The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 3

M >> Michel de Montaigne >> The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 3





CHAPTER XVIII

THAT MEN ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF OUR HAPPINESS TILL AFTER DEATH.

[Charron has borrowed with unusual liberality from this and the
succeeding chapter. See Nodier, Questions, p. 206.]

"Scilicet ultima semper
Exspectanda dies homini est; dicique beatus
Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet."

["We should all look forward to our last day: no one can be called
happy till he is dead and buried."--Ovid, Met, iii. 135]

The very children know the story of King Croesus to this purpose, who
being taken prisoner by Cyrus, and by him condemned to die, as he was
going to execution cried out, "O Solon, Solon!" which being presently
reported to Cyrus, and he sending to inquire of him what it meant,
Croesus gave him to understand that he now found the teaching Solon had
formerly given him true to his cost; which was, "That men, however
fortune may smile upon them, could never be said to be happy till they
had been seen to pass over the last day of their lives," by reason of the
uncertainty and mutability of human things, which, upon very light and
trivial occasions, are subject to be totally changed into a quite
contrary condition. And so it was that Agesilaus made answer to one who
was saying what a happy young man the King of Persia was, to come so
young to so mighty a kingdom: "'Tis true," said he, "but neither was
Priam unhappy at his years."--[Plutarch, Apothegms of the
Lacedaemonians.]--In a short time, kings of Macedon, successors to that
mighty Alexander, became joiners and scriveners at Rome; a tyrant of
Sicily, a pedant at Corinth; a conqueror of one-half of the world and
general of so many armies, a miserable suppliant to the rascally officers
of a king of Egypt: so much did the prolongation of five or six months of
life cost the great Pompey; and, in our fathers' days, Ludovico Sforza,
the tenth Duke of Milan, whom all Italy had so long truckled under, was
seen to die a wretched prisoner at Loches, but not till he had lived ten
years in captivity,--[He was imprisoned by Louis XI. in an iron cage]--
which was the worst part of his fortune. The fairest of all queens,
--[Mary, Queen of Scots.]--widow to the greatest king in Europe, did she
not come to die by the hand of an executioner? Unworthy and barbarous
cruelty! And a thousand more examples there are of the same kind; for it
seems that as storms and tempests have a malice against the proud and
overtowering heights of our lofty buildings, there are also spirits above
that are envious of the greatnesses here below:

"Usque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam
Obterit, et pulchros fasces, saevasque secures
Proculcare, ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur."

["So true it is that some occult power upsets human affairs, the
glittering fasces and the cruel axes spurns under foot, and seems to
make sport of them."--Lucretius, v. 1231.]

And it should seem, also, that Fortune sometimes lies in wait to surprise
the last hour of our lives, to show the power she has, in a moment, to
overthrow what she was so many years in building, making us cry out with
Laberius:

"Nimirum hac die
Una plus vixi mihi, quam vivendum fuit."

["I have lived longer by this one day than I should have
done."--Macrobius, ii. 7.]

And, in this sense, this good advice of Solon may reasonably be taken;
but he, being a philosopher (with which sort of men the favours and
disgraces of Fortune stand for nothing, either to the making a man happy
or unhappy, and with whom grandeurs and powers are accidents of a quality
almost indifferent) I am apt to think that he had some further aim, and
that his meaning was, that the very felicity of life itself, which
depends upon the tranquillity and contentment of a well-descended spirit,
and the resolution and assurance of a well-ordered soul, ought never to
be attributed to any man till he has first been seen to play the last,
and, doubtless, the hardest act of his part. There may be disguise and
dissimulation in all the rest: where these fine philosophical discourses
are only put on, and where accident, not touching us to the quick, gives
us leisure to maintain the same gravity of aspect; but, in this last
scene of death, there is no more counterfeiting: we must speak out plain,
and discover what there is of good and clean in the bottom of the pot,

"Nam vera; voces turn demum pectore ab imo
Ejiciuntur; et eripitur persona, manet res."

["Then at last truth issues from the heart; the visor's gone,
the man remains."--Lucretius, iii. 57.]

Wherefore, at this last, all the other actions of our life ought to be
tried and sifted: 'tis the master-day, 'tis the day that is judge of all
the rest, "'tis the day," says one of the ancients,--[Seneca, Ep., 102]--
"that must be judge of all my foregoing years." To death do I refer the
assay of the fruit of all my studies: we shall then see whether my
discourses came only from my mouth or from my heart. I have seen many by
their death give a good or an ill repute to their whole life. Scipio,
the father-in-law of Pompey, in dying, well removed the ill opinion that
till then every one had conceived of him. Epaminondas being asked which
of the three he had in greatest esteem, Chabrias, Iphicrates, or himself.
"You must first see us die," said he, "before that question can be
resolved."--[Plutarch, Apoth.]--And, in truth, he would infinitely
wrong that man who would weigh him without the honour and grandeur of his
end.

God has ordered all things as it has best pleased Him; but I have, in my
time, seen three of the most execrable persons that ever I knew in all
manner of abominable living, and the most infamous to boot, who all died
a very regular death, and in all circumstances composed, even to
perfection. There are brave and fortunate deaths: I have seen death cut
the thread of the progress of a prodigious advancement, and in the height
and flower of its increase, of a certain person,--[Montaigne doubtless
refers to his friend Etienne de la Boetie, at whose death in 1563 he was
present.]--with so glorious an end that, in my opinion, his ambitious
and generous designs had nothing in them so high and great as their
interruption. He arrived, without completing his course, at the place to
which his ambition aimed, with greater glory than he could either have
hoped or desired, anticipating by his fall the name and power to which he
aspired in perfecting his career. In the judgment I make of another
man's life, I always observe how he carried himself at his death; and the
principal concern I have for my own is that I may die well--that is,
patiently and tranquilly.




CHAPTER XIX

THAT TO STUDY PHILOSOPY IS TO LEARN TO DIE

Cicero says--[Tusc., i. 31.]--"that to study philosophy is nothing but
to prepare one's self to die." The reason of which is, because study and
contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us our soul, and employ it
separately from the body, which is a kind of apprenticeship and a
resemblance of death; or, else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in
the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to fear
to die. And to say the truth, either our reason mocks us, or it ought to
have no other aim but our contentment only, nor to endeavour anything
but, in sum, to make us live well, and, as the Holy Scripture says, at
our ease. All the opinions of the world agree in this, that pleasure is
our end, though we make use of divers means to attain it: they would,
otherwise, be rejected at the first motion; for who would give ear to him
that should propose affliction and misery for his end? The controversies
and disputes of the philosophical sects upon this point are merely
verbal:

"Transcurramus solertissimas nugas"

["Let us skip over those subtle trifles."--Seneca, Ep., 117.]

--there is more in them of opposition and obstinacy than is consistent
with so sacred a profession; but whatsoever personage a man takes upon
himself to perform, he ever mixes his own part with it.

Let the philosophers say what they will, the thing at which we all aim,
even in virtue is pleasure. It amuses me to rattle in ears this word,
which they so nauseate to and if it signify some supreme pleasure and
contentment, it is more due to the assistance of virtue than to any other
assistance whatever. This pleasure, for being more gay, more sinewy,
more robust and more manly, is only the more seriously voluptuous, and we
ought give it the name of pleasure, as that which is more favourable,
gentle, and natural, and not that from which we have denominated it. The
other and meaner pleasure, if it could deserve this fair name, it ought
to be by way of competition, and not of privilege. I find it less exempt
from traverses and inconveniences than virtue itself; and, besides that
the enjoyment is more momentary, fluid, and frail, it has its watchings,
fasts, and labours, its sweat and its blood; and, moreover, has
particular to itself so many several sorts of sharp and wounding
passions, and so dull a satiety attending it, as equal it to the severest
penance. And we mistake if we think that these incommodities serve it
for a spur and a seasoning to its sweetness (as in nature one contrary is
quickened by another), or say, when we come to virtue, that like
consequences and difficulties overwhelm and render it austere and
inaccessible; whereas, much more aptly than in voluptuousness, they
ennoble, sharpen, and heighten the perfect and divine pleasure they
procure us. He renders himself unworthy of it who will counterpoise its
cost with its fruit, and neither understands the blessing nor how to use
it. Those who preach to us that the quest of it is craggy, difficult,
and painful, but its fruition pleasant, what do they mean by that but to
tell us that it is always unpleasing? For what human means will ever
attain its enjoyment? The most perfect have been fain to content
themselves to aspire unto it, and to approach it only, without ever
possessing it. But they are deceived, seeing that of all the pleasures
we know, the very pursuit is pleasant. The attempt ever relishes of the
quality of the thing to which it is directed, for it is a good part of,
and consubstantial with, the effect. The felicity and beatitude that
glitters in Virtue, shines throughout all her appurtenances and avenues,
even to the first entry and utmost limits.

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of
death is one of the greatest, as the means that accommodates human life
with a soft and easy tranquillity, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste
of living, without which all other pleasure would be extinct. Which is
the reason why all the rules centre and concur in this one article. And
although they all in like manner, with common accord, teach us also to
despise pain, poverty, and the other accidents to which human life is
subject, it is not, nevertheless, with the same solicitude, as well by
reason these accidents are not of so great necessity, the greater part of
mankind passing over their whole lives without ever knowing what poverty
is, and some without sorrow or sickness, as Xenophilus the musician, who
lived a hundred and six years in a perfect and continual health; as also
because, at the worst, death can, whenever we please, cut short and put
an end to all other inconveniences. But as to death, it is inevitable:--

"Omnes eodem cogimur; omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura, et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae."

["We are all bound one voyage; the lot of all, sooner or later, is
to come out of the urn. All must to eternal exile sail away."
--Hor., Od., ii. 3, 25.]

and, consequently, if it frights us, 'tis a perpetual torment, for which
there is no sort of consolation. There is no way by which it may not
reach us. We may continually turn our heads this way and that, as in a
suspected country:

"Quae, quasi saxum Tantalo, semper impendet."

["Ever, like Tantalus stone, hangs over us."
--Cicero, De Finib., i. 18.]

Our courts of justice often send back condemned criminals to be executed
upon the place where the crime was committed; but, carry them to fine
houses by the way, prepare for them the best entertainment you can--

"Non Siculae dapes
Dulcem elaborabunt saporem:
Non avium cyatheaceae cantus
Somnum reducent."

["Sicilian dainties will not tickle their palates, nor the melody of
birds and harps bring back sleep."--Hor., Od., iii. 1, 18.]

Do you think they can relish it? and that the fatal end of their journey
being continually before their eyes, would not alter and deprave their
palate from tasting these regalios?

"Audit iter, numeratque dies, spatioque viarum
Metitur vitam; torquetur peste futura."

["He considers the route, computes the time of travelling, measuring
his life by the length of the journey; and torments himself by
thinking of the blow to come."--Claudianus, in Ruf., ii. 137.]

The end of our race is death; 'tis the necessary object of our aim,
which, if it fright us, how is it possible to advance a step without a
fit of ague? The remedy the vulgar use is not to think on't; but from
what brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a blindness? They must
bridle the ass by the tail:

"Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro,"

["Who in his folly seeks to advance backwards"--Lucretius, iv. 474]

'tis no wonder if he be often trapped in the pitfall. They affright
people with the very mention of death, and many cross themselves, as it
were the name of the devil. And because the making a man's will is in
reference to dying, not a man will be persuaded to take a pen in hand to
that purpose, till the physician has passed sentence upon and totally
given him over, and then betwixt and terror, God knows in how fit a
condition of understanding he is to do it.

The Romans, by reason that this poor syllable death sounded so harshly to
their ears and seemed so ominous, found out a way to soften and spin it
out by a periphrasis, and instead of pronouncing such a one is dead,
said, "Such a one has lived," or "Such a one has ceased to live"
--[Plutarch, Life of Cicero, c. 22:]--for, provided there was any mention
of life in the case, though past, it carried yet some sound of
consolation. And from them it is that we have borrowed our expression,
"The late Monsieur such and such a one."--["feu Monsieur un tel."]
Peradventure, as the saying is, the term we have lived is worth our
money. I was born betwixt eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon the
last day of February 1533, according to our computation, beginning the
year the 1st of January,--[This was in virtue of an ordinance of Charles
IX. in 1563. Previously the year commenced at Easter, so that the 1st
January 1563 became the first day of the year 1563.]--and it is now but
just fifteen days since I was complete nine-and-thirty years old; I make
account to live, at least, as many more. In the meantime, to trouble a
man's self with the thought of a thing so far off were folly. But what?
Young and old die upon the same terms; no one departs out of life
otherwise than if he had but just before entered into it; neither is any
man so old and decrepit, who, having heard of Methuselah, does not think
he has yet twenty good years to come. Fool that thou art! who has
assured unto thee the term of life? Thou dependest upon physicians'
tales: rather consult effects and experience. According to the common
course of things, 'tis long since that thou hast lived by extraordinary
favour; thou hast already outlived the ordinary term of life. And that
it is so, reckon up thy acquaintance, how many more have died before they
arrived at thy age than have attained unto it; and of those who have
ennobled their lives by their renown, take but an account, and I dare
lay a wager thou wilt find more who have died before than after
five-and-thirty years of age. It is full both of reason and piety, too,
to take example by the humanity of Jesus Christ Himself; now, He ended
His life at three-and-thirty years. The greatest man, that was no more
than a man, Alexander, died also at the same age. How many several ways
has death to surprise us?

"Quid quisque, vitet, nunquam homini satis
Cautum est in horas."

["Be as cautious as he may, man can never foresee the danger that
may at any hour befal him."--Hor. O. ii. 13, 13.]

To omit fevers and pleurisies, who would ever have imagined that a duke
of Brittany,--[Jean II. died 1305.]--should be pressed to death in a
crowd as that duke was at the entry of Pope Clement, my neighbour, into
Lyons?--[Montaigne speaks of him as if he had been a contemporary
neighbour, perhaps because he was the Archbishop of Bordeaux. Bertrand
le Got was Pope under the title of Clement V., 1305-14.]--Hast thou not
seen one of our kings--[Henry II., killed in a tournament, July 10,
1559]--killed at a tilting, and did not one of his ancestors die by
jostle of a hog?--[Philip, eldest son of Louis le Gros.]--AEschylus,
threatened with the fall of a house, was to much purpose circumspect to
avoid that danger, seeing that he was knocked on the head by a tortoise
falling out of an eagle's talons in the air. Another was choked with a
grape-stone;--[Val. Max., ix. 12, ext. 2.]--an emperor killed with
the scratch of a comb in combing his head. AEmilius Lepidus with a
stumble at his own threshold,--[Pliny, Nat. Hist., vii. 33.]--
and Aufidius with a jostle against the door as he entered the
council-chamber. And betwixt the very thighs of women, Cornelius Gallus
the proctor; Tigillinus, captain of the watch at Rome; Ludovico, son of
Guido di Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua; and (of worse example) Speusippus, a
Platonic philosopher, and one of our Popes. The poor judge Bebius gave
adjournment in a case for eight days; but he himself, meanwhile, was
condemned by death, and his own stay of life expired. Whilst Caius
Julius, the physician, was anointing the eyes of a patient, death closed
his own; and, if I may bring in an example of my own blood, a brother of
mine, Captain St. Martin, a young man, three-and-twenty years old, who
had already given sufficient testimony of his valour, playing a match at
tennis, received a blow of a ball a little above his right ear, which, as
it gave no manner of sign of wound or contusion, he took no notice of it,
nor so much as sat down to repose himself, but, nevertheless, died within
five or six hours after of an apoplexy occasioned by that blow.

These so frequent and common examples passing every day before our eyes,
how is it possible a man should disengage himself from the thought of
death, or avoid fancying that it has us every moment by the throat? What
matter is it, you will say, which way it comes to pass, provided a man
does not terrify himself with the expectation? For my part, I am of this
mind, and if a man could by any means avoid it, though by creeping under
a calf's skin, I am one that should not be ashamed of the shift; all I
aim at is, to pass my time at my ease, and the recreations that will most
contribute to it, I take hold of, as little glorious and exemplary as you
will:

"Praetulerim . . . delirus inersque videri,
Dum mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant,
Quam sapere, et ringi."

["I had rather seem mad and a sluggard, so that my defects are
agreeable to myself, or that I am not painfully conscious of them,
than be wise, and chaptious."--Hor., Ep., ii. 2, 126.]

But 'tis folly to think of doing anything that way. They go, they come,
they gallop and dance, and not a word of death. All this is very fine;
but withal, when it comes either to themselves, their wives, their
children, or friends, surprising them at unawares and unprepared, then,
what torment, what outcries, what madness and despair! Did you ever see
anything so subdued, so changed, and so confounded? A man must,
therefore, make more early provision for it; and this brutish negligence,
could it possibly lodge in the brain of any man of sense (which I think
utterly impossible), sells us its merchandise too dear. Were it an enemy
that could be avoided, I would then advise to borrow arms even of
cowardice itself; but seeing it is not, and that it will catch you as
well flying and playing the poltroon, as standing to't like an honest
man:--

"Nempe et fugacem persequitur virum,
Nec parcit imbellis juventae
Poplitibus timidoque tergo."

["He pursues the flying poltroon, nor spares the hamstrings of the
unwarlike youth who turns his back"--Hor., Ep., iii. 2, 14.]

And seeing that no temper of arms is of proof to secure us:--

"Ille licet ferro cautus, se condat et aere,
Mors tamen inclusum protrahet inde caput"

["Let him hide beneath iron or brass in his fear, death will pull
his head out of his armour."--Propertious iii. 18]

--let us learn bravely to stand our ground, and fight him. And to begin
to deprive him of the greatest advantage he has over us, let us take a
way quite contrary to the common course. Let us disarm him of his
novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and
have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death. Upon all occasions
represent him to our imagination in his every shape; at the stumbling of
a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick with a pin, let us
presently consider, and say to ourselves, "Well, and what if it had been
death itself?" and, thereupon, let us encourage and fortify ourselves.
Let us evermore, amidst our jollity and feasting, set the remembrance of
our frail condition before our eyes, never suffering ourselves to be so
far transported with our delights, but that we have some intervals of
reflecting upon, and considering how many several ways this jollity of
ours tends to death, and with how many dangers it threatens it. The
Egyptians were wont to do after this manner, who in the height of their
feasting and mirth, caused a dried skeleton of a man to be brought into
the room to serve for a memento to their guests:

"Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum
Grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur, hora."

["Think each day when past is thy last; the next day, as unexpected,
will be the more welcome."--Hor., Ep., i. 4, 13.]

Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere.
The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has
learned to die has unlearned to serve. There is nothing evil in life for
him who rightly comprehends that the privation of life is no evil: to
know, how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint. Paulus
Emilius answered him whom the miserable King of Macedon, his prisoner,
sent to entreat him that he would not lead him in his triumph, "Let him
make that request to himself."--[ Plutarch, Life of Paulus Aemilius,
c. 17; Cicero, Tusc., v. 40.]

In truth, in all things, if nature do not help a little, it is very hard
for art and industry to perform anything to purpose. I am in my own
nature not melancholic, but meditative; and there is nothing I have more
continually entertained myself withal than imaginations of death, even in
the most wanton time of my age:

"Jucundum quum aetas florida ver ageret."

["When my florid age rejoiced in pleasant spring."
--Catullus, lxviii.]

In the company of ladies, and at games, some have perhaps thought me
possessed with some jealousy, or the uncertainty of some hope, whilst I
was entertaining myself with the remembrance of some one, surprised, a
few days before, with a burning fever of which he died, returning from an
entertainment like this, with his head full of idle fancies of love and
jollity, as mine was then, and that, for aught I knew, the same-destiny
was attending me.

"Jam fuerit, nec post unquam revocare licebit."

["Presently the present will have gone, never to be recalled."
Lucretius, iii. 928.]

Yet did not this thought wrinkle my forehead any more than any other.
It is impossible but we must feel a sting in such imaginations as these,
at first; but with often turning and returning them in one's mind, they,
at last, become so familiar as to be no trouble at all: otherwise, I, for
my part, should be in a perpetual fright and frenzy; for never man was so
distrustful of his life, never man so uncertain as to its duration.
Neither health, which I have hitherto ever enjoyed very strong and
vigorous, and very seldom interrupted, does prolong, nor sickness
contract my hopes. Every minute, methinks, I am escaping, and it
eternally runs in my mind, that what may be done to-morrow, may be done
to-day. Hazards and dangers do, in truth, little or nothing hasten our
end; and if we consider how many thousands more remain and hang over our
heads, besides the accident that immediately threatens us, we shall find
that the sound and the sick, those that are abroad at sea, and those that
sit by the fire, those who are engaged in battle, and those who sit idle
at home, are the one as near it as the other.