The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 9

should be of force to lead us on so far as to action, if we do not, over and above, exercise and form the soul by experience to

w and inexpert in the combat, but sallied out to meet her, and purposely threw themselves into the proof of difficulties. Some of them abandoned riches to exercise themselves in a voluntary poverty; others sought out labour and an austerity of life, to i

dents, but as to death, we can experiment it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it. There have, anciently, been men so excellent managers of their time that they have tri

pergitus

emel est vitai

s once fallen into th

ius, ii

your soul now? what is she doing? What are you thinking of?"-"I was thinking," replied the other, "to keep myself ready, and the faculties of my mind full settled and fixed, to try if in this short and quick instant of death, I could perceive the motion of the soul when she parts from the body, and whether she has any sentiment a

imi morient

of mind he had dying

mblance of death: with how great facility do we pass from waking to sleeping, and with how little concern do we lose the knowledge of light and of ourselves. Peradventure, the faculty of sleeping would seem useless and contrary to nature, since it deprives us of all action and sentiment, were it not that by it nature instructs us that she has equally made us to die as to live; and in life presents to us the eternal state she reserves for us after it, to accustom us to it and to take from us the fear of it. But such as hav

I am under the shelter of a warm room, in a stormy and tempestuous night, I wonder how people can live abroad, and am afflicted for those who are out in the fields: if I am there myself, I do not wish to be anywhere else. This one thing of being always shut up in a chamber I fancied insupportable: but I was presently inured to be so imprisoned a week, nay a month together, in a very weak, disordered, and sad condition; and I have found that, in th

ahead of his fellows, comes thundering full speed in the very track where I was, rushing like a Colossus upon the little man and the little horse, with such a career of strength and weight, that he turned us both over and over, topsy-turvy with our heels in the air: so that there lay the horse overthrown and stunned with the fall, and I ten or twelve paces from him stretched out at length, with my face all battered and broken, my sword which I had had in my hand, above ten paces beyond that, and my belt broken all to pieces, without motion or sense any more than a stock. 'Twas the only swoon I was ever in till that hour in my life. Those who were with me, after having used all the means they could to bring

iosa ancor de

ura attonit

ul as to its return, c

erus. Lib.

ge and idea of death, has in some sort reconciled me to that untoward adventure. When I first began to open my eyes,

ch'or apr

o tra'l sonno e

opens, now shuts his

sso, Gierus. Li

harquebuss shot in my head, and indeed, at the time there were a great many fired round about us. Methought my life but just hung upon my, lips: and I shut my eyes, to help, methought, to thrust it out, and took a pleasure in languishing and letting

th grievous dolours, or that their souls suffer under painful thoughts. It has ever been my belief, contrary to the opinion of many, and particularly of La Boetie, that

bi saep

quis nostros, u

as agit; ingemit,

at nervos, torq

t in jactando m

under our eyes, and foams, groans, and trembles, stretches, twists, breathes

from these signs by which it seems as if they had some remains of consciousness, and that there are

t vitae nesci

does not know th

rist., i

could maintain any force within to take cognisance of herself, and that, therefore, they had no tormenting reflectio

t silent seems to me the most graceful, if accompanied with a grave and constant countenance); or if those miserable prisoners, who fall into the hands of the base hangman soldiers of this age, by whom they are tormented with all sorts of inhuman usage to compel them to some

c eg

ro, teque isto

sacred thing to Plut

ee."-AEnei

o testimony, nevertheless, that they live, an entire life at least. So it happens to us in the yawning of sleep, before it has fully possessed us, to perceive, as in a dream, what is done about us, and to follow the last th

g in a swoon, I laboured to rip open the buttons of my doublet with my nails, for my sword was gone; and yet I f

cant digiti, ferr

grope about, and gra

id, x

natural impulse, which prompts our limbs to offices

ant currus abscin

erra videatur a

; cum mens tamen

i, non quit se

ythe-bearing chariots

ound; and yet the min

e swiftness of the

ius, ii

imals, and even men, in whom one may perceive the muscles to stir and tremble after they are dead. Every one experimentally knows that there are some members which grow stiff and flag without his leave. Now, those passions

ew not for all that, whence I came or whither I went, neither was I capable to weigh and consider what was said to me: these were light effects, that the senses produced of themselves as of custom; what the soul contributed was in a dream, lightly touched, licked and bedewed by the soft impression of the senses. Notwithstanding, my condition was, in truth, very easy and quiet; I had no affliction upon me, either for others or myself; it was an extreme languor and weakness, without any manner of pain. I saw my own house, but knew it not. When they had put me to bed I found an inexpressible sweetness in that repose; for I had been desperately tugged and lugged by those poor p

sensus conv

my lost senses

rist., i

g I could make them beat into my head, was the memory of this accident, and I had it over and over again repeated to me, whither I was going, from whence I came, and at what time of the day this mischance befell me, before I could comprehend it. As to the manner of my fall, that was concealed from me in favour to him who had been the occasion, and other flim-flams were invented. But a long time after, and the

ly that will die with me, and that no one is to inherit. We hear but of two or three of the ancients, who have beaten this path, and yet I cannot say if it was after this manner, knowing no more of them but their names. No one since has followed the track: 'tis a rugged road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain, as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate internal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble motions; 'tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us from the common and most recommended employments of the world. 'Tis now many years since that my thoughts have had no other aim and level than myself, and that I have only pried i

ducit cul

re fault often lead

from a fault l

Arte Poetics

y, at all events, when the occasions arise, they don't hesitate to put themselves on the public highway. Of what does Socrates treat more largely than of himself? To what does he more direct and address the discourses of his disciples, than to speak of themselves, not of the lesson in their book, but of the essence and motion of their souls? We confess ourselves religiously to God and our confessor; as our neighbours, do to all the people. But some will answer that we there speak nothing but accusation against ourselves; why then, we say all; for our very virtue itself is faulty and penetrable. My trade and art is to live; he that forbids me to speak according to my own sense, experience, and practice, may as well enjoin an architect not to speak of building according to his own knowledge, but according to that of his neighbour; according to the knowledge of another, and not according to his own. If it be v

y which is under a man's value is pusillanimity and cowardice, according to, Aristotle. No virtue assists itself with falsehood; truth is never matter of error. To speak more of one's self than is really true is not always mere presumption; 'tis, moreover, very often folly; to, be immeasurably pleased with what one is, and to fall into an indisc

n only, a stranger. If any one be in rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, let him but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be abated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him under foot. If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personal valour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so many armies, so many nations, that leave him so far behind them. No particular

ITOR'S B

voyage to no

s when we come

us of life; no one c

ss to-

because some pe

etray, accuse, and fi

of that eager

our own custody

nd certain trial of

elieve a man's cons

th." "No health to th

se be, as 'tis d

this voluntary di

s to nouris

as he will, after

if the liberty o

es as a third pers

he meanness of def

ce betwixt us

t on which a man in

is exempt from a

h upon your mistress

e, but a hundred

ure is carried on at

dren wine till eig

ve, being so near t

self than what one

er sleep as a re

s commendabl

untary death

ite to curiosi

by imagination tha

is the cause, if t

el that will a

a trial of patie

go, we a

suffer who do

punishment alr

ong as he ought, no