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10 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

heavy-headed; I am not pleased with it. If there be any one, any pleasant party, in country, in city, in France, or elsewhere, resident or travelling, to whom my temperament may be agreeable and whose temperaments may be agree- able to me, they have but to whistle and I will go to them and supply them with essays in flesh and bone.

Since it is the privilege of the mind to hold his'own in old age, I advise him most earnestly to do so; let him grow green and flourish the while, if he can, like mistletoe on a dead tree. I fear that he is a traitor; he is so closely united to the body that he abandons me continually to follow that in its need. I privately flatter him, I frequent him, to no purpose; in vain do I try to withdraw him from this associa- tion and offer to his view Seneca and Catullus, and ladies, and royal dances; if his companion has the stone, it seems as if he had it also. Even the powers which are peculiar to him and especially his own can not then be roused; they are evi- dently chilled. There is no animation in his doings if at the time there is none in the body.

(c) Our masters mistake in this, when seeking the causes of the unusual sudden movements of the mind, that besides what they attribute of these to a divine transport, to love, to martial vehemence, to poesy, to wine, they have not as- signed to health its share in them — to ebullient, lusty, solid, unbusied health, such as in other days the spring- time of life and absence of care supplied me with uninter- ruptedly.? This fire of gaiety kindles in the mind flashes vivid and bright beyond our natural brightness, and the most lively, ‘a not the most wide-reaching,’ of our inspira- tions. Now truly, it is no wonder if a contrary condition weighs down my mind, fetters it, and draws from it a con-

trary effect.

(6) Ad nullum consurgit opus, cum corpore languet.‘

And yet the mind insists that I am beholden to him for yielding, he says, much less to this connection than is the

  • Throughout this paragraph the personal pronoun refers to the

mind.

® Par venues. 1 Esperdus.

  • Te rises to no task when the body is faint. — Maximianus (Pseudo-

Gallus), I, 125.

Gor gle

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