character. Just as our passion, and the feverish solicitude we have of the chastity of women makes the saying a good woman, a woman of worth, a woman of honour and virtue, to signify no more than a chaste woman; as if to oblige her to that one duty, we were indifferent to all the rest; and gave them the reins to all other faults whatever, to compound for that one of incontinence.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE AFFECTION OF FATHERS TO THEIR CHILDREN.

To Madame D'Estissac.1

MADAM, if the strangeness and novelty of my subject, which generally give value to things, do not save me, I shall never come off with honour from this foolish attempt; but 'tis so fantastic, and carries a face so unlike the common custom, that the oddness of it may perhaps make it pass. 'Tis a melancholic humour, and consequently a humour very much opposed to my natural complexion, engendered by the pensiveness of the solitude into which for some years past I have retired myself, that first put into my head this idle fancy of writing; wherein, finding myself totally unprovided and empty of other matters, I presented myself to myself for argument and subject. 'Tis the only book in the world of its kind, and of a wild and extravagant design. Indeed, there is nothing worth remark but the extravagancy in this affair ; for in a subject so vain and frivolous the best workman in the world could not have given it a form fit to recommend it to any manner of esteem. Now, madam, being to draw my

1 The son of this lady accompanied Montaigne in his journey to Rome.

own picture to the life, I should have omitted an important feature, had I not represented in it the honour I have ever paid to your merits; and I have chosen to say this expressly at the head of this chapter, by reason that, among your other excellent qualities, the love you have shown to your children holds one of the chief places. Whoever shall know at what age Monsieur d' Estissac, your husband, left you a widow, the great and honourable matches have since been offered to you, as many and as great as to any lady of your condition in France; the firmness and steadiness wherewith you have sustained for so many years, through so many sharp difficulties, the charge and conduct of their affairs, which have kept you in agitation in every corner of the kingdom, and which yet hold you, as it were, besieged, and the happy direction you have given all these, either by your prudence or good fortune, will easily conclude with me that we have not a more striking example than yours of maternal affection in our times.

I praise God, madam, that it has been so well employed; for the great hopes that Monsieur d' Estissac, your son, gives of himself, are sufficient assurances that, when he comes to age, you will reap from him all the obedience and gratitude of a very good man. But forasmuch as by reason of his tender years he has not been capable of taking notice of those numberless offices of kindness which he has received from you, I will take care, if these papers ever fall into his hands, when I shall neither have mouth nor speech left to deliver it to him, that he shall receive from me this testimony, in all truth, which shall be more effectually manifested to him by their own effects, and by which he will see and feel that there is not a gentleman in France who stands more indebted to a mother's care than he does; and that he cannot for the future give a better nor more certain proof of his own worth and virtue, than by acknowledging you for that excellent mother you are.

If there be any law truly natural, that is to say, any in

The affection of

their children

of children to

why.

stinct that is seen universally, and perpetually imprinted in both beasts and men (which is not parents toward without controversy), I can say that, in my greater than that opinion, next to the care every animal has of wards them, and his own preservation, and to avoid that which may hurt him, the affection that the begetter bears to his offspring holds the second place in rank. And seeing that nature seems to have recommended it to us, having regard to the extension and progression of the successive pieces of this machine of hers; 'tis no wonder that, on the contrary, that of children towards their parents is not so great. To which we may add this other Aristotelian consideration, that he who confers a benefit on any one loves him better than he is be1 loved by him again; and that he to whom it is due loves better than him from whom it is due;1 and that every artificer is fonder of his work than, if that work had sense, it would be of the artificer; by reason that it is dear to us to be, and to be consists in moving and action; whereby every one has, in some sort, a being in his work. Whoever confers a benefit, exercises a fine and honest action; he who receives it, exercises the utile only. Now the utile is much less amiable than the honestum; the honestum is stable and permanent, supplying him who has done it with a continual gratification. The utile loses itself, easily slides away, and the memory of it is neither so fresh nor so pleasing. Those things are dearest

to us that have cost us most; and giving is more chargeable 1

than receiving.

ble of reasoning.

Since it has pleased God to endue us with some capacity of weighing and considering things, to the end To what end men we may not, like brutes, be servilely subjected are created capaand enslaved by the laws common to both, but that we should by judgment, and a voluntary liberty, apply ourselves to them; we ought, indeed, sometimes to yield to the simple authority of nature, but not suffer ourselves to be tyrannically hurried away, and transported by her; reason 1 Aristotle, Ethics, ix. 7.

me.

What ought to be

alone should have the conduct of our inclinations. I, for my part, have a strange distaste to those inclinations that are started in us, without the mediation and direction of the judgment; as, upon the subject I am speaking of, I cannot entertain that passion of dandling and caressing an infant scarcely born, having, as yet, neither motion of soul, nor shape of body distinguishable, by which they can render themselves lovable; and have not willingly suffered them to be nursed near A true and well-regulated affection ought to spring up, and increase with the knowledge they give us the love of parents of themselves, and then, if they are worthy of to their children. it, natural propension going hand in hand with reason, to cherish them with a truly paternal love; and to judge and discern also if they be otherwise, still submitting ourselves to reason, notwithstanding the force of nature. It is often quite the reverse; and most commonly we find ourselves more taken with the first trotting about, and little ways and plays of our children, than we are afterwards with their formed actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men. And some there are who are very liberal in buying them playthings when they are children, who are very close-handed for the least necessary expense when they grow up. Nay, to such degree that it looks as if the jealousy of seeing them appear in, and enjoy the world, when we are about to leave it, renders us more niggardly and stingy towards them; it vexes us that they tread upon our heels, as if to solicit us to go out; but if this be to be feared, since the order of things will have it so, that they cannot, to speak the truth, be or live but at the expense of our being and life, we should never meddle with getting children.

For my part, I think it cruelty and injustice not to receive them into the share and society of our goods, and not to make them partakers in the intelligence of our domestic affairs when they are capable, and not to lessen and contract our own expenses, to make the more room for theirs, seeing we

begat them to that effect. 'Tis unjust that an old fellow, deaf, lame, and half dead, should alone, in a corner of the chimney, enjoy the goods that were sufficient for the maintenance and advancement of many children, and suffer them in the mean time to lose their best years for want of means to put themselves forward in the public service, and the knowledge of men. A man by this means drives them to desperate courses, and to seek out by any means, how unjust or dishonourable soever, to provide for their own support; as I have, in my time, seen several young men of good birth so addicted to stealing that no correction could cure them of it. I know one of a very good family, to whom, at young men given the request of a brother of his, a very honest to filching. and brave gentleman, I once spoke on this account; who made answer, and confessed to me roundly that he had been put upon this dirty practice by the severity and avarice of his father; but that he was now so accustomed to it he could not leave it off. At this very time he had been entrapped stealing a lady's rings, being come into her chamber as she was dressing, with several others. He put me in mind of a story I had heard of another gentleman so perfect and accomplished in this genteel trade in his youth that, after he came to his estate, and resolved to give it over, could not hold his hands, nevertheless, if he passed by a shop where he saw any thing he liked, from catching it up, though it put him to the shame of sending afterwards to pay for it. And I have myself seen several so habituated to this laudable quality that even amongst their comrades they could not forbear filching, though with intent to restore what they had taken. I am a Gascon, and yet there is no vice I so little understand as that; I hate it even something more by disposition than I condemn it by my reason; I do not so much as desire any thing of another man's. This province of ours Gascons generally is, in truth, a little more suspected than the addicted to stealother parts of the kingdom; and yet we have often seen, in our times, men of good families of other prov

ing.