Page:Essays, Vol 4 (Ives, 1925).pdf/18

6 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

When he says, “ Some of my earliest Essays have a borrowed favour,” we must wonder whether he meant that they were derived from the an- cients or his contemporaries.

What he says of the impromptu character of the activity of his mind, of his deepest and his gayest thoughts coming to him unexpectedly, usually in conversation, and when he could not put them on paper, is ex- tremely interesting. What a loss to the world that he had no Boswell!

The “leaving books aside”’ connects itself logically with the “Let us leave Bembo and Equicola” of a previous page; the intermediate per- sonal passage is quite a thing apart.

Skipping four or five pages, we come to the passage beginning: ““What a monstrous animal" (is the man who shuns health and cheer- fulness), which conveys in its very effective phrasing a warning of strik- ing character to all the Pascal class of minds. It connects itself in feeling with a later page in this same Essay, where Montaigne declares that it is only reasonable for us to accept pleasure as readily as we do pain. And in one of the last pages he dwells on the double power of the soul, both to cherish bodily pleasure and to infuse into the body enjoyment of pleasure of her own.

ROFITABLE thoughts, the more pithy and solid

they are, are also the more troublesome and burden-

some. Vice, death, poverty, maladies are grave and

grievous matters. The soul must needs be instructed as to the means of supporting and combatting ills, and in- structed as to the rule for right living and right thinking, and must often be aroused and exercised in this noble study; but with a common sort of soul this must needs be with intervals and moderation: such a one is weakened by being kept too continually strained.

In my youth I had need to admonish myself and look carefully after myself, to keep me to my duty; good spirits and health do not consist so well, they say, with serious and wise reflections. I am now in a different condition; the accompaniments of old age admonish me only too much, teach me wisdom, and preach to me. From excess of gaiety I have fallen into the more irksome excess of gravity; there- fore, I now allow myself designedly to indulge a little in dis- orderly ways, and sometimes employ my soul in lively and youthful thoughts, where it makes holiday. I am at present only too sober, too pondering, and too mature: my years daily instruct me in insensibility and temperance. This body shuns and fears irregularity; it is taking its turn to