The Essays, vol 19 | Page 9

so sublime a knowledge; they falsify them,
and present us her face painted with too high and too adulterate a
complexion, whence spring so many different pictures of so uniform a
subject. As she has given us feet to walk with, so has she given us
prudence to guide us in life: not so ingenious, robust, and pompous a
prudence as that of their invention; but yet one that is easy, quiet, and
salutary, and that very well performs what the other promises, in him
who has the good luck to know how to employ it sincerely and
regularly, that is to say, according to nature. The most simply to
commit one's self to nature is to do it most wisely. Oh, what a soft, easy,
and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity, whereon to repose
a well-ordered head!
I had rather understand myself well in myself, than in Cicero. Of the
experience I have of myself, I find enough to make me wise, if I were
but a good scholar: whoever will call to mind the excess of his past
anger, and to what a degree that fever transported him, will see the
deformity of this passion better than in Aristotle, and conceive a more
just hatred against it; whoever will remember the ills he has undergone,
those that have threatened him, and the light occasions that have
removed him from one state to another, will by that prepare himself for
future changes, and the knowledge of his condition. The life of Caesar
has no greater example for us than our own: though popular and of
command, 'tis still a life subject to all human accidents. Let us but
listen to it; we apply to ourselves all whereof we have principal need;
whoever shall call to memory how many and many times he has been
mistaken in his own judgment, is he not a great fool if he does not ever
after suspect it? When I find myself convinced, by the reason of
another, of a false opinion, I do not so much learn what he has said to
me that is new and the particular ignorance--that would be no great
acquisition--as, in general, I learn my own debility and the treachery of
my understanding, whence I extract the reformation of the whole mass.

In all my other errors I do the same, and find from this rule great utility
to life; I regard not the species and individual as a stone that I have
stumbled at; I learn to suspect my steps throughout, and am careful to
place them right. To learn that a man has said or done a foolish thing is
nothing: a man must learn that he is nothing but a fool, a much more
ample, and important instruction. The false steps that my memory has
so often made, even then when it was most secure and confident of
itself, are not idly thrown away; it vainly swears and assures me I shake
my ears; the first opposition that is made to its testimony puts me into
suspense, and I durst not rely upon it in anything of moment, nor
warrant it in another person's concerns: and were it not that what I do
for want of memory, others do more often for want of good faith, I
should always, in matter of fact, rather choose to take the truth from
another's mouth than from my own. If every one would pry into the
effects and circumstances of the passions that sway him, as I have done
into those which I am most subject to, he would see them coming, and
would a little break their impetuosity and career; they do not always
seize us on a sudden; there is threatening and degrees
"Fluctus uti primo coepit cum albescere vento, Paulatim sese tollit mare,
et altius undas Erigit, inde imo consurgit ad aethera fundo."
["As with the first wind the sea begins to foam, and swells, thence
higher swells, and higher raises the waves, till the ocean rises from its
depths to the sky."--AEneid, vii. 528.]
Judgment holds in me a magisterial seat; at least it carefully endeavours
to make it so: it leaves my appetites to take their own course, hatred
and friendship, nay, even that I bear to myself, without change or
corruption; if it cannot reform the other parts according to its own
model, at least it suffers not itself to be corrupted by them, but plays its
game apart.
The advice to every one, "to know themselves," should be of important
effect, since that god of wisdom and light' caused it to be written on the
front of his temple,--[At Delphi]--as comprehending all he had to
advise us. Plato says also, that prudence is no other thing than the
execution of this