The Complete Essays (164 page)

[B] Any sentence which I pass on myself is far stiffer and more rigorous than any given by judges who can seize me only by aspects of common obligation, whereas my conscience is stricter and more severe. But in the case of duties towards which they would drag me if I would not go willingly, I pursue them but slackly: [C]
‘Hoc ipsum ita justum est quod recte fit, si est voluntarium.’
[The essence of a just deed lies in being voluntary.]
⁶³
[B] If the deed has none of the splendour of freedom it has neither grace nor honour:

Quod me jus cogit, vix voluntate impetrent
.
[You will not easily get me to do what the law says I must.]

When necessity compels me, I like to slacken my will,
‘quia quicquid imperio cogitur exigenti magis quam praestanti acceptum refertur’
[because when anything is commanded, gratitude is given to the one who issues the order not the one who obeys it].

I know some who adopt that position to the point of unfairness: they would rather give away than return, and lend out rather than repay, doing good most meanly to those to whom they are most beholden. I do not go that far, but I get close to it.

I am so fond of ridding myself of the weight of obligations that I have occasionally counted as gains such attacks or insults or acts of ingratitude as came from those to whom, by nature or accident, I owed some duty of
affection, taking their offence, as it occurred, as so much towards the settling or discharge of my debt. Even when I continue to pay them the visible courtesies which society requires, I still find it a great saving [C] to do for justice what I used to do for affection and [B] to alleviate a little the inward stress and anxiety of my will [C]
‘Est prudentis sustinere ut cursum, sic impetum benevolentiae.’
[Wise men should stop a rush of benevolence as they would a runaway chariot.]
⁶⁴
[B] I have a will which, when I yield to it, is rather too impulsive and pressing, at least for a man who wishes never to be under any pressure. My restraint can reconcile me to the imperfections of those who are in contact with me: I am sorry that they are worth the less for it but I can nevertheless economize a little over my attachment and engagement towards them. I approve of the man who loves his son
⁶⁵
less if he is scabby or a hunchback, not merely when he is wicked but also when he is unfortunate or ill-endowed (for God has himself, to that extent, reduced his natural worth and value), provided that he behave, in his absence of warmth, with moderation and scrupulous fairness. In my own case a close relationship does not lighten defects: it tends to aggravate them.

After all that, insofar as I understand the subject of beneficence and gratitude (which is a delicate and most useful science) I know no one more free and under less obligation than I am so far. I owe whatever I do owe to common natural obligations: no one is more purely unindebted:
⁶⁶

nec sunt mihi nota potentum
                                Munera
.

[and as for presents from powerful men, I know them not.]

Princes [C] give me plenty if they take nothing from me and [B] do me enough good if they do me no harm. That is all I ask of them. Oh how beholden I am to God that it should have pleased Him that I should receive all I have directly from His grace and for His reserving all my debt to Him alone! [C] How urgently I beg God of His mercy that I may never owe a fundamental ‘Thank you’ to any man. Blessed freedom, which has guided me thus far! May it last to the end.

[B] I try to have no express need of anyone: [C]
‘in me omnis spes est
mihi’
[all my hope is in myself].
⁶⁷
[B] That is something all can do, but it is easier for those whom God has protected from pressing natural needs. To depend upon another is pitiful and hazardous. Even our own self (which is the most secure and right place to turn to) does not provide adequate security. I own nothing but myself, yet even my possession of that is partly imperfect and defective. I husband myself
⁶⁸
[C] and put heart into myself (which is more important) while still fortunate, [B] so as to find there the wherewithal to satisfy me when all else should abandon me.

[C] Eleus Hippias did not equip himself solely with learning so as to be able, if needs be, to withdraw happily from all other company into the lap of the Muses, nor solely with philosophy so as to teach his soul to be content with itself, manfully doing without all external goods when Fate demands it: he took care to learn to be his own cook and barber, to make his own clothes, shoes and rings so as to be able to rely as far as possible entirely on himself and to relieve himself of the need of others’ help.
⁶⁹
[B] You can enjoy more freely and contentedly the use of good things which do not derive from yourself when your enjoyment of them is not bound and constrained by necessity and when your will has the power, and your financial resources the means, of doing without them.

[C] I know myself well, but it is hard for me to conceive of any act of kindness from anyone or any hospitality so frank and free but that, if I were to become involved in it out of necessity, it would be to me painful, tyrannical and stained with reproach. Just as giving is a pretentious quality, a prerogative, receiving is an act of subordination – witness Bajazet’s insulting and bellicose rejection of the gifts sent to him by Tamberlane;
⁷⁰
and the gifts sent on the part of the Emperor Soleiman put the Emperor of Calicut in such a rage that he not only bluntly rejected them, saying that neither he nor his predecessors were accustomed to take, it being their place to bestow, but he also had the envoys who had been sent with them cast into a dungeon.

Aristotle says that when Thetis flatters Jupiter, and the Spartans the Athenians, they do not start reminding them again of all that they
themselves have done for them – that is always odious – but of all they have received from them.
⁷¹
Those whom I see readily using the good offices of each and everyone and pawning themselves to them would not do so if they attached the weight which wise men should to the bond of an obligation: it can sometimes be repaid but never untied – a cruel trussing-up for anyone who likes to give his freedom elbow-room everywhere. Those who are acquainted with me (both those above and below me) know whether they have ever met anyone who puts fewer burdens upon others. If I am excessive about this by today’s standards, that is no great marvel, since so many elements in my character contribute to it: a little innate pride, the inability to bear a refusal, my restricted needs and my lack of flair for any kind of business – and my most cherished characteristics: idleness and frankness. For all of which reasons I have a mortal hatred of being beholden to anyone or through anyone but myself. Under any circumstances whatever, before I will make use of another’s kindly services, no matter how trivial or unimportant, I make vigorous use of every means of doing without them. Those whom I hold in affection distress me hugely when they beg me to beg a favour for them from a third party. If I make use of anyone, it seems to cost me no less to redeem what he has in pawn to me than, if he owes me nothing, to pawn myself to him on behalf of others. But apart from that condition and the next (that they do not want anything from me which requires anxious bargaining, for I have declared a war unto death against bother of any sort), I am easily accessible to the needs of everyone.
⁷²

[B] But even more than seeking to bestow I have fled from all receiving – [C] which Aristotle says is an easier thing to do.
⁷³
[B] My Fortune has not allowed me to give much to others, and the little she has allowed me has been lodged with the very poor.

If Fortune had brought me into this world to hold high rank among men I would have been ambitious to be loved, not feared or held in awe. Shall I express it more cheekily? I would have been more concerned to please than to bring moral improvement. [C] Cyrus said most wisely (through the mouth of an excellent captain and better philosopher)
⁷⁴
that
he reckoned that his generosity and benefactions far excelled his valour and his conquests in war. And whenever Scipio the Elder wants to make himself esteemed he rates his affability and humanity above his bravery and victories, and always has this proud saying on his lips: he had given his foes as much reason to love him as his friends.

[B] What I mean, then, is that if I must owe anyone anything it should be for some other more legitimate pretext than the one I mentioned just now, in which I am implicated by the laws of this wretched war, one where the debt does not amount to my entire preservation. Such a debt overwhelms me. I have gone to bed in my own home hundreds of times thinking that I would be betrayed and killed that night, bargaining with Fortune that the event should not be terrifying and long drawn-out. And after reciting my Lord’s Prayer I have exclaimed,

Impius hœc tam culta novalia miles habebit!
[Some impious soldier, then, will get these well-farmed lands!]
⁷⁵

What remedy is there? I was born in this place and so were most of my ancestors. They have entrusted their love and reputation unto it. We get hardened to anything to which we are accustomed. And in wretched circumstances such as ours now it is a most kindly gift of Nature that we do grow accustomed to it, so that it deadens our sense of suffering many evils.

What makes civil wars worse than other wars is that each man is on sentry-guard over his own home.

Quam miserum porta vitam muroque tueri,
Vixque suæ tutum viribus esse domus
.

[How pitiful it is to need gates and walls to protect your life and scarcely to be able to trust in the strength of your own home.]

It is to be in great extremity to be hard-pressed even within your very house, in the quiet of your home.
⁷⁶
The place where I dwell is always the first and the last to be pounded by our strife: peace never shows her full face there:

Tum quoque cum pax est, trepidant formidine belli
.
[Even when there is peace we tremble for fear of war.]
⁷⁷

Quoties pacem fortuna lacessit,
Hac iter est bellis. Melius, fortuna, dedisses
Orbe sub Eoo sedem, gelidaque sub Arcto,
Errantesque domos
.

[Every rime that Fortune strikes at peace, that is the road to war. Fortune, you would have been better advised to settle me in lands beneath the Morning Star or the wandering planets of the frozen North.]

Sometimes I find in indifference and languor the means of firming myself against such reflections – for they too can make us somewhat resolute. It often happens that I think with some pleasure of those mortal dangers and wait for them: I lower my head and plunge, devoid of sensation, into death, neither contemplating it nor exploring it, as into some voiceless, darkling deep, which swallows me up at one jump and in an instant overwhelms me with a powerful sleep entirely lacking any sensation or suffering. And what I foresee to follow upon those short and violent deaths consoles me more than their reality disturbs me. [C] (Life, they say, is no better for being long: death is better for not being so.) [B] I do not recoil from being dead but, rather, I become reassured about dying. I wrap up and crouch down during the storm, which, with one quick attack, one unfelt blow, must blind me and ravish me in its frenzy.

Just as some gardeners say that roses and violets spring up more sweet-scented near garlic and onions which attract and draw to themselves all that is foul-smelling in the soil,
⁷⁸
suppose those depraved characters similarly suck up all the venom in the air of our climate, rendering me better and purer by their proximity, so that all is not loss. But things are not so. Yet there may be something in the following: goodness is more beautiful and attractive when it is rare, while the determination to act well is stiffened by contradiction and concentrated in us by opposition, being enflamed by glory and a jealous desire to resist.

[C] Robbers, of their courtesy, do not have it in for me personally. Do I not return the compliment? I would need to have it in for too many people! [’95] Under various kinds of dress [C] are lodged
⁷⁹
similar consciences, similar cruelty, treachery and robbery, and they are all the worse when they are more cowardly and safe for being better hidden behind the shadow of the law. Avowed injuries I hate less than treacherous
ones, and those of war less than those of peace – [’95] judicial ones. [C] This fever of ours has occurred in a body which it has hardly made worse: the fire was there already: the flames had already taken. The din is much greater, the evil but little more.

[B] When people ask why I go on my travels I usually reply that I know what I am escaping from but not what I am looking for. If they tell me that there may be [C] just as little soundness [B] among foreigners
⁸⁰
and that their morals may be no better than ours, I reply: first, that that would not be easy: