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280 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE
riving sustenance from it;! like our ancestors, who, being besieged by Cesar in the town of Alexia, determined to re- lieve hunger during the siege by the bodies of old men, women, and other persons useless for fighting.’
(4) Vascones, fama est, alimentis talibus usi Produxere animas.*
(a) And physicians do not fear to make use of it in every sort of way for our health, whether to be applied internally or externally; but there was never found an opinion so un- reasonable as to excuse treachery, disloyalty, tyranny, and cruelty, which are our common faults.
We can, then, rightly call them barbarians with respect to the rules of reason, but not with respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every sort of barbarism... Their warfare is wholly noble and honourable, and has as much excuse and beauty as that malady of mankind can have. With them it has no other motive than simply eagerness of prowess.‘ They.are not at strife forshe conquest of new territories, for they still enjoy that natural fertility which supplies them, without labour and without trouble, with all things neces- sary, in such abundance that they have no reason to enlarge their boundaries. They are still at that fortunate point of desiring only so much as is ordained by their natural needs: every thing beyond that is superfluous for them. They gen- erally call those of the same age brothers, those younger, children; and the old men are fathers to all the others. They leave to their heirs in common the undivided full pos- session of property, without other title than that flawless one which Nature gives to her creatures on bringing them into the world. If their neighbours come over the mountains to attack them and win the victory over them, the victor’s gain is glory, and the advantage of having proved the su- perior in valour and prowess; for no qtherwise do they give
1 See Diogenes Laertius, Life of Chrysippus, and Life of Zeno; Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, III, 24.
2 See De Bello Gallico, VII, 77, 78. + The Gascons, it is said, prolonged life by the use of such food. —
Juvenal, XV, 93. ‘ La seule jalousie de la vertu. 5 Cette pleine possession de biens par indivis.