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18 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

sante, comme celle la est de sa nature, pour la remplir d’une juste et fertile chaleur, il s’y faut presenter rarement et & notables intervalles,

Quo rapiat sitiens venerem interiusque recondat.'

Je ne vois point de mariages qui faillent plustost et se troublent que ceux qui s’acheminent par la beauté et desirs amoureux. II y faut des fondemens plus solides et plus con- stans, et y marcher d'aguet; cette bouillante allegresse n’y vaut rien.

They who think to honour marriage by joining love with it proceed, it seems to me, like those who, to favour virtue, maintain that nobility is nothing else than virtue.’?’ They are things which have some affinity; but therewith great diversity; we should not confound their names and their titles; we wrong both the one and the other by confusing them. Nobility is an admirable function, and invented with good reason; but inasmuch as it is a function that is de- pendent upon others and that may belong to a man who is vicious and worthless, it is of a value very far below that of virtue; if it be a virtue,’ it is an artificial and visible one, de- pendent upon time and fortune; different in form in different countries; belonging to this life ¢ and mortal; as much with- out origin as the river Nile; a thing of genealogy and gen- erality; that passes from one man to another with no change; that 1s derived from the force of preceding conditions — a very feeble force.’ Knowledge, strength, goodness, beauty, wealth, all other qualities have relation to communication and intercourse; this one is fulfilled in itself, of no commerce in the service of others. There was offered to one of our kings the choice between two competitors for the same post,

! Virgil, Georgics, III, 137.

  • This passage must be interpreted by recognising the signification

to Montaigne of the words mod/esse and vertu. Nodlesse indicated to him the position of men of rank — not only of high rank, but all those above

“the people” and outside the clergy, physicians, scholars, and the like. Fertu to him did not so much imply goodness, as the quality of a gentleman, especially the quality of manliness. —

  • That is, if in its habitual qualities it resembles virtue.
  • Fivante.

§ Genealogique et commune; de suite ef de similitude; tirée par con- sequence, et consequence bien foible.

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