Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/255

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
BOOK I, CHAPTER XXVI
235

a bad man, but merely a useless one; they foresaw distaste of work, not ill deeds.[1]

(c) I am conscious that it has turned out so. The complaints that sound in my ears are of this tenor: "Lazy; cold to the duties of friendship and kinship, and to public duties; too withdrawn." Even the most critical do not say: "Why has he taken? Why has n't he paid?" but: "Why does n’t he renounce? Why does n’t he give?" I ought to be thankful that they ask of me only such acts of supererogation. But they are unjust, to demand what I do not owe much more strictly than they demand of themselves what they do owe. By declaring this to be my duty they efface the gratification of the act and the gratitude which should be due to me for it: whereas active well-doing on my part ought to count for more, from the consideration that there is nothing to constrain me to it. I am the more at liberty to dispose of my fortune as it is the more my own, [and of myself because I am more my own].[2] However, if I were a great blazoner[3] of my own actions, perchance I might confute these reproaches, and teach some people that they are not so much offended because I do not do enough as because I could do a good deal more than I do.

(a) Yet for all this my soul did not fail, at the same time, to have secretly strong agitations, (c) and assured and liberal judgements with regard to things with which it was acquainted; (a) and it examined them alone without making them known to any one. And, among other things, I truly believe that it would have been altogether incapable of yielding to force and violence. (b) Shall I take account of this faculty of my childhood — a command of countenance and a flexibility of voice and gesture in adapting myself to parts that I undertook to play? For before the age when

Alter ab undecimo tum me vix ceperat annus,[4]

I had acted the chief personages in the Latin tragedies of

  1. ↑ De la faineantise, non pas de la malice.
  2. ↑ The clause in brackets is in 1595, but not in the Édition Municipale.
  3. ↑ Enlumineur.
  4. ↑ I had scarcely reached my twelfth year. — Virgil, Eclogues, VIII, 39. Montaigne reads vix for jam, doubtless intentionally.
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.