The Complete Essays (12 page)

3. Our emotions get carried away beyond us

[Many of the
exempla
in this chapter are rooted in war. They show, as do the more personal ones, how men fruitlessly worry about what happens to their bodies after death. Montaigne already states (as later he will insist) that a human being only
is
(only exists) when body and soul are conjoined.]

[B] Those who reproach humanity with always gaping towards the future and who teach us to grasp present goods and to be satisfied with them since we have no hold over what is to come – less hold, even, than we have over the past – touch upon the most common of human aberrations (if we dare use the word ‘aberration’ for something towards which Nature herself brings us in the service of the perpetuation of her handiwork, [C] impressing this false thought upon us as she does many others, more ardently concerned as she is for us to do than to know). [B] We are never ‘at home’: we are always outside ourselves. Fear, desire, hope, impel us towards the future; they rob us of feelings and concern for what now is, in order to spend time over what will be – even when we ourselves shall be no more. [C]
‘Calamitosus est animus futuri anxius’
[Wretched is a mind anxious about the future].
¹

‘Do what thou hast to do, and know thyself’ – that great precept is often cited by Plato;
²
each clause of it embraces our entire duty, generally, and similarly embraces its fellow. Whoever would do what he has to do would see that the first thing he must learn is to know what he is and what is properly his. And whoever does know himself never considers external things to be his; above all other things he loves and cultivates himself: he rejects excessive concerns as well as useless thoughts and resolutions.
‘Ut stultitia etsi adepta est quod concupivit nunquam se tamen satis consecutam putat: sic sapientia semper eo contenta est quod adest, neque eam unquam sui poenitet.’
[Folly never thinks it has enough, even when it obtains what it desires, but
Wisdom is happy with what is to hand and is never vexed with itself.]
³
Epicurus frees his Wise Man from anticipation and worry about the future.
⁴

[B] The most solid of our laws concerning the dead seems to me to be the one which requires the deeds of monarchs to be examined once their life is over. They are, if not the masters, then the companions of the laws: that which Justice could not visit upon their heads can rightly be visited upon their reputations and on the goods of their heirs – things we often prefer to life itself. It is a custom which brings many singular advantages to those peoples who observe it; it is something to be desired by good monarchs [C] who have cause to complain that the memory of the wicked is honoured just like their own. We owe subordination and obedience to all our kings equally, for that concerns their office; but we owe esteem and affection only to their virtue. Let us concede this much to the political order: to suffer kings patiently when unworthy, to hide their vices and to encourage their indifferent actions with our approbation – while their authority needs our support. But once our commerce with them is over, it is not reasonable to deprive Justice and our own freedom of the right to express our true feelings – and especially to deprive good subjects of the glory of having reverently and faithfully served a master whose imperfections were so well known to them, thus depriving posterity of so useful an example. Those who out of some private obligation wickedly espouse the memory of an unpraiseworthy monarch put private above public justice. Livy rightly says that the speech of men brought up under monarchies is always full of foolish pomposity and vain testimony, as each one of them elevates his king, regardless of merit, to the ultimate point of valour and sovereign greatness.
⁵

One may reprove the greatness of soul of those two soldiers who answered Nero back to his face: one of them, when asked by Nero why he wished him ill, retorted: ‘I loved you while you deserved it; but since you have become a parricide, a fire-raiser, a mountebank and a chariot-driver, I hate you as you deserve’; the other, asked why he wanted to kill him, replied, ‘Because I can find no other remedy to your continual misdoings’; but how can anyone of sound judgement reprove those public and universal testimonies to his tyrannous and vile deeds which were rendered after his death – and always will be?
⁶

It displeases me that such lying veneration should be found in so religious a regime as that of Sparta. On the death of their kings all their allies and neighbours and all the helots – men and women indiscriminately – slashed their foreheads in token of their grief, declaring in their cries and lamentations that the dead king was the best they had ever had, thus attributing to rank the praise which belongs to merit and attributing to the least and the lowest what belongs to the highest merit.
⁷

Aristotle, who goes into everything, takes the saying of Solon that ‘nobody can be termed happy before he is dead’ and inquires whether even a man who has lived and died ordinately can be called happy if his reputation fares badly and if his descendants are wretched.
⁸
While we can move we can transport ourselves by anticipation wherever we may please: but once we have gone outside our being we have no commerce with that which
is
. It would be better to tell Solon that no man is ever happy, therefore, since he only is so when he
is
no more.
⁹

[B]
Quisquam
Vix radicitus e vita se tollit, et ejicit:
Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse,
Nec removet satis aprojecto corpore sese, et
Vindicat
.

[A man does not tear himself from life by the roots and cast himself away: unawares, he dreams that some part of himself will still remain; he does not withdraw enough from that cast-off body nor free himself.]
¹⁰

[A] Bertrand Du Guesclin died at the siege of Rancon castle near Le Puy in Auvergne. When the besieged later surrendered they were made to bring out the keys of the fortress borne on the body of that dead man. When Bartolomeo d’Alviano, the general of the Venetian army, had died in the service of their wars in. Brescia, his corpse had to be brought back to Venice through the territory of their enemy, Verona; the majority in the army were in favour of asking the Veronese for a safe-conduct but Teodoro Trivulcio opposed it, choosing to pass through their lands by force of arms at the hazard of battle. ‘It is not becoming,’ he said, ‘that he
who never feared his enemy while alive should show fear of them when dead.’
¹¹

[B] In a kindred matter, by the laws of the Greeks anyone who asked leave of the enemy to retrieve a corpse for burial had definitely given up any claim to victory; it was not licit to erect a trophy. For him to whom the request was made it was proof that he had won. That is how Nicias lost the advantage he so clearly had over the Corinthians, and how on the other hand Agesilaus rendered certain the doubtful advantage he had acquired over the Boeotians.
¹²

[A] These details might seem odd, were it not acceptable in all ages to project beyond this life the care we have for ourselves, and to believe moreover that divine favours often accompany us to the tomb and extend to our remains. There are so many ancient examples of this, let alone our own, that there is no need for me to dilate on them. Edward I, King of England, in the long wars with Robert, King of Scotland, had assayed how great an advantage his presence conferred on his affairs since he always won the victory when personally present at an engagement; when he was dying he bound his son by a solemn oath to boil his body as soon as he was dead, so as to separate his flesh from his bones and bury it; as for his bones, he was to keep them, carrying them with him in his army whenever he should happen to be fighting against the Scots – as though it were fated by Destiny that victory should reside in his joints.

[B] John Vischa, who brought insurrection to Bohemia in defence of the errors of Wyclif, wished to be flayed after death and his skin to be made into a drum to bear in battle against his foes; he reckoned that that would prolong the superiority which he had known in the wars he had waged against them. Similarly certain Indians bore into battle against the Spaniards the bones of one of their leaders, out of respect for the good fortune which he had known in life. And other tribes in that same World bear in their war-train the bodies of their valiant men who had died in battle, to provide both good fortune and encouragement.
¹³
[A] My first examples were of men seeking to preserve in the tomb reputations acquired by previous acts: the later ones intended to convey that they still could act; but the deed of Captain Bayard constitutes a better compact:
realizing he was fatally wounded in the body by a volley of harquebuses, he replied when advised to withdraw from the fray that he would not now at the end of his life start to turn his back on the enemy; having fought as long as he had strength, feeling himself faint and sliding from his saddle, he commanded his batman to lay him at the foot of a tree, but in such a fashion that he should die facing the foe. As he did.
¹⁴

I must add this further example, which is as worthy of note in this connection as any of the foregoing. The Emperor Maximilian, the great-grandfather of the present King Philip, was a monarch fully endowed with great advantages; among others, he was singularly handsome. One of his humours was flat contrary to that of princes who, to get through important business, make a throne of their lavatory: he never allowed a valet such intimacy as to see him on his privy. He would even hide away to pass water, being as scrupulous as a [C] maiden [A] about uncovering, for a doctor or anyone else, those parts which are customarily kept hidden.
¹⁵
[B] I myself, so shameless in speech, have nevertheless in my complexion a touch of such modesty: except when strongly moved by necessity or pleasure I rarely let anyone’s eyes see those members or those actions which our customs ordain to be hidden. I find this all the more constraining in that I do not think it becoming in a man, above all in one of my calling.
¹⁶
But Maximilian became [A] so scrupulous that he expressly commanded in his will that linen drawers should be tied on him when he was dead. He should have added a codicil saying that the man who pulled them on ought to be blindfold!

[C] The order which Cyrus gave to his children (that neither they nor any others should see or touch his body once his soul had left it) I attribute to some personal vow; for among their other great qualities both he and his historian sowed broadcast through their lives a singular care and reverence for religion.
¹⁷

[B] I was not pleased by a tale which a great prince told me about a member of a family allied to mine, a man well-known in peace and war: when very old, and dying within his court extremely tormented by the stone, he consumed all his last hours with vehement cares about the dignity and pomp of his funeral: he summoned all the nobility who visited him to promise to join his cortège. He urgently begged this very prince, who saw
him in his last moments, to command that his family be present, employing many examples and arguments to prove that it was appropriate to a man of his station; and having extracted that promise and established to his liking the arrangements and order of his procession, he seemed to die happy.

I have rarely known vanity so persistent.

That opposite care (and my family does not lack an example of that either) seems to me to be cousin-german to the other: it consists in getting worried and worked up at this final stage about restricting the attendance (out of some private and unwonted frugality) to one servant and one lantern. I have seen this humour praised, as was the command of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who forbade his heirs to perform for him the ceremonies which were customary in such matters.
¹⁸
Is it still temperance and frugality if we avoid expenditures the use of which – and pleasures all knowledge of which – we are incapable of perceiving? An easy way to reform; and it costs little!

[C] If it were necessary to make arrangements for it, my decision would be that in this as in all other of life’s actions each man should conform his principles to the size of his fortune; Lycon, the philosopher, wisely prescribed that his friends should lay his body where they thought best, and, as far as the funeral was concerned, should make it neither excessive nor niggardly.
¹⁹
[B] I shall leave it [C] purely to custom to order this ceremony; I shall entrust myself to the discretion of the first people this duty shall fall to.
²⁰
‘Totus hic locus est contemnendus in nobis, non negligendus in nostris.’
[All this is a matter to be despised for ourselves but not neglected for our own.] And a saint put it a saintly way:
‘Curatio funeris, conditio sepulturae, pompa exsequiarum magis sunt vivorum solatia quam subsidia mortuorum.’
[The arranging of funerals, the choosing of tombs and the pomp of obsequies are consolations for the living rather than supports for the dead.] That is why Socrates (when Crito asked him in his final moments how he wanted to be buried) replied, ‘Just as you wish.’