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ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

 Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res. [1]

Such a man I would train my pupil to be.

Quem duplici panno patientia velat
Mirabor, vitæ via si conversa decebit,
Personamque feret non inconcinnus utramque. [2]

These are my precepts. (c) He who practises them has profited more by them than he who simply knows them. If you see him, you hear him; if you hear him, you see him. Now, God forbid, says some one in Plato, that to philosophise is to learn many things and to discuss the arts![3] Hanc amplissimam omnium artium bene vivendi disciplinam vitamagis quam litteris persequuti sunt.[4] Leo, prince of the Phalasians, inquiring of Heraclides Ponticus what science, what art he professed, "I know nothing," he said, "of either art or science, but I am a philosopher.[5] Some one reproved Diogenes because, being ignorant, he dealt with philosophy.[6] "I deal with it all the more fitly," he said. Hegesias begged him to read some book[7] to him. "You are queer," he replied; "you select real natural figs, not painted ones; why do you not select also natural and real things for the enrichment of the mind?"[8] Let him not so much say his lesson as do it; let him repeat it in his acts. (a) We shall see if there be prudence in his undertakings, if there be sincerity and

  1. ↑ Every condition, every situation, every circumstance befitted Aristippus. — Horace, Epistles, I, 17.23.
  2. ↑ He who patiently wraps himself in a patched garment will win my admiration if his new manner of life becomes him and he plays both parts without awkwardness. — Ibid., 17.25, 26, 29. By taking words in a forced sense, and by omitting two lines, Montaigne thus adapts to his context a passage which Horace intended to be taken in just the opposite sense.
  3. ↑ See Plato, The Rivals.
  4. ↑ This instruction in right living, the most liberal of all arts, they have sought more in life than in letters. — Cicero, Tusc. Disp., IV, 3.
  5. ↑ See Ibid., V, 3. At this point, Montaigne first wrote, then erased, the following on the Bordeaux copy of 1588: Suivant le dogme de Antisthene maintenant que la vertu n'avoit besoin ny des disciplines ny des paroles ny des effaicts, qu'elle suffisoit à soi Hergesias.
  6. ↑ See Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes.
  7. ↑ That is, something written by Diogenes.
  8. ↑ See Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes.
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