fair turns out so well? I am very glad, said he, that it has so happened; yet I do not repent that I advised otherwise. When my friends apply to me for my opinion, I give it freely and plainly, without considering, as almost all mankind do, that the thing being hazardous, it may fall out contrary to my opinion, and then, perhaps, they may reproach me for my advice; but this is what I am very indifferent about; for they will be to blame for desiring that office which I could not justify myself to refuse

them.

seldom

vice in the

manage

all'airs, and

other per

I scarce ever lay any mistakes or misfortunes of Montaigne mine to the charge of another person: the truth is, took an I seldom make use of another's advice, but only for other's adthe sake of civility and ceremony, unless it be where mana I have need of instruction in any science, or infor- ment of his mation of any fact. For in things where I have only seldom my judgment to make use of, other men's reasons gave his to may be of some credit to support me, but of little sous force to dissuade me. I hear every thing favourably and decently; but I do not remember that to this hour I ever made use of any reason but my own. With me they are but flies or atoms that hover about my will. will. I lay no great stress upon my own opinions, and as little upon those of other men. Fortune rewards me justly. As I do not receive advice, I give as little. I am seldom asked for it, and more seldom trusted to; and know not of any undertaking, either public or private, that has been the better for my advice; even the persons, whom fortune had in any manner engaged to follow my direction, have chose more willingly to be guided by any other head-piece than mine: and as I am a man altogether as vigilant against the disturbance of my tranquillity as the diminution of my authority, I like it the better. By thus neglecting me, they humour me in what I profess, which is to settle and wholly

* Plutarch, in his Notable Sayings of ancient Kings, Princes, &c. under the article Phocion.

Was little troubled

for events

contrary to

contain myself within myself. It is a pleasure to me to be disinterested in other men's affairs, and not to be any way responsible for them.

All affairs when they are over, happen as they will, give me little concern; for the imagination, that fell out that so it ought to be, puts me out of my pain. his wishes, They are rolled about in the great revolution of the and why. universe, and linked in the chain of stoical causes. Your fancy cannot, by wish or imagination, move an iota, either past or to come, which the order of things will not totally overturn.

Made little account of the repent

As to the rest, I hate that accidental repentance which old age brings with it. He, of old times,* who ance owing said he was obliged to his years for stripping him of old age. pleasure, was of a different opinion from me.

purely to

I can never think myself beholden to impotency for any good that it does me. Nec tam aversa unquam videbitur ab opere suo providentia, ut debiliter inter optime inventa sit: "Nor can Providence ever be "thought so averse to its own work that debility "should be found among the best things." Our appetites are rare in old age. A profound satiety comes upon us after the act. I discern nothing of conscience in this. It is chagrin and weakness that imprint on us a languid phlegmatic quality. We must not suffer ourselves to be wholly carried away by the alterations of nature so as to debase our judg ment. Youth and pleasure did not heretofore so far blind me that I did not discern the face of vice in pleasure; nor does that disgust which years have now brought upon me, hinder me from discerning the face of pleasure in vice. Now that my days of pleasure are over, I judge of it as if they were not. 1, who strictly and attentively ransack my reason, find it the very same it was in my most licentious

This was Sophocles, who being asked if he still enjoyed the pleasures of love, made answer, Dii meliora: libenter vero istine, tanquam a domino agresti ac furioso profugi: "The gods have done "better for me; and glad I am that I have lived to escape from the "wild and furious tyranny of love." Cic. de Senectute, cap. 14.

age, if it be not perhaps a little weakened and impaired by being grown old; and I am of opinion, that as it does not permit me to embark in pleasure, for the sake of my bodily health, it would not give me more allowance now than heretofore for the sake of my soul's health. I do not reckon my reason the more vigorous because it has nothing to combat. My temptations are so shattered and mortified that they are not worth its opposition, for with only stretching out my hands I overcome them. Should my former concupiscence be replaced in its view, I fear it would not have so much strength to resist it as it had heretofore. I do not find that it has any other notion of pleasure now than it had then, nor that it has acquired any new light; wherefore if there be a recovery it is a scurvy one. Miserable kind of remedy, where health is not to be obtained without a disease. It is not for our misfortune to perform this office, but for the good fortune of our judgment. I am not influenced by injuries and afflictions to do any thing but to curse them. This is for people who are not to be roused till they feel the scourge. My reason, indeed, acts with more freedom in prosperity, but is more distracted and harder put to it, to digest misfortunes than pleasures. I see best in a clear sky; health premonishes me with more alacrity and more benefit than sickness. I did all that I could to repair and regulate myself when I had health to enjoy them. I would be ashamed and vexed that the misery and misfortune of my old age should be preferred before my good, healthful, sprightly, and vigorous years; and that men should judge of me, not by what I have been, but by what I am now that I have as it were ceased to be.

city con

cording to

In my opinion it is in happy living, and not in Wherein dying happily, as Antisthenes said, that human feli-human felicity consists. I have not aimed to make a monstrous sists, acaddition of a philosopher's tail to the head and body Montaigne. of a libertine, nor that this wretched remainder of life should contradict and give the lie to the pleaC

VOL. III.

What is the

wisdom of old men.

santest, soundest, and longest part of it. I would fain represent myself uniform throughout. Were I to lead my life over again, I would live just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor fear the future; and, if I do not deceive myself, I have been much the same within as without. I am principally obliged to my fortune, that the course of my bodily estate has been carried on in every thing in its season. I have seen it in its bud, blossoms, and fruit, and now see it withered; happily, however, because naturally. I bear the ailments I have the better as they are at their crisis, and also because they give me the more pleasing remembrance of the long felicity of my past life. My wisdom also may, perhaps, have been of the same pitch in both ages, but it was more active and graceful, when young, sprightly, and natural, than now that it is broken, peevish, and 'painful. I therefore renounce those casual and dolorous reformations. God must touch our hearts, and our consciences must amend of themselves by the aid of our reason, and not by the decay of our appetites.

Pleasure is in itself neither pale nor discoloured for being discerned by eyes that are dim and distempered. We ought to love temperance for its own sake, and in respect to God, who has commanded both that and chastity. What we derive from catarrhs, and what I am obliged for to my cholic, is neither chastity nor temperance. A man cannot

boast that he despises and resists pleasure, if he does not see it, and if he does not know it, together with its charms, power, and most alluring beauty. I know both the one and the other, I have a right to say it: but it seems to me that in old age our minds are subject to more troublesome maladies and imperfections than they are in youth. I said the same when I was young, and when I was reproached with the want of a beard; and I say the same now that my gray hairs gain me authority. We call the crabbedness of our tempers, and the disrelish of present things, wisdom;

but in truth we do not so much forsake vices as change them, and in my opinion for worse. Besides a foolish groundless pride, nauseous babble, froward and unsociable humours, superstition, and a ridicu lous thirst after riches, when the use of them is lost, I find in old age more envy, injustice, and malignity. It furrows the mind with more wrinkles than the face; and we never, or very rarely, see people who, in growing old, do not grow sour and musty. The whole man moves, both towards his perfection and his decay. In considering the wisdom of Socrates, and many circumstances of his condemnation,* I dare believe that he indulged himself by prevarication, in some measure, for the purpose, seeing that at 70 years of age he suffered such a rich genius as his was to be almost totally cramped, and his wonted brightness obscured. What metamorphoses do I every day see made by age in several of my acquaintance! It is a powerful malady, which creeps upon us naturally, and imperceptibly. Deep study and great precaution are absolutely necessary to avoid the imperfections it loads us with, or at least to slacken their progress. I find that, notwithstanding all my intrenchments, it steals upon me one foot after another; I bear up against it as well as I can, but I know not what it will bring me to at last; but, happen what will, I am content to have it known what I was before I fell.

* If this be a conjecture only founded on Montaigne's sagacity, it does him very great honour, for Xenophon tells us expressly, that in truth, Socrates defended himself with so much haughtiness before his judges, only from a consideration that at his age death would be better for him than life. This is the subject of the entire preface to that defence made by Socrates before his judges.