Part 46 (1/2)
he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he must tremble upon the margin of a precipice, like a child; nature having reserved these light marks of her authority, not to be forced by our reason and the stoic virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness; he turns pale with fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, if not with desperate outcry, at least with hoa.r.s.e and broken voice:
”Humani a se nihil alienum putet.”
[”Let him not think himself exempt from that which is incidental to men in general.”--Terence, Heauton, i. 1, 25.]
The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their greatest heroes of tears:
”Sic fatur lacrymans, cla.s.sique immitt.i.t habenas.”
[”Thus he speaks, weeping, and then sets sail with his fleet.”
--Aeneid, vi. i.]
'Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for totally to suppress them is not in him to do. Even our great Plutarch, that excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when he sees Brutus and Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could proceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not rather been stimulated by some other pa.s.sion.--[Plutarch, Life of Publicola, c. 3.]
--All actions exceeding the ordinary bounds are liable to sinister interpretation, for as much as our liking no more holds with what is above than with what is below it.
Let us leave that other sect, that sets up an express profession of scornful superiority--[The Stoics.]--: but when even in that sect, reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades of Metrodorus:
”Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos interclusi ut ad me aspirare non posses;”
[”Fortune, I have got the better of thee, and have made all the avenues so sure thou canst not come at me.”
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 9.]
when Anaxarchus, by command of Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, was put into a stone mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not to say, ”Strike, batter, break; 'tis not Anaxarchus, 'tis but his sheath that you pound and bray so”; when we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant from the middle of the flame, ”This side is roasted enough, fall to and eat, it is enough done; fall to work with the other;” when we hear the child in Josephus' torn piece-meal with pincers, defying Antiochus, and crying out with a constant and a.s.sured voice: ”Tyrant, thou losest thy labour, I am still at ease; where is the pain, where are the torments with which thou didst so threaten me? Is this all thou canst do? My constancy torments thee more than thy cruelty does me. O pitiful coward, thou faintest, and I grow stronger; make me complain, make me bend, make me yield if thou canst; encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners; see, see they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spur them up”; truly, a man must confess that there is some phrenzy, some fury, how holy soever, that at that time possesses those souls. When we come to these Stoical sallies: ”I had rather be mad than voluptuous,” a saying of Antisthenes. When s.e.xtius tells us, ”he had rather be fettered with affliction than pleasure”: when Epicurus takes upon him to play with his gout, and, refusing health and ease, defies all torments, and despising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets and calls out for others sharper, more violent, and more worthy of him;
”Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votis Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem:”
[”And instead of timid beasts, wishes the foaming boar or tawny lion would come from the mountain.”--AEneid, iv. 158.]
who but must conclude that these are wild sallies pushed on by a courage that has broken loose from its place? Our soul cannot from her own seat reach so high; 'tis necessary she must leave it, raise herself up, and, taking the bridle in her teeth, transport her man so far that he shall afterwards himself be astonished at what he has done; as, in war, the heat of battle impels generous soldiers to perform things of so infinite danger, as afterwards, recollecting them, they themselves are the first to wonder at; as it also fares with the poets, who are often rapt with admiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the track through which they performed so fine a Career; which also is in them called fury and rapture. And as Plato says, 'tis to no purpose for a sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy: so Aristotle says, that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness; and he has reason to call all transports, how commendable soever, that surpa.s.s our own judgment and understanding, madness; forasmuch as wisdom is a regular government of the soul, which is carried on with measure and proportion, and for which she is to herself responsible. Plato argues thus, that the faculty of prophesying is so far above us, that we must be out of ourselves when we meddle with it, and our prudence must either be obstructed by sleep or sickness, or lifted from her place by some celestial rapture.
CHAPTER III
A CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA
[Cos. Cea is the form of the name given by Pliny]
If to philosophise be, as 'tis defined, to doubt, much more to write at random and play the fool, as I do, ought to be reputed doubting, for it is for novices and freshmen to inquire and to dispute, and for the chairman to moderate and determine.
My moderator is the authority of the divine will, that governs us without contradiction, and that is seated above these human and vain contestations.
Philip having forcibly entered into Peloponnesus, and some one saying to Damidas that the Lacedaemonians were likely very much to suffer if they did not in time reconcile themselves to his favour: ”Why, you pitiful fellow,” replied he, ”what can they suffer who do not fear to die?” It being also asked of Agis, which way a man might live free? ”Why,” said he, ”by despising death.” These, and a thousand other sayings to the same purpose, distinctly sound of something more than the patient attending the stroke of death when it shall come; for there are several accidents in life far worse to suffer than death itself. Witness the Lacedaemonian boy taken by Antigonus, and sold for a slave, who being by his master commanded to some base employment: ”Thou shalt see,” says the boy, ”whom thou hast bought; it would be a shame for me to serve, being so near the reach of liberty,” and having so said, threw himself from the top of the house. Antipater severely threatening the Lacedaemonians, that he might the better incline them to acquiesce in a certain demand of his: ”If thou threatenest us with more than death,” replied they, ”we shall the more willingly die”; and to Philip, having written them word that he would frustrate all their enterprises: ”What, wilt thou also hinder us from dying?” This is the meaning of the sentence, ”That the wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can; and that the most obliging present Nature has made us, and which takes from us all colour of complaint of our condition, is to have delivered into our own custody the keys of life; she has only ordered, one door into life, but a hundred thousand ways out. We may be straitened for earth to live upon, but earth sufficient to die upon can never be wanting, as Boiocalus answered the Romans.”--[Tacitus, Annal., xiii. 56.]--Why dost thou complain of this world? it detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain. There needs no more to die but to will to die:
”Ubique mors est; optime hoc cavit deus.
Eripere vitam nemo non homini potest; At nemo mortem; mille ad hanc aditus patent.”
[”Death is everywhere: heaven has well provided for that. Any one may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death. To death there are a thousand avenues.”--Seneca, Theb:, i, I, 151.]
Neither is it a recipe for one disease only; death is the infallible cure of all; 'tis a most a.s.sured port that is never to be feared, and very often to be sought. It comes all to one, whether a man give himself his end, or stays to receive it by some other means; whether he pays before his day, or stay till his day of payment come; from whencesoever it comes, it is still his; in what part soever the thread breaks, there's the end of the clue. The most voluntary death is the finest. Life depends upon the pleasure of others; death upon our own. We ought not to accommodate ourselves to our own humour in anything so much as in this.