NOTES

QUE PHILOSOPHER C'EST APPRENDRE A MOURIR

It con

This essay opens with a consideration of the meaning of the sentence of Cicero which forms the title of the essay. tinues with the assertion that to lose the fear of death is part of that pleasure or volupté (as Montaigne chooses to call it from a wilful desire to shock those to whom this word "est si fort à contre cœur"), which is "le dernier but de nostre visée;" and from this he passes into a noble passage regarding the pleasure of virtue: "Ceux qui nous vont instruisant” etc. The last sentence could hardly be finer. (All this paragraph belongs to 1595.) Continuing, he says: "le but de nostre carrière c'est la mort; c'est l'object nécessaire de nostre visée." In one of the latest and one of the noblest of his writings, the essay De la physionomie, he precisely contradicts this remark; he had risen from a "theological" to a “humane” conception of death. He recognizes, "Si nous avons sceu vivre, c'est injustice de nous apprendre à mourir, si nous avons sceu vivre constamment et tranquillement, nous sçavons mourir de mesme . . . Il m'est advis que c'est bien le bout, non pourtant le but de la vie, c'est sa fin, son extremité, non pourtant son object; elle doibt estre elle-mesme à soi sa visée, son desseing; son droit estude est se regler, se conduire, se souffrir. Au nombre de plusieurs autres offices, que comprend le général et principal chapitre de 'sçavoir vivre' est cet article de 'sçavoir mourir', et des plus legiers, si nostre crainte ne luy donnait poids." Here we have the mature Montaigne, serene, simple, natural. In the present essay, he had not yet shaken off the conventional emotions of his day; he was still youthful in mind, though he tells us he was thirty-nine years old.

In the considerations he here turns to on the common length of life it is worth observing, as showing the different standard for it in his day and ours, and not less in his and earlier (Bible)

days, that he speaks of this age of thirty-nine as beyond the usual term of life. This has a strange sound to-day. The next point he touches upon is a curious one, the question whether or not the majority of famous men have died before they were thirty-five; and this becomes more interesting when connected with a kindred question he raises in a later essay, De l'aage, whether or not the greater number of noble actions on record have been performed before the age of thirty years. He thinks so, "ouy, en la vie des mesmes hommes souvent"; that is, even when the same men have lived on to later years.

From the words "Ces exemples" etc. (p. 7), the whole essay is worth reading as showing the state of Montaigne's mind at one period. There is only a sentence here and there which is worth long remembrance, except the noble address of Nature to Man, imitated from Lucretius, to prove that Death is a part of the constitution of the universe. Much of the rest makes us feel with Lord Bacon, in the Advancement of Learning: "Much of the doctrines of the philosophers seem to me to be more fearful and cautionary than the nature of things requires: thus they increase the fear of death in offering to cure it; for when they would have a man's whole life be but a discipline or preparation to die, they must needs make men think that it is a terrible enemy, against whom there is no end of preparing." See also Bacon's essay, On Death.

This criticism is of precisely opposite tone to that made by Pascal (Pensées), who speaking directly of Montaigne says: "On peut excuser ses sentiments un peu libres et voluptueux en quelques rencontres de la vie; mais on ne peut excuser ses sentiments tout païens sur la mort; car il faut renoncer à toute piété, si on ne veut au moins mourir chrétiennement: or, il ne pense qu'à mourir lâchement et mollement par tout son livre." (Not "lâchement et mollement, but "quietement et sourdement", in still better phrase, "constamment et tranquillement”.)

This essay was composed mainly in 1572, but has later additions belonging perhaps to 1578 (Cf. Villey, I, p. 342). It expresses the stoical attitude which Montaigne afterwards to a large degree abandoned. Cf. Villey's analysis, I, p. 289.

Page 1. 1. Cicero, etc. Tota philosophorum vita commentatio mortis est. Cic. Tusculanae quaestiones, I, 30. "The whole life of philosophers is a preparation for death." Cicero is translating a passage of the Phaedo of Plato. Montaigne uses the same quotation in the essay De la physionomie.

2. qui, a thing which.

3. discours, reasoning. (Latin discursus.)

4. saincte escriture.

"I know that there is nothing better for them, than to rejoice, and to do good so long as they live." - Ecclesiastes, III, xii.

5. que le plaisir est nostre but, an addition of the edition of 1595, which very greatly modifies the stoical tone of the essay. Similarly, the whole text from "Les dissentions" to "extreme barriere" belongs to 1595.

6. transcurramus solertissimas nugas.

"Let us pass over

these ingenious trifles." — Seneca, Epist. 117.

7. picoterie, disputing.

8. volupté. See for this word La Fontaine's hymn to Volupté, at the end of the Amours de Psyché (Bk. II) of which M. Faguet says: "Ce que La Fontaine appelle 'volupté' est un penchant à aimer tout ce qui produit une sensation douce et forte, ce qui est la marque même de l'artiste."

Page 3. 1. la plupart des hommes, etc. This somewhat surprising statement is worth noticing.

2. santé. "Biennio minor (than Gorgias who lived 107 years) Xenophilus Chalcidiensis pythagoricus, sed felicitate non inferior, siquidem, ut ait Aristoxenus musicus, omnis humani incommodi expers, in summo perfectissimae splendore doctrinae exstinctus est." From Valerius Maximus, VIII, 13. An instance of Montaigne's carelessness in his allusions, if he took the statement direct from Valerius Maximus, which is doubtful. Valerius Maximus dedicated to Tiberius a collection of anecdotes for rhetorical purposes, which was much used by the moralists cf the sixteenth century.

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3. coupper broche à, cut off. Broche the wooden peg with which is plugged a hole made in a barrel by a drill. "Couper la broche, la couper au ras du tonneau pour qu'on ne puisse plus la

retirer et faire couler le vin, et (fig. famil.) couper broche à quelque chose, le faire cesser." Hatzfeld et Darmesteter.

4. cymbae. "We are all driven the same way; our lot abides in the urn of fate, sooner or later to emerge, and to place us upcn the bark for an eternal exile." - Horace, Odes, II, 3.

5. impendet, "which is always overhanging, like the rock over Tantalus." Cicero, De Finibus, I, 18.

6. parlements, courts.

Page 4. I. reducent. "The banquets of Sicily will not furnish sweet savor; the song of birds and of the lyre will not bring back sleep.' Horace, Odes, III, 1.

2. futura. "He gives his attention to the journey, he counts the days, he measures his life by the length of the way; he is worried by the prospect of death." Claudian, In Rufinum, II, 137.

4. brider l'asne par la queue, i. e. 'begin at the wrong end.' 5. retro. "who foolishly tries to advance backwards."

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, IV, 474.

6. pastissent, i. e. put together confusedly, as flour is mixed for a pie or pastry. In a general sense - 'to construct hurriedly.'

Page 5. — 1. voix, word (Latin vox).

2. vescu. Amyot's Plutarch, Cicero.

3. feu maistre Iehan, i. e. ‘the late so-and-so'. Something like our 'John Doe' and 'Richard Roe'.

4. l'argent, i. e. ‘the delay is worth the money'. It is to be observed that the preceding passage from "Parce que" to "maistre Jehan" was added in 1588. In the text of 1580, "A l'adventure" follows immediately after "pastissent", which makes the phrase more intelligible in its bearing. It is evident that Montaigne did not sometimes observe, with his earliest additions as with his latest, that he had not "placed" them accurately in the context; and this is likely to have been the case also with the additions in his manuscript. It is likely that many of his incoherences may be thus accounted for. He did not read his proofs carefully, if he had any.