THE COMPLETE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE (Annotated Edition). Michel de Montaigne

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СКАЧАТЬ which antiquity founded most of their public and private enterprises, our religion has totally abolished them. And although there yet remain amongst us some practices of divination from the stars, from spirits, from the shapes and complexions of men, from dreams and the like (a notable example of the wild curiosity of our nature to grasp at and anticipate future things, as if we had not enough to do to digest the present)—

      “Cur hanc tibi, rector Olympi,

       Sollicitis visum mortalibus addere curam,

       Noscant venturas ut dira per omina clades? . . .

       Sit subitum, quodcumque paras; sit coeca futuri

       Mens hominum fati, liceat sperare timenti.”

      [“Why, ruler of Olympus, hast thou to anxious mortals thought fit to

       add this care, that they should know by, omens future slaughter? . . .

       Let whatever thou art preparing be sudden. Let the mind of men be

       blind to fate in store; let it be permitted to the timid to hope.”

       —Lucan, ii. 14]

      “Ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit;

       miserum est enim, nihil proficientem angi,”

      [“It is useless to know what shall come to pass; it is a miserable

       thing to be tormented to no purpose.”

       —Cicero, De Natura Deor., iii. 6.]

      yet are they of much less authority now than heretofore. Which makes so much more remarkable the example of Francesco, Marquis of Saluzzo, who being lieutenant to King Francis I. in his ultramontane army, infinitely favoured and esteemed in our court, and obliged to the king’s bounty for the marquisate itself, which had been forfeited by his brother; and as to the rest, having no manner of provocation given him to do it, and even his own affection opposing any such disloyalty, suffered himself to be so terrified, as it was confidently reported, with the fine prognostics that were spread abroad everywhere in favour of the Emperor Charles V., and to our disadvantage (especially in Italy, where these foolish prophecies were so far believed, that at Rome great sums of money were ventured out upon return of greater, when the prognostics came to pass, so certain they made themselves of our ruin), that, having often bewailed, to those of his acquaintance who were most intimate with him, the mischiefs that he saw would inevitably fall upon the Crown of France and the friends he had in that court, he revolted and turned to the other side; to his own misfortune, nevertheless, what constellation soever governed at that time. But he carried himself in this affair like a man agitated by divers passions; for having both towns and forces in his hands, the enemy’s army under Antonio de Leyva close by him, and we not at all suspecting his design, it had been in his power to have done more than he did; for we lost no men by this infidelity of his, nor any town, but Fossano only, and that after a long siege and a brave defence. [1536]

      “Prudens futuri temporis exitum

       Caliginosa nocte premit Deus,

       Ridetque, si mortalis ultra

       Fas trepidat.”

      [“A wise God covers with thick night the path of the future, and

       laughs at the man who alarms himself without reason.”

       —Hor., Od., iii. 29.]

      “Ille potens sui

       Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem

       Dixisse vixi! cras vel atra

       Nube polum pater occupato,

       Vel sole puro.”

      [“He lives happy and master of himself who can say as each day

       passes on, ‘I HAVE LIVED:’ whether to-morrow our Father shall give

       us a clouded sky or a clear day.”—Hor., Od., iii. 29]

      “Laetus in praesens animus; quod ultra est,

       Oderit curare.”

      [“A mind happy, cheerful in the present state, will take good care

       not to think of what is beyond it.”—Ibid., ii. 25]

      And those who take this sentence in a contrary sense interpret it amiss:

      “Ista sic reciprocantur, ut et si divinatio sit,

       dii sint; et si dii lint, sit divinatio.”

      [“These things are so far reciprocal that if there be divination,

       there must be deities; and if deities, divination.”—Cicero, De

       Divin., i. 6.]

      Much more wisely Pacuvius—

      “Nam istis, qui linguam avium intelligunt,

       Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt, quam ex suo,

       Magis audiendum, quam auscultandum, censeo.”

      [“As to those who understand the language of birds, and who rather

       consult the livers of animals other than their own, I had rather

       hear them than attend to them.”

       —Cicero, De Divin., i. 57, ex Pacuvio]

      The so celebrated art of divination amongst the Tuscans took its beginning thus: A labourer striking deep with his cutter into the earth, saw the demigod Tages ascend, with an infantine aspect, but endued with a mature and senile wisdom. Upon the rumour of which, all the people ran to see the sight, by whom his words and science, containing the principles and means to attain to this art, were recorded, and kept for many ages. [Cicero, De Devina, ii. 23] A birth suitable to its progress; I, for my part, should sooner regulate my affairs by the chance of a die than by such idle and vain dreams. And, indeed, in all republics, a good share of the government has ever been referred to chance. Plato, in the civil regimen that he models according to his own fancy, leaves to it the decision of several things of very great importance, and will, amongst other things, that marriages should be appointed by lot; attributing so great importance to this accidental choice as to ordain that the children begotten in such wedlock be brought up in the country, and those begotten in any other be thrust out as spurious and base; yet so, that if any of those exiles, notwithstanding, should, peradventure, in growing up give any good hope of himself, he might be recalled, as, also, that such as had been retained, should be exiled, in case they gave little expectation of themselves in their early growth.

      I see some who are mightily given to study and comment upon their almanacs, and produce them to us as an authority when anything has fallen out pat; and, for that matter, it is hardly possible but that these alleged authorities sometimes stumble upon a truth amongst an infinite number of lies.

      “Quis est enim, qui totum diem jaculans

       non aliquando collineet?”

      [“For who shoots all day at butts that does not sometimes hit the

       white?”—Cicero, СКАЧАТЬ