Michel de Montaigne
(Edited)
CICERO says "that to
study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die." The reason
of which is, because study and contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us
our soul, and employ it separately from the body, which is a kind of
apprenticeship and a resemblance of death; or else, because all the wisdom and
reasoning in the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to
fear to die. And to say the truth, either our reason mocks us, or it ought to
have no other aim but our contentment only, nor to endeavor anything but, in
sum, to make us live well, and, as the Holy Scripture says, at our ease. All
the opinions of the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, though we
make use of divers means to attain it: they would, otherwise, be rejected at
the first motion; for who would give ear to him that should propose affliction
and misery for his end?
Now, of all the benefits that
virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest, as the
means that accommodates human life with a soft and easy tranquillity, and gives
us a pure and pleasant taste of living, without which all other pleasure would
be extinct. Which is the reason why all the rules center and concur in this one
article. And although they all in like manner, with common accord, teach us
also to despise pain, poverty, and the other accidents to which human life is
subject, it is not, nevertheless, with the same solicitude, as well by reason
these accidents are not of so great necessity, the greater part of mankind
passing over their whole lives without ever knowing what poverty is, and some
without sorrow or sickness, as Xenophilus the musician, who lived a hundred and
six years in perfect and continual health; as also because, at the worst, death
can, whenever we please, cut short and put an end to all other inconveniences.
But as to death, it is inevitable, and, consequently, if it frights us, 'tis a
perpetual torment, for which there is no sort of consolation. There is no way
by which it may not reach us. We may continually turn our heads this way and
that, as in a suspected country. Our courts of justice often send back
condemned criminals to be executed upon the place where the crime was
committed; but, carry them to fine houses by the way, prepare for them the best
entertainment.
Do you think they can relish
it? and that the fatal end of their journey being continually before their
eyes, would not alter and deprave their palate from enjoying these
entertainments?
The end of our race is death;
'tis the necessary object of our aim, which, if it fright us, how is it
possible to advance a step without a fit of ague? The remedy the vulgar use is
not to think on't; but from what brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a
blindness? They must bridle the ass by the tail. It is no wonder if he be often trapped in the pitfall. They
affright people with the very mention of death, and many cross themselves, as
it were the name of the devil. And because the making a man's will is in
reference to dying, not a man will be persuaded to take a pen in hand to that
purpose till the physician has passed sentence upon him, and totally given him
over, and then between grief and terror, God knows in how fit a condition of
understanding he is to do it.
The Romans, by reason that
this poor syllable death sounded so harshly to their ears, and seemed so
ominous, found out a way to soften and spin it out by a periphrasis, and
instead of pronouncing such a one is dead, said, "Such a one has
lived," or "Such a one has ceased to live;" for, provided there
was any mention of life in the case, though past, it carried yet some sound of
consolation. And from them it is that we have borrowed our expression,
"The late monsieur such and such a one."
Young and old die upon the
same terms; no one departs out of life otherwise than if he had but just before
entered into it; neither is any man so old and decrepit, who, having heard of
Methuselah, does not think he has yet twenty years good to come. Fool that thou
art, who has assured unto thee the term of life? Thou dependest upon
physicians' tales: rather consult effects and experience. According to the
common course of things, 'tis long since that thou hast lived by extraordinary
favor: thou hast already outlived the ordinary term of life. And that is so,
reckon up thy acquaintance, how many more have died before they arrived at thy
age than have attained unto it; and of those who have ennobled their lives by
their renown, take but an account, and I dare lay a wager thou wilt find more
who have died before than after five-and-thirty years of age. It is full both
of reason and piety too, to take example by the humanity of Jesus Christ
Himself; now, He ended His life at three-and-thirty years. The greatest man,
that was no more than a man, Alexander, died also at the same age. How many
several ways has death to surprise us?
To omit fevers and
pleurisies, who would ever have imagined that a duke of Brittany should be
pressed to death in a crowd as that duke was, at the entry of Pope Clement, my
neighbor, into Lyons? Hast thou not seen one of our kings killed at a tilting,
and did not one of his ancestors die by the jostle of a hog? Aeschylus,
threatened with the fall of a house, was to much purpose circumspect to avoid
that danger, seeing that he was knocked on the head by a tortoise falling out
of an eagle's talons in the air. Another was choked with a grapestone; an
emperor killed with the scratch of a comb in combing his head. Aemilius Lepidus
with a stumble at his own threshold, and Aufidius with a jostle against the
door as he entered the council-chamber. And between the very thighs of woman,
Cornelius Gallus the praetor; Tigillinus, captain of the watch at Rome; Ludovico,
son of Guido di Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua; and (of worse example) Speusippus,
a Platonic philosopher, and one of our popes. The poor judge Bebius gave
adjournment in a case for eight days, but he himself meanwhile, was condemned
by death, and his own stay of life expired. While Caius Julius, the physician,
was anointing the eyes of a patient, death closed his own; and, if I may bring
in an example of my own blood, a brother of mine, Captain St. Martin, a young
man, three-and-twenty years old, who had already given sufficient testimony of
his valor, playing a match at tennis, received a blow of a ball a little above
his right ear, which, as it gave no manner of sign of wound or contusion, he
took no notice of it, nor so much as sat down to repose himself, but,
nevertheless, died within five or six hours after, of an apoplexy occasioned by
that blow.
These so frequent and common
examples passing every day before our eyes, how is it possible a man should
disengage himself from the thought of death, or avoid fancying that it has us,
every moment, by the throat? What matter is it, you will say, which way it
comes to pass, provided a man does not terrify himself with the expectation?
For my part, I am of this mind, and if a man could by any means avoid it, though
by creeping under a calf's skin, I am one that should not be ashamed of the
shift; all I aim at is, to pass my time at my ease, and the recreations that
will most contribute to it, I take hold of, as little glorious and exemplary as
you will.
But 'tis folly to think of
doing anything that way. They go, they come, they gallop and dance, and not a
word of death. All this is very fine: but withal, when it comes either to
themselves, their wives, their children, or friends, surprising them at
unawares and unprepared, then what torment, what outcries, what madness and
despair! Did you ever see anything so subdued, so changed, and so confounded? A
man must, therefore, make more early provision for it; and this brutish
negligence, could it possibly lodge in the brain of any man of sense (which I
think utterly impossible), sells us its merchandise too dear. Were it an enemy
that could be avoided, I would then advise to borrow arms even of cowardice
itself; but seeing it is not, and that it will catch you as well flying and
playing the poltroon, as standing to't like an honest man. Let us learn bravely
to stand our ground, and fight him. And to begin to deprive him of the greatest
advantage he has over us, let us take a way quite contrary to the common
course. Let us disarm him of his novelty and strangeness, let us converse and
be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death.
Upon all occasions represent him to our imagination in his every shape; at the
stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick with a pin,
let us presently consider, and say to ourselves, "Well, and what if it had
been death itself?" and, thereupon, let us encourage and fortify
ourselves. Let us evermore, amidst our jollity and feasting, set the remembrance
of our frail condition before our eyes, never suffering ourselves to be so far
transported with our delights, but that we have some intervals of reflecting
upon, and considering how many several ways this jollity of ours tends to
death, and with how many dangers it threatens it. The Egyptians were wont to do
after this manner, who in the height of their feasting and mirth, caused a
dried skeleton of a man to be brought into the room to serve for a memento to
their guests.
Where death waits for us is
uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of death is the
premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die, has unlearned to serve.
There is nothing of evil in life, for him who rightly comprehends that the
privation of life is no evil: to know how to die, delivers us from all
subjection and constraint. Paulus Aemilius answered him whom the miserable king
of Macedon, his prisoner, sent to entreat him that he would not lead him in his
triumph, "Let him make that request to himself."
In truth, in all things, if
nature do not help a little, it is very hard for art and industry to perform
anything to purpose. I am in my own nature not melancholic, but meditative; and
there is nothing I have more continually entertained myself withal than
imaginations of death, even in the most wanton time of my age.
In the company of ladies, and
at games, some have perhaps thought me possessed with some jealousy, or the
uncertainty of some hope, while I was entertaining myself with the remembrance
of some one, surprised, a few days before, with a burning fever of which he
died, returning from an entertainment like this, with his head full of idle
fancies of love and jollity, as mine was then, and that, for aught I knew, the
same destiny was attending me.
Yet did not this thought
wrinkle my forehead any more than any other. It is impossible but we must feel
a sting in such imaginations as these, at first; but with often turning and
re-turning them in one's mind, they, at last, become so familiar as to be no
trouble at all; otherwise, I, for my part, should be in a perpetual fright and
frenzy; for never man was so distrustful of his life, never man so uncertain as
to its duration. Neither health, which I have hitherto ever enjoyed very strong
and vigorous, and very seldom interrupted, does prolong, nor sickness contract
my hopes. Every minute, methinks, I am escaping, and it eternally runs in my
mind, that what may be done to-morrow, may be done to-day. Hazards and dangers
do, in truth, little or nothing hasten our end; and if we consider how many
thousands more remain and hang over our heads, besides the accident that
immediately threatens us, we shall find that the sound and the sick, those that
are abroad at sea, and those that sit by the fire, those who are engaged in
battle, and those who sit idle at home, are the one as near it as the other.
For anything I have to do before I die, the longest leisure would appear too
short, were it but an hour's business I had to do.
I would always have a man to
be doing, and, as much as in him lies, to extend and spin out the offices of
life; and then let death take me planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and
still less of my garden's not being finished. I saw one die, who, at his last
gasp, complained of nothing so much as that destiny was about to cut the thread
of a chronicle history he was then compiling, when he was gone no farther than
the fifteenth or sixteenth of our kings.
We are to discharge ourselves
from these vulgar and hurtful humors. To this purpose it was that men first
appointed the places of sepulture adjoining the churches, and in the most
frequented places of the city, to accustom, says Lycurgus, the common people,
women, and children, that they should not be startled at the sight of a corpse,
and to the end, that the continual spectacle of bones, graves, and funeral
obsequies should put us in mind of our frail condition.
Peradventure, some one may
object, that the pain and terror of dying so infinitely exceed all manner of
imagination, that the best fencer will be quite out of his play when it comes
to the push. Let them say what they will: to premeditate is doubtless a very
great advantage; and besides, is it nothing to go so far, at least, without
disturbance or alteration? Moreover, nature herself assists and encourages us:
if the death be sudden and violent, we have not leisure to fear; if otherwise,
I perceive that as I engage further in my disease, I naturally enter into a
certain loathing and disdain of life. I find I have much more ado to digest
this resolution of dying, when I am well in health, than when languishing of a
fever; and by how much I have less to do with the commodities of life, by
reason that I begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, by so much I look
upon death with less terror. Which makes me hope, that the farther I remove
from the first, and the nearer I approach to the latter, I shall the more
easily exchange the one for the other. And, as I have experienced in other
occurrences, that, as Caesar says, things often appear greater to us at a
distance than near at hand, I have found, that being well, I have had maladies
in much greater horror than when really afflicted with them. The vigor wherein
I now am, the cheerfulness and delight wherein I now live, make the contrary
estate appear in so great a disproportion to my present condition, that, by
imagination, I magnify those inconveniences by one-half, and apprehend them to
be much more troublesome, than I find them really to be, when they lie the most
heavy upon me; I hope to find death the same.
Let us but observe in the
ordinary changes and declinations we daily suffer, how nature deprives us of
the light and sense of our bodily decay. What remains to an old man of the
vigor of his youth and better days?
" Caesar, to an old
weather-beaten soldier of his guards, who came to ask him leave that he might
kill himself, taking notice of his withered body and decrepit motion,
pleasantly answered, "Thou fanciest, then, that thou art yet alive."
Should a man fall into this condition on the sudden, I do not think humanity
capable of enduring such a change: but nature, leading us by the hand, an easy
and, as it were, an insensible pace step by step conducts us to that miserable
state, and by that means makes it familiar to us, so that we are insensible of
the stroke when our youth dies in us, though it be really a harder death than
the final dissolution of a languishing body, than the death of old age;
forasmuch as the fall is not so great from an uneasy being to none at all, as
it is from a sprightly and flourishing being to one that is troublesome and
painful. The body, bent and bowed, has less force to support a burden; and it
is the same with the soul, and therefore it is, that we are to raise her up
firm and erect against the power of this adversary. For, as it is impossible
she should ever be at rest, while she stands in fear of it; so, if she once can
assure herself, she may boast (which is a thing as it were surpassing human
condition) that it is impossible that disquiet, anxiety, or fear, or any other
disturbance, should inhabit or have any place in her.
She is then become sovereign
of all her lusts and passions, mistress of necessity, shame, poverty, and all
the other injuries of fortune. Let us, therefore, as many of us as can, get
this advantage; 'tis the true and sovereign liberty here on earth, that
fortifies us wherewithal to defy violence and injustice, and to contemn prisons
and chains.
Our very religion itself has
no surer human foundation than the contempt of death. Not only the argument of
reason invites us to it- for why should we fear to lose a thing, which being
lost cannot be lamented? but, also, seeing we are threatened by so many sorts
of death, is it not infinitely worse eternally to fear them all, than once to
undergo one of them? And what matters it, when it shall happen, since it is
inevitable? To him that told Socrates, "The thirty tyrants have sentenced
thee to death;" "And nature them," said he. What a ridiculous
thing it is to trouble ourselves about taking the only step that is to deliver
us from all trouble! As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so in our
death is the death of all things included. And therefore to lament that we
shall not he alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we
were not alive a hundred years ago. Death is the beginning of another life. So
did we weep, and so much it cost us to enter into this, and so did we put off
our former veil in entering into it. Nothing can be a grievance that is but once.
Is it reasonable so long to fear a thing that will so soon be despatched? Long
life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to
things that are no more. Aristotle tells us that there are certain little
beasts upon the banks of the river Hypanis, that never live above a day: they
which die at eight of the clock in the morning, die in their youth, and those
that die at five in the evening, in their decrepitude: which of us would not
laugh to see this moment of continuance put into the consideration of weal or
woe? The most and the least, of ours, in comparison with eternity, or yet with
the duration of mountains, rivers, stars, trees, and even of some animals, is
no less ridiculous.
I have often considered with
myself whence it should proceed, that in war the image of death, whether we
look upon it in ourselves or in others, should, without comparison, appear less
dreadful than at home in our own houses (for if it were not so, it would be an
army of doctors and whining milksops), and that being still in all places the
same, there should be, notwithstanding, much more assurance in peasants and the
meaner sort of people, than in others of better quality. I believe, in truth,
that it is those terrible ceremonies and preparations wherewith we set it out,
that more terrify us than the thing itself; a new, quite contrary way of
living; the cries of mothers, wives, and children: the visits of astounded and
afflicted friends; the attendance of pale and blubbering servants; a dark room,
set round with burning tapers; our beds environed with physicians and divines;
in sum, nothing but ghostliness and horror round about us: we seem dead and
buried already. Children are afraid even of those they are best acquainted
with, when disguised in a visor; and so 'tis with us; the visor must be removed
as well from things as from persons; that being taken away, we shall find
nothing underneath but the very same death that a mean servant, or a poor
chambermaid, died a day or two ago, without any manner of apprehension. Happy
is the death that leaves us no leisure to prepare things for all this foppery.