescrois non plus la bouche, que la main des hommes: et qui sçay qu’on escript autant indiscretement qu’on parle: et qui estime ce siecle, comme vn autre passé, i’allegue aussi volontiers vn mien amy, que Aulugelle, et que Macrobe: et ce que i’ay veu, que ce qu’ils ont escrit. Et comme ils tiennent de la vertu, qu’elle n’est pas plus grande, pour estre plus longue: i’estime de mesme de la verité, que pour estre plus vieille, elle n’est pas plus sage. Ie dis souuent que c’est pure sottise, qui nous fait courir apres les exemples estrangers et scholastiques. Leur fertilité est pareille à cette heure à celle du temps d’Homere et de Platon.
But I do not disbelieve men’s mouths any more than their hands. I know that people write as rashly as they speak, and I think this age as good as any past one. So I cite a friend of mine as readily as Aulus Gellius or Macrobius, and what I have seen as readily as what they have written. And as they hold that virtue is no greater for lasting longer, so I hold that truth is no wiser for being older. I often say that it is sheer folly that makes us run after foreign and scholastic examples. They are as plentiful now as in the time of Homer and Plato.
Mais n’est-ce pas, que nous cherchons plus l’honneur de l’allegation, que la verité du discours? Comme si c’estoit plus d’emprunter, de la boutique de Vascosan, ou de Plantin, nos preuues, que de ce qui se voit en nostre village. Ou bien certes, que nous n’auons pas l’esprit, d’esplucher, et faire valoir, ce qui se passe deuant nous, et le iuger assez vifuement, pour le tirer en exemple. Car si nous disons, que l’authorité nous manque, pour donner foy à nostre tesmoignage, nous le disons hors de propos.
But is it not that we seek the honor of quoting more than the truth of the argument? As if it counted for more to borrow our proofs from the shop of Vascosan or Plantin than from what can be seen in our own village. Or else, surely, that we do not have the wit to sift and make the most of what happens before our eyes, and to judge it keenly enough to make an example of it. For if we say that we lack the authority to make our testimony believed, we are speaking beside the point.
D’autant qu’à mon aduis, des plus ordinaires choses, et plus communes, et cognuës, si nous sçauons trouuer leur iour, se peuuent former les plus grands miracles de nature, et les plus merueilleux exemples, notamment sur le subiect des actions humaines.
Because in my opinion the greatest miracles of nature and the most marvelous examples, especially on the subject of human actions, can be made out of the most ordinary, common and familiar things, if we know how to see them in the right light.
Or sur mon subiect, laissant les exemples que ie sçay par les liures: et ce que dit Aristote d’Andron Argien, qu’il trauersoit sans boire les arides sablons de la Lybie: vn Gentil-homme qui s’est acquitté dignement de plusieurs charges, disoit où i’estois qu’il estoit allé de Madrid à Lisbonne, en plain esté, sans boire. Il se porte vigoureusement pour son aage, et n’a rien d’extraordinaire en l’vsage de sa vie, que cecy, d’estre deux ou trois mois, voire vn an, ce m’a-il dit, sans boire. Il sent de l’alteration, mais il la laisse passer: et tient, que c’est vn appetit qui s’alanguit aiséement de soy-mesme: et boit plus par caprice, que pour le besoing, ou pour le plaisir.
Now, on my subject, leaving aside the examples I know from books, and what Aristotle says of Andron of Argos, that he crossed the arid sands of Libya without drinking: a gentleman who has worthily discharged several offices said in my presence that he had gone from Madrid to Lisbon in midsummer without drinking. He is vigorous for his age and has nothing extraordinary in his way of life except this: he goes two or three months, even a year, he told me, without drinking. He feels thirst, but lets it pass, and holds that it is an appetite that easily dies down of itself. He drinks more from whim than from need or for pleasure.
En voicy d’vn autre. Il n’y a pas long temps, que ie rencontray l’vn des plus sçauans hommes de France, entre ceux de non mediocre fortune, estudiant au coin d’vne sale, qu’on luy auoit rembarré de tapisserie: et autour de luy, vn tabut de ses valets, plain de licence. Il me dit, et Seneque quasi autant de soy, qu’il faisoit son profit de ce tintamarre: comme si battu de ce bruict, il se ramenast et reserrast plus en soy, pour la contemplation, et que cette tempeste de voix repercutast ses pensées au dedans.
Here is an example of another kind. Not long ago I came upon one of the most learned men in France, among those of no mean fortune, studying in a corner of a hall that had been partitioned off for him with tapestry, and around him an uproar of his servants, taking every liberty. He told me, and Seneca says almost as much of himself, that he profited from this din: as if, battered by the noise, he drew back and gathered himself more closely into himself for contemplation, and this storm of voices drove his thoughts back inward.
Estant escholier à Padoüe, il eut son estude si long temps logé à la batterie des coches, et du tumulte de la place, qu’il se forma non seulement au mespris, mais à l’vsage du bruit, pour le seruice de ses estudes. Socrates respondit à Alcibiades, s’estonnant comme il pouuoit porter le continuel tintamarre de la teste de sa femme: Comme ceux, qui sont accoustumez à l’ordinaire bruit des rouës à puiser de l’eau. Ie suis bien au contraire: i’ay l’esprit tendre et facile à prendre l’essor. Quand il est empesché à part soy, le moindre bourdonnement de mousche l’assassine.
When he was a student at Padua, his study was lodged so long amid the clatter of coaches and the tumult of the square that he trained himself not only to scorn noise but to make use of it in the service of his studies. Alcibiades once wondered how Socrates could bear the endless din of his wife’s temper, and Socrates answered: “As those do who are used to the ordinary noise of wheels drawing water.” I am quite the opposite. My mind is delicate and quick to take flight. When it is busy on its own, the slightest buzzing of a fly murders it.
Seneque en sa ieunesse, ayant mordu chaudement, à l’exemple de Sextius, de ne manger chose, qui eust prins mort, s’en passoit dans vn an, auec plaisir, comme il dit. Et s’en deporta seulement, pour n’estre soupçonné, d’emprunter cette regle d’aucunes religions nouuelles, qui la semoyent. Il print quand et quand des preceptes d’Attalus, de ne se coucher plus sur des loudiers, qui enfondrent: et employa iusqu’à la vieillesse ceux qui ne cedent point au corps. Ce que l’vsage de son temps, luy faict compter à rudesse, le nostre, nous le faict tenir à mollesse.
Seneca in his youth eagerly took up the example of Sextius and ate nothing that had been killed. He did without it for a year, with pleasure, as he says, and gave it up only so as not to be suspected of borrowing this rule from certain new religions that were spreading it. At the same time he adopted Attalus’s precept of no longer lying on mattresses that sink under you, and used, right into old age, the kind that do not yield to the body. What the usage of his time made him count as hardness, ours makes us consider softness.
Regardez la difference du viure de mes valets à bras, à la mienne: les Scythes et les Indes n’ont rien plus eslongné de ma force, et de ma forme. Ie sçay, auoir retiré de l’aumosne, des enfans pour m’en seruir, qui bien tost apres m’ont quicté et ma cuisine, et leur liurée: seulement, pour se rendre à leur premiere vie. Et en trouuay vn, amassant depuis, des moules, emmy la voirie, pour son disner, que par priere, ny par menasse, ie ne sçeu distraire de la saueur et douceur, qu’il trouuoit en l’indigence. Les gueux ont leurs magnificences, et leurs voluptez, comme les riches: et, dit-on, leurs dignitez et ordres politiques. Ce sont effects de l’accoustumance.
Look at the difference between my laborers’ way of living and mine: the Scythians and the Indians have nothing further removed from my strength and my ways. I know that I have taken children off begging to serve me, who soon afterward left me, my kitchen and their livery, simply to go back to their former life. And later I found one of them gathering mussels in the refuse for his dinner, and neither by entreaty nor by threat could I draw him away from the savor and sweetness he found in poverty. Beggars have their magnificences and their pleasures, like the rich, and, they say, their dignities and political orders. These are the effects of habit.
Elle nous peut duire, non seulement à telle forme qu’il luy plaist (pourtant, disent les sages, nous faut-il planter à la meilleure, qu’elle nous facilitera incontinent) mais aussi au changement et à la variation: qui est le plus noble, et le plus vtile de ses apprentissages. La meilleure de mes complexions corporelles, c’est d’estre flexible et peu opiniastre. I’ay des inclinations plus propres et ordinaires, et plus aggreables, que d’autres. Mais auec bien peu d’effort, ie m’en destourne, et me coule aiséement à la façon contraire. Vn ieune homme, doit troubler ses regles, pour esueiller sa vigueur: la garder de moisir et s’apoltronir. Et n’est train de vie, si sot et si debile, que celuy qui se conduict par ordonnance et discipline.
Habit can shape us not only to whatever form it pleases (and that is why, say the wise, we must fix ourselves on the best, which habit will at once make easy for us), but also to change and variation, which is the noblest and most useful of its lessons. The best of my bodily qualities is that I am flexible and not very obstinate. I have inclinations that are more my own, more usual and more agreeable than others; but with very little effort I turn away from them and slip easily into the opposite way. A young man should upset his rules to rouse his vigor and keep it from going moldy and slack. And there is no way of life so foolish and so feeble as one conducted by prescription and discipline.
Ad primum lapidem vectari cùm placet, hora / Sumitur ex libro; si prurit frictus ocelli / Angulus, inspecta genesi collyria quærit. Il se reiettera souuent aux excez mesme, s’il m’en croit: autrement, la moindre desbauche le ruyne. Il se rend incommode et desaggreable en conuersation. La plus contraire qualité à vn honneste homme, c’est la delicatesse et obligation à certaine façon particuliere. Et elle est particuliere, si elle n’est ployable, et soupple. Il y a de la honte, de laisser à faire par impuissance, ou de n’oser, ce qu’on voit faire à ses compaignons. Que telles gens gardent leur cuisine. Par tout ailleurs, il est indecent: mais à vn homme de guerre, il est vitieux et insupportable.
If he wants to ride out as far as the first milestone, the hour / is taken from his book; if the corner of his eye itches from rubbing, / he consults his horoscope before seeking eye-salve. He will often throw himself even into excess, if he takes my advice; otherwise the slightest indulgence will ruin him. He becomes awkward and disagreeable in company. The quality most contrary to a man of good breeding is fastidiousness and being tied to some particular way of doing things. And it is particular if it is not pliable and supple. It is shameful to leave undone, from incapacity or from not daring, what one sees one’s companions doing. Let such people stay in their kitchens. Everywhere else this is unbecoming; but in a soldier it is a vice and intolerable.
Lequel, comme disoit Philopœmen, se doit accoustumer à toute diuersité, et inegalité de vie.
For a soldier, as Philopoemen said, should accustom himself to every variety and unevenness of life.
The hold of habit
Habit has made him depend on certain comforts, though flexibility is the better rule.
Quoy que i’aye esté dressé autant qu’on a peu, à la liberté et à l’indifference, si est-ce que par nonchalance, m’estant en vieillissant, plus arresté sur certaines formes (mon aage est hors d’institution, et n’a desormais dequoy regarder ailleurs qu’à se maintenir) la coustume a desia sans y penser, imprimé si bien en moy son charactere, en certaines choses, que i’appelle excez de m’en despartir.
I was trained as much as possible to freedom and indifference. Nevertheless, through carelessness, I have settled more on certain ways as I grew old (my age is past education and has nothing left to look to but keeping itself going), and custom has already, without my noticing, so stamped its character on me in certain things that I call it excess to depart from them.
Et sans m’essayer, ne puis, ny dormir sur iour, ny faire collation entre les repas, ny desieuner, ny m’aller coucher sans grand interualle, comme de trois heures, apres le soupper, ny faire des enfans, qu’auant le sommeil: ny les faire debout: ny porter ma sueur: ny m’abreuuer d’eau pure ou de vin pur: ny me tenir nud teste long temps: ny me faire tondre apres disner. Et me passerois autant mal-aisément de mes gans, que de ma chemise: et de me lauer à l’issuë de table, et à mon leuer: et de ciel et rideaux à mon lict, comme de choses bien necessaires. Ie disnerois sans nape: mais à l’Alemande sans seruiette blanche, tres-incommodéement.
And without an effort I cannot sleep by day, nor eat between meals, nor have breakfast, nor go to bed without a long interval, of some three hours, after supper, nor make children except before sleeping, nor make them standing up, nor bear my own sweat, nor quench my thirst with pure water or pure wine, nor stay bareheaded for long, nor have my hair cut after dinner. And I would do without my gloves as uneasily as without my shirt, and without washing when I leave the table and when I get up, and without a canopy and curtains on my bed, as things quite necessary. I could dine without a tablecloth; but without a clean napkin, in the German manner, very uncomfortably.
Ie les souïlle plus qu’eux et les Italiens ne font: et m’ayde peu de cullier, et de fourchete. Ie plains qu’on n’aye suyuy vn train, que i’ay veu commencer à l’exemple des Roys: Qu’on nous changeast de seruiette, selon les seruices, comme d’assiette. Nous tenons de ce laborieux soldat Marius, que vieillissant, il deuint delicat en son boire: et ne le prenoit qu’en vne sienne couppe particuliere. Moy ie me laisse aller de mesme à certaine forme de verres, et ne boy pas volontiers en verre commun. Non plus que d’vne main commune. Tout metail m’y desplaist au prix d’vne matiere claire et transparante. Que mes yeux y tastent aussi selon leur capacité. Ie dois plusieurs telles mollesses à l’vsage.
I soil napkins more than the Germans and the Italians do, and I make little use of spoon and fork. I regret that people have not kept up a practice I saw begun after the example of kings: that our napkins should be changed with each course, like our plates. We are told of that hardworking soldier Marius that as he grew old he became fastidious about his drink and would take it only from a particular cup of his own. I too let myself favor a certain shape of glass, and I do not like drinking from a common glass, any more than from a common hand. All metal displeases me compared with a clear, transparent material. Let my eyes taste as well, as far as they can. I owe several such softnesses to habit.
Nature m’a aussi d’autre part apporté les siennes: comme de ne soustenir plus deux plains repas en vn iour, sans surcharger mon estomach: ny l’abstinence pure de l’vn des repas: sans me remplir de vents, assecher ma bouche, estonner mon appetit. De m’offenser d’vn long serein. Car depuis quelques années, aux couruées de la guerre, quand toute la nuict y court, comme il aduient communément, apres cinq ou six heures, l’estomach me commence à troubler, auec vehemente douleur de teste: et n’arriue point au iour, sans vomir. Comme les autres s’en vont desieuner, ie m’en vay dormir: et au partir de là, aussi gay qu’au parauant.
Nature, on the other hand, has also brought me her own: for instance, I can no longer stand two full meals in one day without overloading my stomach, nor go without one of the meals entirely without filling up with wind, drying my mouth and stunning my appetite. And I am harmed by long exposure to the night air. For some years now, on night expeditions in the wars, when they last all night, as commonly happens, after five or six hours my stomach begins to be upset, with a violent headache, and I do not reach daylight without vomiting. When the others go off to breakfast, I go off to sleep, and afterward I am as cheerful as before.
I’auois tousiours appris, que le serein ne s’espandoit qu’à la naissance de la nuict: mais hantant ces années passées familierement, et long temps, vn seigneur imbu de cette creance, que le serein est plus aspre et dangereux sur l’inclination du soleil, vne heure ou deux auant son coucher: lequel il euite songneusement, et mesprise celuy de la nuict: il a cuidé m’imprimer, non tant son discours, que son sentiment. Quoy, que le doubte mesme, et l’inquisition frappe nostre imagination, et nous change? Ceux qui cedent tout à coup à ces pentes, attirent l’entiere ruine sur eux. Et plains plusieurs Gentils-hommes, qui par la sottise de leurs medecins, se sont mis en chartre tous ieunes et entiers.
I had always been taught that the evening damp spread only at nightfall. But in these past years I spent much time, and for a long while, with a lord imbued with the belief that the damp is harsher and more dangerous as the sun goes down, an hour or two before it sets. He carefully avoids it and scorns the damp of the night. He very nearly impressed on me not so much his reasoning as his feeling. What! Can mere doubt and inquiry strike our imagination and change us? Those who give in all at once to these tendencies bring complete ruin on themselves. And I pity several gentlemen who, through the folly of their physicians, have shut themselves up like prisoners while still young and sound.
Encores vaudroit-il mieux souffrir vn reume, que de perdre pour iamais, par desaccoustumance, le commerce de la vie commune, en action de si grand vsage. Fascheuse science: qui nous descrie les plus douces heures du iour. Estendons nostre possession iusques aux derniers moyens. Le plus souuent on s’y durcit, en s’opiniastrant, et corrige lon sa complexion: comme fit Cæsar le haut mal, à force de le mespriser et corrompre. On se doit adonner aux meilleures regles, mais non pas s’y asseruir: si ce n’est à celles, s’il y en a quelqu’vne, ausquelles l’obligation et seruitude soit vtile.
Even so, it would be better to suffer a cold than to lose forever, through disuse, the company of ordinary life in an activity of such common use. A troublesome science, that spoils for us the sweetest hours of the day! Let us stretch our hold on life to its very last means. Most often one hardens oneself by persisting, and corrects one’s constitution, as Caesar did with his epilepsy, by dint of scorning and thwarting it. One should devote oneself to the best rules, but not enslave oneself to them, except to those, if there are any, to which obligation and servitude are useful.
Et les Roys et les philosophes fientent, et les dames aussi. Les vies publiques se doiuent à la ceremonie: la mienne obscure et priuée, iouït de toute dispence naturelle. Soldat et Gascon, sont qualitez aussi, vn peu subiettes à l’indiscretion. Parquoy, ie diray cecy de cette action: qu’il est besoing de la renuoyer à certaines heures, prescriptes et nocturnes, et s’y forcer par coustume, et assubiectir, comme i’ay faict. Mais non s’assuiectir, comme i’ay faict en vieillissant, au soing de particuliere commodité de lieu, et de siege, pour ce seruice: et le rendre empeschant par longueur et mollesse. Toutesfois aux plus sales offices, est-il pas aucunement excusable, de requerir plus de soing et de netteté?
Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies. Public lives are owed to ceremony; mine, obscure and private, enjoys every natural dispensation. Soldier and Gascon are also qualities a little given to indiscretion. So I will say this of that function: it should be put off to certain set hours, at night, and one should force and subject oneself to them by habit, as I have done. But one should not subject oneself, as I have done in growing old, to worrying about a particular comfort of place and seat for this service, and make it a nuisance by dawdling and softness. Still, in the dirtiest functions, is it not somewhat excusable to require more care and cleanliness?
Naturâ homo mundum et elegans animal est. De toutes les actions naturelles, c’est celle, que ie souffre plus mal volontiers m’estre interrompue. I’ay veu beaucoup de gens de guerre, incommodez du desreiglement de leur ventre. Tandis que le mien et moy, ne nous faillions iamais au poinct de nostre assignation: qui est au sault du lict, si quelque violente occupation, ou maladie ne nous trouble.
By nature man is a clean and dainty animal. Of all natural functions, it is the one I least willingly allow to be interrupted. I have seen many soldiers inconvenienced by the irregularity of their bowels. Mine and I, on the other hand, never fail to keep our appointment, which is the moment I jump out of bed, unless some violent business or illness disturbs us.
Ie ne iuge donc point, comme ie disois, où les malades se puissent mettre mieux en seurté, qu’en se tenant coy, dans le train de vie, où ils se sont esleuez et nourris. Le changement, quel qu’il soit, estonne et blesse. Allez croire que les chastaignes nuisent à vn Perigourdin, ou à vn Lucquois: et le laict et le fromage aux gens de la montaigne. On leur va ordonnant, vne non seulement nouuelle, mais contraire forme de vie. Mutation qu’vn sain ne pourroit souffrir. Ordonnez de l’eau à vn Breton de soixante dix ans: enfermez dans vne estuue vn homme de marine: deffendez le promener à vn laquay Basque: ils les priuent de mouuement et en fin d’air et de lumiere. *An viuere tanti est?
So I do not think, as I was saying, that sick people can put themselves anywhere safer than by keeping quietly to the way of life in which they were raised and brought up. Change of any kind stuns and wounds. Go and believe that chestnuts harm a man from Périgord or from Lucca, and milk and cheese the mountain people! They go about prescribing for them a way of life that is not just new but contrary—a change a healthy man could not bear. Prescribe water to a Breton of seventy, shut a sailor up in a steam room, forbid a Basque footman to walk: they deprive them of movement, and in the end of air and light. *Is life worth so much?
/ Cogimur à suetis animum suspendere rebus, / Atque, vt viuamus, viuere desinimus: / Hos superesse reor, quibus et spirabilis aer, / Et lux, qua regimur, redditur ipsa grauis.* S’ils ne font autre bien, ils font aumoins cecy, qu’ils preparent de bonne heure les patiens à la mort, leur sapant peu à peu et retranchant l’vsage de la vie.
/ We are forced to wean our minds from the things we are used to, / and to stay alive we cease to live. / Shall I count those still living for whom the air they breathe / and the very light that rules us have become a burden?* If physicians do no other good, they at least do this: they prepare their patients for death in good time, undermining and cutting back, little by little, their enjoyment of life.
Trusting appetite
He trusts his desires over physicians and finds pleasure the best medicine.
Et sain et malade, ie me suis volontiers laissé aller aux appetits qui me pressoient. Ie donne grande authorité à mes desirs et propensions. Ie n’ayme point à guarir le mal par le mal. Ie hay les remedes qui importunent plus que la maladie. D’estre subiect à la colique, et subiect à m’abstenir du plaisir de manger des huitres, ce sont deux maux pour vn. Le mal nous pinse d’vn costé, la regle de l’autre. Puis-qu’on est au hazard de se mesconter, hasardons nous plustost à la suitte du plaisir. Le monde faict au rebours, et ne pense rien vtile, qui ne soit penible. La facilité luy est suspecte.
Sick or well, I have readily let myself follow the appetites that pressed me. I give great authority to my desires and inclinations. I do not like to cure one ill with another. I hate remedies that are more troublesome than the illness. To be subject to the colic and subject to abstaining from the pleasure of eating oysters—that is two ills for one. The illness pinches us on one side, the rule on the other. Since we run the risk of getting it wrong, let us rather take the risk in pursuit of pleasure. The world does the opposite, and thinks nothing useful that is not painful. Ease is suspect to it.
Mon appetit en plusieurs choses, s’est assez heureusement accommodé par soy-mesme, et rangé à la santé de mon estomach. L’acrimonie et la pointe des sauces m’agréerent estant ieune: mon estomach s’en ennuyant depuis, le goust l’a incontinent suyuy. Le vin nuit aux malades: c’est la premiere chose, dequoy ma bouche se desgouste, et d’vn degoust inuincible. Quoy que ie reçoiue desagreablement, me nuyt; et rien ne me nuyt, que ie face auec faim, et allegresse. Ie n’ay iamais receu nuysance d’action, qui m’eust esté bien plaisante. Et si ay fait ceder à mon plaisir, bien largement, toute conclusion medicinalle.
My appetite has, in many things, adjusted itself quite happily on its own and fallen in with the health of my stomach. Sharp, pungent sauces pleased me when I was young; when my stomach later tired of them, my taste promptly followed suit. Wine harms the sick: it is the first thing my mouth loses its taste for, and with an invincible distaste. Whatever I take with displeasure harms me; and nothing harms me that I do with hunger and gusto. I have never been harmed by anything I did that was really pleasant to me. And yet I have made every medical conclusion give way, and very liberally, to my pleasure.
Et me suis ieune, Quem circumcursans huc atque huc sæpe Cupido / Fulgebat crocina splendidus in tunica, presté autant licentieusement et inconsidérement qu’autre, au desir qui me tenoit saisi: Et militaui non sine gloria. Plus toutesfois en continuation et en durée, qu’en saillie. Sex me vix memini sustinuisse vices. Il y a du malheur certes, et du miracle, à confesser, en quelle foiblesse d’ans, ie me rencontray premierement en sa subiection. Ce fut bien rencontre: car ce fut long temps auant l’aage de choix et de cognoissance. Il ne me souuient point de moy de si loing. Et peut on marier ma fortune à celle de Quartilla, qui n’auoit point memoire de son fillage.
And when I was young, When Cupid, darting about me this way and that, / shone radiant in his saffron tunic, I gave myself up as licentiously and thoughtlessly as anyone to the desire that had me in its grip, And I campaigned, not without glory, more, however, in staying power and endurance than in sudden dashes: I barely remember managing six bouts. There is certainly something unfortunate, and something miraculous, in confessing how young I was when I first found myself in its subjection. It was indeed by chance, for it was long before the age of choice and knowledge. I do not remember myself so far back. And my fortune can be paired with that of Quartilla, who had no memory of her maidenhood.
Inde tragus celerésque pili, mirandáque matri / Barba meæ. Les medecins ployent ordinairement auec vtilité, leurs regles, à la violence des enuies aspres, qui suruiennent aux malades. Ce grand desir ne se peut imaginer, si estranger et vicieux, que Nature ne s’y applique. Et puis, combien est-ce de contenter la fantasie? A mon opinion cette piece là importe de tout: au moins, au delà de toute autre. Les plus griefs et ordinaires maux, sont ceux que la fantasie nous charge. Ce mot Espagnol me plaist à plusieurs visages: Defienda me Dios de my. Ie plains estant malade, dequoy ie n’ay quelque desir qui me donne ce contentement de l’assouuir: à peine m’en destourneroit la medecine. Autant en fay-ie sain.
Hence the goatish smell, the early hair, and a beard / that amazed my mother. Physicians usually bend their rules, and usefully, to the violence of the sharp cravings that come over the sick. This great desire cannot be imagined so strange and perverse that Nature is not at work in it. And then, what a thing it is to satisfy the fancy! In my opinion this part matters above all—at least more than any other. The most grievous and common ills are those that fancy loads on us. This Spanish saying pleases me from many angles: God defend me from myself. When I am sick, I regret not having some desire that would give me the satisfaction of fulfilling it; medicine would hardly turn me from it. I do as much when I am well.
Ie ne voy guere plus qu’esperer et vouloir. C’est pitié d’estre alanguy et affoibly, iusques au souhaiter.
I can see little more left to me than hoping and wishing. It is a pitiful thing to be so languid and weakened that it reaches even one’s wishes.
L’art de medecine, n’est pas si resolue, que nous soyons sans authorité, quoy que nous facions. Elle change selon les climats, et selon les Lunes: selon Fernel et selon l’Escale. Si vostre medecin ne trouue bon, que vous dormez, que vous vsez de vin, ou de telle viande: ne vous chaille: ie vous en trouueray vn autre qui ne sera pas de son aduis. La diuersité des arguments et opinions medicinales, embrasse toute sorte de formes. Ie vis vn miserable malade, creuer et se pasmer d’alteration, pour se guarir: et estre moqué depuis par vn autre medecin: condamnant ce conseil comme nuisible. Auoit-il pas bien employé sa peine?
The art of medicine is not so settled that we cannot find some authority for whatever we do. It changes with climates and with moons, with Fernel and with Scaliger. If your physician does not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat a certain food, don’t worry: I will find you another who will not agree with him. The diversity of medical arguments and opinions covers every possible form. I saw a wretched sick man bursting and fainting with thirst in order to be cured, and afterward mocked by another physician who condemned that advice as harmful. Had he not put his suffering to good use?
Il est mort freschement de la pierre, vn homme de ce mestier, qui s’estoit seruy d’extreme abstinence à combattre son mal: ses compagnons disent, qu’au rebours, ce ieusne l’auoit asseché, et luy auoit cuit le sable dans les rongnons.
A man of that profession recently died of the stone who had used extreme abstinence to fight his illness; his colleagues say that, on the contrary, the fasting had dried him out and baked the sand in his kidneys.
I’ay apperceu qu’aux blesseures, et aux maladies, le parler m’esmeut et me nuit, autant que desordre que ie face. La voix me couste, et me lasse: car ie l’ay haute et efforcée. Si que, quand ie suis venu à entretenir l’oreille des grands, d’affaires de poix, ie les ay mis souuent en soing de moderer ma voix.
I have noticed that when I am wounded or ill, talking excites me and harms me as much as any excess I might commit. My voice costs me effort and tires me, for it is loud and strained; so that when I have had occasion to hold the ear of the great on weighty matters, I have often made them anxious to get me to moderate my voice.
Ce compte merite de me diuertir. Quelqu’vn, en certaine eschole Grecque, parloit haut comme moy: le maistre des ceremonies luy manda qu’il parlast plus bas: Qu’il m’enuoye, fit-il, le ton auquel il veut que ie parle. L’autre luy repliqua, qu’il prinst son ton des oreilles de celuy à qui il parloit. C’estoit bien dit, pourueu qu’il s’entende: Parlez selon ce que vous auez affaire à vostre auditeur. Car si c’est à dire, suffise vous qu’il vous oye: ou, reglez vous par luy: ie ne trouue pas que ce fust raison. Le ton et mouuement de la voix, a quelque expression, et signification de mon sens: c’est à moy à le conduire, pour me representer.
This story deserves a digression. Someone in a certain Greek school spoke loudly, as I do; the master of ceremonies sent word to him to speak lower. “Let him send me,” he said, “the pitch at which he wants me to speak.” The other replied that he should take his pitch from the ears of the person he was speaking to. That was well said, provided it is understood to mean: “Speak according to what you have to do with your listener.” For if it means “Be content that he hears you,” or “Regulate yourself by him,” I do not find that reasonable. The tone and movement of the voice carry some expression and signification of my meaning; it is up to me to direct it so as to represent myself.
Il y a voix pour instruire, voix pour flater, ou pour tancer. Ie veux que ma voix non seulement arriue à luy, mais à l’auanture qu’elle le frappe, et qu’elle le perse. Quand ie mastine mon laquay, d’vn ton aigre et poignant: il seroit bon qu’il vinst à me dire: Mon maistre parlez plus doux, ie vous oy bien. Est quædam vox ad auditum accommodata, non magnitudine, sed proprietate. La parole est moitié à celuy qui parle, moitié à celuy qui l’escoute. Cestuy-cy se doibt preparer à la receuoir, selon le branle qu’elle prend. Comme entre ceux qui ioüent à la paume, celuy qui soustient, se desmarche et s’appreste, selon qu’il voit remuer celuy qui luy iette le coup, et selon la forme du coup.
There is a voice for instructing, a voice for flattering, or for scolding. I want my voice not only to reach him but, as it may be, to strike him and pierce him. When I am berating my footman in a sharp, cutting tone, it would be a fine thing if he were to come and tell me, “Master, speak more softly; I can hear you perfectly well.” There is a kind of voice suited to the hearing, not by its volume but by its quality. Speech belongs half to the one who speaks, half to the one who listens. The listener must prepare to receive it according to the motion it takes. So among tennis players, the one who receives steps back and gets ready according to how he sees the one hitting the ball to him move, and according to the kind of stroke.
Letting illness run its course
Diseases have their own life span, and impatience only prolongs them.
L’experience m’a encores appris cecy, que nous nous perdons d’impatience. Les maux ont leur vie, et leurs bornes, leurs maladies et leur santé. La constitution des maladies, est formée au patron de la constitution des animaux. Elles ont leur fortune limitée dès leur naissance: et leurs iours. Qui essaye de les abbreger imperieusement, par force, au trauers de leur course, il les allonge et multiplie: et les harselle, au lieu de les appaiser. Ie suis de l’aduis de Crantor, qu’il ne faut ny obstinéement s’opposer aux maux, et à l’estourdi: ny leur succomber de mollesse: mais qu’il leur faut ceder naturellement, selon leur condition et la nostre. On doit donner passage aux maladies: et ie trouue qu’elles arrestent moins chez moy, qui les laisse faire.
Experience has also taught me this: that we ruin ourselves through impatience. Ills have their life and their limits, their sicknesses and their health. The constitution of diseases is formed on the pattern of the constitution of animals. Their fortune is limited from their birth, and so are their days. Whoever tries to cut them short imperiously, by force, in the middle of their course, lengthens and multiplies them, and harasses them instead of calming them. I agree with Crantor that we must neither oppose our ills obstinately and recklessly nor succumb to them from weakness, but give way to them naturally, according to their condition and ours. We must let diseases pass through; and I find they stay less long with me, because I let them run their course.
Et en ay perdu de celles qu’on estime plus opiniastres et tenaces, de leur propre decadence: sans ayde et sans art, et contre ses regles. Laissons faire vn peu à Nature: elle entend mieux ses affaires que nous. Mais vn tel en mourut. Si ferez vous: sinon de ce mal là, d’vn autre. Et combien n’ont pas laissé d’en mourir, ayants trois medecins à leur cul? L’exemple est vn miroüer vague, vniuersel et à tout sens. Si c’est vne medecine voluptueuse, acceptez la; c’est tousiours autant de bien present. Ie ne m’arresteray ny au nom ny à la couleur, si elle est delicieuse et appetissante. Le plaisir est des principales especes du profit.
And I have lost some of those considered most stubborn and tenacious through their own decline, without help and without the art of medicine, and against its rules. Let us leave things a little to Nature: she understands her business better than we do. “But so-and-so died of it.” So will you—if not of that illness, then of another. And how many have nonetheless died of it with three physicians at their backsides? Example is a hazy mirror, universal, reflecting every way. If it is a pleasant medicine, accept it; it is always so much present good. I will not dwell on the name or the color if it is delicious and appetizing. Pleasure is one of the chief kinds of profit.
I’ay laissé enuieillir et mourir en moy, de mort naturelle, des rheumes; defluxions goutteuses; relaxation; battement de cœur; micraines; et autres accidens, que i’ay perdu, quand ie m’estois à demy formé à les nourrir. On les coniure mieux par courtoisie, que par brauerie. Il faut souffrir doucement les loix de nostre condition. Nous sommes pour vieillir, pour affoiblir, pour estre malades, en despit de toute medecine. C’est la premiere leçon, que les Mexicains font à leurs enfans; quand au partir du ventre des meres, ils les vont saluant, ainsin: Enfant, tu és venu au monde pour endurer: endure, souffre, et tais toy. C’est iniustice de se douloir qu’il soit aduenu à quelqu’vn, ce qui peut aduenir à chacun.
I have let colds, gouty discharges, looseness, palpitations of the heart, migraines and other ailments grow old in me and die a natural death—ailments I lost just when I had half trained myself to nurse them. They are better conjured away by courtesy than by bravado. We must gently endure the laws of our condition. We are made to grow old, to grow weak, to be sick, in spite of all medicine. That is the first lesson the Mexicans give their children, when, as they come out of their mothers’ wombs, they greet them thus: “Child, you have come into the world to endure: endure, suffer, and be quiet.” It is unjust to lament that something has happened to someone which can happen to anyone.
Indignare si quid in te iniquè propriè constitutum est.
Be indignant if any decree has been unjustly made against you alone.
Voyez vn vieillart, qui demande à Dieu qu’il luy maintienne sa santé entiere et vigoureuse; c’est à dire qu’il le remette en ieunesse. Stulte, quid hæc frustra votis puerilibus optas? N’est-ce pas folie? Sa condition ne le porte pas. La goutte, la grauelle, l’indigestion, sont symptomes des longues années; comme des longs voyages, la chaleur, les pluyes, et les vents. Platon ne croit pas, qu’Æsculape se mist en peine, de prouuoir par regimes, à faire durer la vie, en vn corps gasté et imbecille: inutile à son pays, inutile à sa vacation: et à produire des enfants sains et robustes: et ne trouue pas ce soing conuenable à la iustice et prudence diuine, qui doit conduire toutes choses à l’vtilité.
Look at an old man asking God to keep his health whole and vigorous—that is to say, to make him young again. Fool, why do you vainly wish for these things with childish prayers? Is it not folly? His condition does not allow it. Gout, gravel and indigestion are symptoms of long years, as heat, rain and wind are of long journeys. Plato does not believe that Aesculapius troubled to provide, by regimens, for prolonging life in a spoiled and feeble body, useless to its country, useless to its calling and to producing healthy and robust children; nor does he find such care fitting to divine justice and wisdom, which must guide all things toward what is useful.
Mon bon homme, c’est faict: on ne vous sçauroit redresser: on vous plastrera pour le plus, et estançonnera vn peu, et allongera-lon de quelque heure vostre misere. Non secus instantem cupiens fulcire ruinam, / Diuersis contrà nititur obijcibus, / Donec certa dies, omni compage soluta, / Ipsum cum rebus subruat auxilium. Il faut apprendre à souffrir, ce qu’on ne peut euiter. Nostre vie est composée, comme l’harmonie du monde, de choses contraires, aussi de diuers tons, doux et aspres, aigus et plats, mols et graues. Le musicien qui n’en aymeroit que les vns, que voudroit il dire? Il faut qu’il s’en sçache seruir en commun, et les mesler. Et nous aussi, les biens et les maux, qui sont consubstantiels à nostre vie.
My good man, it’s over: no one can set you straight again; at most they will plaster you up and prop you a little, and prolong your misery by an hour or so. Just so, a man who wants to shore up a building about to fall / sets various supports against it, / until the fixed day comes and, with every joint loosened, / brings down the props themselves along with the house. We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, and also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and deep. What would a musician mean who liked only some of them? He must know how to use them all together and blend them. And so must we with the goods and ills that are consubstantial with our life.
Nostre estre ne peut sans ce meslange; et y est l’vne bande non moins necessaire que l’autre. D’essayer à regimber contre la necessité naturelle, c’est representer la folie de Ctesiphon, qui entreprenoit de faire à coups de pied auec sa mule.
Our being cannot do without this mixture, and one side is no less necessary to it than the other. To try to kick against natural necessity is to reenact the folly of Ctesiphon, who took it upon himself to have a kicking match with his mule.
Consoling myself for the stone
His mind argues that the kidney stone is mild, deserved and a lesson in dying.
Ie consulte peu, des alterations, que ie sens. Car ces gens icy sont auantageux, quand ils vous tiennent à leur misericorde. Ils vous gourmandent les oreilles, de leurs prognostiques, et me surprenant autre fois affoibly du mal, m’ont iniurieusement traicté de leurs dogmes, et troigne magistrale: me menassant tantost de grandes douleurs, tantost de mort prochaine. Ie n’en estois abbatu, ny deslogé de ma place, mais i’en estois heurté et poussé. Si mon iugement n’en est ny changé, ny troublé: au moins il en estoit empesché. C’est tousiours agitation et combat. Or ie traicte mon imagination le plus doucement que ie puis; et la deschargerois si ie pouuois, de toute peine et contestation. Il la faut secourir, et flatter, et pipper qui peut.
I seldom consult anyone about the changes I feel. For these people are overbearing when they have you at their mercy. They batter your ears with their prognoses; and once, catching me weakened by illness, they treated me insultingly with their dogmas and their magisterial frowns, threatening me now with great pains, now with approaching death. I was not knocked down by it or dislodged from my position, but I was jostled and pushed. If my judgment was neither changed nor troubled by it, at least it was hindered. It is always agitation and combat. Now, I treat my imagination as gently as I can, and would relieve it, if I could, of all pain and strife. One must help it, and flatter it, and fool it if one can.
Mon esprit est propre à cet office. Il n’a point faute d’apparences par tout. S’il persuadoit, comme il presche, il me secourroit heureusement. Vous en plaist-il vn exemple? Il dict, que c’est pour mon mieux, que i’ay la grauele. Que les bastimens de mon aage, ont naturellement à souffrir quelque gouttiere. Il est temps qu’ils commencent à se lascher et desmentir. C’est vne commune necessité. Et n’eust on pas faict pour moy, vn nouueau miracle. Ie paye par là, le loyer deu à la vieillesse; et ne sçaurois en auoir meilleur comte. Que la compagnie me doit consoler; estant tombé en l’accident le plus ordinaire des hommes de mon temps. I’en vois par tout d’affligez de mesme nature de mal.
My mind is well suited to this task. It never lacks plausible arguments about anything. If it persuaded as well as it preaches, it would help me admirably. Would you like an example? It says that it is for my own good that I have the gravel; that buildings of my age naturally have to suffer some leaks; that it is time they began to loosen and give way. It is a common necessity, and no new miracle would have been worked for my sake. By this I pay the rent due to old age, and I could not get a better bargain. And the company, it says, ought to console me, since I have fallen into the most common ailment of men of my time. Everywhere I see men afflicted with the same kind of illness.
Et m’en est la societé honorable, d’autant qu’il se prend plus volontiers aux grands: son essence a de la noblesse et de la dignité. Que des hommes qui en sont frappez, il en est peu de quittes à meilleure raison: et si, il leur couste la peine d’vn facheux regime, et la prise ennuieuse, et quotidienne, des drogues medecinales. Là où, ie le doy purement à ma bonne fortune. Car quelques bouillons communs de l’eringium, et herbe du Turc, que deux ou trois fois i’ay aualé, en faueur des dames, qui plus gracieusement que mon mal n’est aigre, m’en offroyent la moitié du leur, m’ont semblé egalement faciles à prendre, et inutiles en operation.
And I find its fellowship honorable, all the more since it prefers to attack the great: its essence has nobility and dignity. Of the men who are stricken with it, few get off more cheaply; and even so it costs them the trouble of an irksome diet and the tedious daily taking of medicinal drugs, whereas I owe it purely to my good fortune. For a few ordinary broths of eryngo and Turkish herb, which I have swallowed two or three times to oblige the ladies—who, more graciously than my illness is bitter, offered me half of theirs—seemed to me as easy to take as they were useless in their effect.
Ils ont à payer mille vœux à Æsculape, et autant d’escus à leur medecin, de la profluuion de sable aisée et abondante, que ie reçoy souuent par le benefice de Nature. La decence mesme de ma contenance en compagnie, n’en est pas troublée: et porte mon eau dix heures, et aussi long temps qu’vn sain. La crainte de ce mal, dit-il, t’effrayoit autresfois, quand il t’estoit incogneu. Les cris et le desespoir, de ceux qui l’aigrissent par leur impatience, t’en engendroient l’horreur. C’est vn mal, qui te bat les membres, par lesquels tu as le plus failly. Tu és homme de conscience: Quæ venit indignè pæna, dolenda venit. Regarde ce chastiement; il est bien doux au prix d’autres, et d’vne faueur paternelle.
They have to pay a thousand vows to Aesculapius, and as many crowns to their physician, for the easy and abundant flow of sand that I often receive by the bounty of Nature. Even the decorum of my bearing in company is not disturbed by it, and I can hold my water for ten hours, as long as a healthy man. The fear of this illness, it says, used to frighten you when you did not know it. The cries and despair of those who make it worse by their impatience bred in you a horror of it. It is an illness that strikes you in the members through which you have sinned most. You are a man of conscience: The punishment that comes undeserved is the one to grieve over. Look at this chastisement: it is very mild compared with others, and shows a fatherly favor.
Regarde sa tardifueté: il n’incommode et occupe, que la saison de ta vie, qui ainsi comme ainsin est mes-huy perdue et sterile; ayant faict place à la licence et plaisirs de ta ieunesse, comme par composition. La crainte et pitié, que le peuple a de ce mal, te sert de matiere de gloire. Qualité, de laquelle si tu as le iugement purgé, et en as guery ton discours, tes amis pourtant en recognoissent encore quelque teinture en ta complexion. Il y a plaisir à ouyr dire de soy: Voyla bien de la force: voila bien de la patience.
Look at how late it came: it troubles and occupies only that season of your life which, one way or another, is by now lost and barren, having made way for the license and pleasures of your youth, as if by agreement. The fear and pity people feel for this illness give you matter for glory—a quality from which, even if you have purged your judgment and cured your reasoning of it, your friends still recognize some tinge in your temperament. There is pleasure in hearing people say of you: “What strength! What patience!”
On te voit suer d’ahan, pallir, rougir, trembler, vomir iusques au sang, souffrir des contractions et conuulsions estranges, degoutter par fois de grosses larmes des yeux, rendre les vrines espesses, noires, et effroyables, ou les auoir arrestées par quelque pierre espineuse et herissée qui te poinct, et escorche cruellement le col de la verge, entretenant cependant les assistans, d’vne contenance commune; bouffonant à pauses auec tes gens: tenant ta partie en vn discours tendu: excusant de parolle ta douleur, et rabbatant de ta souffrance. Te souuient-il de ces gens du temps passé, qui recherchoyent les maux auec si grand faim, pour tenir leur vertu en haleine, et en exercice?
You are seen sweating with strain, turning pale, turning red, trembling, vomiting until you bring up blood, suffering strange contractions and convulsions, sometimes letting great tears drip from your eyes, passing thick, black, frightful urine, or having it stopped by some sharp, bristling stone that pricks and cruelly flays the neck of your penis—while all the while you entertain those present with an ordinary countenance, joke now and then with your people, hold your own in a strenuous discussion, make excuses for your pain in words and play down your suffering. Do you remember those men of old who sought out ills with such hunger, to keep their virtue in breath and in practice?
mets le cas que Nature te porte, et te pousse à cette glorieuse escole, en laquelle tu ne fusses iamais entré de ton gré. Si tu me dis, que c’est vn mal dangereux et mortel: quels autres ne le sont? Car c’est vne pipperie medecinale, d’en excepter aucuns; qu’ils disent n’aller point de droict fil à la mort. Qu’importe, s’ils y vont par accident; et s’ils glissent, et gauchissent aisément, vers la voye qui nous y meine? Mais tu ne meurs pas de ce que tu es malade: tu meurs de ce que tu es viuant. La mort te tue bien, sans le secours de la maladie.
Suppose that Nature is carrying and pushing you into that glorious school, which you would never have entered of your own accord. If you tell me that it is a dangerous and mortal illness, which others are not? For it is a medical trick to except some, which they say do not lead straight to death. What does it matter if they get there by accident, and slip and veer easily toward the road that leads us there? But you do not die because you are sick; you die because you are alive. Death kills you well enough without the help of illness.
Et à d’aucuns, les maladies ont esloigné la mort: qui ont plus vescu, de ce qu’il leur sembloit s’en aller mourants. Ioint qu’il est, comme des playes, aussi des maladies medecinales et salutaires. La colique est souuent non moins viuace que vous. Il se voit des hommes, ausquels elle a continué depuis leur enfance iusques à leur extreme vieillesse; et s’ils ne luy eussent failly de compagnie, elle estoit pour les assister plus outre. Vous la tuez plus souuent qu’elle ne vous tue. Et quand elle te presenteroit l’image de la mort voisine, seroit-ce pas vn bon office, à vn homme de tel aage, de le ramener aux cogitations de sa fin? Et qui pis est, tu n’as plus pour quoy guerir.
And for some, illnesses have kept death at a distance: they have lived longer because they thought they were dying. Besides, just as with wounds, there are illnesses that are medicinal and wholesome. The colic often has as tenacious a life as you do. There are men in whom it has continued from childhood to extreme old age; and if they had not deserted its company, it was ready to keep them company longer still. You kill it more often than it kills you. And even if it showed you the image of approaching death, would it not be doing a good service to a man of such an age to bring him back to thoughts of his end? And what is worse, you no longer have anything to get well for.
Ainsi comme ainsin, au premier jour la commune necessité t’appelle. Considere combien artificielement et doucement, elle te desgouste de la vie, et desprend du monde: non te forçant, d’vne subiection tyrannique, comme tant d’autres maux, que tu vois aux vieillards, qui les tiennent continuellement entrauez, et sans relasche de foiblesses et douleurs: mais par aduertissemens, et instructions reprises à interualles; entremeslant des longues pauses de repos, comme pour te donner moyen de mediter et repeter sa leçon à ton aise. Pour te donner moyen de iuger sainement, et prendre party en homme de cœur, elle te presente l’estat de ta condition entiere, et en bien et en mal; et en mesme iour, vne vie tres-alegre tantost, tantost insupportable.
One way or another, the common necessity will call you any day now. Consider how artfully and gently your illness gives you a distaste for life and detaches you from the world: not forcing you with tyrannical subjection, like so many other ills you see in old men, which keep them continually shackled, with no respite from weakness and pain, but by warnings and instructions repeated at intervals, mingled with long pauses of rest, as if to give you the chance to meditate and rehearse its lesson at your leisure. To give you the chance to judge soundly and make up your mind like a man of courage, it shows you the state of your whole condition, both good and bad, and on the same day a life now very cheerful, now unbearable.
Si tu n’accoles la mort, au moins tu luy touches en paume, vne fois le mois. Par où tu as de plus à esperer, qu’elle t’attrappera vn iour sans menace. Et qu’estant si souuent conduit iusques au port: te fiant d’estre encore aux termes accoustumez, on t’aura et ta fiance, passé l’eau vn matin, inopinément. On n’a point à se plaindre des maladies, qui partagent loyallement le temps auec la santé.
If you do not embrace death, at least you shake hands with it once a month. So you have the further hope that it will catch you one day without warning; and that, having been brought so often to the harbor, while you trust that you are still within the usual limits, you and your trust will one morning, unexpectedly, have been ferried across the water. We have no cause to complain of illnesses that share our time fairly with health.
Ie suis obligé à la Fortune, dequoy elle m’assaut si souuent de mesme sorte d’armes. Elle m’y façonne, et m’y dresse par vsage, m’y durcit et habitue: ie sçay à peu pres mes-huy, en quoy i’en dois estre quitte. A faute de memoire naturelle, i’en forge de papier. Et comme quelque nouueau symptome suruient à mon mal, ie l’escris: d’où il aduient, qu’à cette heure, estant quasi passé par toute sorte d’exemples: si quelque estonnement me menace: feuilletant ces petits breuets descousus, comme des feuilles Sybillines, ie ne faux plus de trouuer où me consoler, de quelque prognostique fauorable, en mon experience passée. Me sert aussi l’accoustumance, à mieux esperer pour l’aduenir.
I am obliged to Fortune for assailing me so often with the same kind of weapons. She shapes me and trains me to them by practice, hardens and accustoms me; by now I know more or less what it will cost me to get off. For lack of natural memory, I make myself one out of paper. And whenever some new symptom appears in my illness, I write it down; so that now, having been through almost every kind of example, if some alarm threatens me, I leaf through these little loose notes, like the Sibyl’s leaves, and never fail to find some favorable prognosis in my past experience to console me. Being used to it also helps me hope for better in the future.
Car la conduicte de ce vuidange, ayant continué si long temps; il est à croire, que Nature ne changera point ce train, et n’en aduiendra autre pire accident, que celuy que ie sens. En outre; la condition de cette maladie n’est point mal aduenante à ma complexion prompte et soudaine. Quand elle m’assault mollement, elle me faict peur, car c’est pour long temps. Mais naturellement, elle a des excez vigoureux et gaillarts. Elle me secouë à outrance, pour vn iour ou deux. Mes reins ont duré vn aage, sans alteration; il y en a tantost vn autre, qu’ils ont changé d’estat. Les maux ont leur periode comme les biens: à l’aduanture est cet accident à sa fin.
For since this discharge has kept up its course for so long, it is likely that Nature will not change its pace and that no worse ailment will come of it than the one I feel. Moreover, the character of this illness is not ill-suited to my quick and sudden temperament. When it attacks me gently, it frightens me, for then it will last a long time. But by nature it has vigorous and lusty fits. It shakes me violently for a day or two. My kidneys lasted an age without change; it will soon be another since they changed their state. Ills have their cycles, like goods: perhaps this ailment is near its end.
L’aage affoiblit la chaleur de mon estomach; sa digestion en estant moins parfaicte, il renuoye cette matiere cruë à mes reins. Pourquoy ne pourra estre à certaine reuolution, affoiblie pareillement la chaleur de mes reins; si qu’ils ne puissent plus petrifier mon flegme; et Nature s’acheminer à prendre quelque autre voye de purgation? Les ans m’ont euidemment faict tarir aucuns rheumes. Pourquoy ces excremens, qui fournissent de matiere à la graue? Mais est-il rien doux, au prix de cette soudaine mutation; quand d’vne douleur extreme, ie viens par le vuidange de ma pierre, à recouurer, comme d’vn esclair, la belle lumiere de la santé: si libre, et si pleine: comme il aduient en noz soudaines et plus aspres coliques?
Age is weakening the heat of my stomach; since its digestion is less perfect, it sends this raw matter on to my kidneys. Why, at some turn of time, might not the heat of my kidneys be weakened likewise, so that they can no longer petrify my phlegm, and Nature set about finding some other way of purging? The years have plainly dried up certain catarrhs in me. Why not these excretions that supply the matter for the gravel? But is there anything as sweet as that sudden change, when from extreme pain I come, by voiding my stone, to recover as if in a flash the fair light of health, so free and so full, as happens in our sudden and sharpest attacks of colic?
Y a il rien en cette douleur soufferte, qu’on puisse contrepoiser au plaisir d’vn si prompt amendement? De combien la santé me semble plus belle apres la maladie, si voisine et si contigue, que ie les puis recognoistre en presence l’vne de l’autre, en leur plus hault appareil: où elles se mettent à l’enuy, comme pour se faire teste et contrecarre! Tout ainsi que les Stoïciens disent, que les vices sont vtilement introduicts, pour donner prix et faire espaule à la vertu: nous pouuons dire, auec meilleure raison, et coniecture moins hardie, que Nature nous a presté la douleur, pour l’honneur et seruice de la volupté et indolence.
Is there anything in the pain endured that can be weighed against the pleasure of so swift an improvement? How much more beautiful health seems to me after illness, when the two are so near and so close together that I can recognize them face to face, each in its finest array, where they vie with each other as if to stand up to and defy each other! Just as the Stoics say that vices were usefully introduced to give value and support to virtue, we can say, with better reason and less bold conjecture, that Nature has lent us pain for the honor and service of pleasure and freedom from pain.
Lors que Socrates apres qu’on l’eust deschargé de ses fers, sentit la friandise de cette demangeaison, que leur pesanteur auoit causé en ses iambes: il se resiouit, à considerer l’estroitte alliance de la douleur à la volupté: comme elles sont associées d’vne liaison necessaire: si qu’à tours, elles se suyuent, et entr’engendrent: et s’escrioit au bon Esope, qu’il deust auoir pris, de cette consideration, vn corps propre à vne belle fable.
When Socrates, after his chains had been taken off, felt the delicious itching that their weight had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to consider the close alliance between pain and pleasure, how they are bound together by a necessary link, so that they follow each other in turn and engender each other; and he exclaimed that good Aesop ought to have taken from this consideration the material for a fine fable.
Le pis que ie voye aux autres maladies, c’est qu’elles ne sont pas si griefues en leur effect, comme elles sont en leur yssue. On est vn an à se rauoir, tousiours plein de foiblesse, et de crainte. Il y a tant de hazard, et tant de degrez, à se reconduire à sauueté, que ce n’est iamais faict. Auant qu’on vous aye deffublé d’vn couurechef, et puis d’vne calote, auant qu’on vous aye rendu l’vsage de l’air, et du vin, et de vostre femme, et des melons, c’est grand cas si vous n’estes recheu en quelque nouuelle misere. Cette-cy a ce priuilege, qu’elle s’emporte tout net.
The worst thing I see in other illnesses is that they are not so grievous in their effect as in their aftermath. It takes a year to recover, always full of weakness and fear. There is so much risk, and there are so many steps in getting back to safety, that it is never over. Before they have stripped you of a kerchief and then of a skullcap, before they have given you back the use of fresh air, and wine, and your wife, and melons, it is a wonder if you have not relapsed into some new misery. This one has the privilege of clearing out completely.
Là où les autres laissent tousiours quelque impression, et alteration, qui rend le corps susceptible de nouueau mal, et se prestent la main les vns aux autres. Ceux là sont excusables, qui se contentent de leur possession sur nous, sans l’estendre, et sans introduire leur sequele. Mais courtois et gratieux sont ceux, de qui le passage nous apporte quelque vtile consequence. Depuis ma colique, ie me trouue deschargé d’autres accidens: plus ce me semble que ie n’estois auparauant, et n’ay point eu de fiebure depuis.
The others, by contrast, always leave some imprint and change that makes the body susceptible to new illness, and they lend each other a hand. Those are excusable that are content with their hold on us without extending it and without bringing their train in after them. But courteous and gracious are those whose passage brings us some useful consequence. Since my colic, I find myself relieved of other ailments, more so, it seems to me, than I was before, and I have not had a fever since.
I’argumente, que les vomissemens extremes et frequens que ie souffre, me purgent: et d’autre costé, mes degoustemens, et les ieusnes estranges, que ie passe, digerent mes humeurs peccantes: et Nature vuide en ces pierres, ce qu’elle a de superflu et nuysible. Qu’on ne me die point, que c’est vne medecine trop cher vendue. Car quoy tant de puans breuuages, cauteres, incisions, suées, sedons, dietes, et tant de formes de guarir, qui nous apportent souuent la mort, pour ne pouuoir soustenir leur violence, et importunité? Par ainsi, quand ie suis attaint, ie le prens à medecine: quand ie suis exempt, ie le prens à constante et entiere deliurance.
I argue that the extreme and frequent vomiting I suffer purges me; that, on the other hand, my losses of appetite and the strange fasts I go through digest my morbid humors; and that Nature voids in these stones whatever she has that is superfluous and harmful. Let no one tell me that it is a medicine sold too dear. For what about so many stinking potions, cauteries, incisions, sweatings, setons, diets, and so many methods of cure that often bring us death because we cannot stand their violence and harassment? So when I am attacked, I take it as medicine; when I am free, I take it as a lasting and complete deliverance.
Voicy encore vne faueur de mon mal, particuliere. C’est qu’à peu pres, il faict son ieu à part, et me laisse faire le mien; où il ne tient qu’à faute de courage. En sa plus grande esmotion, ie l’ay tenu dix heures à cheual. Souffrez seulement, vous n’auez que faire d’autre regime. Iouez, disnez, courez, faictes cecy, et faictes encore cela, si vous pouuez; vostre desbauche y seruira plus, qu’elle n’y nuira. Dictes en autant à vn verolé, à vn goutteux, à vn hernieux. Les autres maladies, ont des obligations plus vniuerselles; gehennent bien autrement noz actions; troublent tout nostre ordre, et engagent à leur consideration, tout l’estat de la vie.
Here is yet another particular favor of my illness: it more or less plays its own game and lets me play mine, and if I do not, it is only for want of courage. At its most violent, I have stayed on horseback with it for ten hours. Just endure; you need no other regimen. Play, dine, run, do this, and do that too if you can; your excesses will help more than they harm. Say as much to a man with the pox, to a man with gout, to a man with a hernia. Other illnesses impose more universal obligations, constrain our actions in quite another way, disturb our whole order, and make the whole conduct of our life revolve around them.
Cette-cy ne faict que pinser la peau; elle vous laisse l’entendement, et la volonté en vostre disposition, et la langue, et les pieds, et les mains. Elle vous esueille plustost qu’elle ne vous assoupit. L’ame est frapée de l’ardeur d’vne fiebure, et atterrée d’vne epilepsie, et disloquée par vne aspre micraine, et en fin estonnée par toutes les maladies qui blessent la masse, et les plus nobles parties. Icy, on ne l’attaque point. S’il luy va mal, à sa coulpe. Elle se trahit elle mesme, s’abandonne, et se desmonte. Il n’y a que les fols qui se laissent persuader, que ce corps dur et massif, qui se cuyt en noz rognons, se puisse dissoudre par breuuages.
This one only pinches the skin; it leaves your understanding and your will at your disposal, and your tongue, and your feet, and your hands. It wakes you up rather than putting you to sleep. The soul is struck by the burning of a fever, felled by epilepsy, dislocated by a sharp migraine, and in short stunned by all the illnesses that wound the whole mass and the noblest parts. Here it is not attacked. If things go badly with it, that is its own fault: it betrays itself, abandons itself and falls apart. Only fools let themselves be persuaded that this hard, massive body that is baked in our kidneys can be dissolved by potions.
Parquoy depuis qu’il est esbranlé, il n’est que de luy donner passage, aussi bien le prendra-il.
So once it has been set moving, there is nothing to do but let it pass; it will take its passage anyway.
Ie remarque encore cette particuliere commodité, que c’est vn mal, auquel nous auons peu à deuiner. Nous sommes dispensez du trouble, auquel les autres maux nous iettent, par l’incertitude de leurs causes, et conditions, et progrez. Trouble infiniement penible. Nous n’auons que faire de consultations et interpretations doctorales: les sens nous montrent que c’est, et où c’est.
I note yet another particular advantage: it is an illness about which we have little to guess. We are spared the disturbance that other ills throw us into through the uncertainty of their causes, conditions and progress—an infinitely painful disturbance. We have no need of consultations and learned interpretations: our senses show us what it is and where it is.
Par tels argumens, et forts et foibles, comme Cicero le mal de sa vieillesse, i’essaye d’endormir et amuser mon imagination, et graisser ses playes. Si elles s’empirent demain, demain nous y pouruoyrons d’autres eschappatoires. Qu’il soit vray. Voicy depuis de nouueau, que les plus legers mouuements espreignent le pur sang de mes reins. Quoy pour cela? ie ne laisse de me mouuoir comme deuant, et picquer apres mes chiens, d’vne iuuenile ardeur, et insolente. Et trouue que i’ay grand raison, d’vn si important accident: qui ne me couste qu’vne sourde poisanteur, et alteration en cette partie.
With such arguments, both strong and weak, as Cicero did with the ill of his old age, I try to lull and beguile my imagination and grease its wounds. If they get worse tomorrow, tomorrow we will find other ways out. And so it proves: here, lately, the slightest movements squeeze pure blood from my kidneys. What of it? I do not stop moving as before and riding after my hounds with youthful, insolent ardor. And I find I am getting off very well from so serious an accident, which costs me only a dull heaviness and discomfort in that part.
C’est quelque grosse pierre, qui foulle et consomme la substance de mes roignons: et ma vie, que ie vuide peu à peu: non sans quelque naturelle douceur, comme vn excrement hormais superflu et empeschant. Or sens-ie quelque chose qui crousle; ne vous attendez pas que i’aille m’amusant à recognoistre mon poux, et mes vrines, pour y prendre quelque preuoyance ennuyeuse. Ie seray assez à temps à sentir le mal, sans l’allonger par le mal de la peur. Qui craint de souffrir, il souffre desia de ce qu’il craint. Ioint que la dubitation et ignorance de ceux, qui se meslent d’expliquer les ressorts de Nature, et ses internes progrez: et tant de faux prognostiques de leur art: nous doit faire cognoistre, qu’ell’a ses moyens infiniment incognuz.
It is some big stone crushing and consuming the substance of my kidneys, and my life, which I am voiding little by little, not without some natural pleasure, like an excrement now superfluous and in the way. Now, if I feel something crumbling, do not expect me to start amusing myself by checking my pulse and my urine so as to take some distressing precaution. I will be in time enough to feel the pain without prolonging it with the pain of fear. He who fears suffering already suffers from what he fears. Besides, the doubt and ignorance of those who take it upon themselves to explain the springs of Nature and her inner workings, and so many false prognoses of their art, should make us realize that her means are infinitely unknown.
Il y a grande incertitude, varieté et obscurité, de ce qu’elle nous promet ou menace. Sauf la vieillesse, qui est vn signe indubitable de l’approche de la mort: de tous les autres accidents, ie voy peu de signes de l’aduenir, surquoy nous ayons à fonder nostre diuination. Ie ne me iuge que par vray sentiment, non par discours. A quoy faire? puisque ie n’y veux apporter que l’attente et la patience. Voulez vous sçauoir combien ie gaigne à cela? Regardez ceux qui font autrement, et qui dependent de tant de diuerses persuasions et conseils: combien souuent l’imagination les presse sans le corps. I’ay maintesfois prins plaisir estant en seurté, et deliure de ces accidens dangereux, de les communiquer aux medecins, comme naissans lors en moy.
There is great uncertainty, variety and obscurity in what she promises or threatens us with. Except for old age, which is an indubitable sign that death is approaching, I see in all other accidents few signs of the future on which we can base our divination. I judge myself only by actual feeling, not by reasoning. What would be the point, since I mean to bring to it nothing but waiting and patience? Do you want to know how much I gain by this? Look at those who do otherwise and who depend on so many different opinions and counsels: how often their imagination oppresses them when their body does not. I have many times taken pleasure, when I was safe and free of these dangerous symptoms, in describing them to the physicians as if they were just starting in me.
Ie souffrois l’arrest de leurs horribles conclusions, bien à mon aise; et en demeurois de tant plus obligé à Dieu de sa grace, et mieux instruict de la vanité de cet art.
I heard the sentence of their horrible conclusions quite at my ease, and came away all the more obliged to God for his grace, and better instructed in the vanity of that art.
Sleep, food and daily habits
A portrait of how he sleeps, eats, drinks and dresses as he grows old.
Il n’est rien qu’on doiue tant recommander à la ieunesse, que l’actiueté et la vigilance. Nostre vie, n’est que mouuement. Ie m’esbransle difficilement, et suis tardif par tout: à me leuer, à me coucher, et mes repas. C’est matin pour moy que sept heures: et où ie gouuerne, ie ne disne, ny auant onze, ny ne souppe, qu’apres six heures. I’ay autrefois attribué la cause des fiebures, et maladies où ie suis tombé, à la pesanteur et assoupissement, que le long sommeil m’auoit apporté. Et me suis tousiours repenty de me rendormir le matin. Platon veut plus de mal à l’excés du dormir, qu’à l’excés du boire. I’ayme à coucher dur, et seul; voire sans femme, à la royalle: vn peu bien couuert.
There is nothing we should recommend so strongly to the young as activity and wakefulness. Our life is nothing but movement. I am hard to get moving, and slow in everything: getting up, going to bed, and at my meals. Seven o’clock is early morning for me; and where I am in charge, I do not dine before eleven or sup until after six. I used to attribute the fevers and illnesses I fell into to the heaviness and drowsiness that long sleep had brought on me; and I have always regretted going back to sleep in the morning. Plato condemns excess in sleeping more than excess in drinking. I like to sleep on a hard bed, and alone—even without a wife, in royal fashion—and fairly well covered.
On ne bassine iamais mon lict; mais depuis la vieillesse, on me donne quand i’en ay besoing, des draps, à eschauffer les pieds et l’estomach. On trouuoit à redire au grand Scipion, d’estre dormart, non à mon aduis pour autre raison, sinon qu’il faschoit aux hommes, qu’en luy seul, il n’y eust aucune chose à redire. Si i’ay quelque curiosité en mon traictement, c’est plustost au coucher qu’à autre chose; mais ie cede et m’accommode en general, autant que tout autre, à la necessité. Le dormir a occupé vne grande partie de ma vie: et le continuë encores en cet aage, huict ou neuf heures, d’vne haleine. Ie me retire auec vtilité, de cette propension paresseuse: et en vaulx euidemment mieux.
My bed is never warmed with a warming pan; but since I have grown old, I am given warm cloths when I need them for my feet and stomach. The great Scipio was criticized for being a sleepyhead—for no other reason, in my opinion, than that it annoyed people that in him alone there was nothing to criticize. If I am at all fussy about how I am looked after, it is about my bed more than anything else; but in general I yield and adapt to necessity as well as anyone. Sleep has taken up a large part of my life, and at this age I still sleep eight or nine hours at a stretch. I am usefully weaning myself from this lazy propensity, and I am plainly the better for it.
Ie sens vn peu le coup de la mutation: mais c’est faict en trois iours. Et n’en voy gueres, qui viue à moins, quand il est besoin: et qui s’exerce plus constamment, ny à qui les coruées poisent moins. Mon corps est capable d’vne agitation ferme; mais non pas vehemente et soudaine. Ie fuis meshuy, les exercices violents, et qui me meinent à la sueur: mes membres se lassent auant qu’ils s’eschauffent. Ie me tiens debout, tout le long d’vn iour, et ne m’ennuye point à me promener. Mais sur le paué, depuis mon premier aage, ie n’ay aymé d’aller qu’à cheual.
I feel the shock of the change a little, but it is over in three days. And I hardly see anyone who can live on less when need be, or who exercises more steadily, or on whom hard duties weigh less. My body is capable of steady exertion, but not of violent and sudden exertion. I now avoid violent exercise that makes me sweat: my limbs tire before they warm up. I can stay on my feet all day long, and I do not tire of walking. But on paved streets, since my earliest years, I have liked to go only on horseback.
A pied, ie me crotte iusques aux fesses: et les petites gens, sont subiects par ces ruës, à estre chocquez et coudoyez à faute d’apparence. Et ay aymé à me reposer, soit couché, soit assis, les iambes autant ou plus haultes que le siege.
On foot I get muddy up to my buttocks; and short people are liable, in these streets, to be jostled and elbowed for lack of an imposing presence. And I have liked to rest, lying or sitting, with my legs as high as the seat or higher.
Il n’est occupation plaisante comme la militaire: occupation et noble en execution (car la plus forte, genereuse, et superbe de toutes les vertus, est la vaillance) et noble en sa cause. Il n’est point d’vtilité, ny plus iuste, ny plus vniuerselle, que la protection du repos, et grandeur de son pays.
There is no occupation as pleasant as soldiering—an occupation noble in its execution (for the strongest, most generous and proudest of all the virtues is valor) and noble in its cause. There is no service more just or more universal than protecting the peace and greatness of one’s country.
La compagnie de tant d’hommes vous plaist, nobles, ieunes, actifs: la veuë ordinaire de tant de spectacles tragiques: la liberté de cette conuersation, sans art, et vne façon de vie, masle et sans ceremonie: la varieté de mille actions diuerses: cette courageuse harmonie de la musique guerriere, qui vous entretient et eschauffe, et les oreilles, et l’ame: l’honneur de cet exercice: son aspreté mesme et sa difficulté, que Platon estime si peu, qu’en sa republique il en faict part aux femmes et aux enfants.
You enjoy the company of so many men, noble, young, active; the daily sight of so many tragic spectacles; the freedom of that artless conversation, and a manly way of life without ceremony; the variety of a thousand different actions; that courageous harmony of martial music, which sustains you and warms both your ears and your soul; the honor of this occupation; its very harshness and difficulty, which Plato thinks so little of that in his Republic he gives women and children a share in it.
Vous vous conuiez aux rolles, et hazards particuliers, selon que vous iugez de leur esclat, et de leur importance: soldat volontaire: et voyez quand la vie mesme y est excusablement employée, Pulchrùmque mori succurrit in armis. De craindre les hazards communs, qui regardent vne si grande presse; de n’oser ce que tant de sortes d’ames osent, et tout vn peuple, c’est à faire à vn cœur mol, et bas outre mesure. La compagnie asseure iusques aux enfans. Si d’autres vous surpassent en science, en grace, en force, en fortune; vous auez des causes tierces, à qui vous en prendre; mais de leur ceder en fermeté d’ame, vous n’auez à vous en prendre qu’à vous.
You volunteer for particular roles and risks according to your judgment of their brilliance and importance, as a volunteer soldier; and you see when life itself can be excusably spent there: And it comes to mind how fine it is to die in arms. To fear the common dangers that concern so great a crowd, not to dare what so many kinds of souls dare, and a whole people, is for a heart soft and base beyond measure. Company reassures even children. If others surpass you in knowledge, in grace, in strength, in fortune, you have outside causes to blame; but if you yield to them in firmness of soul, you have only yourself to blame.
La mort est plus abiecte, plus languissante, et penible dans vn lict, qu’en vn combat: les fiebures et les caterrhes, autant douloureux et mortels, qu’vne harquebuzade. Qui seroit faict, à porter valeureusement, les accidens de la vie commune, n’auroit point à grossir son courage, pour se rendre gendarme. Viuere, mi Lucilli, militare est.
Death is more abject, more lingering and painful in bed than in battle; fevers and catarrhs are as painful and deadly as a arquebus shot. Anyone trained to bear the accidents of ordinary life valiantly would not need to swell his courage to become a man-at-arms. To live, my Lucilius, is to be a soldier.
Il ne me souuient point de m’estre iamais veu galleux. Si est la gratterie, des gratifications de Nature les plus douces, et autant à main. Mais ell’a la penitence trop importunément voisine. Ie l’exerce plus aux oreilles, que i’ay au dedans pruantes, par secousses.
I do not remember ever having had the itch. Yet scratching is among the sweetest of Nature’s gratifications, and as handy as any. But its penance follows too annoyingly close behind. I practice it most on my ears, which itch inside from time to time.
Ie suis nay de tous les sens, entiers quasi à la perfection. Mon estomach est commodément bon, comme est ma teste: et le plus souuent, se maintiennent au trauers de mes fiebures, et aussi mon haleine. I’ay outrepassé l’aage auquel des nations, non sans occasion, auoient prescript vne si iuste fin à la vie, qu’elles ne permettoyent point qu’on l’excedast. Si ay-ie encore des remises: quoy qu’inconstantes et courtes, si nettes, qu’il y a peu à dire de la santé et indolence de ma ieunesse. Ie ne parle pas de la vigueur et allegresse: ce n’est pas raison qu’elle me suyue hors ses limites: Non hoc amplius est liminis, aut aquæ / Cœlestis, patiens latus. Mon visage et mes yeux me descouurent incontinent.
I was born with all my senses sound, almost to perfection. My stomach is comfortably good, as is my head; and most of the time they hold up through my fevers, and so does my breath. I have passed the age at which certain nations, not without reason, had prescribed so fitting an end to life that they did not allow anyone to exceed it. Yet I still have remissions, irregular and short though they are, so clear that they fall little short of the health and painlessness of my youth. I do not speak of vigor and sprightliness; it is not reasonable that they should follow me beyond their limits: No longer can this body bear lying at a threshold / or the rain from heaven. My face and eyes give me away at once.
Tous mes changemens commencent par là: et vn peu plus aigres, qu’ils ne sont en effect. Ie fais souuent pitié à mes amis, auant que i’en sente la cause. Mon miroüer ne m’estonne pas: car en la ieunesse mesme, il m’est aduenu plus d’vne fois, de chausser ainsin vn teinct, et vn port trouble, et de mauuais prognostique, sans grand accident: en maniere que les medecins, qui ne trouuoyent au dedans cause qui respondist à cette alteration externe, l’attribuoient à l’esprit, et à quelque passion secrette, qui me rongeast au dedans. Ils se trompoyent. Si le corps se gouuernoit autant selon moy, que faict l’ame, nous marcherions vn peu plus à nostre aise.
All my changes begin there, and look somewhat worse than they really are. My friends often pity me before I feel the cause. My mirror does not alarm me, for even in my youth it happened more than once that I took on a murky complexion and bearing, of bad omen, without any serious ailment; so that the physicians, finding no cause within to account for this outward change, attributed it to the mind and to some secret passion gnawing at me inside. They were wrong. If the body governed itself according to my will as much as my soul does, we would get along a little more comfortably.
Ie l’auois lors, non seulement exempte de trouble, mais encore pleine de satisfaction, et de feste: comme elle est le plus ordinairement: moytié de sa complexion, moytié de son dessein: Nec vitiant artus ægræ contagia mentis. Ie tiens, que cette sienne temperature, a releué maintesfois le corps de ses cheutes. Il est souuent abbatu; que si elle n’est eniouée, elle est au moins en estat tranquille et reposé. I’euz la fiebure quarte, quatre ou cinq mois, qui m’auoit tout desuisagé: l’esprit alla tousiours non paisiblement, mais plaisamment. Si la douleur est hors de moy, l’affoiblissement et langueur ne m’attristent guere. Ie vois plusieurs deffaillances corporelles, qui font horreur seulement à nommer, que ie craindrois moins que mille passions d’esprit que ie vois en vsage.
My soul at that time was not only free from trouble but full of satisfaction and gaiety, as it most usually is, half by its nature, half by its design: Nor does the contagion of a sick mind infect my limbs. I believe that this temper of my soul has many times lifted my body up from its falls. The body is often low; and if the soul is not merry, it is at least in a tranquil and restful state. I had a quartan fever for four or five months, which had quite disfigured me; my mind kept going all the while, not just peacefully but pleasantly. If the pain is outside me, weakness and languor hardly sadden me. I see many bodily failings, horrible merely to name, which I would fear less than a thousand passions of the mind that I see in common use.
Ie prens party de ne plus courre, c’est assez que ie me traine; ny ne me plains de la decadance naturelle qui me tient, Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus? Non plus, que ie ne regrette, que ma durée ne soit aussi longue et entiere que celle d’vn chesne.
I have made up my mind to run no longer—it is enough that I can drag myself along; nor do I complain of the natural decline that has hold of me—Who is surprised at a swollen throat in the Alps?—any more than I regret that my lifespan is not as long and sound as an oak’s.
Ie n’ay point à me plaindre de mon imagination: i’ay eu peu de pensées en ma vie qui m’ayent seulement interrompu le cours de mon sommeil, si elles n’ont esté du desir, qui m’esueillast sans m’affliger. Ie songe peu souuent; et lors c’est des choses fantastiques et des chimeres, produictes communément de pensées plaisantes: plutost ridicules que tristes. Et tiens qu’il est vray, que les songes sont loyaux interpretes de noz inclinations; mais il y a de l’art à les assortir et entendre. Res quæ in vita vsurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident, / Quæque agunt vigilantes, agitántque, ea sicut in somno accidunt, / Minus mirandum est. Platon dit dauantage, que c’est l’office de la prudence d’en tirer des instructions diuinatrices pour l’aduenir.
I have no complaint about my imagination: I have had few thoughts in my life that have so much as interrupted the course of my sleep, unless they were thoughts of desire, which woke me without distressing me. I seldom dream, and then it is of fantastic things and chimeras, usually produced by pleasant thoughts, more ridiculous than sad. And I hold it true that dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is skill in sorting and understanding them. What men busy themselves with in life, what they think of, care for and see, / what they do and pursue when awake—if this happens to them in sleep, / it is less to be wondered at. Plato says, moreover, that it is the office of wisdom to draw from them prophetic instructions for the future.
Ie ne voy rien à cela, sinon les merueilleuses experiences, que Socrates, Xenophon, Aristote en recitent, personnages d’authorité irreprochable. Les histoires disent, que les Atlantes ne songent iamais: qui ne mangent aussi rien, qui aye prins mort. Ce que i’adiouste, d’autant que c’est à l’aduenture l’occasion, pourquoy ils ne songent point. Car Pythagoras ordonnoit certaine preparation de nourriture, pour faire les songes à propos. Les miens sont tendres: et ne m’apportent aucune agitation de corps, ny expression de voix. I’ay veu plusieurs de mon temps, en estre merueilleusement agitez. Theon le philosophe, se promenoit, en songeant: et le valet de Pericles sur les tuilles mesmes et faiste de la maison.
I see nothing in that, except the marvelous experiences that Socrates, Xenophon and Aristotle relate of it, persons of irreproachable authority. The histories say that the Atlantes never dream; they also never eat anything that has been killed. I add this because it is perhaps the reason why they do not dream. For Pythagoras prescribed a certain preparation of food so as to have dreams to the purpose. Mine are mild, and bring me no agitation of body or utterance of voice. I have seen several people in my time wonderfully agitated by theirs. Theon the philosopher walked about while dreaming, and Pericles’ servant did so even on the tiles and the ridge of the house.
Ie ne choisis guere à table; et me prens à la premiere chose et plus voisine: et me remue mal volontiers d’vn goust à vn autre. La presse des plats, et des seruices me desplaist, autant qu’autre presse. Ie me contente aisément de peu de mets; et hay l’opinion de Fauorinus, qu’en vn festin, il faut qu’on vous desrobe la viande où vous prenez appetit, et qu’on vous en substitue tousiours vne nouuelle: et que c’est vn miserable soupper, si on n’a saoullé les assistans de crouppions de diuers oyseaux; et que le seul bequefigue merite qu’on le mange entier. I’vse familierement de viandes sallées; si ayme-ie mieux le pain sans sel.
I am not very choosy at table. I take the first thing and the nearest, and I am reluctant to move from one taste to another. A crowd of dishes and courses displeases me as much as any other crowd. I am easily content with few dishes, and I hate the opinion of Favorinus that at a feast they should snatch away the dish you are getting an appetite for and always put a new one in its place; that it is a wretched supper if the guests have not been glutted with the rumps of various birds; and that the beccafico alone deserves to be eaten whole. I regularly eat salted meats; yet I prefer bread without salt.
Et mon boulanger chez moy, n’en sert pas d’autre pour ma table, contre l’vsage du pays. On a eu en mon enfance principalement à corriger, le refus, que ie faisois des choses que communément on ayme le mieux, en cet aage; succres, confitures, pieces de four. Mon gouuerneur combatit cette hayne de viandes delicates, comme vne espece de delicatesse. Aussi n’est elle autre chose, que difficulté de goust, où qu’il s’applique. Qui oste à vn enfant, certaine particuliere et obstinée affection au pain bis, et au lard, ou à l’ail, il luy oste la friandise. Il en est, qui font les laborieux, et les patiens pour regretter le bœuf, et le iambon, parmy les perdris.
My baker at home serves no other kind for my table, against the custom of the region. In my childhood, the main thing they had to correct was my refusal of the things children of that age usually like best: sugar, preserves, pastries. My tutor fought this dislike of dainty foods as a kind of daintiness in itself. And indeed it is nothing else but fussiness of taste, wherever it is applied. Whoever cures a child of a particular, stubborn fondness for brown bread and bacon, or garlic, cures him of being finicky about food. There are some who play the long-sufferers and make a show of patience by pining for beef and ham among the partridges.
Ils ont bon temps: c’est la delicatesse des delicats; c’est le goust d’vne molle fortune, qui s’affadit aux choses ordinaires et accoustumées, Per quæ luxuria diuitiarum tædio ludit. Laisser à faire bonne chere de ce qu’vn autre la faict; auoir vn soing curieux de son traictement; c’est l’essence de ce vice; Si modica cœnare times olus omne patella. Il y a bien vrayement cette difference, qu’il vaut mieux obliger son desir, aux choses plus aisées à recouurer; mais c’est tousiours vice de s’obliger. I’appellois autresfois, delicat vn mien parent, qui auoit desapris en noz galeres, à se seruir de noz licts, et se despouiller pour se coucher.
They have it easy. It is the daintiness of the dainty; it is the taste of a soft fortune that grows jaded with ordinary, everyday things, By which luxury beguiles its weariness of riches. To stop relishing what another man relishes, to take fastidious care over one’s fare: that is the essence of this vice. If you are afraid to dine on a plain dish of greens. There is indeed this difference: it is better to bind one’s desire to things that are easier to come by. But it is always a vice to bind oneself. I used to call a kinsman of mine dainty because in our galleys he had unlearned how to use our beds and to undress before lying down.
Si i’auois des enfans masles, ie leur desirasse volontiers ma fortune. Le bon pere que Dieu me donna (qui n’a de moy que la recognoissance de sa bonté, mais certes bien gaillarde) m’enuoya dés le berceau, nourrir à vn pauure village des siens, et m’y tint autant que ie fus en nourrisse, et encores au delà: me dressant à la plus basse et commune façon de viure: Magna pars libertatis est benè moratus venter. Ne prenez iamais, et donnez encore moins à vos femmes, la charge de leur nourriture: laissez les former à la fortune, souz des loix populaires et naturelles: laissez à la coustume, de les dresser à la frugalité et à l’austerité; qu’ils ayent plustot à descendre de l’aspreté, qu’à monter vers elle.
If I had sons, I would gladly wish them my own lot. The good father God gave me (who has nothing from me but my gratitude for his goodness—though a very hearty gratitude) sent me from the cradle to be nursed in a poor village of his. He kept me there as long as I was at nurse, and even longer, training me to the lowliest and commonest way of living: A well-disciplined belly is a large part of freedom. Never take on yourselves, and still less give to your wives, the charge of bringing up your children. Let them be shaped by fortune, under the laws of the common people and of nature. Let custom train them to frugality and austerity, so that they have to come down from hardship rather than climb up to it.
Son humeur visoit encore à vne autre fin. De me rallier auec le peuple, et cette condition d’hommes, qui a besoin de nostre ayde: et estimoit que ie fusse tenu de regarder plustost, vers celuy qui me tend les bras, que vers celuy, qui me tourne le dos. Et fut cette raison, pourquoy aussi il me donna à tenir sur les fons, à des personnes de la plus abiecte fortune, pour m’y obliger et attacher.
His temperament aimed at yet another end: to bind me to the people and to that class of men who need our help. He thought I ought to look toward the man who holds out his arms to me rather than toward the man who turns his back on me. And this was why he also had me held at the font by people of the humblest station: to oblige and attach me to them.
Son dessein n’a pas du tout mal succedé. Ie m’adonne volontiers aux petits; soit pour ce qu’il y a plus de gloire: soit par naturelle compassion, qui peut infiniement en moy. Le party que ie condemneray en noz guerres, ie le condemneray plus asprement, fleurissant et prospere. Il sera pour me concilier aucunement à soy quand ie le verray miserable et accablé. Combien volontiers ie considere la belle humeur de Chelonis, fille et femme de Roys de Sparte! Pendant que Cleombrotus son mary, aux desordres de sa ville, eut auantage sur Leonidas son pere, elle fit la bonne fille: se r’allie auec son pere, en son exil, en sa misere, s’opposant au victorieux. La chance vint elle à tourner?
His plan has not altogether failed. I readily take the side of the little people, whether because there is more glory in it or out of a natural compassion that has infinite power over me. The party I condemn in our wars I shall condemn more harshly when it is flourishing and prosperous; it will go some way toward winning me over when I see it wretched and crushed. How gladly I contemplate the fine disposition of Chelonis, daughter and wife of kings of Sparta! While Cleombrotus, her husband, had the upper hand over Leonidas, her father, in the disorders of her city, she played the good daughter: she joined her father in his exile and his misery, opposing the victor. Did luck happen to turn?
la voila changée de vouloir avec la fortune, se rangeant courageusement à son mary: lequel elle suiuit par tout, où sa ruine le porta: n’ayant ce me semble autre choix, que de se ietter au party, où elle faisoit le plus de besoin, et où elle se montroit plus pitoyable. Ie me laisse plus naturellement aller apres l’exemple de Flaminius, qui se prestoit à ceux qui auoyent besoin de luy, plus qu’à ceux qui luy pouuoient bien-faire: que ie ne fais à celuy de Pyrrhus, propre à s’abaisser soubs les grands, et à s’enorgueillir sur les petits.
There she is, changing her will along with fortune, bravely taking her husband’s side, and following him wherever his ruin carried him. She had no other choice, it seems to me, than to throw herself into the party where she was most needed and where she could show the most compassion. I am more naturally inclined to follow the example of Flamininus, who gave himself to those who needed him rather than to those who could do him good, than that of Pyrrhus, who was apt to stoop before the great and swagger over the small.
Les longues tables m’ennuyent, et me nuisent: car soit pour m’y estre accoustumé enfant, à faute de meilleure contenance, ie mange autant que i’y suis. Pourtant chez moy, quoy qu’elle soit des courtes, ie m’y mets volontiers vn peu apres les autres; sur la forme d’Auguste: mais ie ne l’imite pas, en ce qu’il en sortoit aussi auant les autres. Au rebours, i’ayme à me reposer long temps apres, et en ouyr comter: pourueu que ie ne m’y mesle point; car ie me lasse et me blesse de parler, l’estomach plain: autant comme ie trouue l’exercice de crier, et contester, auant le repas, tressalubre et plaisant.
Long meals weary me and do me harm. For, perhaps because I got used to it as a child for lack of anything better to do with myself, I eat as long as I am at table. So at home, though my table is one of the short ones, I like to sit down a little after the others, in the manner of Augustus; but I do not imitate him in leaving before the others as well. On the contrary, I like to sit on for a long while afterward and listen to the talk, provided I take no part in it. For talking on a full stomach tires me and does me harm, just as I find the exercise of shouting and arguing before a meal very healthy and pleasant.
Les anciens Grecs et Romains auoyent meilleure raison que nous, assignans à la nourriture, qui est vne action principale de la vie, si autre extraordinaire occupation ne les en diuertissoit, plusieurs heures, et la meilleure partie de la nuict: mangeans et beuuans moins hastiuement que nous, qui passons en poste toutes noz actions: et estendans ce plaisir naturel, à plus de loisir et d’vsage, y entresemans diuers offices de conuersation, vtiles et aggreables.
The ancient Greeks and Romans were wiser than we are. Unless some other extraordinary occupation diverted them, they gave several hours and the better part of the night to eating, which is one of the principal actions of life. They ate and drank less hurriedly than we do, who rush through all our actions post-haste. They stretched out this natural pleasure with more leisure and enjoyment, interspersing it with various kinds of useful and agreeable conversation.
Ceux qui doiuent auoir soing de moy, pourroyent à bon marché me desrober ce qu’ils pensent m’estre nuisible: car en telles choses, ie ne desire iamais, ny ne trouue à dire, ce que ie ne vois pas: mais aussi de celles qui se presentent, ils perdent leur temps de m’en prescher l’abstinence. Si que quand ie veux ieusner, il me faut mettre à part des souppeurs; et qu’on me presente iustement, autant qu’il est besoin pour vne reglée collation: car si ie me mets à table, i’oublie ma resolution. Quand i’ordonne qu’on change d’apprest à quelque viande; mes gens sçauent, que c’est à dire, que mon appetit est allanguy, et que ie n’y toucheray point.
Those who have to look after me could easily steal from me whatever they think is bad for me, for in such matters I never want or miss what I do not see. But as for things that are set before me, they waste their time preaching abstinence to me. So when I want to fast, I must be kept apart from the supper-eaters and served exactly as much as a measured light meal requires; for if I sit down at table, I forget my resolution. When I order a dish to be prepared some other way, my people know that this means my appetite has flagged and I shall not touch it.
En toutes celles qui le peuuent souffrir, ie les ayme peu cuittes. Et les ayme fort mortifiées: et iusques à l’alteration de la senteur, en plusieurs. Il n’y a que la dureté qui generalement me fasche (de toute autre qualité, ie suis aussi nonchalant et souffrant qu’homme que i’aye cogneu) si que contre l’humeur commune, entre les poissons mesme, il m’aduient d’en trouuer, et de trop frais, et de trop fermes. Ce n’est pas la faute de mes dents, que i’ay eu tousiours bonnes iusques à l’excellence; et que l’aage ne commence de menasser qu’à cette heure. I’ay apprins dés l’enfance, à les frotter de ma seruiette, et le matin, et à l’entrée et issuë de la table.
I like all meats that can stand it underdone. And I like them well hung, in many cases even to the point where the smell changes. Only toughness generally bothers me (about every other quality I am as indifferent and tolerant as any man I have known), so that, contrary to the common taste, I find even some fish both too fresh and too firm. It is not the fault of my teeth. They have always been good, to the point of excellence, and age is only now beginning to threaten them. I learned in childhood to rub them with my napkin, both in the morning and on sitting down to table and rising from it.
Dying by degrees
Losing a tooth, he welcomes a death that comes piece by piece.
Dieu faict grace à ceux à qui il soustrait la vie par le menu. C’est le seul benefice de la vieillesse. La derniere mort en sera d’autant moins plaine et nuisible: elle ne tuera plus qu’vn demy, ou vn quart d’homme. Voila vne dent qui me vient de choir, sans douleur, sans effort: c’estoit le terme naturel de sa durée. Et cette partie de mon estre, et plusieurs autres, sont desia mortes, autres demy mortes, des plus actiues, et qui tenoyent le premier rang pendant la vigueur de mon aage. C’est ainsi que ie fons, et eschappe à moy. Quelle bestise sera-ce à mon entendement, de sentir le sault de cette cheute, desia si auancée, comme si elle estoit entiere? Ie ne l’espere pas.
God shows favor to those from whom he takes life away bit by bit. That is the only benefit of old age. The final death will be all the less complete and harmful for it: it will kill no more than half a man, or a quarter. Here is a tooth that has just fallen out, without pain, without effort: it had reached the natural term of its life. And that part of my being, and several others, are already dead, and others half dead—some of the most active ones, which held first rank in the vigor of my prime. That is how I melt away and slip from myself. What stupidity it would be in my understanding to feel the final drop of this fall, already so far advanced, as if it were the whole fall! I hope it will not.
A la verité, ie reçoy vne principale consolation aux pensées de ma mort, qu’elle soit des iustes et naturelles: et que mes-huy ie ne puisse en cela, requerir ni esperer de la destinée, faueur qu’illegitime. Les hommes se font accroire, qu’ils ont eu autres-fois, comme la stature, la vie aussi plus grande. Mais ils se trompent: et Solon, qui est de ces vieux temps-là, en taille pourtant l’extreme durée à soixante et dix ans. Moy qui ay tant adoré et si vniuersellement cet αριστον μετρον, du temps passé: et qui ay tant pris pour la plus parfaicte, la moyenne mesure: pretendray-ie vne desmesurée et prodigieuse vieillesse?
In truth, my chief consolation when I think of my death is that it will be of the just and natural kind, and that from now on I cannot ask or hope from destiny for any favor in this matter that would not be illegitimate. Men persuade themselves that in former times they had longer lives, as they had greater stature. But they are mistaken: Solon, who belongs to those old times, nevertheless sets the extreme limit of life at seventy years. I, who have so worshiped, and in all things, that measure is best of ancient times, and who have taken the middle measure as the most perfect—am I to aspire to an immoderate and prodigious old age?
Tout ce qui vient au reuers du cours de nature, peut estre fascheux: mais ce, qui vient selon elle, doibt estre tousiours plaisant. Omnia, quæ secundum naturam fiunt, sunt habenda in bonis. Par ainsi, dit Platon, la mort, que les playes ou maladies apportent, soit violente: mais celle, qui nous surprend, la vieillesse nous y conduisant, est de toutes la plus legere, et aucunement delicieuse. Vitam adolescentibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas. La mort se mesle et confond par tout à nostre vie: le declin præoccupe son heure, et s’ingere au cours de nostre auancement mesme. I’ay des portraits de ma forme de vingt et cinq, et de trente cinq ans: ie les compare auec celuy d’asteure.
Whatever goes against the course of nature may be unpleasant, but what comes in accordance with it should always be pleasant. All things that happen according to nature are to be counted among goods. Thus, says Plato, the death brought by wounds or illness may be violent; but the death that comes upon us with old age leading us to it is the lightest of all, and in a way delightful. Violence takes life from the young, ripeness from the old. Death mingles and blends everywhere with our life. Decline anticipates its hour and thrusts itself into the very course of our growth. I have portraits of myself at twenty-five and at thirty-five; I compare them with the one of today.
Combien de fois, ce n’est plus moy: combien est mon image presente plus eslongnée de celles là, que de celle de mon trespas. C’est trop abusé de nature, de la tracasser si loing, qu’elle soit contrainte de nous quitter: et abandonner nostre conduite, nos yeux, nos dens, nos iambes, et le reste, à la mercy d’vn secours estranger et mandié: et nous resigner entre les mains de l’art, las de nous suyure.
How many times over it is no longer I! How much farther my present image is from those than from the image of my death! It is abusing nature too much to drag her so far that she is forced to leave us, to abandon our guidance—our eyes, our teeth, our legs, and the rest—to the mercy of outside help we have to beg for, and, weary of following us, to hand us over to the hands of art.
Ie ne suis excessiuement desireux, ny de salades, ny de fruits: sauf les melons. Mon pere haïssoit toute sorte de sauces, ie les ayme toutes. Le trop manger m’empesche: mais par sa qualité, ie n’ay encore cognoissance bien certaine, qu’aucune viande me nuise: comme aussi ie ne remarque, ny lune plaine, ny basse, ny l’automne du printemps. Il y a des mouuemens en nous, inconstans et incognuz. Car des refors, pour exemple, ie les ay trouuez premierement commodes, depuis fascheux, à present de rechef commodes. En plusieurs choses, ie sens mon estomach et mon appetit aller ainsi diuersifiant. I’ay rechangé du blanc au clairet, et puis du clairet au blanc.
I am not excessively fond of salads or of fruit, except melons. My father hated every kind of sauce; I like them all. Eating too much bothers me; but as for the nature of foods, I do not yet know for certain that any food harms me. Nor do I notice full moon or waning moon, or autumn as against spring. There are movements in us that are inconstant and unknown. Radishes, for example: first I found them agreeable, then troublesome, and now agreeable again. In several things I feel my stomach and my appetite varying like this. I have switched from white wine to claret, and then from claret back to white.
Ie suis friand de poisson, et fais mes iours gras des maigres: et mes festes des iours de ieusne. Ie croy ce qu’aucuns disent, qu’il est de plus aisée digestion que la chair. Comme ie fais conscience de manger de la viande, le iour de poisson: aussi fait mon goust, de mesler le poisson à la chair. Cette diuersité me semble trop eslongnée.
I am fond of fish, and I make my meat days of the lean days and my feasts of the fast days. I believe what some say, that it is easier to digest than meat. Just as my conscience balks at eating meat on a fish day, so my taste balks at mixing fish with meat. The gap between them seems to me too wide.
Dés ma ieunesse, ie desrobois par fois quelque repas: ou à fin d’esguiser mon appetit au lendemain (car comme Epicurus ieusnoit et faisoit des repas maigres, pour accoustumer sa volupté à se passer de l’abondance: moy au rebours, pour dresser ma volupté, à faire mieux son profit, et se seruir plus alaigrement, de l’abondance) ou ie ieusnois, pour conseruer ma vigueur au seruice de quelque action de corps ou d’esprit: car et l’vn et l’autre, s’apparesse cruellement en moy, par la repletion: (et sur tout, ie hay ce sot accouplage, d’vne Deesse si saine et si alegre, auec ce petit Dieu indigest et roteur, tout bouffy de la fumée de sa liqueur) ou pour guarir mon estomach malade: ou pour estre sans compaignie propre.
Since my youth I have sometimes skipped a meal. Sometimes it was to sharpen my appetite for the next day: for as Epicurus fasted and ate lean meals to accustom his pleasure to do without abundance, I did the opposite, to train my pleasure to make better profit and more cheerful use of abundance. Sometimes I fasted to keep my vigor for some action of body or mind, for both grow cruelly sluggish in me from a full stomach (and above all I hate that foolish coupling of so healthy and lively a goddess with that little indigestible, belching god, all bloated with the fumes of his liquor). Sometimes it was to cure my sick stomach, or because I lacked suitable company.
Car ie dy comme ce mesme Epicurus, qu’il ne faut pas tant regarder ce qu’on mange, qu’auec qui on mange. Et louë Chilon, de n’auoir voulu promettre de se trouuer au festin de Periander, auant que d’estre informé, qui estoyent les autres conuiez. Il n’est point de si doux apprest pour moy, ny de sauce si appetissante, que celle qui se tire de la societé. Ie croys qu’il est plus sain, de manger plus bellement et moins: et de manger plus souuent. Mais ie veux faire valoir l’appetit et la faim: ie n’aurois nul plaisir à trainer à la medecinale, trois ou quatre chetifs repas par iour, ainsi contrains. Qui m’asseureroit que le goust ouuert, que i’ay ce matin, ie le retrouuasse encore à souper?
For I say, like that same Epicurus, that we should look not so much at what we eat as at whom we eat with. And I praise Chilon for refusing to promise to attend Periander’s feast before he had been told who the other guests were. For me there is no dressing so sweet, no sauce so appetizing, as the one that comes from company. I believe it is healthier to eat more gently and less, and to eat more often. But I want to give appetite and hunger their due. I would get no pleasure from dragging out three or four meager meals a day, medicinally, under such constraint. Who could assure me that I would find the keen appetite I have this morning again at supper?
Prenons, sur tout les vieillards: le premier temps opportun qui nous vient. Laissons aux faiseurs d’almanachs les esperances et les prognostiques. L’extreme fruict de ma santé, c’est la volupté: tenons nous à la premiere presente et cognuë. I’euite la constance en ces loix de ieusne. Qui veut qu’vne forme luy serue, fuye à la continuer: nous nous y durcissons, nos forces s’y endorment: six mois apres, vous y aurez si bien acoquiné vostre estomach, que vostre proffit, ce ne sera que d’auoir perdu la liberté d’en vser autrement sans dommage.
Let us seize—old men above all—the first opportune moment that comes our way. Let us leave hopes and forecasts to the almanac-makers. The ultimate fruit of my health is pleasure: let us hold on to the first pleasure that is present and known. I avoid constancy in these laws of fasting. Whoever wants a regimen to serve him should avoid keeping it up. We grow hardened to it, and our powers fall asleep in it. Six months later you will have got your stomach so used to it that your only profit will be to have lost the freedom to do otherwise without harm.
Ie ne porte les iambes, et les cuisses, non plus couuertes en hyuer qu’en esté, vn bas de soye tout simple. Ie me suis laissé aller pour le secours de mes reumes, à tenir la teste plus chaude, et le ventre, pour ma colique. Mes maux s’y habituerent en peu de iours, et desdaignerent mes ordinaires prouisions. I’estois monté d’vne coiffe à vn couurechef, et d’vn bonnet à vn chapeau double. Les embourreures de mon pourpoint, ne me seruent plus que de galbe: ce n’est rien: si ie n’y adiouste vne peau de lieure ou de vautour: vne calote à ma teste. Suyuez cette gradation, vous irez beau train. Ie n’en feray rien. Et me dedirois volontiers du commencement que i’y ay donné, si i’osois.
I keep my legs and thighs no more covered in winter than in summer: a single plain silk stocking. To help with my colds I let myself keep my head warmer, and my belly for my colic. My ailments got used to it in a few days and scorned my ordinary provisions. I had moved up from a cap to a kerchief, and from a bonnet to a double hat. The padding of my doublet now serves only for show. That is nothing, unless I add a hare’s skin or a vulture’s skin, and a skullcap on my head. Follow this progression and you will go at a fine pace. I shall do nothing of the sort. And I would gladly take back the start I gave it, if I dared.
Tombez vous en quelque inconuenient nouueau? cette reformation ne vous sert plus: vous y estes accoustumé, cherchez en vne autre. Ainsi se ruinent ceux qui se laissent empestrer à des regimes contraincts, et s’y astreignent superstitieusement: il leur en faut encore, et encore apres, d’autres au delà: ce n’est iamais fait.
Do you fall into some new trouble? This adjustment is no use to you anymore; you are used to it; look for another. That is how those people ruin themselves who let themselves get entangled in strict regimens and bind themselves to them superstitiously. They need more, and more again after that, and still others beyond: it is never done.
Pour nos occupations, et le plaisir: il est beaucoup plus commode, comme faisoyent les anciens, de perdre le disner, et remettre à faire bonne chere à l’heure de la retraicte et du repos, sans rompre le iour: ainsi le faisois-ie autresfois. Pour la santé, ie trouue depuis par experience au contraire, qu’il vaut mieux disner, et que la digestion se faict mieux en veillant. Ie ne suis guere subiect à estre alteré ny sain ny malade: i’ay bien volontiers lors la bouche seche, mais sans soif. Et communement, ie ne bois que du desir qui m’en vient en mangeant, et bien auant dans le repas. Ie bois assez bien, pour vn homme de commune façon.
For our occupations, and for pleasure, it is much more convenient to skip the midday meal, as the ancients did, and put off feasting until the hour of retirement and rest, without breaking up the day. That is what I used to do. For health, on the contrary, I have since found by experience that it is better to eat at midday, and that digestion goes better when one is awake. I am hardly ever thirsty, sick or well. At such times I do often have a dry mouth, but without thirst. As a rule I drink only from the desire that comes to me while eating, and well into the meal. I drink fairly well for a man of ordinary make.
En esté, et en vn repas appetissant, ie n’outrepasse point seulement les limites d’Auguste, qui ne beuuoit que trois fois precisement: mais pour n’offenser la regle de Democritus, qui deffendoit de s’arrester à quattre, comme à vn nombre mal fortuné, ie coule à vn besoing, iusques à cinq: trois demysetiers, enuiron. Car les petis verres sont les miens fauoris: et me plaist de les vuider, ce que d’autres euitent comme chose mal seante. Ie trempe mon vin plus souuent à moitié, par fois au tiers d’eau. Et quand ie suis en ma maison, d’vn ancien vsage que son medecin ordonnoit à mon pere, et à soy, on mesle celuy qu’il me faut, des la sommelerie, deux ou trois heures auant qu’on serue.
In summer, and at an appetizing meal, I not only exceed the limit of Augustus, who drank precisely three times and no more, but, so as not to break the rule of Democritus, who forbade stopping at four as an unlucky number, I slip on when need be to five: about three half-pints. For small glasses are my favorites, and I like to empty them, which others avoid as unseemly. Most often I dilute my wine half with water, sometimes with a third. And when I am at home, following an old practice that his physician prescribed for my father and for himself, the wine I need is mixed in the pantry two or three hours before it is served.
Ils disent, que Cranaus Roy des Atheniens fut inuenteur de cet vsage, de tremper le vin: vtilement ou non, i’en ay veu debattre. I’estime plus decent et plus sain, que les enfans n’en vsent qu’apres seize ou dix-huict ans. La forme de viure plus vsitée et commune, est la plus belle. Toute particularité, m’y semble à euiter: et haïrois autant vn Aleman qui mist de l’eau au vin, qu’vn François qui le buroit pur. L’vsage publiq donne loy à telles choses.
They say that Cranaus, king of the Athenians, invented this practice of watering wine; whether usefully or not, I have heard it debated. I think it more seemly and healthier for children not to drink wine until after sixteen or eighteen. The most usual and common way of life is the finest. All singularity seems to me something to avoid in it; and I would hate a German who put water in his wine as much as a Frenchman who drank it neat. Public usage lays down the law in such things.
Ie crains vn air empesché, et fuys mortellement la fumée: (la premiere reparation où ie courus chez moy, ce fut aux cheminées, et aux retraicts, vice commun des vieux bastimens, et insupportable) et entre les difficultez de la guerre, comte ces espaisses poussieres, dans lesquelles on nous tient enterrez au chault, tout le long d’vne iournée. I’ay la respiration libre et aysée: et se passent mes morfondements le plus souuent sans offence du poulmon, et sans toux.
I dread stuffy air and avoid smoke like death (the first repairs I rushed to make in my house were to the chimneys and privies, a common and unbearable fault of old buildings). And among the hardships of war I count those thick clouds of dust in which they keep us buried in the heat all day long. My breathing is free and easy, and my colds usually pass without affecting the lungs and without a cough.
L’aspreté de l’esté m’est plus ennemie que celle de l’hyuer: car outre l’incommodité de la chaleur, moins remediable que celle du froid, et outre le coup que les rayons du soleil donnent à la teste: mes yeux s’offencent de toute lueur esclatante: ie ne sçaurois à cette heure disner assiz, vis à vis d’vn feu ardent, et lumineux.
The harshness of summer is more hostile to me than that of winter. For besides the discomfort of heat, which is harder to remedy than that of cold, and besides the blow the sun’s rays deal to the head, my eyes are hurt by any glaring light. I could not now dine sitting opposite a bright, blazing fire.
Pour amortir la blancheur du papier, au temps que i’auois plus accoustumé de lire, ie couchois sur mon liure, vne piece de verre, et m’en trouuois fort soulagé. I’ignore iusques à present, l’vsage des lunettes: et vois aussi loing, que ie fis onques, et que tout autre. Il est vray, que sur le declin du iour, ie commence à sentir du trouble, et de la foiblesse à lire: dequoy l’exercice a tousiours trauaillé mes yeux: mais sur tout nocturne. Voyla vn pas en arriere: à toute peine sensible. Ie reculeray d’vn autre; du second au tiers, du tiers au quart, si coïement qu’il me faudra estre aueugle formé, auant que ie sente la decadence et vieillesse de ma veuë.
To dull the whiteness of the paper, when I was more in the habit of reading, I used to lay a piece of glass over my book, and found it a great relief. To this day I know nothing of the use of spectacles, and I see as far as I ever did, and as far as anyone. It is true that as the day declines I begin to feel some blurring and weakness when I read—an exercise that has always strained my eyes, but especially at night. That is one step backward, barely perceptible. I shall go back another, from the second to the third, from the third to the fourth, so quietly that I shall have to be fully blind before I feel the decline and aging of my sight.
Tant les Parques destordent artificiellement nostre vie. Si suis-ie en doubte, que mon ouïe marchande à s’espaissir: et verrez que ie l’auray demy perdue, que ie m’en prendray encore à la voix de ceux qui parlent à moy. Il faut bien bander l’ame, pour luy faire sentir, comme elle s’escoule.
So artfully do the Fates unwind our life. And yet I suspect that my hearing is beginning to grow dull; and you will see that when I have half lost it I shall still be blaming the voices of the people speaking to me. One must strain the soul hard indeed to make it feel how it is ebbing away.
Mon marcher est prompt et ferme: et ne sçay lequel des deux, ou l’esprit ou le corps, i’ay arresté plus mal-aisément, en mesme poinct. Le prescheur est bien de mes amys, qui oblige mon attention, tout vn sermon. Aux lieux de ceremonie, où chacun est si bandé en contenance, où i’ay veu les dames tenir leurs yeux mesmes si certains, ie ne suis iamais venu à bout, que quelque piece des miennes n’extrauague tousiours: encore que i’y sois assis, i’y suis peu rassis.
My walk is quick and firm; and I do not know which of the two, mind or body, I have found harder to keep fixed on one spot. The preacher who holds my attention through a whole sermon is a good friend of mine indeed. At ceremonies, where everyone keeps his countenance so stiff, where I have seen ladies hold even their eyes so steady, I have never managed to stop some part of me from forever wandering off. Though I am seated, I am hardly settled.
Comme la chambriere du Philosophe Chrysippus, disoit de son maistre, qu’il n’estoit yure que par les iambes: car il auoit cette coustume de les remuer, en quelque assiette qu’il fust: et elle le disoit, lors que le vin esmouuant ses compaignons, luy n’en sentoit aucune alteration. On a peu dire aussi dés mon enfance, que i’auoy de la follie aux pieds, ou de l’argent vif: tant i’y ay de remuement et d’inconstance naturelle, en quelque lieu, que ie les place.
The maidservant of the philosopher Chrysippus said of her master that he was drunk only in his legs, for he had the habit of moving them whatever position he was in; and she said it at times when the wine was stirring his companions and he felt no change from it. In the same way it could have been said of me since childhood that I had folly in my feet, or quicksilver, so much fidgeting and natural restlessness do I have in them, wherever I put them.
C’est indecence, outre ce qu’il nuit à la santé, voire et au plaisir, de manger gouluement, comme ie fais. Ie mors souuent ma langue, par fois mes doigts, de hastiueté. Diogenes, rencontrant vn enfant qui mangeoit ainsin, en donna vn soufflet à son precepteur. Il y auoit des hommes à Rome, qui enseignoyent à mascher, comme à marcher, de bonne grace. I’en pers le loisir de parler, qui est vn si doux assaisonnement des tables, pourueu que ce soyent des propos de mesme, plaisans et courts.
It is unseemly, besides being bad for one’s health and even for one’s pleasure, to eat greedily, as I do. I often bite my tongue, and sometimes my fingers, in my haste. Diogenes, meeting a boy who was eating like that, gave his tutor a slap. There were men in Rome who taught people to chew gracefully, as they taught them to walk. Eating this way I lose the leisure to talk, which is such a sweet seasoning to a meal, provided the talk is of the same sort, pleasant and short.
Il y a de la ialousie et enuie entre nos plaisirs, ils se choquent et empeschent l’vn l’autre. Alcibiades, homme bien entendu à faire bonne chere, chassoit la musique mesme des tables, pour qu’elle ne troublast la douceur des deuis, par la raison, que Platon luy preste. Que c’est vn vsage d’hommes populaires, d’appeller des ioüeurs d’instruments et des chantres aux festins, à faute de bons discours et aggreables entretiens, dequoy les gens d’entendement sçauent s’entrefestoyer. Varro demande cecy au conuiue: l’assemblée de personnes belles de presence, et aggreables de conuersation, qui ne soyent ny muets ny bauarts: netteté et delicatesse aux viures, et au lieu: et le temps serein. Ce n’est pas vne feste peu artificielle, et peu voluptueuse, qu’vn bon traittement de table.
There is jealousy and envy among our pleasures: they clash and get in each other’s way. Alcibiades, a man who well understood good living, banished even music from the table, so that it would not disturb the sweetness of conversation, for the reason Plato gives him: that it is a custom of common men to call in instrument players and singers to their feasts, for lack of the good talk and pleasant conversation with which people of understanding know how to regale one another. Varro asks this of a banquet: a gathering of people handsome in appearance and agreeable in conversation, who are neither mute nor chatterboxes; cleanliness and delicacy in the food and the place; and fine weather. A good table is no small work of art and no small pleasure.
Ny les grands chefs de guerre, ny les grands philosophes, n’en ont desdaigné l’vsage et la science. Mon imagination en a donné trois en garde à ma memoire, que la fortune me rendit de souueraine douceur, en diuers temps de mon aage plus fleurissant. Mon estat present m’en forclost. Car chacun pour soy y fournit de grace principale, et de saueur, selon la bonne trampe de corps et d’ame, en quoy lors il se trouue. Moy qui ne manie que terre à terre, hay cette inhumaine sapience, qui nous veut rendre desdaigneux et ennemis de la culture du corps. I’estime pareille iniustice, de prendre à contre cœur les voluptez naturelles, que de les prendre trop à cœur.
Neither great generals nor great philosophers have disdained its practice and its science. My imagination has entrusted to my memory three such meals, which fortune made supremely sweet for me at various times in the flower of my life. My present state shuts me out of them, for each person supplies the chief charm and savor according to the good temper of body and soul he finds himself in at the time. I, who deal only in things down to earth, hate that inhuman wisdom that would make us disdainful of the care of the body and hostile to it. I think it equally unjust to set our hearts against natural pleasures as to set our hearts on them too much.
Accepting pleasure
Natural pleasures should be received, neither chased nor fled; when I dance, I dance.
Xerxes estoit un fat, qui enueloppé en toutes les voluptez humaines, alloit proposer prix à qui luy en trouueroit d’autres. Mais non guere moins fat est celuy, qui retranche celles, que nature luy a trouuées. Il ne les faut ny suyure ny fuyr: il les faut receuoir. Ie les reçois vn peu plus grassement et gratieusement, et me laisse plus volontiers aller vers la pente naturelle. Nous n’auons que faire d’exaggerer leur inanité: elle se faict assez sentir, et se produit assez. Mercy à nostre esprit maladif, rabat-ioye, qui nous desgouste d’elles, comme de soy-mesme.
Xerxes was a fool: wrapped in every human pleasure, he went and offered a prize to whoever could find him others. But hardly less a fool is the man who cuts off those that nature has found for him. We should neither pursue them nor flee them; we should accept them. I accept them a little more amply and graciously, and more readily let myself follow the natural slope. We have no need to exaggerate their emptiness: it makes itself felt enough and shows itself enough. Thanks to our sickly, killjoy mind, which puts us off them as it puts us off itself.
Il traitte et soy, et tout ce qu’il reçoit, tantost auant, tantost arriere, selon son estre insatiable, vagabond et versatile: Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis, acescit. Moy, qui me vente d’embrasser si curieusement les commoditez de la vie, et si particulierement: n’y trouue, quand i’y regarde ainsi finement, à peu pres que du vent. Mais quoy? nous sommes par tout vent. Et le vent encore, plus sagement que nous s’ayme à bruire, à s’agiter: et se contente en ses propres offices: sans desirer la stabilité, la solidité, qualitez non siennes.
It treats both itself and everything it receives now well, now badly, according to its insatiable, wandering, and fickle nature: Unless the vessel is clean, whatever you pour into it turns sour. I, who boast of embracing the comforts of life so carefully and so particularly, find in them, when I look at them that closely, little more than wind. But what of it? We are wind through and through. And even the wind, more wisely than we, likes to make a noise and move about, and is content with its own functions, without wishing for stability and solidity, qualities that are not its own.
Les plaisirs purs de l’imagination, ainsi que les desplaisirs, disent aucuns, sont les plus grands: comme l’exprimoit la balance de Critolaüs. Ce n’est pas merueille. Elle les compose à sa poste, et se les taille en plein drap. I’en voy tous les iours, des exemples insignes, et à l’aduenture desirables. Mais moy, d’vne condition mixte, grossier, ne puis mordre si à faict, à ce seul obiect, si simple: que ie ne me laisse tout lourdement aller aux plaisirs presents, de la loy humaine et generale. Intellectuellement sensibles, sensiblement intellectuels. Les philosophes Cyrenaïques veulent, que comme les douleurs, aussi les plaisirs corporels soyent plus puissants: et comme doubles, et comme plus iustes. Il en est, comme dit Aristote, qui d’vne farouche stupidité, en font les desgoustez.
The pure pleasures of the imagination, some say, like its displeasures, are the greatest, as the scales of Critolaus expressed. No wonder: the imagination composes them as it pleases and cuts them out of whole cloth. Every day I see striking examples of this, and perhaps enviable ones. But I, being of a mixed condition and coarse, cannot bite so wholly into this single, simple object that I do not let myself go, quite heavily, to the present pleasures of the general human law—intellectually sensual, sensually intellectual. The Cyrenaic philosophers hold that bodily pleasures, like bodily pains, are the more powerful, both as being double and as being more just. There are some, as Aristotle says, who out of a fierce insensibility make a show of disdaining them.
I’en cognoy d’autres qui par ambition le font. Que ne renoncent ils encore au respirer? que ne viuent-ils du leur, et ne refusent la lumiere, de ce qu’elle est gratuite: ne leur coutant ny inuention ny vigueur? Que Mars, ou Pallas, ou Mercure, les substantent pour voir, au lieu de Venus, de Cerez, et de Bacchus. Chercheront ils pas la quadrature du cercle, iuchez sur leurs femmes? Ie hay, qu’on nous ordonne d’auoir l’esprit aux nues, pendant que nous auons le corps à table. Ie ne veux pas que l’esprit s’y clouë, ny qu’il s’y veautre: mais ie veux qu’il s’y applique: qu’il s’y see, non qu’il s’y couche.
I know others who do it out of ambition. Why don’t they give up breathing too? Why don’t they live on their own resources, and refuse the light because it is free and costs them neither invention nor vigor? Let Mars or Pallas or Mercury feed them, just to see, instead of Venus, Ceres, and Bacchus. Won’t they be seeking to square the circle while perched on their wives? I hate being told to keep our minds in the clouds while our bodies are at table. I do not want the mind to be nailed to the table or to wallow there, but I want it to attend to it: to sit at it, not lie down at it.
Aristippus ne defendoit que le corps, comme si nous n’auions pas d’ame: Zenon n’embrassoit que l’ame, comme si nous n’auions pas de corps. Touts deux vicieusement. Pythagoras, disent-ils, a suiuy vne philosophie toute en contemplation: Socrates, toute en mœurs et en action: Platon en a trouué le temperament entre les deux. Mais ils le disent, pour en conter. Et le vray temperament se trouue en Socrates; et Platon est plus Socratique, que Pythagorique: et luy sied mieux. Quand ie dance, ie dance: quand ie dors, ie dors.
Aristippus defended only the body, as if we had no soul; Zeno embraced only the soul, as if we had no body. Both were at fault. Pythagoras, they say, followed a philosophy that was all contemplation, Socrates one that was all morals and action; Plato found the balance between the two. But they say this just to tell a story. The true balance is found in Socrates; and Plato is more Socratic than Pythagorean, and it suits him better. When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep.
Voire, et quand ie me promeine solitairement en vn beau verger, si mes pensees se sont entretenuës des occurrences estrangeres quelque partie du temps: quelque autre partie, ie les rameine à la promenade, au verger, à la douceur de cette solitude, et à moy.
Yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been occupied with outside matters for part of the time, for another part I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to myself.
Nature a maternellement obserué cela, que les actions qu’elle nous a enioinctes pour nostre besoing, nous fussent aussi voluptueuses. Et nous y conuie, non seulement par la raison: mais aussi par l’appetit: c’est iniustice de corrompre ses regles. Quand ie vois, et Cæsar, et Alexandre, au plus espaiz de sa grande besongne, iouïr si plainement des plaisirs humains et corporels, ie ne dis pas que ce soit relascher son ame, ie dis que c’est la roidir: sousmettant par vigueur de courage, à l’vsage de la vie ordinaire, ces violentes occupations et laborieuses pensées. Sages, s’ils eussent creu, que c’estoit là leur ordinaire vocation, cette-cy, l’extraordinaire. Nous sommes de grands fols. Il a passé sa vie en oisiueté, disons-nous: ie n’ay rien faict d’auiourd’huy. Quoy?
Nature has seen to it, like a mother, that the actions she has enjoined on us for our needs should also give us pleasure. She invites us to them not only through reason but also through appetite: it is wrong to corrupt her rules. When I see both Caesar and Alexander, in the thick of their great task, enjoying human and bodily pleasures so fully, I do not say that they are relaxing their souls; I say they are toughening them, by strength of spirit subjecting those violent occupations and laborious thoughts to the practice of ordinary life. Wise men they would have been, had they believed that ordinary life was their regular calling and the other their extraordinary one. We are great fools. “He has spent his life in idleness,” we say; “I have done nothing today.” What?
auez-vous pas vescu? C’est non seulement la fondamentale, mais la plus illustre de vos occupations. Si on m’eust mis au propre des grands maniements, i’eusse montré ce que ie sçauoy faire. Auez vous sceu mediter et manier vostre vie? vous auez faict la plus grande besoigne de toutes. Pour se montrer et exploicter, nature n’a que faire de fortune. Elle se montre egallement en tous estages: et derriere, comme sans rideau. Auez-vous sceu composer vos mœurs: vous auez bien plus faict que celuy qui a composé des liures. Auez-vous sceu prendre du repos: vous auez plus faict, que celuy qui a pris des Empires et des villes.
Have you not lived? That is not only the most fundamental of your occupations but the most illustrious. “If I had been put in charge of great affairs, I would have shown what I could do.” Have you known how to think over and manage your life? You have done the greatest task of all. To show and exert herself, nature has no need of fortune. She shows herself equally at every level, and behind a curtain as well as without one. Have you known how to compose your character? You have done much more than the man who has composed books. Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than the man who has taken empires and cities.
Living fittingly
To live well is man’s masterpiece, and Socrates is its model.
Le glorieux chef-d’œuure de l’homme, c’est viure à propos. Toutes autres choses: regner, thesauriser, bastir, n’en sont qu’appendicules et adminicules, pour le plus. Ie prens plaisir de voir vn general d’armée au pied d’vne breche qu’il veut tantost attaquer, se prestant tout entier et deliure, à son disner, au deuis, entre ses amis. Et Brutus, ayant le ciel et la terre conspirez à l’encontre de luy, et de la liberté Romaine, desrober à ses rondes, quelque heure de nuict, pour lire et breueter Polybe en toute securité. C’est aux petites ames enseuelies du poix des affaires, de ne s’en sçauoir purement desmesler: de ne les sçauoir et laisser et reprendre.
The glorious masterpiece of man is to live fittingly. All other things—ruling, hoarding, building—are only little appendages and props, at most. I enjoy seeing a general at the foot of a breach he is about to attack, giving himself wholly and freely to his dinner and to conversation among his friends. And Brutus, with heaven and earth conspiring against him and against Roman liberty, stealing an hour of the night from his rounds to read and summarize Polybius in perfect calm. It is for little souls, buried under the weight of business, not to know how to disentangle themselves from it cleanly, not to know how to set it aside and take it up again.
O fortes peioràque passi / Mecum sæpe viri, nunc vino pellite curas, / Cras ingens iterabimus æquor.
O brave men, who have often suffered worse things / with me, now drive away your cares with wine; / tomorrow we shall set out again on the vast sea.
Soit par gosserie, soit à certes, que le vin theologal et Sorbonique est passé en prouerbe, et leurs festins: ie trouue que c’est raison, qu’ils en disnent d’autant plus commodément et plaisamment, qu’ils ont vtilement et serieusement employé la matinée à l’exercice de leur eschole. La conscience d’auoir bien dispensé les autres heures, est vn iuste et sauoureux condiment des tables. Ainsin ont vescu les sages. Et cette inimitable contention à la vertu, qui nous estonne en l’vn et l’autre Caton, cette humeur seuere iusques à l’importunité, s’est ainsi mollement submise, et pleuë aux loix de l’humaine condition, et de Venus et de Bacchus.
Whether in jest or in earnest, the wine of the theologians and the Sorbonne has become proverbial, and their feasts too. I think it only right that they dine all the more comfortably and pleasantly for having spent the morning usefully and seriously in the work of their school. The consciousness of having spent the other hours well is a just and savory condiment at table. That is how the sages lived. And that inimitable striving for virtue which astounds us in both Catos, that disposition severe to the point of being tiresome, submitted thus gently and yielded to the laws of the human condition, and of Venus and Bacchus.
Suiuant les preceptes de leur secte, qui demandent le sage parfaict, autant expert et entendu à l’vsage des voluptez qu’en tout autre deuoir de la vie. Cui cor sapiat, ei et sapiat palatus.
They were following the precepts of their sect, which require the perfect sage to be as expert and skilled in the enjoyment of pleasures as in every other duty of life. Let him whose heart is discerning have a discerning palate too.
Le relaschement et facilité honore ce semble à merueilles, et sied mieux à vne ame forte et genereuse. Epaminondas n’estimoit pas que de se mesler à la dance des garçons de sa ville, de chanter, de sonner, et s’y embesongner auec attention, fust chose qui derogeast à l’honneur de ses glorieuses victoires, et à la parfaicte reformation des mœurs qui estoit en luy. Et parmy tant d’admirables actions de Scipion l’ayeul, personnage digne de l’opinion d’vne geniture celeste, il n’est rien qui luy donne plus de grace, que de le voir nonchalamment et puerilement baguenaudant à amasser et choisir des coquilles, et ioüer à cornichon va deuant, le long de la marine auec Lælius.
Ease and relaxation, it seems, do a strong and generous soul wonderful honor and suit it best. Epaminondas did not think that joining in the dance of the young men of his city, singing, playing music, and giving his whole attention to it, in any way detracted from the honor of his glorious victories or from the perfect reform of morals that was in him. And among so many admirable actions of Scipio the grandfather, a man worthy of being thought of heavenly birth, nothing gives him more charm than to see him idly and childishly fooling about, gathering and choosing shells and playing ducks and drakes along the seashore with Laelius.
Et s’il faisoit mauuais temps, s’amusant et se chatouillant, à representer par escript en comedies, les plus populaires et basses actions des hommes. Et la teste pleine de cette merueilleuse entreprinse d’Annibal et d’Afrique; visitant les escholes en Sicile, et se trouuant aux leçons de la philosophie, iusques à en auoir armé les dents de l’aueugle enuie de ses ennemis à Rome. Ny chose plus remarquable en Socrates, que ce que tout vieil, il trouue le temps de se faire instruire à baller, et iouër des instrumens: et le tient pour bien employé. Cettuy-cy, s’est veu en ecstase debout, vn iour entier et vne nuict, en presence de toute l’armée Grecque, surpris et rauy par quelque profonde pensée.
And in bad weather he amused and tickled himself by portraying in writing, in comedies, the most common and lowly actions of men. And with his head full of that marvelous enterprise against Hannibal and Africa, he visited the schools in Sicily and attended lectures in philosophy, so much so that he armed the blind envy of his enemies in Rome with teeth. Nor is there anything more remarkable in Socrates than that, quite old, he found time to have himself taught dancing and playing instruments, and thought it time well spent. This same man was seen in an ecstasy, standing, for a whole day and a night, in the presence of the whole Greek army, overtaken and enraptured by some profound thought.
Il s’est veu le premier parmy tant de vaillants hommes de l’armée, courir au secours d’Alcibiades, accablé des ennemis: le couurir de son corps, et le descharger de la presse, à viue force d’armes. En la bataille Delienne, releuer et sauuer Xenophon, renuersé de son cheual. Et emmy tout le peuple d’Athenes, outré, comme luy, d’vn si indigne spectacle, se presenter le premier à recourir Theramenes, que les trente tyrans faisoient mener à la mort par leurs satellites: et ne desista cette hardie entreprinse, qu’à la remontrance de Theramenes mesme: quoy qu’il ne fust suiuy que de deux, en tout. Il s’est veu, recherché par vne beauté, de laquelle il estoit esprins, maintenir au besoing vne seuere abstinence.
He was seen, first among so many valiant men in the army, running to rescue Alcibiades when he was overwhelmed by the enemy, covering him with his body, and freeing him from the throng by sheer force of arms. In the battle of Delium he was seen lifting up and saving Xenophon, who had been thrown from his horse. And amid all the people of Athens, outraged as he was by so shameful a spectacle, he was the first to come forward to rescue Theramenes, whom the Thirty Tyrants were having their henchmen lead to his death; and he gave up this bold attempt only at the urging of Theramenes himself, though only two men in all had followed him. He was seen, when courted by a beauty with whom he was smitten, to keep, when need be, a strict abstinence.
Il s’est veu continuellement marcher à la guerre, et fouler la glace les pieds nuds; porter mesme robbe en hyuer et en esté: surmonter tous ses compaignons en patience de trauail, ne manger point autrement en festin qu’en son ordinaire. Il s’est veu vingt et sept ans, de pareil visage, porter la faim, la pauureté, l’indocilité de ses enfants, les griffes de sa femme. Et en fin la calomnie, la tyrannie, la prison, les fers, et le venin. Mais cet homme là estoit-il conuié de boire à lut par deuoir de ciuilité? c’estoit aussi celuy de l’armée, à qui en demeuroit l’aduantage.
He was seen continually marching to war and treading the ice barefoot, wearing the same robe in winter and summer, surpassing all his companions in endurance of toil, and eating no differently at a feast than at his ordinary meals. He was seen for twenty-seven years, with the same countenance, bearing hunger, poverty, the unruliness of his children, the claws of his wife; and in the end calumny, tyranny, prison, fetters, and poison. But was this man invited by the duty of civility to a drinking contest? He was also the one in the army who came off best.
Et ne refusoit ny à iouër aux noisettes auec les enfans, ny à courir auec eux sur vn cheual de bois, et y auoit bonne grace: car toutes actions, dit la philosophie, sieent egallement bien et honnorent egallement le sage. On a dequoy, et ne doit-on iamais se lasser de presenter l’image de ce personnage à tous patrons et formes de perfection. Il est fort peu d’exemples de vie, pleins et purs. Et faict-on tort à nostre instruction, de nous en proposer tous les iours, d’imbecilles et manques: à peine bons à vn seul ply: qui nous tirent arriere plustost: corrupteurs plustost que correcteurs.
And he did not refuse to play at nuts with the children, or to ride a hobbyhorse with them, and he did it gracefully; for all actions, says philosophy, equally become and equally honor the wise man. We have every reason, and we should never tire, to present the image of this man as the pattern and model of every kind of perfection. There are very few examples of a life that is full and pure. And it harms our instruction to be offered every day examples that are feeble and defective, barely good for a single purpose, which pull us backward instead—corrupters rather than correctors.
Le peuple se trompe: on va bien plus facilement par les bouts, où l’extremité sert de borne, d’arrest et de guide, que par la voye du milieu large et ouuerte, et selon l’art, que selon nature; mais bien moins noblement aussi, et moins recommendablement.
People are mistaken. It is much easier to travel along the edges, where the outer limit serves as boundary, stop, and guide, than by the broad, open middle way; and according to art than according to nature. But it is also much less noble and less commendable.
La grandeur de l’ame n’est pas tant, tirer à mont, et tirer auant, comme sçauoir se ranger et circonscrire. Elle tient pour grand, tout ce qui est assez. Et montre sa hauteur, à aimer mieux les choses moyennes, que les eminentes. Il n’est rien si beau et legitime, que de faire bien l’homme et deuëment. Ny science si arduë que de bien sçauoir viure cette vie. Et de nos maladies la plus sauuage, c’est mespriser nostre estre.
Greatness of soul lies not so much in pressing upward and forward as in knowing how to order and limit oneself. It regards as great whatever is enough, and shows its height by preferring moderate things to eminent ones. There is nothing so fine and legitimate as to play the man well and properly, nor any knowledge so hard as knowing how to live this life well. And the wildest of our maladies is to despise our own being.
Qui veut escarter son ame, le face hardiment s’il peut, lors que le corps se portera mal, pour la descharger de cette contagion. Ailleurs au contraire: qu’elle l’assiste et fauorise, et ne refuse point de participer à ses naturels plaisirs, et de s’y complaire coniugalement: y apportant, si elle est plus sage, la moderation, de peur que par indiscretion, ils ne se confondent auec le desplaisir. L’intemperance, est peste de la volupté: et la temperance n’est pas son fleau: c’est son assaisonnement. Eudoxus, qui en establissoit le souuerain bien, et ses compaignons, qui la monterent à si haut prix, la sauourerent en sa plus gracieuse douceur, par le moyen de la temperance, qui fut en eux singuliere et exemplaire.
Whoever wants to send his soul elsewhere, let him do it boldly if he can, when the body is ailing, to free it from that contagion. At other times, on the contrary, let the soul assist and favor the body, and not refuse to share in its natural pleasures and to delight in them as a spouse would, bringing to them moderation, if it is the wiser of the two, for fear that through lack of discretion they may become mixed up with displeasure. Intemperance is the plague of pleasure; and temperance is not its scourge but its seasoning. Eudoxus, who made pleasure the sovereign good, and his companions, who set so high a value on it, savored it in its most gracious sweetness by means of temperance, which was singular and exemplary in them.
I’ordonne à mon ame, de regarder et la douleur, et la volupté, de veuë pareillement reglée: eodem enim vitio est effusio animi in lætitia, quo in dolore contractio: et pareillement ferme: mais gayement l’vne, l’autre seuerement. Et selon ce qu’elle y peut apporter, autant soigneuse d’en esteindre l’vne, que d’estendre l’autre. Le voir sainement les biens, tire apres soy le voir sainement les maux. Et la douleur a quelque chose de non euitable, en son tendre commencement: et la volupté quelque chose d’euitable en sa fin excessiue. Platon les accouple: et veut, que ce soit pareillement l’office de la fortitude combattre à l’encontre de la douleur, et à l’encontre des immoderées et charmeresses blandices de la volupté.
I order my soul to look upon both pain and pleasure with an equally regulated gaze—for it is as much a fault for the soul to overflow in joy as to contract in grief—and an equally firm one: but upon the one cheerfully, upon the other sternly. And, as far as it can contribute, it is to be as careful to extinguish the one as to extend the other. Seeing good things sanely brings with it seeing bad things sanely. Pain has something unavoidable in its tender beginning, and pleasure something avoidable in its excessive end. Plato couples them together, and holds that it is equally the function of fortitude to fight against pain and against the immoderate and bewitching blandishments of pleasure.
Ce sont deux fontaines, ausquelles, qui puise, d’où, quand et combien il faut, soit cité, soit homme, soit beste, il est bien heureux. La premiere, il la faut prendre par medecine et par necessité, plus escharsement: l’autre par soif, mais non iusques à l’yuresse. La douleur, la volupté, l’amour, la haine, sont les premieres choses, que sent vn enfant: si la raison suruenant elles s’appliquent à elle: cela c’est vertu.
These are two fountains: whoever draws from them where, when, and as much as he should, be it a city, a man, or a beast, is very fortunate. The first must be taken as medicine and of necessity, more sparingly; the other for thirst, but not to the point of drunkenness. Pain, pleasure, love, and hatred are the first things a child feels; if, when reason arrives, they fall in with it, that is virtue.
Passing the time
He savors life all the more closely as it grows short.
I’ay vn dictionaire tout à part moy: ie passe le temps, quand il est mauuais et incommode; quand il est bon, ie ne le veux pas passer, ie le retaste, ie m’y tiens. Il faut courir le mauuais, et se rassoir au bon. Cette fraze ordinaire de passe-temps, et de passer le temps, represente l’vsage de ces prudentes gens, qui ne pensent point auoir meilleur conte de leur vie, que de la couler et eschaper: de la passer, gauchir, et autant qu’il est en eux, ignorer et fuir; comme chose de qualité ennuyeuse et desdaignable. Mais ie la cognois autre: et la trouue, et prisable et commode, voire en son dernier decours, où ie la tiens.
I have a dictionary all my own. I “pass the time” when it is bad and disagreeable; when it is good I do not want to pass it, I taste it again, I hold on to it. We must run through the bad and settle down in the good. This ordinary phrase “pastime” and “passing the time” reflects the habit of those prudent people who think they can make no better use of their life than to let it slip by and escape it, to pass it, sidestep it, and, as far as they can, ignore it and flee it, as something irksome and contemptible. But I know it to be otherwise, and find it both worth prizing and agreeable, even in its last decline, where I now hold it.
Et nous l’a nature mise en main, garnie de telles circonstances et si fauorables, que nous n’auons à nous plaindre qu’à nous, si elle nous presse; et si elle nous eschappe inutilement. Stulti vita ingrata est, trepida est, tota in futurum fertur. Ie me compose pourtant à la perdre sans regret: mais comme perdable de sa condition, non comme moleste et importune. Aussi ne sied-il proprement bien, de ne se desplaire à mourir qu’à ceux, qui se plaisent à viure. Il y a du mesnage à la iouyr: ie la iouis au double des autres: car la mesure en la iouissance, depend du plus ou moins d’application, que nous y prestons.
And nature has put it into our hands furnished with such favorable circumstances that we have only ourselves to blame if it weighs on us and if it slips away from us uselessly. The fool’s life is joyless and anxious, wholly borne toward the future. Even so, I am preparing myself to lose it without regret, but as something by its nature losable, not as something burdensome and troublesome. Besides, not minding death is truly fitting only for those who take pleasure in living. There is husbandry in enjoying it. I enjoy it twice as much as others, for the measure of enjoyment depends on the greater or lesser attention we give to it.
Principalement à cette heure, que i’apperçoy la mienne si briefue en temps, ie la veux estendre en poix. Ie veux arrester la promptitude de sa fuite par la promptitude de ma saisie: et par la vigueur de l’vsage, compenser la hastiueté de son escoulement. A mesure que la possession du viure est plus courte, il me la faut rendre plus profonde, et plus pleine.
Especially now that I see mine so short in time, I want to extend it in weight. I want to check the speed of its flight by the speed of my grasp, and by the vigor of my use of it to make up for the haste of its ebbing away. The shorter my possession of life, the deeper and fuller I must make it.
Les autres sentent la douceur d’vn contentement, et de la prosperité: ie la sens ainsi qu’eux: mais ce n’est pas en passant et glissant. Si la faut-il estudier, sauourer et ruminer, pour en rendre graces condignes à celuy qui nous l’ottroye. Ils iouyssent les autres plaisirs, comme ils font celuy du sommeil, sans les cognoistre. A celle fin que le dormir mesme ne m’eschappast ainsi stupidement, i’ay autresfois trouué bon qu’on me le troublast, afin que ie l’entreuisse. Ie consulte d’vn contentement auec moy: ie ne l’escume pas, ie le sonde, et plie ma raison à le recueillir, deuenuë chagrigne et desgoustée.
Others feel the sweetness of contentment and prosperity; I feel it as they do, but not in passing and gliding by. Rather, it must be studied, savored, and ruminated, so as to give due thanks for it to him who grants it to us. They enjoy their other pleasures as they enjoy that of sleep, without being aware of them. So that even sleep should not escape me so stupidly, I once thought it a good idea to have it disturbed, so that I might catch a glimpse of it. I deliberate with myself about a contentment; I do not skim it, I sound its depths, and I bend my reason, which has grown peevish and fastidious, to gather it in.
Me trouué-ie en quelque assiette tranquille, y a il quelque volupté qui me chatouille, ie ne la laisse pas friponner aux sens; i’y associe mon ame. Non pas pour s’y engager, mais pour s’y agreer; non pas pour s’y perdre, mais pour s’y trouuer. Et l’employe de sa part, à se mirer dans ce prospere estat, à en poiser et estimer le bon heur, et l’amplifier. Elle mesure combien c’est qu’elle doit à Dieu, d’estre en repos de sa conscience et d’autres passions intestines; d’auoir le corps en sa disposition naturelle: iouissant ordonnément et competemment, des functions molles et flatteuses, par lesquelles il luy plaist compenser de sa grace, les douleurs, dequoy sa iustice nous bat à son tour.
Do I find myself in some tranquil state? Is there some pleasure tickling me? I do not let my senses filch it; I bring my soul into it—not to bind itself to it, but to enjoy it; not to lose itself in it, but to find itself there. And I set it, for its part, to see itself mirrored in this prosperous state, to weigh and appraise its happiness, and to amplify it. It measures how much it owes to God for being at peace with its conscience and free from other inner passions, and for having the body in its natural condition, enjoying in an orderly and fitting way the soft and pleasing functions with which he is pleased, by his grace, to compensate for the pains with which his justice in its turn chastises us.
Combien luy vaut d’estre logee en tel poinct, que où qu’elle iette sa veuë, le ciel est calme autour d’elle: nul desir, nulle crainte ou doubte, qui luy trouble l’air: aucune difficulté passée, presente, future, par dessus laquelle son imagination ne passe sans offence. Cette consideration prend grand lustre de la comparaison des conditions differentes. Ainsi, ie me propose en mille visages, ceux que la fortune, ou que leur propre erreur emporte et tempeste. Et encores ceux cy plus pres de moy, qui reçoiuent si laschement, et incurieusement leur bonne fortune.
How much it is worth to it to be lodged in such a place that, wherever it casts its eyes, the sky is calm around it: no desire, no fear or doubt to trouble its air, no difficulty past, present, or future over which its imagination cannot pass without harm! This reflection gains great luster from comparison with different conditions. So I set before me, in a thousand guises, those whom fortune or their own error carries away and buffets with storms; and also those, closer to me, who receive their good fortune so slackly and incuriously.
Ce sont gens qui passent voirement leur temps; ils outrepassent le present, et ce qu’ils possedent, pour seruir à l’esperance, et pour des ombrages et vaines images, que la fantasie leur met au deuant, Morte obita quales fama est volitare figuras, / Aut quæ sopitos deludunt somnia sensus; lesquelles hastent et allongent leur fuitte, à mesme qu’on les suit. Le fruict et but de leur poursuitte, c’est poursuiure: comme Alexandre disoit que la fin de son trauail, c’estoit trauailler. Nihil actum credens, cùm quid superesset agendum.
These are people who really do “pass their time.” They overleap the present and what they possess, to serve hope, and for the sake of shadows and vain images that fancy sets before them, Like the shapes that, rumor says, flit about after death, / Or the dreams that delude our slumbering senses; and these images hasten and lengthen their flight the more they are pursued. The fruit and goal of their pursuit is to pursue, as Alexander said that the end of his labor was to labor. Thinking nothing done while anything remained to do.
Pour moy donc, i’ayme la vie, et la cultiue, telle qu’il a pleu à Dieu nous l’octroyer. Ie ne vay pas desirant, qu’elle eust à dire la necessité de boire et de manger. Et me sembleroit faillir non moins excusablement, de desirer qu’elle l’eust double. Sapiens diuitiarum naturalium quæsitor acerrimus. Ny que nous nous substantassions, mettans seulement en la bouche vn peu de cette drogue par laquelle Epimenides se priuoit d’appetit, et se maintenoit. Ny qu’on produisist stupidement des enfans, par les doigts, ou par les talons, ains parlant en reuerence, que plustost encores, on les produisist voluptueusement, par les doigts, et par les talons. Ny que le corps fust sans desir et sans chatouillement. Ce sont plaintes ingrates et iniques.
As for me, then, I love life and cultivate it just as it has pleased God to grant it to us. I do not go around wishing that it lacked the need to eat and drink; and it would seem to me no less excusable an error to wish that need doubled. The wise man is the keenest seeker after natural riches. Nor do I wish that we could sustain ourselves just by putting into our mouths a little of that drug by which Epimenides took away his appetite and kept himself alive. Nor that we should produce children insensibly, through our fingers or our heels—but rather, saving your reverence, that we might also produce them with pleasure through our fingers and our heels. Nor that the body should be without desire and without titillation. These are ungrateful and unjust complaints.
I’accepte de bon cœur et recognoissant, ce que nature a faict pour moy: et m’en aggree et m’en loue. On faict tort à ce grand et tout puissant donneur, de refuser son don, l’annuller et desfigurer, tout bon, il a faict tout bon. Omnia, quæ secundum naturam sunt, æstimatione digna sunt.
I accept with a glad and grateful heart what nature has done for me, and I am pleased with it and proud of it. We wrong that great and all-powerful giver by refusing his gift, nullifying it, and disfiguring it. All good himself, he has made all things good. All things that are according to nature are worthy of esteem.
Body and mind together
Mind and body belong together; those who would rise above man sink below him.
Des opinions de la philosophie, i’embrasse plus volontiers celles qui sont les plus solides: c’est à dire les plus humaines, et nostres. Mes discours sont conformément à mes mœurs, bas et humbles. Elle faict bien l’enfant à mon gré, quand elle se met sur ses ergots, pour nous prescher. Que c’est vne farrouche alliance, de marier le diuin auec le terrestre, le raisonnable auec le desraisonnable, le seuere à l’indulgent, l’honneste au des-honneste. Que la volupté, est qualité brutale, indigne que le sage la gouste. Le seul plaisir, qu’il tire de la iouyssance d’vne belle ieune espouse, que c’est le plaisir de sa conscience, de faire vne action selon l’ordre. Comme de chausser ses bottes pour vne vtile cheuauchee.
Among the opinions of philosophy, I more readily embrace those that are most solid, that is to say, the most human and most our own. My reasonings, in keeping with my ways, are low and humble. To my mind philosophy is being very childish when she struts up on her spurs to preach to us: that it is an uncouth alliance to marry the divine with the earthly, the reasonable with the unreasonable, the severe with the indulgent, the honorable with the dishonorable; that pleasure is a brutish quality, unworthy of being tasted by the wise man; that the only pleasure he draws from the enjoyment of a beautiful young wife is the pleasure of his conscience at performing an action according to order, like pulling on his boots for a useful ride.
N’eussent ses suyuans, non plus de droit, et de nerfs, et de suc, au despucelage de leurs femmes, qu’en a sa leçon.
May her followers have no more right, nerve, and sap for deflowering their wives than her lesson has!
Ce n’est pas ce que dit Socrates, son precepteur et le nostre. Il prise, comme il doit, la volupté corporelle: mais il prefere celle de l’esprit, comme ayant plus de force, de constance, de facilité, de varieté, de dignité. Cette cy ne va nullement seule, selon luy; il n’est pas si fantastique: mais seulement, premiere. Pour luy, la temperance est moderatrice, non aduersaire des voluptez. Nature est vn doux guide: mais non pas plus doux, que prudent et iuste. Intrandum est in rerum naturam, et penitus quid ea postulet, peruidendum. Ie queste par tout sa piste: nous l’auons confondüe de traces artificielles. Et ce souuerain bien Academique, et Peripatetique, qui est viure selon icelle: deuient à cette cause difficile à borner et expliquer.
That is not what Socrates says, her tutor and ours. He values bodily pleasure as he should, but he prefers that of the mind, as having more force, constancy, ease, variety, and dignity. According to him, the pleasure of the mind by no means goes alone—he is not so fanciful—but only first. For him temperance is the moderator of pleasures, not their adversary. Nature is a gentle guide, but no more gentle than prudent and just. We must penetrate into the nature of things and see thoroughly what it demands. I seek her track everywhere; we have muddled it with artificial tracks. And for this reason that sovereign good of the Academics and Peripatetics, which is to live according to nature, becomes hard to define and explain.
Et celuy des Stoïciens, voisin à celuy-là, qui est, consentir à nature. Est-ce pas erreur, d’estimer aucunes actions moins dignes de ce qu’elles sont necessaires? Si ne m’osteront-ils pas de la teste, que ce ne soit vn tres-conuenable mariage, du plaisir auec la necessité, auec laquelle, dit vn ancien, les Dieux complottent tousiours. A quoy faire desmembrons nous en diuorce, vn bastiment tissu d’vne si ioincte et fraternelle correspondance? Au rebours, renouons le par mutuels offices: que l’esprit esueille et viuifie la pesanteur du corps, le corps arreste la legereté de l’esprit, et la fixe, Qui velut summum bonum laudat animæ naturam, et tanquam malum naturam carnis accusat, profectò et animam carnaliter appetit et carnem carnaliter fugit, quoniam id vanitate sentit humana, non veritate diuina.
So does that of the Stoics, close to it, which is to consent to nature. Is it not an error to consider some actions less worthy because they are necessary? They will never get it out of my head that the marriage of pleasure with necessity is a most fitting one—necessity, with whom, says an ancient, the gods always conspire. Why do we tear apart in divorce a structure woven of so close and brotherly a correspondence? On the contrary, let us bind it together again by mutual services. Let the mind awaken and quicken the heaviness of the body, and the body check the lightness of the mind and steady it. He who praises the nature of the soul as the sovereign good and condemns the nature of the flesh as evil, assuredly both desires the soul carnally and flees the flesh carnally, since he feels this from human vanity, not from divine truth.
Il n’y a piece indigne de nostre soing, en ce present que Dieu nous a faict: nous en deuons comte iusques à vn poil. Et n’est pas vne commission par acquit à l’homme, de conduire l’homme selon sa condition. Elle est expresse, naïfue et tres-principale: et nous l’a le Createur donnee serieusement et seuerement. L’authorité peut seule enuers les communs entendemens: et poise plus en langage peregrin. Reschargeons en ce lieu. Stultitiæ proprium quis non dixerit, ignauè et contumaciter facere quæ facienda sunt: et alio corpus impellere, alio animum: distrahique inter diuersissimos motus?
There is no part of this present God has given us that is unworthy of our care; we must account for it down to a single hair. And the commission given to man to guide man according to his condition is no perfunctory one. It is express, plain, and of the first importance, and the Creator gave it to us seriously and sternly. Authority alone carries weight with common minds, and it weighs more in a foreign language. Let us charge again here. Who would not say that it is the mark of folly to do lazily and rebelliously what has to be done, to push the body one way and the mind another, and to be torn between the most contrary motions?
Or sus pour voir, faictes vous dire vn iour, les amusemens et imaginations, que celuy-là met en sa teste, et pour lesquelles il destourne sa pensee d’vn bon repas, et plainct l’heure qu’il employe à se nourrir: vous trouuerez qu’il n’y a rien si fade, en tous les mets de vostre table, que ce bel entretien de son ame (le plus souuent il nous vaudroit mieux dormir tout à faict, que de veiller à ce, à quoy nous veillons) et trouuerez que son discours et intentions, ne valent pas vostre capirotade. Quand ce seroient les rauissemens d’Archimedes mesme, que seroit-ce?
Come now, just to see, have such a man tell you one day the amusements and imaginings he fills his head with, for whose sake he turns his thoughts away from a good meal and begrudges the hour he spends feeding himself. You will find that there is nothing so insipid among all the dishes on your table as this fine entertainment of his soul (most often we would do better to be sound asleep than awake for the things we stay awake for). And you will find that his reasonings and intentions are not worth your stew. Even if they were the raptures of Archimedes himself, what would they amount to?
Ie ne touche pas icy, et ne mesle point à cette marmaille d’hommes que nous sommes, et à cette vanité de desirs et cogitations, qui nous diuertissent, ces ames venerables, esleuees par ardeur de deuotion et religion, à vne constante et conscientieuse meditation des choses diuines, lesquelles preoccupans par l’effort d’vne viue et vehemente esperance, l’vsage de la nourriture eternelle, but final, et dernier arrest des Chrestiens desirs: seul plaisir constant, incorruptible: desdaignent de s’attendre à nos necessiteuses commoditez, fluides et ambigues: et resignent facilement au corps, le soin et l’vsage, de la pasture sensuelle et temporelle. C’est vn estude priuilegé. Entre nous, ce sont choses, que i’ay tousiours veuës de singulier accord: les opinions supercelestes, et les mœurs sousterraines.
I am not touching here, nor mixing in with this rabble of men that we are and this vanity of desires and musings that distract us, those venerable souls raised by the ardor of devotion and religion to a constant and conscientious meditation on divine things. By the force of a lively and vehement hope they anticipate the enjoyment of eternal nourishment, the final goal and last resting place of Christian desires, the only constant and incorruptible pleasure; and so they disdain to concern themselves with our needy comforts, fluid and uncertain, and readily leave to the body the care and use of sensual and temporal fodder. That is a privileged study. Between ourselves, there are two things I have always seen in singular agreement: supercelestial opinions and subterranean morals.
Esope ce grand homme vid son maistre qui pissoit en se promenant, Quoy donq, fit-il, nous faudra-il chier en courant? Mesnageons le temps, encore nous en reste-il beaucoup d’oisif, et mal employé. Nostre esprit n’a volontiers pas assez d’autres heures, à faire ses besongnes, sans se desassocier du corps en ce peu d’espace qu’il luy faut pour sa necessité. Ils veulent se mettre hors d’eux, et eschapper à l’homme. C’est folie: au lieu de se transformer en Anges, ils se transforment en bestes: au lieu de se hausser, ils s’abbattent. Ces humeurs transcendentes m’effrayent, comme les lieux hautains et inaccessibles. Et rien ne m’est facheux à digerer en la vie de Socrates, que ses ecstases et ses demoneries.
Aesop, that great man, saw his master pissing as he walked. “What,” he said, “are we to shit as we run?” Let us husband our time; even so, a great deal of it remains to us idle and ill spent. Does our mind not have enough other hours to do its business without dissociating itself from the body in the little space the body needs for its necessities? They want to get outside themselves and escape from the man. That is folly: instead of changing into angels, they change into beasts; instead of raising themselves, they bring themselves down. These transcendent humors frighten me, like high and inaccessible places. And nothing in the life of Socrates is so hard for me to digest as his ecstasies and his dealings with his daemon.
Rien si humain en Platon, que ce pourquoy ils disent, qu’on l’appelle diuin. Et de nos sciences, celles-là me semblent plus terrestres et basses, qui sont les plus haut montees. Et ie ne trouue rien si humble et si mortel en la vie d’Alexandre, que ses fantasies autour de son immortalisation. Philotas le mordit plaisamment par sa responce. Il s’estoit coniouy auec luy par lettre, de l’oracle de Iupiter Hammon, qui l’auoit logé entre les Dieux. Pour ta consideration, i’en suis bien ayse: mais il y a dequoy plaindre les hommes, qui auront à viure auec vn homme, et luy obeyr, lequel outrepasse, et ne se contente de la mesure d’vn homme.
Nothing in Plato is so human as the very things for which, they say, he is called divine. And of our sciences, those that have climbed highest seem to me the most earthly and low. And I find nothing so humble and mortal in the life of Alexander as his fancies about his immortalization. Philotas stung him wittily with his reply. He had congratulated him by letter on the oracle of Jupiter Ammon that had placed him among the gods: “For your sake I am very glad of it; but there is reason to pity the men who will have to live with, and obey, a man who exceeds the measure of a man and is not content with it.”
Diis te minorem quòd geris, imperas. La gentille inscription, dequoy les Atheniens honnorerent la venue de Pompeius en leur ville, se conforme à mon sens: D’autant es tu Dieu, comme / Tu te recognois homme.
It is because you hold yourself lesser than the gods that you rule. The fine inscription with which the Athenians honored Pompey’s arrival in their city agrees with my view: You are a god just so far / As you know yourself a man.
C’est vne absoluë perfection, et comme diuine, de sçauoir iouyr loyallement de son estre. Nous cherchons d’autres conditions, pour n’entendre l’vsage des nostres: et sortons hors de nous, pour ne sçauoir quel il y faict. Si auons nous beau monter sur des eschasses, car sur des eschasses encores faut-il marcher de nos iambes. Et au plus esleué throne du monde, si ne sommes nous assis, que sus nostre cul. Les plus belles vies, sont à mon gré celles, qui se rangent au modelle commun et humain auec ordre: mais sans miracle, sans extrauagance. Or la vieillesse a vn peu besoin d’estre traictee plus tendrement.
It is an absolute perfection, and as it were divine, to know how to enjoy our being rightly. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside ourselves because we do not know what it is like within. Yet it is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk with our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own backside. The finest lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without extravagance. Now old age needs to be treated a little more tenderly.
Recommandons la à ce Dieu protecteur de santé et de sagesse: mais gaye et sociale: Frui paratis et valido mihi, / Latoe, dones; et precor, integra / Cum mente, nec turpem senectam / Degere, nec Cythara carentem.
Let us commend it to that god who is protector of health and wisdom—but a cheerful and sociable wisdom: Grant me, son of Latona, to enjoy what I have / in good health, and, I pray, with my mind / unimpaired, to pass an old age not shameful, / nor lacking the lyre.