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48 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

agreeable grimacing, a ridiculous way of speaking; vices even more; in proportion as they fret me, they attach them- selves to me and will not let go without being shaken off. I have been heard to swear more by contagion than by na- ture;' (c) fatal imitation, like that of the monkeys of hor- rible size and strength which King Alexander found in a certain region of the Indies, creatures which, except for this, it would have been very difficult to master; but they af- forded them the means to do so by their fondness for mim- icking every thing they saw done; for thereby the hunters learned to put on their shoes in their sight with many knots of the strings, to muffle their heads with wrappings that were nooses, and to seem to anoint their eyes with birdlime. So those poor beasts unwisely employed to an ill end their imitative propensity: they limed and shackled and strangled themselves. The different faculty of wittily imitating by design the gestures and words of another person, which often causes pleasure and admiration, is no more in me than in a log. When I swear after my own fashion, it is simply by God, which is the most straightforward of all oaths. They say that Socrates swore by the dog; that Zeno used the same exclamation that the Italians use to this day — Cappari!* that Pythagoras swore by water and air.‘

(4) I am so thoughtlessly apt to receive these superficial impressions that, if I have had on my lips, “ Your Grace,” or “ Your Highness,” three days in succession, a week later they escape me instead of “Your Excellency,” or “Your Lordship.” And what I may have said jestingly and mock- ingly, I may say the next day seriously. Because of this, I make use in writing somewhat unwillingly of much beaten subjects, for fear of treating them with borrowed ones.* Every subject is equally fertile for me. I can find them in any trifle, and may it please God that this I have now in hand was not taken up at the bidding of a merely flighty

© Par similitude gue par complexion.

2 See Diodorus Siculus, XVII, 20.

  • See Diogenes Laertius, Life of Zeno: Per Capparim . .. jurabat.
  • See Idem, Life of Pythagoras: Non per aérem quem spiro; non per

aquam guam bibo.

® Aux despens d'autruy.

Gor gle

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