Shakespeare's Montaigne by Michel de Montaigne
Somebody, not long since turning over my writing tables, found by chance a memorial of something I would have done after my death. I told him (as indeed it was true) that being but a mile from my house, and in perfect health and lusty, I had made haste to write it because I could not assure myself I should ever come home in safety. As one that am ever hatching of mine own thoughts and place them in myself, I am ever prepared about that which I may be. Nor can death (come when she please) put me in mind of any new thing.
A man should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey, and above all things look he have then nothing to do but with himself.
Quid brevi fortes iaculamur ævo
Multa?
To aim why are we ever bold,
At many things in so short hold? [47]
For then we shall have work sufficient without any more accrease. [48] Some man complaineth more that death doth hinder him from the assured course of an hoped-for victory than of death itself; another cries out, he should give place to her before he have married his daughter or directed the course of his children’s bringing up; another bewaileth he must forgo his wife’s company; another moaneth the loss of his children, the chiefest commodities of his being.
I am now by means of the mercy of God in such a taking that, without regret or grieving at any worldly matter, I am prepared to dislodge whensoever he shall please to call me. I am everywhere free: my farewell is soon taken of all my friends, except of myself. No man did ever prepare himself to quit the world more simply and fully, or more generally spake of all thoughts of it, than I am fully assured I shall do. The deadest deaths are the best.
Miser, o miser (aiunt) omnia ademit,
Una dies infesta mihi tot præmia vitæ:
O wretch, O wretch (friends cry), one day,
All joys of life hath ta’ne [49] away: [50]
And the builder,
——maneant (saith he) opera interrupta, minæque
Murorum ingentes.
The works unfinisht lie,
And walls that threatned hie. [51]
A man should design nothing so long aforehand, or at least with such an intent, as to passionate himself to see the end of it; we are all born to be doing.
Cum moriar, medium soluar et inter opus.
When dying I myself shall spend,
Ere half my business come to end. [52]
I would have a man to be doing, and to prolong his life’s offices, as much as lieth in him, and let death seize upon me whilst I am setting my cabbages, careless of her dart, but more of my unperfect garden. I saw one die who, being at his last gasp, uncessantly complained against his destiny and that death should so unkindly cut him off in the midst of an history which he had in hand, and was now come to the fifteenth or sixteenth of our kings.
Illud in his rebus non addunt, nec tibi earum,
Iam desiderium rerum super insidet una.
Friends add not that in this case, now no more
Shalt thou desire or want things wished before. [53]
A man should rid himself of these vulgar and hurtful humours. Even as churchyards were first placed adjoining unto churches and in the most frequented places of the city, to inure (as Lycurgus said) the common people, women, and children not to be scared at the sight of a dead man, and to the end that continual spectacle of bones, sculls, tombs, graves, and burials should forewarn us of our condition and fatal end.
Quin etiam exhilarare viris convivia cæde
Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira
Certantum ferro, sæpe et super ipsa cadentum
Pocula, respersis non parco sanguine mensis.
Nay more, the manner was to welcome guests,
And with dire shows of slaughter to mix feasts
Of them that fought at sharp, and with boards tainted
Of them with much blood, who o’re [54] full cups fainted. [55]
And even as the Egyptians after their feastings and carousings caused a great image of death to be brought in and showed to the guests and by-standers by one that cried aloud, Drink and be merry, for such shalt thou be when thou art dead. So have I learned this custom or lesson, to have always death, not only in my imagination but continually in my mouth. And there is nothing I desire more to be informed of than of the death of men: that is to say, what words, what countenance, and what face they showed at their death; and in reading of histories, which I so attentively observe. It appeareth by the shuffling and huddling up of my examples, I affect no subject so particularly as this. Were I a composer of books, I would keep a register, commented of the diverse deaths which, in teaching men to die, should after teach them to live. Dicearchus made one of that title, but of another and less profitable end.
Some man will say to me, the effect exceeds the thought so far that there is no sense so sure, or cunning so certain, but a man shall either lose or forget if he come once to that point. Let them say what they list: To premeditate on it giveth no doubt a great advantage. And is it nothing at the least to go so far without dismay or alteration, or without an ague? There belongs more to it: Nature herself lends us her hand and gives us courage. If it be a short and violent death, we have no leisure to fear it; if otherwise, I perceive that according as I engage myself in sickness, I do naturally fall into some disdain and contempt of life. I find that I have more ado to digest this resolution that I shall die when I am in health than I have when I am troubled with a fever. Forsomuch as I have no more such fast hold on the commodities of life whereof I begin to lose the use and pleasure and view death in the face with a less undaunted look, which makes me hope that the further I go from that, and the nearer I approach to this, so much more easily do I enter in composition for their exchange. Even as I have tried in many other occurrences, which Caesar affirmed, that often some things seem greater, being far from us, than if they be near at hand. I have found that, being in perfect health, I have much more been frighted with sickness than when I have felt it. The jollity wherein I live, the pleasure and the strength, make the other seem so disproportionable from that, that by imagination I amplify these commodities by one moiety [56] and apprehended them much more heavy and burdensome than I feel them when I have them upon my shoulders. The same I hope will happen to me of death.
Consider we by the ordinary mutations and daily declinations which we suffer how Nature deprives us of the sight of our loss and impairing. What hath an aged man left him of his youth’s rigor, and of his forepast life?
Heu senibus vitæ portio quanta manet!
Alas to men in years, how small
A part of life is left in all? [57]
Caesar to a tired and crazed soldier of his guard, who in the open street came to him to beg leave he might cause himself to be put to death, viewing his decrepit behaviour, answered pleasantly: Dost thou think to be alive then? [58] Were man all at once to fall into it, I do not think we should be able to bear such a change. But being fair and gently led on by her hand, in a slow and as it were unperceived descent, by little and little, and step by step, she rolls us into that miserable state, and day by day seeks to acquaint us with it. So that when youth fails in us, we feel, nay we perceive, no shaking or transchange at all in ourselves, which in essence and verity is a harder death than that of a languishing and irksome life or that of age. Forsomuch as the leap from an ill being unto a not being is not so dangerous or steepy as it is from a delightful and flourishing being unto a painful and sorrowful condition.
A weak bending and faint stooping body hath less strength to bear and undergo a heavy burden: so hath our soul. She must be roused and raised against the violence and force of this adversary. For, as it is impossible, she should take any rest whilst she feareth, whereof if she be assured (which is a thing exceeding human condition), she may boast that it is impossible unquietness, torment, and fear, much less the least displeasure, should lodge in her.
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida, neque Auster,
Nec fulminantis magna Iovis manus.
No urging tyrants threatening face,
Where mind is found can it displace,
No troublous wind the rough sea’s Master,
Nor Jove’s great hand the thunder caster. [59]
She [60] is made mistress of her passions and concupiscence, lady of indulgence, of shame, of poverty, and of all fortune’s injuries. Let him that can attain to this advantage: herein consists the true and sovereign liberty that affords us means wherewith to jest and make a scorn of force and justice and to deride imprisonment, gyves, [61] or fetters.
——in manicis, et
Compedibus, sævo te sub custode tenebo.
Ipse Deus simul atque volam, me solvet: opinor,
Hoc sentit moriar, mors ultima linea rerum est.
In gyves and fetters I will hamper thee,
Under a jailor that shall cruel be:
Yet, when I will, God me deliver shall,
He thinks, I shall die: death is end of all. [62]
Our religion hath had no surer human foundation than the contempt of life. Discourse of reason doth not only call and summon us unto it. For why should we fear to lose a thing which, being lost, cannot be moaned? [63] But also, since we are threatened by so many kinds of death, there is no more inconvenience to fear them all than to endure one. What matter is it when it cometh, since it is unavoidable? Socrates answered one that told him, “The thirty tyrants have condemned thee to death”; And Nature them, said he.
What fondness is it to cark [64] and care so much, at that instant and passage from all exemption of pain and care? As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so shall our death the end of all things. Therefore is it as great folly to weep we shall not live a hundred years hence as to wail we lived not a hundred years ago. Death is the beginning of another life. So wept we, and so much did it cost us to enter into this life; and so did we spoil us of our ancient vale in entering into it.
Nothing can be grievous that is but once. Is it reason so long to fear, a thing of so short time? Long life or short life is made all one by death. For long or short is not in things that are no more. Aristotle sayeth there are certain little beasts alongst the river Hispanis that live but one day. She which dieth at 8 o’clock in the morning, dies in her youth, and she that dies at 5 in the afternoon, dies in her decrepitude. Who of us doth not laugh when we shall see this short moment of continuance to be had in consideration of good or ill fortune? The most and the least in ours, if we compare it with eternity, or equal it to the lasting of mountains, rivers, stars, and trees, or any other living creature, is no less ridiculous.
But nature compels us to it. [65] Depart, sayeth she, out of this world, even as you came into it. The same way you came from death, to death return without passion or amazement, from life to death. Your death is but a piece of the world’s order and but a parcel of the world’s life.
——inter se mortales mutua vivunt,
Et quasi cursores vitæ lampada tradunt.
Mortal men live by mutual intercourse:
And yield their life-torch, as men in a course. [66]
Shall I not change this goodly contexture of things for you? It is the condition of your creation: death is a part of yourselves; you fly from yourselves. The being you enjoy is equally shared between life and death. The first day of your birth doth as well address you to die as to live.
Prima quæ vitam dedit, hora, carpsit.
The first hour that to me
Gave life straight, cropped it then. [67]
Nascentes morimur, fluisque ab origine pendet.
As we are born we die; the end
Doth of th’original depend. [68]
All the time you live, you steal it from death: it is at her charge. The continual work of your life is to contrive death; you are in death, during the time you continue in life; for you are after death, when you are no longer living. Or if you had rather have it so, you are dead after life; but during life, you are still dying, and death doth more rudely touch the dying than the dead, and more lively and essentially.
If you have profited by life, you have also been fed thereby; depart then satisfied.
Cur non ut plenus vitæ conviva recedis?
Why like a full-fed guest,
Depart you not to rest? [69]
If you have not known how to make use of it, if it were unprofitable to you, what need you care to have lost it? To what end would you enjoy it longer?
——cur amplius addere quæris
Rursum quod pereat male, et ingratum occidat omne?
Why seek you more to gain, what must again,
All perish ill, and pass with grief or pain? [70]
Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the place of good or evil according as you prepare it for them. [71]
And if you have lived one day, you have seen all: one day is equal to all other days. There is no other light, there is no other night. This sun, this moon, these stars, and this disposition is the very same which your forefathers enjoyed and which shall also entertain your posterity.
Non alium videre patres, aliumve nepotes
Aspicient.
No other saw our sires of old,
No other shall their sons behold. [72]
And if the worst happen, the distribution and variety of all the acts of my comedy [73] is performed in one year. If you have observed the course of my four seasons, they contain the infancy, the youth, the virility, and the old age of the world. He hath played his part: he knows no other wiliness belonging to it but to begin again. It will ever be the same, and no other.
——Versamur ibidem, atque insumus usque,
We still in one place turn about,
Still where we are, now in, now out. [74]
Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus.
The year into it self is cast
By those same steps that it hath past. [75]
I am not purposed to devise you other new sports.
Nam tibi præterea quod machinor, inveniamque
Quod placeat, nihil est, eadem sunt omnia semper.
Else nothing, that I can devise or frame,
Can please thee, for all things are still the same. [76]
Make room for others, as others have done for you. Equality is the chief ground-work of equity. Who can complain to be comprehended where all are contained. So may you live long enough, you shall never diminish anything from the time you have to die. It is bootless: so long shall you continue in that state which you fear as if you had died being in your swathing-clothes and when you were sucking.
——licet, quod vis, vivendo vincere secla,
Mors æterna tamen, nihilominus illa manebit.
Though years you live, as many as you will,
Death is eternal, death remaineth still. [77]
And I will so please you that you shall have no discontent.
In vera nescis nullum fore morte alium te,
Qui possit vivus tibi te lugere peremptum,
Stansque iacentem.
Thou knowst not, there shall be no other thou,
When thou art dead indeed, that can tell how
Alive to wail thee dying, standing to wail thee lying. [78]
Nor shall wish for life, which you so much desire.
Nec sibi enim quisquam tum se vitamque requirit,
Nec desiderium nostri nos afficit ullum.
For then none for himself or life requires:
Nor are we of our selves affected with desires. [79]
Death is less to be feared than nothing, if there were anything less than nothing.
——multo mortem minus ad nos esse putandum,
Si minus esse potest quam quod nihil esse videmus.
Death is much less to us, we ought esteem,
If less may be, than what doth nothing seem. [80]
Nor alive, nor dead, it doth concern you nothing. Alive, because you are; dead, because you are
Moreover, no man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours than that which was before your birth and concerneth you no more.
Respice enim quam nil ad nos anteacta vetustas
Temporis æterni fuerit.
For mark, how all antiquity fore-gone
Of all time ere we were, to us was none. [81]
Wheresoever your life ended, there is it all. The profit of life consists not in the space, but rather in the use. Some man hath lived long that hath had a short life. Follow it whilst you have time. It consists not in number of years, but in your will, that you have lived long enough. Did you think you should never come to the place where you were still going? There is no way but hath an end. And if company may solace you, doth not the whole world walk the same path?
——omnia te vita perfuncta sequentur.
Life past, all things at last
Shall follow thee as thou hast past. [82]
Do not all things move as you do, or keep your course? Is there anything grows not old together with yourself? A thousand men, a thousand beasts, and a thousand other creatures die in the very instance that you die.
Nam nox nulla diem, neque noctem aurora sequuta est,