Essays of Montaigne

Fortune, a few years after, punished them in the same kind; for Chabrias, captain-general of their naval forces, having got the better of Pollis, Admiral of Sparta, at the Isle of Naxos, totally lost the fruits of his victory, one of very great importance to their affairs, in order not to incur the danger of this example, and so that he should not lose a few bodies of his dead friends that were floating in the sea, gave opportunity to a world of living enemies to sail away in safety, who afterwards made them pay dear for this unseasonable superstition:—

"Quaeris, quo jaceas, post obitum, loco?

Quo non nata jacent."

["Dost ask where thou shalt lie after death?

Where things not born lie, that never being had."]

Seneca, Tyoa. Choro ii. 30.

This other restores the sense of repose to a body without a soul:

"Neque sepulcrum, quo recipiatur, habeat: portum corporis, ubi,

remissa human, vita, corpus requiescat a malis."

["Nor let him have a sepulchre wherein he may be received, a haven

for his body, where, life being gone, that body may rest from its

woes."—Ennius, ap. Cicero, Tusc. i. 44.]

As nature demonstrates to us that several dead things retain yet an occult relation to life; wine changes its flavour and complexion in cellars, according to the changes and seasons of the vine from whence it came; and the flesh of—venison alters its condition in the powdering-tub, and its taste according to the laws of the living flesh of its kind, as it is said.

CHAPTER IV. THAT THE SOUL EXPENDS ITS PASSIONS UPON FALSE OBJECTS, WHERE THE TRUE ARE WANTING

A gentleman of my country, marvellously tormented with the gout, being importuned by his physicians totally to abstain from all manner of salt meats, was wont pleasantly to reply, that in the extremity of his fits he must needs have something to quarrel with, and that railing at and cursing, one while the Bologna sausages, and another the dried tongues and the hams, was some mitigation to his pain. But, in good earnest, as the arm when it is advanced to strike, if it miss the blow, and goes by the wind, it pains us; and as also, that, to make a pleasant prospect, the sight should not be lost and dilated in vague air, but have some bound and object to limit and circumscribe it at a reasonable distance.

"Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densa

Occurrant sylvae, spatio diffusus inani."

["As the wind loses its force diffused in void space, unless it in

its strength encounters the thick wood."—Lucan, iii. 362.]

So it seems that the soul, being transported and discomposed, turns its violence upon itself, if not supplied with something to oppose it, and therefore always requires an object at which to aim, and whereon to act. Plutarch says of those who are delighted with little dogs and monkeys, that the amorous part that is in us, for want of a legitimate object, rather than lie idle, does after that manner forge and create one false and frivolous. And we see that the soul, in its passions, inclines rather to deceive itself, by creating a false and fantastical a subject, even contrary to its own belief, than not to have something to work upon. After this manner brute beasts direct their fury to fall upon the stone or weapon that has hurt them, and with their teeth a even execute revenge upon themselves for the injury they have received from another:

"Pannonis haud aliter, post ictum saevior ursa,

Cui jaculum parva Lybis amentavit habena,

Se rotat in vulnus, telumque irata receptum

Impetit, et secum fugientem circuit hastam."

["So the she-bear, fiercer after the blow from the Lybian's thong-

hurled dart, turns round upon the wound, and attacking the received

spear, twists it, as she flies."—Lucan, vi. 220.]