The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  Et differe potest….

  [The very fear of future ills have driven many into great dangers; strongest of all is the man who can brave dangers when they come but who knows how to avoid them when possible…]15

  Usque adeo, mortis formidine, vitæ

  Percipit humanos odium, lucisque videndæ,

  Ut sibi consciscant mærenti pectore lethum,

  Obliti fontem curarum hunc esse timorem.

  [Fear of dying can even bring men to hate life and the very sight of the light so that, with heavy heart, they arrange their own deaths, forgetting that the source of all their distress was their fear of dying.]16

  [C] In his Laws Plato ordains an ignominious funeral for any man who has deprived his nearest and dearest (namely himself) of his life and of his destined course when not compelled by the sentence of the public court, by some sad circumstance of Fortune which cannot be avoided or by some unbearable shame, but only by the cowardice and weakness of a timorous soul.17

  [A] Moreover the opinion which holds our life in contempt is a ridiculous one. For, in the end, life is our being and our all. Creatures who enjoy a being richer and nobler than we do may well criticize ours, but it is unnatural that we should despise ourselves or care little for ourselves; it is a sickness peculiar to Man to hate and despise himself; it is found in no other animate creature.

  It is a similar vain desire which makes us want to be something other than what we are. The fruits of such desires can never be of concern to us since that desire is self-contradictory; it works against itself. Anyone who wishes to be changed from man to angel does nothing at all for himself: he would gain nothing by it. Who is supposed to be feeling that amendment for him and rejoicing at it? He is no more:

  [B] Debet enim, misere cui forte ægreque futurum est,

  Ipse quoque esse in eo turn tempore, cum male possit

  Accidere.

  [If anyone must perhaps be wretched and suffer pain in the future, then he himself must exist in that future when such evil occurs.]18

  [A] Freedom from care, from pain and from emotion, together with freedom from the evils of this life, if purchased by our deaths can bring no advantage to us. Avoiding war means nothing if you cannot enjoy the peace: fleeing pain means nothing to a man who has no means of savouring the respite.

  Among those who maintained the first alternative there was considerable uncertainty over what occasions could fully justify anyone deciding to take his own life. (They called that an [a reasonable exodus]).19 They say in fact that one ought to end one’s life for quite minor causes, since the causes which keep us alive are not very strong either; but there has to be a degree of moderation.

  There have been fantastical and baseless humours which have driven not only individual men but whole peoples to do away with themselves. I have already cited some examples; we can read in addition of those maidens of Miletus who conspired in their frenzy to hang themselves one after another until the magistrates considered the matter and commanded that any found hanging should be dragged by the same rope naked through the city.20

  Threicion urged Cleomenes21 to kill himself because of the sorry state of his affairs: as he had fled from a most honourable death in the battle he had just lost, he should accept this other one which abounds in honour for him, and give the victors no opportunity of making him suffer a shameful death or a shameful life. Cleomenes, with a Stoic Spartan courage, rejected this counsel as weak and effeminate: ‘That is a remedy,’ he said, ‘that I will never be without but which no one should use while there remains a finger’s breadth of hope,’ adding that to go on living sometimes requires valour and constancy and that he wished his very death to be of service to his country; he intended to make it an honourable and virtuous deed. Threicion took his own advice and killed himself. Cleomenes did the same later on, but only after assaying the very worse that Fortune can do.

  All ills are not worth our avoiding them by death. Moreover, there are so many sudden reversals in the affairs of men that it is not easy to judge at what point it is right to abandon hope:

  [B] Sperat et in sæva victus gladiator arena,

  Sit licet infesto pollice turba minax.

  [Even when lying vanquished on the cruel sand, while the menacing crowd in the arena turn their thumbs round, the gladiator still hopes on.]22

  [A] There is an ancient saying that anything can be hoped for while a man is still alive. But Seneca replies, ‘Ah yes; but why should I recall that Fortune can do all things for one who remains alive rather than that other saying, that Fortune can impose nothing on one who knows how to die?’23

  We can read how Josephus24 was involved in a danger so clear and so imminent (with an entire nation in revolt against him) that he could not reasonably hope for relief; yet, as he tells us, he was advised at this juncture to do away with himself but was right as it turned out to cling stubbornly to hope, for Fortune so changed the entire situation beyond any human foresight that he found himself delivered from danger quite unharmed. Brutus and Cassius on the other hand, by the precipitous haste with which they killed themselves before the time or circumstances were right, brought about the final loss of the remnants of that Roman freedom which it was their duty to protect.25 – [C] I have seen hundreds of hares escape from the very jaws of the greyhounds: ‘Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit.’ [A man has been known to outlive his executioner.]26

  [B] Multa dies variusque labor mutabilis ævi

  Rettulit in melius; multos alterna revisens

  Lusit, et in solido rursus fortuna locavit.

  [Time in her wavering course has often produced great changes for the better; and Fortune, altering her course, has sported with men and restored them again to solid prosperity.]27

  [A] Pliny lists three kinds of illness which man can justly avoid by killing himself: the harshest of them all is a stone in the bladder with retention of urine;28 [C] Seneca only allows those illnesses which chronically affect the faculties of the soul. [A] Others maintain that death is always permitted at man’s discretion, to avoid a worse one.29

  [C] Damocritus, the leader of the Aetolians, was led prisoner to Rome; one night he succeeded in escaping but being pursued by his guards he fell on his sword before they could recapture him.30 When the city of Epirus was reduced to the last extremity by the Romans, Antinous and Theodotus advised mass suicide; but once the counsel to surrender prevailed they went and sought death, rushing upon the enemy, intent on striking blows not on protecting themselves.31

  A few years ago when the island of Gosso was stormed by the Turks, a Sicilian with two beautiful nubile daughters killed them both and then killed their mother who came running up at their death. Once he had done that, he went out into the street with a crossbow and a harquebus; with two shots he killed the first two Turks who came near his door; he then grabbed a sword and threw himself furiously into a skirmish where he was quickly surrounded and cut to pieces, saving himself from slavery after having first delivered his family from it.32

  [A] Fleeing from the cruelty of Antiochus Jewish women, after circumcizing their infants, jumped to their deaths with them.33

  I was told this tale about a prisoner from a good family in one of our French gaols: his parents, upon hearing that he would certainly be condemned to death, avoided such an ignominious end by procuring a priest to tell him that he had a sovereign way of escape: he should commend himself to a particular saint, making such and such a vow, then go a whole week without food, no matter how weak or faint he felt. He trusted him and, without realizing what he was doing, rid himself of life and subjection.

  Scribonia advised her nephew Libo to kill himself rather than await the hand of Justice, telling him he was doing other people’s work for them if he preserved his life merely to surrender it three or four days later into the hands of those who would come looking for it: he would be serving his enemies if he kept his own life-blood to be thrown to their dogs.34

  We read in the Bible of Nicanor, a persecutor of
God’s law, who sent his guards to seize the good old man named Raxias, who in honour of his virtue ‘was called the Father of the Jews’. When that good man saw no other way, once his gate was in flames and the enemy about to seize him, ‘he struck himself with his sword, choosing to die nobly rather than to fall into the hands of the wicked and to be treated like a dog, in a manner unworthy of his noble birth: but whereas through haste he missed giving himself a sure wound, he ran to the wall through the throng and threw himself down into the crowd; but, as they made room for his fall, he fell straight on his head. Nevertheless, feeling there was still some life in him, he inflamed his heart, staggered to his feet all bloody under the weight of the blows, ran through the crowd and charged towards a certain rock, steep and precipitous, where with no strength left he thrust both hands through a wound, grasped his bowels, tore them out and squashed them together and cast them at his pursuers,’ calling God’s vengeance down upon them and bearing witness to it.35

  Of all the violences done to the conscience the one most to be avoided, it seems to me, is violence against the chastity of women, since an element of bodily pleasure is naturally in it for them. For this reason their resistance cannot be abolutely complete and it would seem that the rape may be mingled with a kind of willingness. Pelagia and Sophronia have both been canonized:36 the first cast herself and her mother and sisters into the river to avoid rape by a group of soldiers, while the other killed herself to avoid being raped by the Emperor Maxentius. [C] Ecclesiastical history reveres several examples of devout persons who sought death as a protection from outrages against their conscience prepared by tyrants.

  [A] Future centuries may honour us for having a learned author in our days (a Parisian be it noted) who has gone to some pains to persuade the ladies today to take any other way out rather than to accept such a horrifying counsel of despair.37 I am only sorry he did not know the story I heard in Toulouse so that he could include it in his tales; it concerns a woman who had passed through the hands of a group of soldiers: ‘God be praised,’ she said, ‘that at least once in my life I have been satisfied without sin.’

  But such cruelties are truly unworthy of French courtesy; thank God our climate has been thoroughly purged of them since that sound piece of advice – the rule of good old Marot: it is enough for women to say ‘No, no!’ while doing it.38

  History is full of people who have, in thousands of ways, exchanged a pain-filled life for death. [B] Lucius Aruntius killed himself, ‘to escape’, he said, ‘from the future and the past’.39 [C] Granius Silvanus and Statius Proximus killed themselves after being pardoned by Nero so as not to live by the grace of so wicked a man, or else so as not to have to beg for a second pardon seeing the ease with which he suspected and accused all men of honour.40

  Spargapises, the son of Queen Tomyris, was taken prisoner by Cyrus; released of his bonds, he exploited this very first favour that Cyrus had granted him to kill himself, never having intended any other profit from his freedom than to atone with his life for the shame of his capture.41

  Bogez, who was Governor of Eon on behalf of King Xerxes, was besieged by the Athenian army under the leadership of Cimon but refused the suggested terms of a safe-conduct to Persia for him and his goods since he could not bear to survive the loss of what his Master had placed under his guard; and after having defended his city to the very end when there was nothing more left to eat, he first threw into the river Strymon all the gold and everything else which he thought the enemy might take as booty; then, having ordered a huge pyre to be lighted and the throats of his wife, children, concubines and servants to be slit, he cast them, and then himself, into the flames.42

  Ninachetuen, an Indian Lord, when he first got wind of the Portuguese Viceroy’s intention to strip him, for no apparent reason, of the office he filled in Malacca so as to bestow it on the King of Campar, privately resolved to act as follows: he had a scaffold erected, longer than it was wide, supported on columns, royally carpeted with flowers and decorated with an abundance of sweet-smelling woods. Then, having donned a robe of cloth-of-gold laden with precious stones of great price, he issued forth into the street and mounted the steps of the scaffold in the corner of which burned a pyre of aromatic wood. Everyone ran out to see what these unusual preparations might portend. With a countenance both brave and angry, he recalled what the Portuguese people owed to him; how faithfully he had carried out his duties; how, for the sake of others, he had often borne witness, weapon in hand, that honour was much dearer to him than life; he was not going to give up caring for honour in his own case; but, although Fortune denied him any way of resisting the insult they intended to do him, his mind told him to remove his power of feeling it or of serving as a fable to the people and as a triumph for persons less worthy than himself. So saying he threw himself into the fire.43

  [B] Sextilia the wife of Scaurus, and Paxea the wife of Labeo, to encourage their husbands to avoid the dangers which beset them and in which they personally were not concerned except as loving wives, voluntarily took their own lives so as to serve them as examples in their dire necessity and to keep them company.

  What they did for their husbands Coceius Nerva did for his country, less usefully but with just as much love. That great jurisconsult, in the full bloom of health, wealth, reputation and respect from the Emperor, killed himself for no other reason than compassion for the wretched condition of the Roman Republic.

  Nothing could surpass the delicacy shown by the death of the wife of Fulvius, the close friend of Augustus. One morning Augustus, having learned that Fulvius had let out a vital secret entrusted to him, gave him a meagre welcome when he came to see him. Fulvius returned home in despair and told his wife piteously that he had resolved to kill himself for having fallen into this misfortune. She frankly replied: ‘That is only right, seeing that you have had enough experience of the indiscipline of my tongue, yet it did not put you on your guard. But wait; let me kill myself first.’ Then without more ado she thrust the sword through her body.

  [C] Vibius Virius, despairing of saving his city, Capua, which was besieged by the Romans or of obtaining mercy for it, spoke up in the last debate held in their Senate, made several exhortations suggesting his conclusion and ended by declaring that the finest thing to do was to escape their fortune by their own hands: their enemies would hold them in honour and Hannibal would realize what faithful allies he had deserted. He invited those who approved of his counsel to come and partake of a good supper already prepared in his home and then, after making good cheer, they would all drink together from the cup he would offer them: ‘It is a drink that will deliver our bodies from torment, our souls from insults and our eyes and our ears from knowledge of the base evils which the vanquished have to suffer from enemies, cruel and incensed. I have,’ he said, ‘arranged for there to be men able to throw us on to a funeral pyre before my door once we have breathed our last.’

  Many gave their approval to this high resolution but few imitated him. Twenty-seven senators did follow him and, after assaying to stifle their dreadful thoughts in wine, they finished their meal with that deadly drink; they lamented together their country’s misfortunes and embraced each other; then some withdrew to their homes while the others remained behind to be laid with Vibius on his flaming pyre. All of them were so long a-dying, since the fumes of the wine had blocked their arteries and retarded the effects of the poison, that some came within an hour of seeing their enemies in Capua (which was taken the next day) and of incurring the very miseries they had fled from at such a cost.

  When the Consul Fulvius was returning from the disgraceful butchering of two hundred and twenty-five senators, Taurea Jubellius, another citizen from those parts, called him back by name fiercely, made him stop, then said: ‘Command them to add me to so great a massacre so that you can at least boast of killing a man more valiant than you are.’ Fulvius treated him with disdain, as a madman (since his hands were bound by a letter just arrived from Rome condemning the inhumani
ty of his action); Jubellius went on: ‘My country is occupied; my friends are dead; although I have killed my wife and children by my own hand to save them from the desolation of this defeat, it is forbidden me to die the same death as my fellow-citizens; so let Virtue lend me the means to take vengeance on this odious life.’ And drawing a sword which he had concealed he ran it through his bosom and fell dying at the consul’s feet.

  [B] Alexander was besieging a town in India: those within the town, finding themselves hard-pressed, vigorously resolved to deprive him of the joy of victory, and – despite his humanity – they all set fire to their town and burned themselves to death. A new kind of war: the enemy fought to save them: they, to destroy themselves; to ensure that they died they did all that men normally do to protect their lives.

  [C] Astapa, a town in Spain, had walls and defence-works too weak to withstand the Romans so the inhabitants made a pile of their valuables and movable goods in the market-place and placed their wives and children on top of the heap, surrounding it with wood and other materials which catch fire easily; then, leaving behind fifty younger men to carry out their plan, they made a sortie during which, as they had sworn to do, they all sought death, not being able to win the battle. The fifty young men, having first massacred every living soul scattered about their town, set fire to the heap and then threw themselves upon it, so bringing their great-hearted freedom to an end in insentience rather than in shame and sorrow; they showed their enemies that if it had pleased Fortune they would have been as brave in wresting victory from them as they had been in frustrating them of a victory which was horrifying and indeed mortal to those who had fallen for the bait of the glittering gold melting in those flames and who had crowded round it, only to be suffocated and burned to death, unable to draw back because of the crowd behind them.