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41 - Selected Essays of Michel de Montaigne by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne · Selected Essays of Michel de Montaigne

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  Speaker 1: Section forty one of the essays of Michel de Montaigne
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  Speaker 1: by Michel ICKEM. De Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton. This
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  Speaker 1: Librivoc's recording is in the public domain. Read by Pamelinagami
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  Speaker 1: of Repentance, Part two, such a one has been a
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  Speaker 1: miracle to the world, in whom neither his wife nor
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  Speaker 1: servant has ever seen anything so much as remarkable. Few
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  Speaker 1: men have been admired by their own domestics. No one
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  Speaker 1: was ever a prophet, not merely in his own house,
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  Speaker 1: but in his own country, says the experience of histories
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  Speaker 1: tis the same in things of naught, And in this
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  Speaker 1: low example, the image of a greater is to be seen.
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  Speaker 1: In my country of Gascony. They look upon it as
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  Speaker 1: a drollery to see me in print. The further off
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  Speaker 1: I am read from my own home, the better I
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  Speaker 1: am esteemed. I am fair aim to purchase printers in
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  Speaker 1: Guienne elsewhere they purchase me upon this. It is that
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  Speaker 1: they lay their foundation, who conceal themselves present in living,
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  Speaker 1: to obtain a name when they are absent and dead.
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  Speaker 1: I had rather have a great deal less in hand,
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  Speaker 1: and do not expose myself to the world upon any
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  Speaker 1: other account than my present share. When I leave it,
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  Speaker 1: I quit the rest. See this functionary, whom the people
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  Speaker 1: escort and state with wonder and applause to his very door.
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  Speaker 1: He puts off the pageant with his robe, and falls
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  Speaker 1: so much the lower by how much he was higher
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  Speaker 1: exalted in himself. Within all is tumult and degraded. And
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  Speaker 1: though all should be regular there, it will require a
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  Speaker 1: vivid and well chosen judgment to perceive it in these
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  Speaker 1: low and private actions, to which may be added that
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  Speaker 1: order is a dull, somber virtue. To enter a breach, conduct,
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  Speaker 1: an embassy, govern a people are actions of renown. To reprehend, laugh, sell, pay, love, hate,
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  Speaker 1: and gently and justly converse with a man's own family
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  Speaker 1: and with himself, not to relax, not to give a
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  Speaker 1: man's self the lie is more rare and hard, and
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  Speaker 1: less remarkable, by which means retired lives. Whatever is said
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  Speaker 1: to the contrary, undergo duties of as great or greater
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  Speaker 1: difficulty than the others do. In private, men, says Aristotle,
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  Speaker 1: serve virtue more painfully and highly than those in authority.
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  Speaker 1: Do we prepare ourselves for eminent occasions more out of
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  Speaker 1: glory than conscience. The shortest way to arrive at glory
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  Speaker 1: would be to do that for conscience, which we do
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  Speaker 1: for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me
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  Speaker 1: of much less vigor in his great theater than that
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  Speaker 1: of Socrates, in his mien and obscure employment. I can
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  Speaker 1: easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander,
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  Speaker 1: and that of Socrates I cannot. Who shall ask the
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  Speaker 1: one what he can do, he will answer subdue the world.
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  Speaker 1: And who shall put the same question to the other,
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  Speaker 1: he will say, carry on human life conformably with its
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  Speaker 1: natural condition, a much more general, weighty, and legitimate science
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  Speaker 1: than the other. The virtue of the soul does not
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  Speaker 1: consist in flying high, but in walking orderly. Its grandeur
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  Speaker 1: does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity. As
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  Speaker 1: they who judge and try us within make no great
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  Speaker 1: account of the luster of our public actions, and see
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  Speaker 1: they are only streaks and rays of clear waters springing
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  Speaker 1: from a slimy and muddy bottom. So likewise they who
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  Speaker 1: judge of us, by this gallant outward appearance and like manner,
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  Speaker 1: conclude of our internal constitution and cannot couple common faculties,
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  Speaker 1: and like their own, with the other faculties that astonish
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  Speaker 1: them and are so far out of their sight. Therefore
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  Speaker 1: it is that we give such savage forms to demons.
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  Speaker 1: And who does not give Tamerlane great eyebrows, wide nostrils,
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  Speaker 1: a dreadful visage, and a prodigious stature, according to the
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  Speaker 1: imagination he has conceived by the report of his name.
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  Speaker 1: Had any one formerly brought me to Erasmus, I should
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  Speaker 1: hardly have believed, but that all was adage and apathem.
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  Speaker 1: He spoke to his man or his hostess. As vicious
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  Speaker 1: souls are often incited by some foreign impulse to do well,
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  Speaker 1: so are our virtuous souls to do ill. They are
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  Speaker 1: therefore to be judged by their settled state when they
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  Speaker 1: are at home, whenever that may be, and at all events,
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  Speaker 1: when they are nearer repose and in their native station.
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  Speaker 1: Natural inclinations are much assisted and fortified by education, but
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  Speaker 1: they seldom alter and overcome their institution. A thousand natures
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  Speaker 1: of my time have escaped toward virtue or vice through
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  Speaker 1: a quite contrary discipline. So savage beasts, when shut up
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  Speaker 1: in cages and grown unaccustomed to the woods, become tame
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  Speaker 1: and lay aside their fierce looks and submit to the
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  Speaker 1: rule of man. If again they taste blood, their rage
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  Speaker 1: and fury return. Their jaws are erected by thirst of blood,
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  Speaker 1: and they scarcely forbear to assail their trembling masters. Says Lucan,
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  Speaker 1: these original qualities are not to be rooted out. They
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  Speaker 1: may be covered and concealed. The Latin tongue is as
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  Speaker 1: it were natural to me. I understand it better than French.
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  Speaker 1: But I have not been used to speak it, nor
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  Speaker 1: hardly to write it these forty years. Yet upon extreme
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  Speaker 1: and sudden emotions, which I have fallen into twice or
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  Speaker 1: thrice in my life, and once seeing my father in
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  Speaker 1: perfect health fall upon me in a swoon, I have
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  Speaker 1: always uttered my first outcries and ejaculations in Latin nature,
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  Speaker 1: starting up and forcibly expressing itself in spite of so
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  Speaker 1: long a discontinuation. And this example is said of many others.
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  Speaker 1: They who in my time have attempted to correct the
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  Speaker 1: manners of the world by new opinions, reform seeming vices,
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  Speaker 1: but the essential vices they leave as they were. If
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  Speaker 1: indeed they do not augment them. An augmentation is therein
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  Speaker 1: to be feared. We defer all other well doing upon
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  Speaker 1: the account of these external reformations of less cost and
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  Speaker 1: greater show, and thereby x be a cheaply for the
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  Speaker 1: other natural, consubstantial, and intestine vices. Look a little into
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  Speaker 1: our experience. There is no man, if he listen to himself,
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  Speaker 1: who does not in himself discover a particular and governing
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  Speaker 1: form of his own that jostles his education and wrestles
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  Speaker 1: with the tempest of passions that are contrary to it.
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  Speaker 1: For my part, I seldom find myself agitated with surprises.
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  Speaker 1: I always find myself in my place, as heavy and
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  Speaker 1: unwieldy bodies do. If I am not at home, I
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  Speaker 1: am always near at hand. My dissipations do not transport
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  Speaker 1: me very far. There is nothing strange nor extreme in
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  Speaker 1: the case. And yet I have sound and vigorous turns.
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  Speaker 1: The true condemnation, and which touches the common practice of men,
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  Speaker 1: is that their very retirement itself is full of filth
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  Speaker 1: and corruption. The idea of their reformation composed their repentance
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  Speaker 1: sick and faulty, very nearly as much as their sin.
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  Speaker 1: Some either from having been linked to vice by a
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  Speaker 1: natural propension of long practice, cannot see its deformity. Others
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  Speaker 1: of which constitution I am do indeed feel the weight
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  Speaker 1: of vice, but they counterbalance it with pleasure or some
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  Speaker 1: other occasion, and suffer and lend themselves to it for
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  Speaker 1: a certain price, but viciously and basely. Yet there might
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  Speaker 1: happily be imagined so vast a disproportion of measure, wherewith
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  Speaker 1: justice the pleasure might excuse the sin, as we say
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  Speaker 1: of utility, not only a fact accidental and out of sin,
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  Speaker 1: as in thefts, but the very exercise of sin, as
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  Speaker 1: in the enjoyment of women, where the temptation is violent,
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  Speaker 1: and tis said sometimes not to be overcome. Being the
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  Speaker 1: other day, at Armagnac, on the estate of a kinsman
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  Speaker 1: of mine, I there saw a country fellow who was
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  Speaker 1: by everyone nicknamed the Thief. He thus related the story
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  Speaker 1: of his life, that, being born a beggar, in finding
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  Speaker 1: that he should not be able, so as to be
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  Speaker 1: clear of indigence to get his living by the sweat
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  Speaker 1: of his brow, he resolved to turn thief, and by
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  Speaker 1: means of his strength of body, had exercised this trade
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  Speaker 1: all the time of his youth in great security, for
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  Speaker 1: he ever made his harvest and vintage in other men's grounds,
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  Speaker 1: but a great way off, and in so great quantities,
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  Speaker 1: that it was not to be imagined one man could
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  Speaker 1: carried away so much in one night upon his shoulders,
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  Speaker 1: and moreover, was careful equally to divide and distribute the
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  Speaker 1: mischief he did, that the loss was of less importance
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  Speaker 1: to every particular man. He is now grown old and
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  Speaker 1: rich for a man of his condition, thanks to his trade,
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  Speaker 1: which he openly confesses to every one, and to make
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  Speaker 1: his peace with God. He says that he is daily ready,
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  Speaker 1: by good offices to make satisfaction to the successors of
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  Speaker 1: those he has robbed. And if he do not finish,
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  Speaker 1: for to do it all at once he is not able,
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  Speaker 1: He will then leave it in charge to his heirs
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  Speaker 1: to perform the rest proportionably to the wrong he himself
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  Speaker 1: only knows he has done to each. By this description
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  Speaker 1: true or false, this man looks upon theft as a
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  Speaker 1: dishonest action, and hates it but less than poverty, and
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  Speaker 1: simply repents. But to the extent he has thus recompensed.
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  Speaker 1: He repents. Not. This is not that habit which incorporates
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  Speaker 1: us into vice, and conforms even our understanding itself to it.
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  Speaker 1: Nor is it that impetuous whirlwind that by gusts, troubles
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  Speaker 1: and blinds our souls, and for the time precipitates us
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  Speaker 1: judgment and all into the power of vice. I customarily
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  Speaker 1: do what I do thoroughly, and make but one step
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  Speaker 1: on it. I have rarely any movement that hides itself
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  Speaker 1: and steals away from my reason, and that does not
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  Speaker 1: proceed in the matter by the consent of all my faculties,
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  Speaker 1: without division or intestine sedition. My judgment is to have
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  Speaker 1: all the blame or all the praise, and the blame
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  Speaker 1: it once has, it has always for almost from my infancy,
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  Speaker 1: it has ever been one the same inclination, the same turn,
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  Speaker 1: the same force. And as to universal opinions, I fix
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  Speaker 1: myself from my childhood in the place where I resolved
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  Speaker 1: to stick. There are some sins that are impetuous, prompt,
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  Speaker 1: and sudden. Let us set them aside. But in these
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  Speaker 1: other sins so often repeated, deliberated, and contrived, whether sins
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  Speaker 1: of complexion or sins of profession and vocation, I cannot
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  Speaker 1: conceive that they should have so long been settled in
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  Speaker 1: the same resolution, unless the reason and conscience of him
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  Speaker 1: who has them be constant to have them, and the
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  Speaker 1: repentance he boasts to be inspired with on a sudden
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  Speaker 1: is very hard for me to imagine or form. I
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  Speaker 1: follow out the opinion of the Pythagorean sect that men
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  Speaker 1: take up a new soul when they repair to the
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  Speaker 1: images of the gods to receive their oracles, unless he
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  Speaker 1: mean that it must needs be extrinsic, new and life
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  Speaker 1: for the time our own showing so a little sign
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  Speaker 1: of purification and cleanness fit for such an office. End
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  Speaker 1: of Section forty one.