The Essays, vol 9 | Page 6

you saw yesterday so
adventurous and brave, you must not think it strange to see him as great
a poltroon the next: anger, necessity, company, wine, or the sound of
the trumpet had roused his spirits; this is no valour formed and
established by reason, but accidentally created by such circumstances,
and therefore it is no wonder if by contrary circumstances it appear
quite another thing.
These supple variations and contradictions so manifest in us, have
given occasion to some to believe that man has two souls; other two
distinct powers that always accompany and incline us, the one towards
good and the other towards ill, according to their own nature and
propension; so abrupt a variety not being imaginable to flow from one
and the same source.

For my part, the puff of every accident not only carries me along with it
according to its own proclivity, but moreover I discompose and trouble
myself by the instability of my own posture; and whoever will look
narrowly into his own bosom, will hardly find himself twice in the
same condition. I give to my soul sometimes one face and sometimes
another, according to the side I turn her to. If I speak variously of
myself, it is because I consider myself variously; all the contrarieties
are there to be found in one corner or another; after one fashion or
another: bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; prating, silent; laborious,
delicate; ingenious, heavy; melancholic, pleasant; lying, true; knowing,
ignorant; liberal, covetous, and prodigal: I find all this in myself, more
or less, according as I turn myself about; and whoever will sift himself
to the bottom, will find in himself, and even in his own judgment, this
volubility and discordance. I have nothing to say of myself entirely,
simply, and solidly without mixture and confusion. 'Distinguo' is the
most universal member of my logic. Though I always intend to speak
well of good things, and rather to interpret such things as fall out in the
best sense than otherwise, yet such is the strangeness of our condition,
that we are often pushed on to do well even by vice itself, if well-doing
were not judged by the intention only. One gallant action, therefore,
ought not to conclude a man valiant; if a man were brave indeed, he
would be always so, and upon all occasions. If it were a habit of valour
and not a sally, it would render a man equally resolute in all accidents;
the same alone as in company; the same in lists as in a battle: for, let
them say what they will, there is not one valour for the pavement and
another for the field; he would bear a sickness in his bed as bravely as a
wound in the field, and no more fear death in his own house than at an
assault. We should not then see the same man charge into a breach with
a brave assurance, and afterwards torment himself like a woman for the
loss of a trial at law or the death of a child; when, being an infamous
coward, he is firm in the necessities of poverty; when he shrinks at the
sight of a barber's razor, and rushes fearless upon the swords of the
enemy, the action is commendable, not the man.
Many of the Greeks, says Cicero,--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 27.]--
cannot endure the sight of an enemy, and yet are courageous in sickness;
the Cimbrians and Celtiberians quite contrary;

"Nihil enim potest esse aequabile, quod non a certa ratione
proficiscatur."
["Nothing can be regular that does not proceed from a fixed ground of
reason."--Idem, ibid., c. 26.]
No valour can be more extreme in its kind than that of Alexander: but it
is of but one kind, nor full enough throughout, nor universal.
Incomparable as it is, it has yet some blemishes; of which his being so
often at his wits' end upon every light suspicion of his captains
conspiring against his life, and the carrying himself in that inquisition
with so much vehemence and indiscreet injustice, and with a fear that
subverted his natural reason, is one pregnant instance. The superstition,
also, with which he was so much tainted, carries along with it some
image of pusillanimity; and the excess of his penitence for the murder
of Clytus is also a testimony of the unevenness of his courage. All we
perform is no other than a cento, as a man may say, of several pieces,
and we would acquire honour by a false title. Virtue cannot be followed
but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other
purpose, she presently pulls it away again. 'Tis a vivid and strong
tincture which, when the soul has once thoroughly imbibed it, will not
out but with the