Montaigne On Vanity by Apraxia

Montaigne

On Vanity

This translation 2016

On Vanity

Perhaps there is no clearer evidence of vanity than to write of it so vainly: what divinity so divinely expressed of it to us should be carefully and constantly pondered by people of understanding. Who doesn't see that I follow a path along which, incessantly and without work, I will continue for as long as there is ink and paper in the world? I cannot account for my life through my actions, as fortune registered them too low. I must do it by my thoughts. Yet I have seen a gentleman communicate his life only by the workings of his digestive system. At his place you would see an array of seven or eight days of chamber pots: This was his study, his discourse: all else stank to him. Here, a little more civilised, are the excrements of an old mind, sometimes dense, other times thin, always undigested. And when will I be done representing the continuing agitation and mutation of my thoughts, as they come to mind, as Diomedes filled six thousand books solely on grammar? What should babbling produce, since the stuttering and unravelling of language clogs the world with such a horrible number of volumes? So many words, for words alone. Oh Pythagoras, that you didn't conjure that tempest. In the past, one Galba was accused of idle living. He responded that each must account for his actions not for his leisure. He was wrong, for justice holds knowledge and disciplinary power over the unoccupied. But there should be some legal constraint against inept and useless writers as there are against vagabonds and idlers: the hands of a hundred people, and my own, would be restrained. No joke. Scribbling seems the sign of a disordered age: when did we write so much as since our civic troubles; when did the Romans write so much as in the time of their ruin? Outside spiritual refinement, this does not make people wise in a society: this idle employment results from each applying themselves halfheartedly to their duties and being self-indulgent. The corruption of the age is built by the particular contributions of each individual: some bring treachery, others injustice, irreligion, tyranny, greed, cruelty according to their greater powers; the more feeble contribute folly, vanity and idleness; of these I am one. This appears to be the season for vain things, when the harmful overwhelm us. In a time when doing wrong is common, doing only the useless is almost commendable. I am consoled that I am one of the last who will be taken in hand: while the greater offenders are pursued, I will have the leisure to amend: it seems to me that it would be unreasonable to pursue those of minor inconvenience On Vanity

while the greater infest us. And the physician Philotimus said to one who asked him to bandage a finger, and who he perceived, both by his face and his breath, had an ulcerated lung: "Friend, this is not the time to bother yourself about your fingertips." In this regard, some years ago I saw a person whose name and memory I hold in singular esteem, at the height of our troubles, when there was neither law nor justice, nor functioning public offices, no more than at present, go and publish I know not what puny reformations to fashion, food and chicanery. These are amusements dropped onto an ill-used people to show that they are not entirely ignored. It is the same from these others who insist on forbidding particular modes of speech, dancing and gaming to a people totally lost to all kinds of execrable vice. There is no time to bathe and wash when seized by a violent fever. Only the Spartans fell to combing and curling when on the point of rushing into some extreme risk to their lives. As for me, I have a yet worse custom that if my shoe becomes shoddy, I let it be and let my shirt and outerwear become so too. I disdain mending by halves: When in a bad state, I go to the bad. I abandon myself to despair and let myself slide to the edge. Throwing in the towel. I obstinately get worse and consider myself not worth my own care: all well or all ill. It is a favour to me that the desolation of this state falls in the desolation of my age. I suffer more willingly that my ill is aggravated than if my well had been disturbed. The words that I utter in accident are angry words. My courage bristles rather than appeases. Contrary to others, I find myself more devout in good than in bad fortune, following Xenophon's precept, if not his reason. And more willing to raise my eyes to heaven in thanks than to request. I am more careful to improve my health when well than to restore it when ill. Prosperity serve to discipline and instruct me, as adversities and rods do for others. (As if good fortune was inconsistent with good conscience; men grow good only through the bad.) Good fortune spurs me to moderation and modesty. An appeal persuades, a threat checks; favour bends me, fear stiffens. Among human dispositions, this is common enough: pleasing ourselves more with the foreign things than our own, and loving novelty and change: Ipsa dies ideo nos grato perluit haustu, Quod permutatis hora recurrit

On Vanity

{The daylight itself pleases us, Because the hours are like a change of horses:}

equis: I have my part of this. Those following the other extreme â&#x20AC;&#x201C; agreeing with themselves, valuing what they have above the rest, and recognising no more beautiful form than what they see â&#x20AC;&#x201C; if they are no wiser than us, in truth they are happier. I do not envy their wisdom but their good fortune. This avidity for new and unknown things helps nourish my desire to travel, though many more circumstances contribute to it. I willingly evade the government of my house. There is some kind of convenience in commanding, even in a barn, and in being obeyed. But this pleasure is too uniform and languishing. And then it is stirred with a thousand vexatious thoughts. There is the poverty and oppression of your tenants, there are the neighbourhood quarrels, there are the slights upon you. Aut verberatae grandine vinae, Fundusque mundax, arbore nunc aquas Culpante, nunc torrentia agros Sidera, nunc hyemes iniquas:

{Or the hail ravages your vines And the land deceives your hopes, trees flooded by rain, fields scorched by the sun, Then the rigours of winter:}

And that rarely in six months does God send weather in which your manager can perform as he should, and that if it nourishes the vines it spoils the meadows Aut nimiis torret fervoribus aetherius sol, Aut subiti perimunt imbres, gelidaeque pruinae, Flabraque ventorum violento turbine vexant;

{Either scorched by the heat of the sun, Or destroyed by sudden rain, by frost, Vexed by swirling winds}

And the well-made new shoe of the man of old, how it hurts the foot. And the stranger does not understand how much it costs and what you contribute to maintain the appearance of order in your family. And perhaps bought too dear. I came late to household management. Those who nature placed before me eased me of that for a long time. I had already taken another direction, more suited to my nature. From what I have seen, it is an occupation more troublesome than hard. Whoever is capable of other things can easily accomplish this. Had I sought to become rich, that way would seem too long; I would have served royalty, as a more fertile route than any other. As I seek to acquire nothing but On Vanity

the reputation of having neither acquired nor squandered, and in the remainder of my life do neither good nor ill. I seek only to pass through, God willing, discreetly. At worst, avoid poverty by reducing expense: that has been my great concern, and doing so before compelled. I have settled my spirit to live on less than I have: I say, pass contentedly. Non aestimatione census, verum victu atque cultu, terminantur pecuniae modus. My real needs are not so aligned to possessions that a blow of misfortune would cut into my self. My presence, entirely ignorant and disdainful as it is, brings great service in my domestic matters; I apply myself to them but my heart is not in them. And though I burn the candle at one end, the other is not spared. Travel does no harm other than its expense, which is large and beyond my means, being accustomed to travel with more than just necessary luggage; I have to make trips shorter and less frequent, spending only profit and my reserve, when and if that becomes available. I do not want the pleasure of travel to spoil that of resting at home; on the contrary I want them to complement and nourish one another. Fortune assisted me in this, as my main profession in this life was to live at ease, nonchalantly rather than busily; she deprived me of the necessity to grow rich to support a multitude of heirs: for one, if he finds insufficient what has been plenty for me, then too bad. His imprudence does not merit me wishing him more. And each, according to the example of Phocion, provides sufficiently for his children who leaves as much to them as was left to him. In no way would I want to follow Crates' approach. He left his money with a banker with this condition: if his children were fools he should give it to them, if they were wise then he should distribute it to the most simple of the people. As if fools, being less capable of living without it, were more capable of using riches. Anyway, any damage from my absence seems not to merit that when opportunity presents itself and I have the means to support it, I should not follow my diversions. Something always goes awry. Affairs, whether of a house or of a person, tear at you. You examine everything too closely, your perspicacity hurts you here as elsewhere. I divest myself of occasions of becoming vexed and turn from knowledge of the things that go wrong. And if I can't, every hour I bump into some thing or other that displeases me. And the tricks hidden from me the most are those I know the best. And there are those that, to not make matters worse, one must help conceal. Vain pinpricks, sometimes vain but always pricks. The smallest and slightest impediments are the most piercing: as small letters tire the eyes so do small matters disturb us most. The mass of On Vanity

small ills offends more than one, however large. The more that these domestic thorns are numerous and small, the more they prick deeper and without warning, surprising when least expected. I am no philosopher: the bad oppresses me with its weight. And weighed as much in form as by matter, often more so. I have more knowledge than the vulgar if I have patience. In the end, if they do not wound they do offend. Life is a tender thing, easily disturbed. Since my face is turned towards sorrow, Nemo enim resistit sibi, cum coeperit impelli, for the most trivial of causes, I irritate the humour on that side, afterwards nourished and exasperated on its own motion. Attracted and heaping one matter on another on which to feed: Stillicidi casus lapidem cavat:

{Falling drips erode stone}

these ulcers consume me. Ordinary inconveniences are never light. They are continual and irreparable, especially those from family members, continual and inseparable. When I consider the aggregate of my affairs from a distance, I find, perhaps due to lacking an exact memory, that they have improved themselves beyond my accounting or reckoning. I take from it more than what I feel I should, but when I look to see how the portions of the business are doing, Tum vero in curas animum diducimus omnes;

{Our soul worn down by cares}

I have a thousand things to desire and fear. To abandon them altogether is easy, but to supervise them without trouble is difficult. It is pitiful to be in a place where everything you see belabours and concerns you. And I seem to more enjoy the pleasures of another's house, with greater and purer taste, than those of my own. Diogenes responded in my manner when asked what kind of wine he found the best; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Someone else'sâ&#x20AC;? he replied. My father loved to build at Montaigne, where he was born. In managing domestic affairs, I like to follow his example and his rules, and will seek similar from my successors if I can: if I could do better for him, I would. I am proud that his will is still performing and acting through me. May it please God that I should not drop any image of life that I can dedicate to such a good father. Whenever I have taken in hand the strengthening of some old piece of wall or to renovate some crumbling building, this has truly been more in respect of his intention than satisfaction of myself. And frustrated at my laziness in not going further to complete the good On Vanity

starts that he left in the house, all the more as I am likely to be its last possessor from my family, putting the last hand to it. As to applying myself, neither this pleasure in building, which is said to be so attractive, nor hunting, nor gardening, nor the other pleasures of life in retirement can amuse me much. Such things vex me, as do all opinions that reflect badly on me. I would not mind to have them vigorous and informed, as if they were easy and convenient to life: they are true and sound if they are useful and agreeable. Those who hear my declared ignorance in household management whisper that it is disdain. And that I decline to learn the tools, their seasons, their order, how to prune and graft my vines, and to know the names and forms of herbs and fruits and the preparation of meats on which I live, the names and prices of the materials I wear, to have set my heart on some higher knowledge: they kill me in saying so. All that was foolish and stupid rather than glorious. Better to ride well than to be a good logician: {Why don't you occupy yourself with Quin tu aliquid saltem potius, making something useful, quorum indiget usus, Viminibus mollique paras detexere from wood and willow twigs} junco.

We confuse our thoughts of the general, of universal causes and conducts which continue well without us, and leave behind our actions, and Michel, who is of more concern than Man. Now I generally stay at home but would be more pleased there than elsewhere: Sit meae sedes utinam senectae, Sit modus lasso maris, et viarum, Militiaeque.

{That it would be my resting place, Tired of the sea, and wandering, And warfare}

I do not know how it will finish up. I could wish that, rather than some other piece of inheritance, my father had left to me that passionate ardour that in his old age he applied to domestic matters. He happily linked these desires to his fortune and took pleasure from what he had. Political philosophy could well condemn the meanness and sterility if I could only once relish it as he did. My opinion is that the most honourable calling is public service and to be useful to the many. Fructus enim ingenii et virtutis, omnisque praestantioe, tum maximus capitur, quum in proximum quemque confertur: Myself, I abstain from it. Partly from conscience, for where I see the weight on such employments, I see also the small means that I have to furnish it. And Plato, himself a master of all political government, carefully abstained On Vanity

from it. Partly from cowardice. I am content to play the world without impact upon it: to live a merely excusable life, to be no burden on myself or any other. No man has more fully and feebly sought to be governed by a third person than would I if I had one such. At this time I should wish for a son-in-law who knew how to relax my old age. In whose hands I might deposit, with full sovereignty, management and use of all my goods, to do with them as I do and obtain what I obtain, provided he was grateful and a friend. But whatever, we live in a world where the loyalty of one's own children is uncertain. He who has charge of my accounts while I travel has it purely and without control: he could thoroughly cheat me in the reckoning. And if he is not a devil, I oblige him to deal faithfully with me by so complete a trust. Multi fallere docuerunt, dum timent falli; et aliis jus peccandi, suspicando, fecerunt. The most common security that I take of my staff is ignorance; I presume no vices until I have seen them so, and have most confidence in the young, who I assume less spoiled by bad example. I would rather say at the end of two months that I have spent 400 Ecus than to have my ears battered every night with three, five, seven. So have I been robbed as little as another. True, I cultivate ignorance. I consciously nourish some kind of troubled and uncertain knowledge of my money. To an extent, I am content to be dubious about it. A little leeway needs to be left for the infidelity or indiscretion of a servant: if enough remains overall to do what you want to do, let fortune's excess flow: the gleaner's portion. After all, I do not so much value the integrity of my staff as I fear the injury which they could bring. What a vile and ridiculous thing for a man to study his money, to take pleasure in handling and counting it obsessively: that is how avarice creeps up. In the 18 years that I have governed the estate, I could not make myself to read the deeds or to examine the principal matters which I am obliged to know and scrutinise. This is not a philosophical contempt for transitory and worldly things: my taste is not so pure, and I value them to the degree that they are worth. But in truth it is inexcusable and infantile laziness and neglect. What would I rather do than to read a contract? And rather than rake through these musty old papers, as a slave to my business. Or, still worse, those of someone else, as many do nowadays to earn money. I hold nothing dearer than care and trouble and seek nothing more than to be carefree and easy. I believe I would have been On Vanity

more suited to live on another man's fortune, had it been without obligation or servitude. And I don't even know, on closer examination with my mood and my character, whether what I have suffered from my affairs and servants has contained something more abject, troublesome and tormenting than there would be in serving a man born better than myself, who would keep me on a gentle rein: Servitus obedientia est fracti animi et abjecti, arbitrio carentis suo. Crates did worse, throwing himself into the freedom of poverty, just to rid himself of household inconveniences and cares. This I would not do. I hate poverty as much as pain. But yes I could change the life I lead for one that was humbler and with fewer affairs to attend. When away, I peel away all these thoughts, and become less concerned at the collapse of a tower than I would be about a falling tile when at home. My mind is easier at a distance, but when present it suffers like that of a peasant. A badly-fitted rein, a strap flapping against my leg, will put me in a bad mood all day. I raise my courage against inconveniences, but my eyes I cannot: Sensus, o superi, sensus.

{Senses, o high ones, senses}

I am responsible for all that goes wrong at home. Few masters (speaking of those of medium scale as is mine, and if they are, they are happier) can rely on another to take part of the responsibility. This has an effect on my hospitality and impeded some, perhaps more by my cuisine than by my attitude, and has drained much of the pleasure which should obtain from my friends coming together as guests. It is most ridiculous to see a gentleman in his own house harassed about the running of the place, whispering in the ear of one servant, glaring at another. Things ought to tick over in their ordinary course. I find it unseemly to discuss the hospitality with guests, either bragging or making excuses. I love order and clarity: Et cantharus et lanx Ostendunt mihi me

{Cups and plates Reflect on me}

as much as abundance: and at home I attend to necessity rather than to show. If a valet trips or drops a dish that he is carrying, you can but laugh: you sleep while the man of the house is arranging with his butler for your schedule tomorrow. I speak for myself, appreciating how certain natures set store by a peaceful and calm household under steady management. And not wishing to attach my own errors and On Vanity

inconveniences. Nor to deny Plato, who regarded the most apt occupation of each as being to go about their own affairs without injustice. When I travel I have no concerns but myself and the handling of my money, which involves only one precept. It is too complicated to accumulate it and I have no understanding of that; of spending I understand a little, and of how to spread the expenditure which is in truth its principal use. But I am immodest in this which makes it unbalanced and deformed, and immoderate in one or another aspect. If it appears, if it is used, I let it flow indiscreetly; and stop as indiscreetly if it does not gleam and please me. Whether it is art or nature that imprints the conditions of life on us, in the relations to others, this does us more harm than good. We deprive ourselves of our own utility to accommodate to public opinion. It doesn't matter so much to us what our own self is as to how the public perceive it. The very goods of the mind and wisdom seem fruitless if enjoyed only by ourselves, if not produced in the view and the approval of others. There are those whose gold runs imperceptibly in subterranean veins; others display gold bars and leaf; to some lions are worth ecus, to others the reverse: the world values use and value according to the display. All attention to riches smells of greed, even their distribution with too calculated a generosity. The just order of spending is pinched and narrow. Retention or expenditure are in themselves indifferent things, coloured for good nor ill only by the application of our will. The other impetus to these journeys is discontent with the current state of affairs. I could reconcile with this corruption in consideration of the interest of the public Perjoraque saecula ferri Temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo;

{worse than the Iron Age Times whose crimes are without name and which none could find a metal to describe}

but for my own, no. They are too oppressive to my life. For in my neighbourhood, the long course of our civil wars has worn us down so overwhelmingly, Quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas {Where right and wrong are intermixed} On Vanity

that in truth it is a wonder it can subsist: Armati terram exercent, semperque {Labouring the earth with armies, always Thinking only of prey and living by rape.} recentes Convectare juvat praedas, et vivere rapto. In the end, by our example, I see that the society of men is maintained and held together at a price: in whatever their situation, they gather and stick together, stirring and piling up, like badly coordinated bodies jumbled together, finding in themselves the means to unite and settle among one another, often better than could have been achieved by design. King Philip put together a mass of the most wicked and incorrigible men that he could find, lodged them in a purpose-built town which bore their name (Poneropolis). Emerging from the vices, I believe that they constructed their own political context and a commodious and fair society. I see not one action, or three, or a hundred, but common and received manners so ferocious especially in inhumanity and disloyalty, to me the worst of vices, that I lack the courage to consider without horror, and that I admire almost as much as I detest them. The exercise of these emblematic evils carries the mark of vigour and spiritual force as well as of error and disorder. Necessity composes people and brings them together. This fortuitous binding hardens into laws. For there have been such which have been as savage as any human could imagine but have maintained bodily health and lifespan as those which Plato or Aristotle would propose. And certainly all the descriptions of social organisation by design turn out to be ridiculous and impractical. Those great drawn-out controversies about the best form of society and the best rules with which to bind ourselves are debates fit only for mental gymnastics, as in the arts various subjects are based in agitation and dispute and have no life outside of that. Such ideas of social organisation might have value in a new world, but we take on people already formed according to certain customs. We do not start out afresh as Pyrrha or Cadmus did. By whatever means that we might redress and reform things, we cannot bend them from their accustomed course without breaking everything. Solon was asked whether he had established the best possible laws for the Athenians. Yes, he replied, of those that they would have accepted. Varro excuses himself similarly. That if he were to begin writing about religion he would On Vanity

say what he believed. But being already received and formed, he would write of it according to usage rather than nature. Not by opinion but in truth, the best and most excellent organisation for each nation is that under which it is maintained. Its form and basic convenience depends on custom. We tend to grumble about present condition. But I hold nevertheless that to desire an oligarchy in a democracy or another form of government in a monarchy is vice and madness. Ayme l'estat, tel que tu le vois estre: S'il est royal ayme la royautĂŠ, S'il est de peu, ou bien communautĂŠ, Ayme l'aussi; car Dieu t'y a faict naistre.

{Love the state as you find it; If it is a monarchy, love the monarch; If it is rule of the few or of the community, Love them too; for God placed your birth under it}

The good Monsieur de Pibrac who we have lost: a man so noble, of sound opinions and gentle manners. That loss and the coincident one of Monsieur de Foix, are losses important to our crown. I do not know if in France another couple can take the place of these two Gascons in sincere and wise advice to the king. These were differently good souls and certainly in our age rare and good, each in his manner. But what placed them in our times, so out of sympathy and proportion to our corruption and storms? Nothing disturbs a state as much as innovation. Change only results in injustice and tyranny. When some piece is dislodged one can repair it; one can object that the alteration and corruption natural to all things should not carry us too far from our founding principles. But to undertake to establish so great a mass anew and to change the foundations of so great a edifice is a matter for those who want to clear away, who wish to mend particular defects through universal confusion, to cure disease by killing: Non tam commutandarum quam evertendarum rerum cupidi. The world is not suitable for cure. It is so impatient of anything pressing that it sees only disengagement, at any price. We see by a thousand examples that it cures itself to its cost: The disappearance of a present condition helps only if it brings a general change in condition. The surgeon's aim is not killing bad flesh: that is only a step towards the cure; he looks beyond that, to its regeneration and to restore the part to its natural health. Whoever seeks only to On Vanity

remove that which offends him will fall short, for the good does not necessarily follow the bad; another bad may succeed it, and one worse, as happened with the killers of Caesar who threw the republic into such a state that they came to regret what they had caused. To others besides, down the ages, it has turned out the same. My contemporaries in France know this well. All great mutations shake and disorder a state. Whoever is aiming for a cure should consider before he begins and stay his hand. Pacuvius Calavius corrected the vice of proceeding thus by a memorable example. His fellow-citizens were in rebellion against the authorities. As a man of great authority in the town of Capua, he one day found the opportunity to lock the senators in the palace, and convened the people in the square, to tell them that the day had come when they were free to revenge themselves on the tyrants who had for so long oppressed them, who were now unarmed and at their mercy. He advised that each should be called out one after another, in no particular order, and whatever was decreed should be immediately executed, but that some honest man should be delegated in the place of the condemned, so that there should be no shortage of officials. No sooner was the name of one senator heard than there was a cry of universal dislike of him. I see, said Pacuvius, that this one is for the out: he is a bad one, let is have a good one in his place. There was an immediate silence: everyone seemed to find the choice difficult. When a first name was suggested, there came an even greater hubbub against him: a hundred imperfections and just charges why he should be rejected. These contradictory attitudes heating up, it became worse with the second senator and the third. As much dissent in electing the new and agreement about turning out the old. Tiring of this trouble, they began, first by this exit then by that, to drift out of the square, each with a mental conviction that the old familiar evil is always more tolerable than a new untried evil. I see us heavily agitated about what we do: Eheu! cicatricum et sceleris pudet, Fratrumque: quid nos dura refugimus Aetas? quid intactum nefasti Liquimus? Unde manus inventus Metu Deorum continuit? quibus Pepercit aris.

{Alas, scarred and with shameful guilt, Brothers, in this cruel hard age What sacrilege have we not committed? Have our hands been stayed by fear of the gods? What alter spared}

I am not led to conclude: On Vanity

Ipsa si velit Salus, Servare prorsus non potest hanc familiam;

{the goddes Salus herself Could not serve to protect this family}

We are not, perhaps, at the end of things. The conservation of states is something which truly exceeds our understanding. As Plato says, nothing is mightier and more difficult to dissolve than a civil order. They outlast mortal and internal injuries, the injuries of unjust laws, tyranny, corrupt and ignorant officials, licentious and seditious peoples. In all our fortunes we compare ourselves to what is above us and look to those who are better: we should measure ourselves with what us below us: there is no condition so miserable that a man cannot find in it and thousand consoling examples. This is our vice. That we look negatively on what is before us rather than a positive view of what is behind us. As Solon said, if you heap up all the ills of the world, nobody would not prefer to leave with those he already has than to have them divided up equally with everyone else and take away his quota. Our society is indeed sickly but others have been sicker without dying. The gods play games with us, chucking us from hand to hand: Enimvero Dii nos homines quasi pilas habent. Rome's fate was in the stars as an example of what they could do in this way. The comprise all the forms and adventures of a state, all that order or disorders it, fortune and misfortune. Who despairs of his condition, seeing the shocks and commotions of that city, which it survived. If the extent of its dominion marks the health of a state (in no way my opinion, and I am pleased by Isocrates in instructing Nicocles not to envy princes with extensive dominions but those who know how to safeguard those which have fallen to them), Rome's was never so sound as when it was sick. The worst of its forms was its most fortunate. It is difficult to discern any pattern of government under the first emperors, which was the most horrible and noisy confusion conceivable. Nonetheless, it was endured and lasted, preserving not a monarchy operating within its own limits, but a range of nations so diverse,so remote, so badly affected, so confusedly commanded, so unjustly conquered: Nec gentibus ullis Commodat in populum, terrae pelagique potentem, Invidiam fortuna suam.

{And no nation Can oppose power of land and sea With its fortune}

Everything that teeters does not collapse. Such a great edifice is On Vanity

supported by more than one nail. It depends even on its antiquity: like old buildings whose foundations are eroded by time, without roughcast or mortar, but which nevertheless survive and support themselves on their own weight: Nec jam validis radicibus haerens, {Not clinging with heavy roots, Preserved by its own weight} Pondere tuta suo est. And it is not right to proceed by examining only the outside walls and the moat: to judge the security of a site, one must observe the approach route and manner of the attacker. Few vessels sink under their own weight without external violence. Now, looking around, everything we see is tottering: in all the great states, be they Christian or otherwise, that are known to us, if you look you will see evidence of the menace of upheaval and ruin: Et sua sunt illis incommoda; parque {And they have their troubles, equally troubled by per omnes Storms.} Tempestas. Astrologers make play in warning us, as they do, of great upheavals and changes to come: their predictions are present and palpable, no need to look to the heavens for that. We take no consolation from this general situation of ills and menaces, but retain some hope for the survival of our state, as naturally no thing falls where all falls: general sickness is particular health, conformity is hostile to dissolution. Me, I do not despair and think I see ways to preserve us: Deus haec fortasse benigna Reducet in sedem vice.

{May benign god put things in their proper place}

Who knows if God wills that it comes to pass, as the body purges and is restored to a better state by long and grievous illnesses, providing them with a more complete and perfect health than was taken from them. What matters most to me is that in assessing the symptoms of our ills, I see as many that are natural and properly heaven-sent as those of our disorder, produced by our human imprudence. The stars themselves seem to declare that we have lasted long enough, beyond the ordinary timespan. It also concerns me that that most immediate evil that menaces us is not alteration to the entire solid mass but its dissipation and dislocation, our most extreme fear. In these musings, I fear betrayal by my memory, that may lead me inadvertently to write the same thing On Vanity

twice. I am averse to examining myself and rarely and unwillingly review what I have stated. These are commonplace thoughts, perhaps conceived a hundred times, so I worry that I have already set them down. Repetition is always tiresome, despite Homer, but ruinous in things which have only a superficial and brief display. I dislike inculcation, even though it can be useful, as in Seneca. And his Stoical school's practice displeases me: on whatever subject to repeat at full length the general principles and presuppositions and always to restate afresh the common and universal reasons. My memory worsens cruelly by the day: Pocula Lethaeos ut si ducentia somnos, Arente fauce traxerim,

{As if I had drunk from the sleepy waters of Lethe To parch my dry throat}

It will be to come, for thank God nothing untoward to date, that whereas others seek time to think before they speak, I avoid preparation,out of fear of binding myself to relying on some obligation. Becoming bound to a thing and under obligation, I seek to avoid, depending on the feeble instrument that is my memory. I never read this story without being offended with a proper and natural resentment. Lyncestes, accused of conspiracy against Alexander, on the day that he was brought before the army, as was customary, for his defence to be heard, had in his head a rehearsed speech from which, hesitant and stammering, he mouthed a few words. As he grew increasingly confused, struggling with his memory and what he sought to retell, the nearby soldiers killed him with pikes, convinced of his guilt. His stupor and his silence served as a confession. Having had in prison so much leisure to prepare his case, they took the view that it was not his memory that failed but that his conscience stopped his speech. And indeed, the place, the assembly, the anticipation, even when he has no ambition but to speak well: what can a man do when it is a speech on which his life depends? For me, just being bound to what I am to say is enough to loosen me from it. When I wholly commit to memory, I so depend on it that it overwhelms: it wilts under the weight. To the extent that I commit to it, I put it outside myself, to the extent of being unable to keep my own countenance, and some days have found it difficult to hide the servitude under which I was engaged. Where my intention is to show in speaking a profound nonchalance and casual and relaxed movement arising from the present occasion: choosing to say nothing over showing that I cam prepared to speak well: an unbecoming thing for a man of my profession. And too On Vanity

great an obligation for one unable to retain much: preparation creates more expectation than it can satisfy. A man often strips to his shirt to leap no further than he would in his coat: Nihil est his, qui placere volunt, tam adversarium, quam expectatio. It is written of the oracle Curio that when he planned his oration divided into three or four parts, or three or four arguments or reasons, he would habitually forget one or add one or two more. I have always guarded against falling into this inconvenience, having disliked these promises and prescriptions: not merely from distrust of my memory but also because the technique has too much of artistry: Simpliciora militares decent. It suffices that I promised myself never again to speak in a respected public forum: for when written speeches are read out, aside from being monstrous, it greatly disadvantages with grace in performance. And to throw myself at the mercy of my present devising, still less. Finding it heavy and perplexed, which would not furnish my immediate and important needs. Let the reader follow the course of this essay, and this whole third part of the rest of my picture. I add but do not edit. Firstly because of my belief that he who has put his works into the world no longer has rights over them. Let him produce something better if he can, but not adulterate the work already sold. Nothing should be bought from such people until they be dead. Let them consider what they are doing before bringing it to light: what's the hurry? My book is one unit, other than that in each new edition, so that the buyer doesn't go emptyhanded, I take the liberty of adding, as it is a mosaic, some ornamentation. These extra weights in no way condemn the initial form, but add some value to each of those that follow, by means of a little ambitious subtlety. However this can involve some chronological transpositions. My tales take their place according to their opportunity not their age. Secondly, concerning myself, I fear loss by change: my understanding does not always advance, it retreats too. I rate my thoughts no less for being the second or third rather than the first: or present or past. We often correct ourselves as wrongly as we do others. My first publication was in the year 1580. Since then, I have aged by a great deal but have not grown an inch wiser. I at that time and I now are two distinct people. But which is the better I cannot say. It would be good to grow old if we proceeded to improve. It is a stumbling, dizzy, infirm motion, like rushes waving casually in the wind. Antiochus had written strongly in favour of the Academy; in his old age he took an opposite position; which of the two would I follow if I always followed Antiochus? After maintaining On Vanity

doubt, to wish to maintain the certainty of human opinions,would this not establish doubt, not certainty? And to promise that were he given another life to live, he would always tend to change his views: none better than another. Public approval has given me a little more confidence than anticipated. But what I fear most is to provide too much. I would prefer to stimulate than bore the reader, as did a learned man of my time. To receive praise is always pleasing, regardless of from whom or why it comes: yet to retain the reputation, one should understand its reason. Even imperfections can be commended. Public appreciation is rarely a happy choice and in my time the worst of my writings can be those best in gaining public response. To be sure, I thank those honest folk who deign to look favourably on my weak efforts. Nowhere do the faults appear so readily than in something which has no recommendation. No blame, please, for those which appear here, by or the inadvertence of others. Each hand, each worker, brings their own tools. I do not bother about spelling, only caring that the printing should follow the old ways; nor about punctuation, lacking expertise in the one like the other. Where they completely destroy the sense, I am less concerned as it is not my problem, but where they substitute a false one, as often happens, and bend me to their conception, they devastate me. Nonetheless, when a sentence does not follow my usual direction, an astute person should reject it as spurious. Anyone knowing how slothful I am, how set in my ways, will easily believe that I would rather write many more essays than subject myself to rereading for pedantic corrections. As I have said, being deep in the mine of this new metal, not only am I deprived of any degree of familiarity with people of other manners and opinions, by which they stick together, as one tie bound to all other ties, but I am still not without risk, among those to which everything is equally permissible, and of whom most cannot cannot offend the laws more than they already have, which gives rise to the extreme degree of licence. Summing all the particular circumstances around me, I see none of our men for whom defence of our laws, both in lost opportunity for gain and effective losses, as the lawyers say, has been more than mine. And some who are loud about their eagerness and enthusiasm do less than I do, on balance. As a house always open and free to visitors and providing security to all (for I could never be induced to make of it an instrument of war, which I seek to keep far away), my house has merited sufficient popular affection. And it would be injudicious to attack me over my own midden; and I consider it a fine and exemplary piece of work On Vanity

that it stands unscathed by blood and plunder throughout such a long storm of revolution and nearby disturbances. To be honest, it was possible for a man of my type to have eluded by one constant and continued form, whatever it could be: but the opposing invasion and incursions, and changes and vicissitudes of fortune around me have hitherto tended to exasperate rather than calm the mood of the country, and involve me in dangers and formidable difficulties. I escape. But I am troubled that this is more by chance, and even my prudence, than by justice. And it displeases me to be outside the protection of laws and under safeguards other than theirs. As things are, I live largely under other's protection, which is a harsh obligation. I do not wish to owe my safety. nor my health and wellbeing to the powerful, who appreciate my respect for law and liberty, nor to the easy manners of my predecessors or myself; For what if I were another kind of person? If my behaviour and frank conversation or kinship oblige my neighbours, it is inhumane that they meet it by allowing me to live. And that they could say: we concede to him the free liberty of having divine service in his own private chapel when all surrounding churches are ravaged and ruined, and allow him the use of his goods and his life, as one who protects our wives and cattle when needed. In my household we have long appreciated Lycurgus of Athens, who acted as deposit holder and guardian for the purses of his fellow citizens. Now, I hold that a man should live by right and authority, not on subsidy or favour. How many virtuous men have preferred to lose their lives rather than be beholden? I dislike placing myself under any form of obligation. But especially that which attaches me by honourable duty. I find nothing so dear as what was given to me, because my will falls under obligations of gratitude: and receive ore willingly services which are for sale: I think so. For these I give only money; for the other I give myself. The knot binding me under the law of honesty seems much tighter than that of civil constraint. I am strangled more gently by a lawyer than myself. Isn't the reason that my conscience becomes much more engaged which it has expectations on it? Else my loyalty owes nothing because it has lent nothing: trust the assurance taken without me. I would rather break the prison wall and the laws than my word. I am attentive, even superstitious, about keeping my promises and on all subjects make them uncertain and conditional. To those with less weight, I give the weight of exactly observing my own rule: it torments me and charges its own interest. In activities which are my own, freely chosen, it seems to me that I prescribe and that once delivered to the On Vanity

other's knowledge it is preordained. To me, I promise it when I say it. Thus I divulge little of my projects. My verdict on myself is more severe and absolute than that of judges, who consider only common obligations: my imposition of conscience more close and severe. I am lazy in those duties in which I would be compelled if I did not proceed with them: Hoc ipsum ita justum est, quod recte fit, si est voluntarium. If action does not involve some zest of liberty, it has neither grace nor honour: Quod me jus cogit, vix voluntate impetrent:

{What the Law prescribes is not done willingly}

Where necessity takes me, I like to let my will be taken: Quia quicquid imperio cogitur exigenti magis, quam praestanti, acceptum refertur. I known of some who follow this rule, even to the point of injustice: give rather than repay, lend rather than pay, most parsimonious with those to whom they are most obliged. I don't go so far but I'm close to it. I so much like to disengage from obligations, that sometimes I have favoured ingratitude, affronts, and slights received from those to whom by nature or accident I carried some duty of friendship, taking this occasion of their defect to acquit and discharge my debt. Still continuing to acknowledge the demands of civil law, I nevertheless find great economy in doing from justice what I did from affection, and gain relief from the attention and solicitude of my internal will: Est prudentis sustinere, ut currum, sic impetum benevolentia. Which I have a little more urgent and pressing in my pursuits; at least for a man who does not want to be bothered by the concerns of public life. And use this behaviour, of some consolation, in the imperfections of those which touch on me. I am sorry that they are not as I would wish, but such as they are, I save something of my application and engagement of them. I approve of a man who is the less fond of his child for having a scald head, or for being crooked. And not only when he bears malice but also when he is ill-tempered and ill-born. (God himself has reduced that from his value and natural estimation), provided he carry himself in this coldness of affection with moderation and exact justice: For me, proximity does not lessen defects but aggravates them. After all, according to my understanding of the science of benefit and recognition, which is a subtle science and well used, I see nobody more free and less indebted than me just now. What I owe, I owe to common and natural obligations. There is nothing which would be more clearly On Vanity

concern another: Nec sunt mihi nota potentum Munera.

{Nor do I know gifts from the powerful}

Princes give me a lot if they take nothing from me, and do me enough good if they do me no harm; that is all I ask. O, how I am obliged to God, that I am given what pleased him, that I have received directly from his grace all that I have, that it is to him particularly that I owe everything. How I beg incessantly of his holy mercy, that I may never be deeply indebted to anyone. Happy the liberty in which I have lived so far; may it be sustained. I try never to have express need of anyone: In me omnis spes est mihi. This each can have in himself but more easily those placed by God outside natural and urgent need. It is pitiful and risky to be dependent on another. Ourselves, the most just and secure dependency, are not sufficiently assured. I have nothing as mine but myself, yet its possession is partly imperfect and borrowed. I cultivate in courage, which is the most strong, and also in fortune: to find in it something satisfying me even when abandoned by all. Hippias Eleus not only furnished himself with learning to be able to happily retire from all other company when the Muses required: nor solely with philosophical knowledge to settle his soul to be content and robustly sustain itself without external commodities when fate ordained. He was careful to know how to feed himself, trim his beard, make his robes, his shoes and things, to be autonomous when he could and outside the care of others. Borrowed goods are enjoyed more freely and happily when it is not an enjoyment forced and constrained by necessity; and when one has, in one's will and fortune, the means to go without. I know myself well. But it is hard to imagine anyone having pure generosity towards me, any hospitality so frank and free that I would not seem disgraced, tyrannical and tainted with reproach if necessity had entangled me in it. As giving is a quality of ambition and prerogative, so too is acceptance a quality of submission: take the example of the injured and querulous rejection by Bayezit of the gifts sent to him by Tamerlane. And those offered by the Emperor Soleiman to the emperor of Calicut so angered him, that not only did he rudely reject them, saying, that neither he nor his predecessors were in the custom of receiving and that their role was to give; but also threw the ambassadors bearing the gifts into a dungeon. When Thetis, according to Aristotle, flatters Jupiter, when the Lacedaemonians flatter the Athenians, they do not recall the memory of good they have done them, which is always odious, but the memory of On Vanity

benefits which they have received from them. Those who I see bringing everyone into their affairs and involving them, they would not do so if they weighed, as a wise man should, the commitment in an obligation: it can perhaps be repaid but never dissolved. Cruel fetters to he who loves the full breadth of liberty in all respects. My acquaintances, above and below my status, know whether they have ever seen one less accountable to others. If I am so to an extent greater than the modern norm, this is no great marvel, so many parts of my manners contribute to it. A little natural pride:inability to support rejection: contraction of my desires and designs; unsuitedness for all kinds of business: and the most favoured of my qualities: idleness, liberty; from all that I have taken a mortal hatred of being obliged to another or by another than me. I do all that I can to avoid needing another's benevolence on any occasion, trivial or important. My friends vex me when they ask me to make a request of a third person. And it seems to me less costly to disengage he who is indebted to me, by making use of him, than to engage myself for him towards he who owes me nothing. These conditions being removed, and provided they require of me nothing difficult and timeconsuming, for I have declared war on all preoccupations, I am solicitous to the needs of all. But I have still more avoided receiving than I have sought to give, more easy according to Aristotle. My fortune has allowed me little to benefit others, and the little it does afford goes to the destitute. Had I been born into the upper ranks, I would have sought to be loved, not feared or admired. Expressing it more plainly, I would have sought to please not profit. Cyrus (very wisely, and from the mouth of a great captain and even greater philosopher) , preferred his bounty and benefits above his valour and war conquests. And the first Scipio, wherever he wanted to assert, valued his sociability and humanity above his boldness and victories, and always had this glorious saying, that he allowed his enemies as much occasion to love him as his friends. So I will say that if it is necessary to owe something, it should be under more legitimate title than what I am discussing, compelled by the law of this miserable war. And not under such a gross debt as that of my total preservation. It overwhelms me. A thousand times have I gone to sleep in my own house imagining that I should be betrayed and murdered that very night. Mixed with the hope that it be without terror and quick. And have cried after my Paternoster:

On Vanity

Impius haec tam culta novalia miles {Some impious soldier will seize these cultivated lands} habebit! What remedy? This is the place of my birth and most of my ancestors: here they placed their affection and their name. We become used to whatever we take as customary. And in a miserable a condition such as ours, becoming accustomed is a great gift of nature, under which slumbers our sense of the many sufferings. Civil wars have this worse than other wars: making us stand guard in our own houses: Quam miserum, porta vitam muroque tueri, Vixque suae tutum viribis esse domus!

{How miserable to need walls to guard one's life, And hardly able to trust the security of one's home}

It is excessive to be disturbed even in one's own place and domestic rest. The place where I live is always the first and the last to arms and where peace is never entire: Tum quoque, cum pax est, trepidant {Even in times of peace we fear war. When fortune strikes at peace it is the path formidine belli. to war. It would have been better, Fortune, Quoties pacem fortuna lacessit; if you had placed me under the wandering Hac iter est bellis... Melius, Fortuna, orbs of the far North} dedisses Orbe sub Eoo sedem, gelidaque sub Arcto, Errantesque domos. Sometimes I take the means to fortify myself against these considerations from indifference and indolence. They, in some way, also lead us to resolution. It often happens that I imagine, with some pleasure, mortal dangers and am attentive to them: Head down I plunge, senselessly in death, without considering and recognising it, as into a deep and dark abyss engulfing me up in one leap, and involves me in an instant in a profound sleep, without any sense of pain. And in these abrupt and violent deaths, the consequence that I predicted provide more consolation than the effect of turmoil. It is said that as life is not better for being long, then death best for not being long. Yet if it should happen, as certain gardeners claim, that roses and violets have more scent when grown near garlic and onion, because these suck and carry the earth's bad odour, so too that those depraved natures, gathering all the noxious content from my air and climate, render it better and purer On Vanity

for me by their proximity, then I should not lose all. That cannot be. There may be something in this though, that the good is more pretty and more attractive when rare, and that the contrary and diversity fortifies and strengthens well-being, and inflame it by the drives of the opposition and by glory. Robbers of their will have nothing against me particularly, nor I against them:I would need too many people for that. Similar consciences live under diverse fortunes. Such as cruelty, disloyalty, pillage. And so much the worse that it is more false, more secure and more concealed in the shadow of the laws. I hate less a injustice that is visible than one that is treacherous, bellicose rather than falsely peaceful. Our fever has seized upon a body that is not much the worse for it. Where there was fire, flames have taken hold. The noise is greater, the evil less so. I usually reply to those who ask the reason for my travels, that I know well what I flee but not what I seek. If told that there may also be little health among foreigners, and that their morals are no better than ours, I reply, firstly that it is difficult to believe, Tam multae scelerum facies!

{Wickedness has many guises}

Secondly, that it is always positive to swap a bad state for a state that is uncertain. And that the ills of others should not injure like our own. Don't forget that I never rebel against France, that I regard Paris well: it has had my heart since childhood,and has brought excellent things. The more that I have seen other beautiful cities, the more its beauty gains my affection. I love her for herself, and more in her own unique being, reconfirmed by the foreign. I love her tenderly, even to her warts and blemishes. I am French only by that great city. Great in people, great in her happy situation, but above all, grand and incomparable in variety, and diversity of commodities. The glory of France and one of the world's most noble ornaments. God keep our divisions far away: entire and united, I find her safe from all other violence. I caution that of all the parties the worst will place her in discord, and fear not for her but of herself, and fear for her more than for any other part of this state. While she endures, I would not want for a retreat where I may die at bay such as to lose my regret for any other retreat. Not because Socrates has said it, but because it is actually my own outlook and, perhaps not without some excess, I regard all men as my compatriots and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, putting that national tie after the universal and common ones. I am in no way taken by the air of the native land. Familiarities totally new and my own seem as precious to me as these other common and fortuitous familiarities with neighbours.: friendships to On Vanity

which we bind ourselves stand above those to which we are obliged by the communication of climate or blood. Nature has placed us in the world free and unencumbered, we imprison ourselves in certain areas: like the Persian kings who obliged themselves to drink no water but that from the Choaspes river, foolishly renouncing their right to use all other waters, and, in respect of themselves, drying up all the others of the world. What Socrates did in the end, assessing a sentence of banishment as worse than a sentence of death against him, I would never, in my opinion, be so worn down nor so habituated to my country to take that position. These celestial lives have enough images that I embrace by esteem more than affection. And also some so elevated and extraordinary that my own estimation I cannot embrace them as I cannot conceive them. That outlook was suitable to a man who regarded the world as his city. True, he disdained travelling and didn't set foot outside the Attica region. what can be said of his complaint about the money his friends offered for his freedom. And that he refused to leave prison through others' negotiations, so as not to disobey the laws in a time when they had become so strongly corrupted. These examples are of the first kind for me. Of the second are others that I could find in this same person. Many of these rare examples exceed the force of my own actions, but some go beyond even the force of my judgment. Beyond these reasons, travel seems to me to be a profitable exercise. The soul is constantly exercised in taking notice of unknown and new things, And I know no better school, as I have often said, to give form to life than to expose it incessantly to the diversity of other lives, fantasies and customs,and to cultivate the taste for such a perpetual variety of forms of human nature. There the body is neither idle nor overworked, and that moderate exercise gives it breath. I can remain on horseback without dismounting, troubled as my digestion is, and without it wearying me, for eight, ten hours. Vires ultra sortemque senectae:

{Stronger than is normal for the elderly}

No season is enemy to me but the heat of an intense sun; For the umbrellas used in Italy since the ancient Romans burden the arm more than they protect the head. I would like to know how the Persians, so long ago and at the birth of luxury, achieved fresh air and shade as they wanted, according to Xenophon. I like raindrops, as the ducks do. Change of air and climate does not affect me, all is the same under the sky. I am vexed only by inward alterations which I produce myself, and these happen less when travelling. I am slow to rouse but once on the On Vanity

road I do as one does. I put as much into small as great undertakings and to equip myself for a day trip to a neighbour as for a real voyage. I have learned to travel as the Spanish do, covering one reasonable length, and in extreme heat to set off by night under the setting sun. The other way of eating on the way, with a hurried and hasty dinner, especially on short days, is inconvenient. My horse takes better to it. No horse has failed me that was able to endure the first day's journey. I water them everywhere and take care that they have sufficient rest to digest their water. My laziness in rising gives my servants the leisure to dine at their ease before starting. As for me, I never eat too late: my appetite comes to me while eating and not at other times; I have no hunger but at table. Some disparage my continuing to this exercise when married and old. They are wrong. It is the best time to abandon one's household when one has arranged it to run on its own: when it has the order consistent with its old form. It is much more imprudent to go from it leaving the house to a less faithful management which is less likely to take care of your needs. The most useful and honourable skill and occupation for a woman is the economy of the household. I have seen who covet one but far fewer who can manage one. This is her supreme quality that one should seek before all others, as the sole dowry that will ruin or preserve our houses. Whatever they say, from what experience has taught me, I seek of a married woman, beyond all other virtues, the economic. I give her that opportunity, leaving her in my absence with all management in her hands. I see with disapproval that in many households the man returns morose and miserable from business troubles, round about midday, while his wife is still at her coiffure in the bedroom. That is for queens, to my knowledge. It is ridiculous and unjust that our wives' laziness should be underwritten by our sweat and labour. I hold that nobody should have a use of my goods in a manner more easy, tranquil and free than me. If the husband brings the material, it is nature that they will find the form. As for the duties of marital friendship that are said to be weakened by absence, I do not believe so. On the contrary, it is an intelligence that easily cools easily from attention that is too continual and assiduous. Every foreign woman seems to us to be a decent woman. And all know from experience that constantly seeing one another cannot give the pleasure that results from successive parting and returning. These interruptions fill me with a fresh love towards my own and make the On Vanity

house more pleasant: reverses of fortune heat my appetite towards one and then the other side. I know that friendship has arms long enough to hold and join from one side of the world to the other: and notably where a continual communication of offices awakens the obligation and remembering. The Stoics say that the sages have such great connections and relations that he who dines in France nourishes his comrade in Egypt, and that whoever lifts his finger, wherever he is, aids all the sages on habitable land. Enjoyment and possession belong principally to the imagination. It embraces more warmly what it seeks than what touches us, and more continually. Assess your daily distractions and you will find that you are far more absent from your friend when he is in your presence: his assistance relaxes your attention and sets your thoughts free to go absent at any time and any occasion. Away in Rome, I keep and supervise my household and the features that I left in it. I see the growing of my walls, my trees and my revenue, and the decreases, close-up as if I was there: Ante oculos errat domus, errat forma locorum.

{Before my eyes is a vision of my house and these places}

If we enjoy only what touches us, then goodbye to our money when it is in our safe and to our children when they go on the hunt. We want them closer. Is the garden too far? A half-day's journey? Ten leagues then, is that far or near? If near, what about eleven, twelve, thirteen? And so on. Truly, she who prescribes to her husband the number that finishes the close and the number that starts the distant, I would think she should stop between the two: Excludat jurgia finis: Utor permisso; caudaeque pilos ut equinae Paulatim vello, et demo unum, demo etiam unum, Dum cadat elusus ratione ruentis acervi.

{Set limits to avoid dispute: Use permitted; like plucking hair from a horse's tail Little by little I take one item then another until my adversary is vanquished by my reasonable accumulation.}

And that they robustly call Philosophy to assist: which someone could reproach, since it sees neither one nor the other end of the line between too much and too little, the long and the short, the light and the heavy, the near and the far, since it recognises neither the start nor the finish, judging uncertainly of the middle. Rerum natura nullam nobis dedit cognitionem finium. Are they not still wives and friends to the deceased, On Vanity

who are not at the end of this but in the other world? We embrace and those who have been, and those who are not yet, not just the absent. We have not set out in marriage to be constantly attached to one another, like some little animals that we see: or like the enchanted of Karenti, in the manner of dogs. And a wife should not to be so greedily fixed on her husband's front, that she cannot endure to see his behind as need be. But these words of such an excellent depicter of their moods can be placed here to show the cause of their complaints: Uxor, si cesses, aut te amare cogitat, Aut tete amari, aut potare, aut animo obsequi; Et tibi bene esse soli, cum sibi sit male;

{Your wife, if you stay out late, thinks you are in love or are beloved, or drinking, And that you alone have a good time while she stays miserable.}

Or may it not be, that in themselves opposition and contradiction entertain and nourish them, and that they accommodate themselves enough that they bother you. In true friendship, on which I am expert, I give myself more to my friend than I draw him to me. I not only like it better to do him good than for him to do good to me, but even that he does good to himself rather than to me: he does best for me when he does so. And if absence is more pleasant or useful to him, then this is more acceptable to me than his presence; and this is not properly absence as there are means to communicate. I have in the past made use of our distance in tangible ways. We would better fill and extend life's possessions in being apart. He lived, he enjoyed, he saw for me, and I for him, as complete as if he had been there himself. The one part would remain idle when we were together, we were mixed: separate space enriched the combination of our wills. That insatiable desire for bodily presence indicates a weakness in the enjoyment of minds. About the old age which is held against me: On the contrary, it is youth that subjects itself to commonplace opinions and constrains itself for others. It can provide to both, the public and itself; we have only to please ourselves. As natural faculties fail, let them be sustained with the artificial. It is unjust to excuse youth for pursuing pleasures, and prevent the old from seeking them. When young, I hid my wanton passions, prudently; older, I chase away sadness by debauchery. Thus the Platonic laws forbid men to travel before forty or fifty, to make travel more useful and instructive. I would more willingly subscribe to the second article of the same Laws, On Vanity

which forbids it after the sixties. But at such an age you may never return from such a long journey. No matter. I undertake it neither to return, nor to finish it. I undertake it solely to keep myself moving, while movement pleases me; and walk for the sake of walking. Those who chase after a position or a hare are not runners. Those runners play at chasing and for exercise. My plan can be broken anywhere: it isn't based on great hopes, each day draws to a close. And my life journey follows in the same way. I have nevertheless seen enough distant places where I could have wished to remain. Why not, if Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Zeno, Antipater, such wise men from the most awkward squad, willingly abandoned their country, without pause for regret, and only to enjoy another air. Certainly the greatest displeasure on my travels is that I am unable to apply that resolution, to make my home where I please, and that I must always take the decision to return, to accommodate myself to the normal ways. Were I to fear dying outside the land of my birth, were I to feel uneasy about dying away from my family, then I would not risk going outside France, I would be afraid to leave my parish. I sense death continually catching my throat or my kidneys. But I am made of other stuff: it happens anywhere. If, nonetheless, I had the choice, I believe I would rather it was on horseback than in a bed, away from my house, and far from my people. There is more heartbreak than consolation in taking leave of one's friends. I willingly forget its duties of civility, for that is the only unpleasant part of friendship, and so would willingly forget to say that great and eternal farewell. If there is some convenience in such attention, there are a hundred inconveniences. I have seen many, dying miserably, surrounded by all this : its mass stifles them. This is contrary to the duty, and indicates little affection and little care, to allow you to die in your sleep. Someone torments your eyes, another your ears, and another your mouth: there is no sense, no limb that won't be broken for you. The heart is stressed by pity to hear the distress of friends, and perhaps irritated to hear other distress, fake and masked. Anyone who has had tender and delicate sensibilities is then all the more so. He then has great need of a gentle hand, accommodated to his sensibility, to scratch just where it itches, or not to touch him at all. If we need a wise woman to bring us into the world, we have real need of a yet wiser man to help us leave it. Such a person, and friend, is necessary at any cost for service on such an occasion. I have not reached that disdainful vigour which invigorates itself, that nothing can help or trouble; I am at a lower level: I seek to hide avoid that passage, not by fear but by art. It is On Vanity

not my intention for that action to be proof and display of my consistency. For whom? Then will cease all the right and interest for which I am reputed. I am content with a death turned in on itself, quiet and solitary, all mine, appropriate to my retired and private life. Contrary to the Roman superstition which estimated unhappy anyone who died without speaking, and whose closest were not there to close his eyes. I have enough to console myself without having to console others, enough thoughts in my head without circumstances adding more, and enough matters to undertake without borrowing more. This part is not the role of society, it is the act of a single person. Let's live and laugh among our own kind, go dying and frowning among strangers. Through paying, one finds those who will turn your head and who will rub your feet, who will bother you no more than you want, who show an indifferent face, allow you to do your thing and complain in your own way. I unbound myself every day by reasoning, from this puerile and inhuman mood in which we desire that our sufferings touch the compassion and mourning of our friends. We exaggerate our problems to induce their tears; and the steadiness which we praise in each bearing ill fortune we blame and reproach in those close to us when the ill is ours. We do not content ourselves that they are aware of our ills if it does not afflict them. One should extend joy and suppress sadness as much as possible. Whoever makes himself lamented with no reason, is a man not to be lamented when it has reason. To be never lamented, always lament about yourself; making yourself piteous is to be pitied by nobody. Whoever makes himself dead while living risks being taken for living when dead. Some I have seen become irritated to be told that their face looks healthy and their pulse is strong, with a strained smile because it betrayed their recovery, and angry at their health because they could not regret its absence. And, what 's more, these were not women. I describe my illnesses, mostly, as they really are:and avoid the words of bad prognostic and composed exclamations. If not joy, at least calm faces are appropriate for bystanders in the presence of a sick sage. Finding himself in a contrary state, he is in no quarrel with health: it pleases him to see it in others, strong and full, and to enjoy it in company. Sensing decline, he does not reject all thoughts of life nor avoid conversation. I would study sickness when I am healthy; when I am not, it makes a real impression without aid from my imagination. We prepare beforehand for the journeys that we undertake and are resolved to them: the moment that we have to mount the horse we leave to the assistants and defer to them. On Vanity

An unanticipated side-benefit of the publication of my opinions is that it provides the rule in some way. Sometimes I take account of not betraying my life story. That public declaration obliges me to stay on the path and not confuse the image of my qualities: commonly less deformed and contradicted than the malignant and unhealthy judgments of the day. The uniformity and simplicity of my views present a face of easy interpretation, but because its mode is rather new, and outside normal usage, it offers too great scope for scandal. Nevertheless it is such that if anyone sought to injure me, it would provide the ammunition about my declared and known imperfections so that he could sate himself on them without battling against the wind. If I myself anticipate accusation and discovery, it seems to him that I seek to make blunt his accusation, it is reasonable that he use his right to amplify and extend. The attack has rights beyond justice. And the vices whose roots I show in myself grow into trees. He should use not only those with which I am really afflicted but those that too only menace me. Injurious vices, and in quality and in number. Let him batter me with these. I willingly follow the example of the philosopher Bion. Antigon wished to reproach him on the subject of his origins. He cut him short. "I am", he said, "the son of a slave, a butcher, stigmatised, and of a whore who my father married in misfortune. Both were penalised for some crime. An orator bought me as a child, found me agreeable, and left me his estate. With which having moved to this city of Athens, I settled to study philosophy. The historians don't need to exert themselves to seek information about me, I will tell them everything." A frank and free confession deflects reproach and disarms injury. All told, it seems to me that as often as I am praised I am deprecated beyond reason. As it also seems to me that since childhood, in rank and degree of honour, I have been placed above rather than beneath where I belong. I would feel easier in a country where those ranks were the rule or disregarded. Between men, when a dispute about precedence in marching or sitting exceeds three replies it is deemed incivil. I do not fear ceding or preceding outside the rules to avoid such bothersome dispute. And never has any man sought to go ahead of me without me allowing him. Outside of this side-benefit that I gain from writing about myself, I hope there is another. That if it happens that my humour pleases and is agreeable to some honest man, I should like us to meet before I die. I have given him much that is hard-earned, for all that from a long On Vanity

acquaintance and familiarity could have been acquired over a period of years, he sees it in three days in this text, and more surely and exactly. Pleasant thought. Many things that I would tell nobody, I am saying in public. And for my most secret ideas and thoughts, send my best friends to a bookshop: Excutienda damus praecordia.

{Opening the heart to examination.}

If good recommendations suggested someone appropriate, I would certainly go far to find him: for the enjoyment of a compatible and agreeable companion is priceless, in my opinion. Oh, a friend: How true is that old saying, that friendship is more necessary and pleasing than the elements of water and fire. To return to my subject: there is therefore no great harm in dying far away and alone. Thus we feel a duty to retire from natural actions less disgraceful and less hideous than this. But yet those who do so, eking out a languishing long life, should perhaps not to wish to impose their misery on a grand family. So the Indians of a certain province thought it right to kill one such needs; in another province they abandoned him to fend for himself as best he could. To whom do they not finally become tedious and insupportable? The everyday duties do not go so far. You are forced to learn cruelty, to your best friends, hardening wife and children to become used to your suffering and no longer take account of and regret it. The groans caused by my digestion are no longer noticed by anyone. And when we glean some pleasure from their conversation, which is not always, because of the disparate conditions, which can easily generate contempt or envy towards anyone, isn't it excessive of it to misuse a life? The more that I see them take care affectionately for me, the more that I am sorry for their efforts. We have the right to lean but not to lie heavily on others and pull them down to their detriment: like he who had little children's throats cut to provide blood to remedy his own illness; or that other supplied with tender youth to warm his old limbs in the night and to mix their sweet breath with his sour stench. I gladly advise Venice for the retreat of such a condition and weakness of life. Decrepitude is a solitary quality. I am sociable to the point of excess. Nevertheless it seems to me to be reasonable that henceforth I withhold my troubles from the sight of the world and keep them to myself alone. Let me shrivel and recoil into my shell like a tortoise. I learn to see men without becoming attached. That would be dangerous in so perilous a pass. It is time to turn away from company. But in some long voyage, you will be taken miserably ill in some hovel where nothing can provide On Vanity

relief. The majority of necessities, I carry with me. And anyway, we cannot evade fortune if she once resolves to attack us. Nothing extraordinary is needed when I am sick: for what nature cannot do within me, I do not seek a pill. At the onset of a fever and debilitating illness, while still complete and in health I reconcile myself to God through the last Christian offices. And finding myself more free and easy by so doing, it seems to me that I have got the better of the disease. Notary and councillor, these I need even less than a doctor: whatever I have not settled in my affairs while healthy nobody should expect of me while ill. What I wish for the services of death is already arranged. I daren't delay it a single day. And if there is nothing to be done or doubt has hindered my choice, for sometimes it is better to choose not to choose, or that I had wanted to do nothing. I write my book for a few men and a few times: were it a matter of duration, I would have committed it to more positive language. In the continual variation that ours has followed to date, who can anticipate that its present form will be in use fifty years hence? It runs and in my time the majority has changed. We say that it has now been perfected. Which each century says of its own. I refrain from treating it as perfect so long as it varies and changes as it does. It is for good and useful writings to fix it to them, and gain credit according to the fortune of our state. In no way am I afraid to place in it several private articles, whose use is for men now living. And which touch on the particular knowledge of some who will see in them more than most. It is not my wish, after all, as often disrupts the memory of the dead, that men should say of me: He judged, he lived thus; he wished this: if he could he have spoken in death, he would have said this, given that. I know him better than all others. Now, as much as decorum permits, here I discover my inclinations and affections: but more freely and voluntarily by word of mouth to anyone seeking to be informed of them. So it is that in these Essays, if any one observe, he will find that I have either told or designed to tell all; What I cannot express, I indicate with my finger: {A wise spirit can take these traces Verum animo satis haec vestigia By means of which you can discover the parva sagaci, rest.} Sunt, per quae possis cognoscere coetera tute:

I leave nothing to be desired and guessed about me. If I must be talked about, I wish that it be true and just. I would willingly return from that other world to haunt whoever reported me other than I was, even if to On Vanity

honour me. Even the living, I notice, are spoken of other than they are. And had I not with all my powers defended a lost friend, he would have been torn into a thousand contrary views. To conclude the tale of my weak humours. I admit that when travelling I seldom reach my lodgings without imagining that there I could fall sick, and die at my ease. I seek lodging in a space which would suit me, without noise, stench or smoke. I seek to flatter death through these frivolous circumstances. Or, to put it better, to discharge myself of all other obstacles so that I may may be attentive only to that, which will weigh heavily enough on me without anything else. I wish that it fits in with the ease and convenience of my life: it is a great and important part of it, and I hope that its will not come to contradict the past. Death has some forms that are easier than others, and takes on diverse qualities according to each person's imagination. Among those that are natural, that which comes from weakness and decline seems to me soft and sweet; among the violent, I imagine less easy a precipice than being crushed by a collapsing building, and a wound from a sword than a shot; I would rather have drunk the poison with Socrates, than stab myself with Cato. And while it all be the same, still my imagination sees as much difference as between death and life between throwing myself into a burning furnace or into a river channel: so idly does our fear see more the means than the effect. It is a mere instant, but of such weight that I would willingly give many days of my life to pass it over in my own way. Since every imagination find it more or less terrible, and since each has some choice between ways to die, let us try a little further to find some one that is wholly clear from all displeasure. Could one even render it voluptuous, as with those who shared the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra? I leave aside the efforts of philosophy and religion, brave and exemplary: but among lesser men some have been found, like Petronius and Tigillinus in Rome, condemned to suicide, who have pacified it with their careful preparations; they have made it creep and slide in their normal pastimes, among girls and good companions, without consoling words, without mention of testament, without ambitious affectation of constancy, without talking of their future condition. But in games, feasts, wit, ordinary discussions, music and amorous verse. Could we imitate that resolve with a more decent outlook? As there are deaths good for the simple, good for the wise: let us find what is good for those in between. My imagination presents some such image, easy and, since it is necessary to die, desirable. The Roman tyrants thought they could grant life to a criminal in giving him the choice of his death. But On Vanity

Theophrastus, a philosopher so delicate, so modest, so wise, was he not driven by reason to dare to quote this verse latinised by Cicero: Vitam regit fortuna, non sapientia

{Life is ruled by luck not wisdom}

How fortune assists the facility of the market of my life, having placed it so that henceforth it can be neither advantage nor hindrance to anyone. This is a condition that I would have accepted at any time of my life; but in this occasion of packing my backs and loading them, I take particular pleasure that in death I will give nobody either good nor harm. She has, by artistic arrangement, made it so that those who may hope for some material advantage from my death will, at the same time, sustain a material inconvenience. Death is sometimes more grievous to us as it is grievous to others, and interests us in their interest as much as in our own, and sometimes more. In the convenience of lodging that I desire, there is nothing of grandeur and size, which I dislike. But a certain simple propriety which is to be found mostly in places where there is less artifice and which nature honours with some grace of her own. neatness, which is oftenest found in places where there is less of art, and that Nature has adorned with some grace that is all her own. Non ampliter, sed munditer convivium. Plus salis quam sumptus. And then it is for those whose business compel them to travel in full winter through the Grisons to be surprised upon the way by the extremity; I who generally travels for pleasure do not get into such problems. If it is bad to the right, I take to the left; if I find myself unable to ride my horse, I stop. And in doing thus, I really see nothing which is not as pleasant and commodious as my own house. It is true that I always find superfluity superfluous, and remark on the problems even in delicacy and abundance. If I have left anything behind me unseen, I go back to see it; this is always my way. I trace no certain line, straight or crooked. In no way do I find what was told to me about where I go, as it often happens that the judgments of others do not accord with mine, and having usually found them false, I never complain about my effort, having observed that what was said about it was untrue. I have a bodily disposition so free, and common tastes, as much as any man in the world: the diversity of manners from one nation to another affects me only as pleasure in variety. Each usage has its reason. And growing older, I accuse this generous faculty, and would wish that On Vanity

delicacy and choice to correct the indiscretion of my appetite, and sometimes help my stomach. When I have been outside France and, from courtesy, have been asked if I want to be served the French way, I have laughed and always sought the tables with the most foreigners. I am ashamed to see our people full of this stupid manner of being frightened by forms contrary to their own. It seems like they are outside their element whenever they are outside their village: wherever they are, they seek their own ways and abominate the foreign. Encountering a compatriot in Hungary, they glory in the chance: thereafter they are inseparable, clinging together, condemning the barbarous manners they see. Why not barbarous, but because they are not French. And those are the most useful, who have seen to slander. Most go only to return. They travel discreetly and circumspect, with a taciturn and incommunicable care preserving them from the contagion of an unknown air. What I am saying about them recalls something similar I have sometimes observed in some of our young courtiers. They mix only with their own kind, regarding us as men from another world, with disdain or pity. Talk about anything outside the mysteries of the Court and they are outside their competence, appearing to us novices and misfits, as we are to them. It is a true observation that a cultivated man is a mixed man. By contrast I travel free of our own ways; I do not seek out Gascons in Sicily; I have left enough of them at home; I rather seek Greeks and Persians. I become acquainted with them and consider them; that is where I place and employ myself. And what is more, it seems to me that I have encountered few manners that are not as good as ours. I take no risks, my travels have not taken me far beyond the horizon of my own house. Furthermore, the majority of the chance companions met along the way bring more inconvenience than pleasure. I try to avoid them: now that my age keeps me apart and waives expected manners. You suffer for others or others suffer for you. The one or the other inconvenience is cumbersome, but the latter seems to me to be the greater. It is rare fortune, but of inestimable relief, to find an honest man, of sound judgment, and manners like your own, who enjoys your company. I have lacked that on all my travels. But such a companion must be chosen and acquired from the start. No pleasure can I savour without communication. Not even a fleeting thought passes through my head without regret to have produced it along and having nobody to offer it to. Si cum hac exceptione detur sapientia, ut illam inclusam teneam, nec enuntiem, rejiciam. Another put it in a higher tone. Si contigerit ea vita sapienti ut omnium rerum affluentibus copiis, quamvis omnia, quoe cognitione digna sunt, summo otio secum ipse On Vanity

consideret et contempletur, tamen, si solitudo tanta sit, ut hominem videre non possit, excedat e vita. I agree with Architas's opinion when he says that it would be unpleasant even in heaven to wander these great and divine celestial bodies without the help of a companion. But it is still better to be alone than in tedious and inept company. Aristippus liked to live as a stranger everywhere. Me si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam Auspiciis,

{If fate allows me to live my life my way}

I would choose to keep my behind on the saddle, Visere gestiens, Qua parte debacchentur ignes, Qua nebulae, pluviique rores.

{Happy In the raging heat or the dropping rain}

Do you not have more advisable pastimes? What is it you lack? Isn't your house in good and healthy air, adequately furnished and more than adequately large? His Royal Highness has visited more than once in his pomp. Doesn't your family have more below them than there are above them in eminence? Does some local, extraordinary, indigestible thought afflict you? Quae te nunc coquat, et vexet sub {Which, in your belly, burns and distresses you} pectore fixa. Where do you think you could be without fuss or bother? Nunquam simpliciter Fortuna indulget. See thus that it is only yourself that frustrates you. And you follow yourself everywhere and complain everywhere. For there is no satisfaction down here other than for brutish or divine souls. Whoever on such a just occasion is without contentment, where does he expect to find it? How many thousand men attain a condition such as yours, which would mark their ultimate aim? Sort yourself out, for that you can do, while you have the right only to patience toward fortune: Nulla placidi quies est nisi quam ratio composuit. I see the rationale for this advice, and see it very well. But it might be conveyed better and more pertinently in one word to me: be wise. That resolution is beyond wisdom; it is her work and production. Thus the doctor advises a poor languishing invalid that he should be cheerful. His advice would be a little less inept if it was to be well. Me, I am only a man of lower form. A salutary, certain and easy precept is to On Vanity

be content with what you have; that is reasonable though following it is no more in the sages than in me: it is a common saying but with a terrible extent: is it understood? All things are under discretion and qualification. I well know that, if taken by the letter, this pleasure of travel bears witness to unease and irresolution: which are also our two main and predominant qualities. Yes, I confess, I see nowhere, only in dreams and desire, where I could take myself. Variety alone satisfies me and the possession of diversity: if anything can. Travelling, it nourishes me that I can stop as I see fit, and that I have places ample to divert myself. I like the private life, because it is through my own choice that I like it, not through an incongruity with public life, which is perhaps in my make-up. I serve my prince more happily as this is by the free choice of my judgment and my reasoning, without particular obligation: and as I am not rejected or constrained, to be unacceptable to the other party and thought of badly, and so on. I dislike the little things that necessity entails. All commodities have be by the throat if I have to depend on them: Alter remus aquas, alter mihi radat {One oar sweeping the water, the other the shore} arenas; A single rope is never enough to bind me. There is vanity, you say, in this amusement. But where is there not? And those fine precepts are vanity, as is all wisdom. Dominus novit cognationes sapientum, quoniam vanoe sunt. These exquisite subtleties are fit only for preaching. They are discourses which will send us saddled into the other world. Life is a material and bodily movement. Action imperfect to its own essence and unruly: I busy myself in serving this. Quisque suos patimur manes.

{Each to their own spirit}

Sic est faciendum, ut contra naturam universam nihil contendamus; ea tamen conservata, propriam sequamur. Of what good are those elevated points of philosophy on which no human being can rely; and those rules that exceed both our use and our force? Often I see images of life proposed to us which neither the proposer nor the listeners have any hope of following. Nor which they would seek to. From the same sheet of paper where he writes a verdict on an adulterer, the judge tears off a piece to write a love letter to the wife of his friend. One who is illicitly embracing will presently, even in your very presence, hotly decry the same fault in their companion than would a Portia. And On Vanity

such condemn people to death for crimes that they they do not regard as faults. I have see, in my youth, a man of good standing with one hand present to the people excellent verses of beauty and debauchery, and simultaneously, with the other the most querulous theological reforms to which the world has been treated for many a year. Thus do people proceed. The laws and precepts are allowed to follow their way; we take another. Not by disrupting norms alone, but often by opinion and by contrary judgment. Listen to a philosophical discourse: the invention, the eloquence, the pertinence immediately strike your mind and affect you. Nothing in it tickles or piques your conscience: it is not to this that they speak, is it? Thus Aristo said that neither a steam bath nor a lesson bears fruit unless it cleans and scours. One may stop at the crust but it is before one reaches the marrow. As it is after having drunk from a wine glass that we consider its design and workmanship. In all the halls of ancient philosophy this can be found: that a single person publishes its rules of temperance, and publishes together writings of love and abandon. And Xenophon in the bosom of Clineas wrote against Aristippic pleasure. It was not through a miraculous conversion that they wavered. Solon represents himself, sometimes in his own person, and sometimes in that of a legislator; one while he speaks for the public, and another for himself. And took for himself the free and natural rules, assuring himself of firm and full health: Curentur dubii medicis majoribus aegri.

{Let the gravely ill consult the doctors}

Antisthenes allows a sage to love and do in his way whatever seems appropriate, without attention to the laws,as he is of better opinions and more knowledge of virtue than them. His disciple Diogenes opposed perturbations to reason, self-confidence to fortune, nature to law. For sensitive stomachs, limited special diets are needed; good stomachs simply follow the prescriptions of their natural appetite. Thus are our doctors, who eat the melon and drink the fresh wine at the same time that they place on their patient a limitation to syrup and sop. I do not know what books, said the courtesan Lays, what wisdom, what philosophy, but these gentlemen knock as often on my door as do any others. While our license carries us always beyond what is allowable and permitted to us, the precepts and rules of our life have been stretched often outside universal reason: Nemo satis credit tantum delinquere, quantum On Vanity

{None believes their own transgressions to have gone beyond the permissible}

Permittas. It would be desirable for there to be more proportion between command and obedience: not placing the mark at a level which cannot be attained. No man is so good that he would place all his thoughts and actions for legal examination, who would not be liable for hanging ten times in his life. Such as it would be great damage and very unjust to punish and ruin: {Ole, what concern to you what he does Ole, quid ad te De cute quid faciat ille, vel illa sua? with his skin and she with hers?}

And there could be one who in no way offends the laws, who nonetheless would not deserve praise as a virtuous man, and who philosophy would have justly whipped. So is this relation unequal and perplexing. We do not take care to be good men before God; we cannot be so before ourselves. Human wisdom never attains the duties which it had itself prescribed; and if it did, it would still prescribe to itself others beyond, to which it would always aspire and pretend. Thus our state is enemy to consistency. Man is ordered to be necessarily in fault: he hardly cuts his obligation to the measure of a being other than his. To whom does he prescribe what he does not expect anyone to do? Is he unjust in not doing what is impossible for him to do? The laws which condemn us to not be able, themselves accuse us for not being able. At worst, this misshaped freedom of presenting ourselves from two perspectives, actions in one way and discourse in another, are allowable to those who speak of things, but cannot be allowed to those who speak of themselves, as I do. I need to go by pen as by foot. The ordinary life must resemble other lives. Cato's virtue was vigorous beyond the measure of his time; and to a man led to govern others, destined for public service, it could be said to have been a justice, if not unjust, at least vain and out of season. My own manners, which differ only a finger breadth from those current among us, render me, nevertheless, some little bit rough and unsociable to my times. I do not know whether I find myself disgusted unreasonably with the world I frequent; but I do know well that it would be unreasonable were I to complain of it being disgusted with me, as I am with it. The virtue vested in worldly affairs is a virtue of many creases, corners and bends to apply and join to human weakness. Mixed and artificial: not straight, clear, constant, nor purely innocent. The chronicles reproach even now one of On Vanity

our kings for being too easily led by the conscientious persuasions of his confessor. The affairs of state have more robust precepts: Exeat aula Qui vult esse pius.

{Leave the Court, Whoever seeks to be pious}

I formerly tried to work in the service of public matters, the opinions and rules of living, as rough, new, unpolished or unpolluted as born with me or acquired from my education, and which I serve, if not commodiously, at least doubtless in particular. A scholarly and novice virtue. I have found them inapt and dangerous. He who goes into the mass must deform, must strain his elbows, pull back or advance, see that he is leaving the right path due to what he encounters: he lives not by himself but by others, not by what he proposes to himself but by what others propose to him, according to the times, according to people, according to the occasions. Plato said that whoever escapes without being sullied by worldly matters, it is a miracle that he escapes. And also says that when he proposes a philosopher as head of government, he did not mean by that a corrupt government like that of Athens, and still less one like ours, in which the wise would lose his Latin. Like a herb transplanted into a soil unsuited to its nature must conform to it rather than reform it to its own needs. I sense that if I had to adapt to such occupations, it would require much change and adaptation. And though I could prevail over myself (and why might I not, with time and diligence?) I would not do so. Of my little involvement in that employment I have taken only distaste for it. I sometimes sense stirrings of ambition rising in my soul, but I divest myself and obstinately stand against them: At tu, Catulle, obstinatus obdura.

{Catullus, be obstinately obdurate}

I am seldom asked and volunteer as seldom. Liberty and laziness, which are my dominant qualities, are qualities diametrically opposed to that field of endeavour. We do not know how to distinguish people's qualities. They have divisions, and limits both hard to choose and delicate. To conclude from the adequacy of one particular life some adequacy for public use is a bad conclusion. One may manage oneself well but not manage others well, and write essays which have no effect. One may manage a siege who would mismanage a battle. and speak smoothly in private but clumsily harangue a people or a prince. See perhaps what rather indicates that he who can do the one can do none of the other. I On Vanity

find high minds in no way better for low things than low minds are for the high. Could one believe that Socrates would have given the Athenians cause for laughter at his expense, for being unable to count on the votes of his tribe to provide to the council? Certainly, my respect for the perfections of this personage merits that his fate should furnish such a magnificent example to excuse my principal imperfections. Our competence decomposes into small pieces. Mine not only lacks extent but is also weak in number. Saturninus, to those who had awarded him the command: Comrades, he said, you have lost a good captain to make of him a bad general of the army. In such a sick time as this, who would aspire to place in the world's service a natural and sincere virtue: or he doesn't know it, opinions spoiling with manners (and in truth, to hear them describe it, to hear the majority glorify their behaviour, and set their rules: instead of depicting virtue, they depict pure injustice and vice, and thus present it false to the institution of princes); or if he does know it, boasts of a wrong and, whatever he says, does a thousand things of which his conscience accuses him. I would willingly believe Seneca's word on his experience of such occasions: provided he would have me speak on it with an open heart. The most honourable mark of goodness in such a necessity is to freely recognise one's fault and that of others, obstructing and restraining with its power one's inclination toward evil; in spite of it to follow this upward path: hope better, desire better. I perceive in these dismemberments of France, and the divisions into which we have fallen: each labours to defend his interest, but even the best does so with deceit and lies. To write frankly would be to write recklessly and faultily of it. The most just party is still a limb of a decayed and worm-ridden body. But in such a body, the least sick limb calls itself healthy: and rightly as our qualities have title only in comparison. Civil innocence is measured according to the time and place. I like Xenophon's praise of Agesilaus. Receiving a request from a nearby prince with whom he had previously been at war to allow passage through his lands, he granted it, giving him free passage through Peloponnesus, and not only did he not imprison or poison him while at his mercy, but he received him, courteously without offence. To their mentalities back then, this was no worthy of remark: elsewhere and in another time, account would be taken of the freedom and magnanimity of such an action. These enrobed monkeys would mock it, so little does the Spartan innocence resemble that of France. We do not lack virtuous men, but they follow our virtues. Whoever has his manners established in standards beyond On Vanity

those of his century, or who twists and blunts his rules, or, which I would rather advise, let him step aside and not meddle with us at all. What would he gain? {If I encounter an eminent man of integrity, Egregium sanctumque virum si He is like a monster, like a deformed child, cerno, bimembri or a fish uncovered by a plow, or a Hoc monstrum puero, et miranti jam pregnant mule.} sub aratro Piscibus inventis, et foetae comparo mulae.

One can pine for the better times but cannot fly from the present; we can wish for other magistrates, but must, notwithstanding, obey those we have; and perhaps there is more in obeying the bad than the good. For as long as the image of the ancient and received laws of this monarchy gleams in some corner, there will I be. If unfortunately they come into contradiction and stalemate between themselves and produce two parts, of dubious and difficult choice, my choice will be willingly to escape and get out of that tempest. Nature could lend a hand, or the hazards of war. Between Caesar and Pompey, I would have to declare a choice; but between the three robbers who followed, it would have been necessary to hide or to follow the wind: which I think sensible when reason no longer guides. Quo diversus abis?

{What sends you off course?}

This concoction is a little outside my theme. I digress, but by licence rather than inadvertently. My imaginings follow themselves, but sometimes this is from afar: and see one another but with a glancing look. I have passed my eyes over such a dialogue by Plato of such a fantastic variegation: from the subject of love all the way to rhetoric. They do not fear variation; and have a marvellous grace in allowing themselves to be carried on the wind, or to seem so. My chapter titles do not always encompass the material: often they denote it only, by some mark, like these other titles, Andria, the Eunuchus; or these other names Sylla, Cicero, Torquatus. There are works by Plutarch where he forgets his theme, where the line of his argument can be found only incidentally, stuffed with foreign matter. See his ways in the Daemon of Socrates. Oh Lord, how these lusty escapades, those digressions have beauty, and all the more as they seem nonchalant and fortuitous. It is On Vanity

the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I; he will always find in a corner some word which is not allowed to be sufficient although close. I like poetic allure by leaps and skips. This art, said Plato, is light, nimble, divine. And I change, indiscreetly and disorderly. My style and my spirit go vagabond that way. One must have a little folly not to have more stupidity, say the precepts of our masters and still more their examples. A thousand poets lag and languish at the prosaic, but the best ancient prose, and I sow here indifferently for verse, gleams everywhere with poetic vigour and daring and represents the air of its fury. It certainly must give the pre-eminence in speaking. The poet, said Plato, sitting on the muses' tripod, emits with fury whatever enters his mouth, like the gargoyle on a fountain, without ruminating and weighing it. And from him come things of various colours, of contrary substance, and from a ruptured course. All is poetic to him, and the old theology is poetry, say the sages, and the first philosophy. I understand that the material distinguishes itself; it shows enough where it changes, where it concludes, where it begins, and where it rejoins, without interlacing words, links and cuts introduced for the service of weak and careless ears, and without explaining myself. Who is he who would not like better not to be read than to be read in a sleepy or inattentive way? Nihil est tam utile, quod in transitu prosit. If lifting books was to understand them, looking was to see, and browsing was to grasp, then I would be to blame for being as ignorant as I say I am. Since I cannot hold the reader's attention through weight, manco male, if it happens that I do so by muddling. See though his regret afterwards at having been engrossed in it. That is true but he will have been occupied by it. And anyway, there are characters like that, which disdain understanding: who think the better of me for not understanding what I say. They evaluate the depth of my sense by its obscurity; speaking of which, in all seriousness, I strongly hate, and would avoid it if I knew how. Aristotle boasted somewhere of having affected it: a mean affectation. Because the frequent break into chapters that I utilised at outset seem to me to have disturbed the attention before it rose, and to dissolve it, disdaining to settle to it and recollect for so little, I have set to making them longer, which requires assigned proposition and leisure. Occupied thus, what one will not give a single hour one gives. And one does nothing for someone for whom one only does it while doing something else. In addition, perhaps I have some particular obligation to speak only by halves, to speak confusedly, to speak discordantly. I have to say that I am vexed at this trouble-fest of reason, and that these On Vanity

extravagant projects which labour life and these such fine opinions, if they are true, I find too expensive and inconvenient. On the contrary, my business is to give value to vanity itself and folly too, if it gives me any pleasure. And to let myself follow my own natural inclinations, without close control. I have seen elsewhere ruined houses, and statues, and heaven and earth: there are always men. All that is true if yet if I cannot revisit the tomb of that city, so grand, so powerful, without my admiration and reverence. Respect for the dead is recommended to us. Now, I was nourished from infancy with those here. I had knowledge of the affairs of Rome long before I had knowledge of those of my own house. I knew the Capitol and its plan before I knew the Louvre; and the Tiber before the Seine. I have been preoccupied by the qualities and fortunes of Lucullus, Metellus, and Scipio more than I have had of any men of our time. They are departed; so too is my father, as completely as them, and is as far removed from me in eighteen years as are they in sixteen hundred; nevertheless I do not cease to embrace the memory, friendship and society of a perfect and lively union. See how my inclination is to pay more regard to the departed. They can no longer help themselves. So they seem the more to need my aid: gratitude is there in its full lustre. Blessing is less richly allocated where there is return and reciprocity. Arcesilaus, visiting the sick Ctesibius and finding him in a poor state, gently slipped some money under his pillow; and by concealing it from him, also freed him from obligations of gratitude. Those who have merited my friendship and gratitude have never lost these by no more being so. I have paid them better and more carefully when gone and unaware. I speak more affectionately of my friends when there are no means for them to know it. Now, I have had a hundred quarrels in defence of Pompey and for the cause of Brutus. This affinity still survives between us: present things only capture us in our imaginations. Finding myself useless to this time, I throw myself back to that other, and am so enchanted by it that the state of ancient Rome, free just and flourishing (for I love neither its birth nor its old age), interests and impassions me. Thus I cannot too often revisit the situations of their streets and houses and those ruins profound as the Antipodes, as to consume all my time. Is it by nature or delusion that the sight of places which we know to have been frequented and inhabited by persons whose memories are recommended to us, in some way affects us more than hearing a recital of their acts or reading their writings? Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis.... Et id quidem in hac urbe infinitum; On Vanity

quacumque, enim ingredimur, in aliquam historiam vestigium ponimus. It pleases me to consider their face, their carriage and their clothes. I mutter those great names between my teeth and make them ring in my ears: Ego illos veneror, et tantis nominibus semper assurgo. Of things that are in some part great and admirable, I admire even the common parts. I would wish to see them talk, walk and sup. It would be ingratitude to disregard the relics and images of such upright and valorous men as I have seen live and die, and who gave by example such good instructions, if we knew how to follow them. Also, this very Rome that we see merits our love. Confederated formally for so long to our crown: the only common and universal city; the sovereign magistrate commands from there and is recognised elsewhere. This is the metropolitan city of all the Christian nations; the Spaniard and Frenchman, each is at home there; to be princes of that state needs only to be Christian. No other place has heaven embraced with such an influence of favour and constancy; her very ruins are glorious and grand, Laudandis pretiosior ruinis;

{Lauded for precious ruins}

Still in her tomb she retains the marks and images of empire. Ut palam sit, uno in loco guadentis opus esse naturoe. Some would blame and be angry in themselves to sense themselves tickled with such a vain pleasure. Our humours are never too vain that are pleasant. Whatever they be if they make content a man capable of common sense, I could not have the heart to blame him. I owe much to fortune, in that until now she has done nothing outrageous to me, not beyond what I can bear. Would it be her way to leave in peace those by whom she is not importuned: Quanto quisque sibi plura negaverit, A diis plura feret: nil cupientium Nudus castra peto ... Multa petentibus Desunt multa.

{The more we deny ourselves, the more the gods will give: stripped, I return to those who desire nothing; those who want a lot lack a lot.}

If she continues, she will dispatch me well content and satisfied: Nihil supra

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{Nothing more do I ask from the gods}

Deos lacesso. But beware of a shock. A thousand sink in the port. I easily console myself easily about what will happen here when I am no longer here. Present things trouble me enough, Fortunae caetera mando.

{As for the rest, the is down to luck}

In addition, I do not have that strong obligation that is said to bind men to the future, by the children who carry their name and their honour. And should perhaps less if they are so desirable. I am tied to the world and to this life only by myself. I am content to be in the hands of fortune, in the circumstances appropriate to my being, without otherwise extending her jurisdiction over me: and having never thought that to be without children was a defect making a life less complete and less content. Sterile occupation also has its conveniences. Children are of the variety of things which are not notably to be desired, especially at the moment, when it would be so difficult to make them good: Bona jam nec nasci licet, ita corrupta sunt semina; and yet are rightly to be regretted be those who lose them after having gained them. He who left me in charge of my house predicted that I would ruin it, seeing my outlook so little domesticated. He was wrong: it is as it was left me. If not a little better. Without office and without gain. Moreover, if fortune has done me no violent and extraordinary injury, neither has she done me any favours. All that is to be derived from her bounty was there more than a hundred years before me. I myself have received no essential and solid good from her liberality: she has done me some insubstantial light, honorific and formal favours; and these not in truth granted but offered to me. God knows, to me who is entirely material, nourished only on reality, still more massive; and who, if I dare confess it, find avarice no less excusable than ambition, nor pain less inevitable than shame, nor health less desirable than knowledge, nor riches than nobility. Among her empty favours, I have none which pleases the inane humour which persists in me as much as the authentic charter of a Roman citizenship granted to me when I was there: pumped up with seals and gilded lettering and granted with all gracious liberality. And because of their mixed style, more or less favourable, I could have been happy beforehand to have seen an example, I will, for the satisfaction of On Vanity

anyone who may find themselves sick with such a curiosity as mine, transcribe it here in its form. Quod Horatius Maximus, Martius Cecius, Alexander Mutus, almae urbis Conservatores, de Illustrissimo viro Michaele Montano, equite Sancti Michaelis, et a cubiculo regis Christianissimi, Romana civitate donando, ad Senatum retulerunt; S. P. Q. R. de ea re ita fieri censuit. QUUM, veteri more et instituto, cupide illisem per studioseque suscepti sint, qui virtute ac nobilitate praestantes, magno Reipublicae nostrae usui atque ornamento fuissent, vel esse aliquando possent: Nos, majorum nostrorum exemplo atque auctoritate permoti, praeclaram hanc consuetudinem nobis imitandam ac servandam fore censemus. Quamobrem quum Illustrissimus Michael Montanus, eques Sancti Michaelis, et a cubiculo regis Christianissimi, Romani nominis studiosissimus, et familiae laude atque splendore, et propriis virtutum meritis dignissimus sit, qui summo, Senatus Populique Romani judicio ac studio in Romanam civitatem adsciscatur; placere Senatui P. Q. R. Illustrissimum Michaelem Montanum, rebus omnibus orantissimum, atque huic inclyto Populo carissimum, ipsum posterosque in Romanam civitatem adscribi, ornarique omnibus et praemiis et honoribus, quibus illi fruuntur, qui cives patriciique Romani nati, aut jure optimo facti sunt. In quo censere Senatum P. Q. R. se non tam illi jus civitatis largiri, quam debitum tribuere, neque magis beneficium dare, quam ab ipso accipere, qui, hoe civitatis munere accipiendo singulari civitatem ipsam ornamento atque honore affecerit. Quam quidem S. C. auctoritatem iidem Conservatores per senatus P. Q. R. scribas in acta referri, atque in Capitolii curia servari, privilegiumque hujusmodi fieri, solitoque urbis sigillo communiri curarunt. Anno ab urbe condita CXC.CCC.XXXI.; post Christum natum M.D.LXXXI. 3 idus Martii. Horatius Fuscus, Sacri S. P. Q. R. scriba. Vincent. Martholus, Sacri S. P. Q. R. scriba.

Being a citizen of no city, I am glad to be that of one of the most noble that ever was or shall be. If others regarded themselves as attentively as I do, they would, as I do, find themselves full of inanity We are all steeped in it, the one as the other, but do those who are aware of it have the better bargain? I have my doubts. That common opinion and usage of observing others rather than ourselves has provided for our affairs. This is an object full of displeasure: we see in it only misery and vanity. To not leave us dejected, nature has placed the range of our seeing to On Vanity

the outside. We go with the current, but to turn our course back against ourselves is laborious: the sea broils and dashes when it is stormy. Attend says everyone, to the motions of the heavens, attend to the public, to the squabbles of so-and-so, to the drives of another, to the will of another, in sum, always observe high and low, to one side, before or behind you. This was a paradoxical commandment which previously came to us from the Delphic gods. Look into yourself, recognise yourself, take hold of yourself; your spirit and your will which will consume themselves elsewhere, pull them back into yourself; you drain yourself, you scatter yourself: concentrate and be firm: they betray you, they waste you, they rob you of yourself. Do you not see that this world keeps all its views constrained within and its eyes open to self-contemplation? It is always vanity for you, inside and out, but it is less vanity when less extended. Except for you, O man, said this God, each thing studies itself first and according to its needs has limits on its labours and desires. There is none so empty and needy than you who embraces the universe: you are the examiner without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and above all the buffoon of the farce.

On Vanity