The Essays Chapter 22

(1, p. 37-37v).Michel de MontaigneC122 Le profit de l’vn est dommage de l’autreMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvuMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvu/137-37v

Le profit de l’un est dommage de l’autre.
Chap. XII.

DEmades Athenien condamna un homme de sa ville, qui faisoit mestier de vendre les choses necessaires aux enterremens, soubs tiltre de ce qu’il en demandoit trop de profit, et que ce profit ne luy pouvoit venir sans la mort de beaucoup de gens. Ce jugement semble estre mal pris, d’autant qu’il ne se fait aucun profit qu’au dommage d’autruy, et qu’à ce conte il faudroit condamner
toute sorte de guein. Le marchand ne fait bien ses affaires qu’à la débauche de la jeunesse ; le laboureur, à la cherté des bleds ;
l’architecte, à la ruine des maisons ; les officiers de la justice, aux
procez et querelles des hommes ; l’honneur mesme et pratique des
ministres de la religion se tire de nostre mort et de nos vices. Nul
medecin
ne prent plaisir à la santé de ses amis mesmes, dit l’ancien
Comique
Grec, ny soldat à la paix de sa ville : ainsi du reste. Et qui pis
est, que chacun se sonde au dedans, il trouvera que nos souhaits
interieurs pour la plus part naissent et se nourrissent aux despens
d’autruy. Ce que considerant, il m’est venu en fantasie, comme nature
ne
se dement point en cela de sa generale police, car les Physiciens
tiennent que la naissance, nourrissement et augmentation de chaque
chose, est l’alteration et corruption d’un’ autre :

Nam quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit,
Continuo hoc mors est illius, quod fuit ante.

Chapter XXII. Of custom, and that we should not easily change a law received.

He seems to me to have had a right and true apprehension of the power of

custom, who first invented the story of a country-woman who, having

accustomed herself to play with and carry a young calf in her arms, and

daily continuing to do so as it grew up, obtained this by custom, that,

when grown to be a great ox, she was still able to bear it. For, in

truth, custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, by

little and little, slily and unperceived, slips in the foot of her

authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the

benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and

tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the

power so much as to lift up our eyes. We see her, at every turn, forcing

and violating the rules of nature:

"Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister."

I refer to her Plato's cave in his Republic, and the physicians, who so

often submit the reasons of their art to her authority; as the story of

that king, who by custom brought his stomach to that pass, as to live by

poison, and the maid that Albertus reports to have lived upon spiders.

In that new world of the Indies, there were found great nations, and in

very differing climates, who were of the same diet, made provision of

them, and fed them for their tables; as also, they did grasshoppers,

mice, lizards, and bats; and in a time of scarcity of such delicacies, a

toad was sold for six crowns, all which they cook, and dish up with

several sauces. There were also others found, to whom our diet, and the

flesh we eat, were venomous and mortal:

"Consuetudinis magna vis est: pernoctant venatores in nive:

in montibus uri se patiuntur: pugiles, caestibus contusi,

ne ingemiscunt quidem."

These strange examples will not appear so strange if we consider what we

have ordinary experience of, how much custom stupefies our senses. We

need not go to what is reported of the people about the cataracts of the

Nile; and what philosophers believe of the music of the spheres, that the

bodies of those circles being solid and smooth, and coming to touch and

rub upon one another, cannot fail of creating a marvellous harmony, the

changes and cadences of which cause the revolutions and dances of the

stars; but that the hearing sense of all creatures here below, being

universally, like that of the Egyptians, deafened, and stupefied with the

continual noise, cannot, how great soever, perceive it-- --

Smiths, millers, pewterers, forgemen, and armourers could never be able

to live in the perpetual noise of their own trades, did it strike their

ears with the same violence that it does ours.

My perfumed doublet gratifies my own scent at first; but after I have

worn it three days together, 'tis only pleasing to the bystanders. This

is yet more strange, that custom, notwithstanding long intermissions and

intervals, should yet have the power to unite and establish the effect of

its impressions upon our senses, as is manifest in such as live near unto

steeples and the frequent noise of the bells. I myself lie at home in a

tower, where every morning and evening a very great bell rings out the

Ave Maria: the noise shakes my very tower, and at first seemed

insupportable to me; but I am so used to it, that I hear it without any

manner of offence, and often without awaking at it.

Plato-- --reprehending a boy for

playing at nuts, "Thou reprovest me," says the boy, "for a very little

thing." "Custom," replied Plato, "is no little thing." I find that our

greatest vices derive their first propensity from our most tender

infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse.

Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a

chicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise

fathers there are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a

martial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a

poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a

great sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow

by some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and

roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and

afterwards shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated

by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile

inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of the

subject: first, it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then more

sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak and

young; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor depend

upon the difference betwixt crowns and pins; but I rather hold it more

just to conclude thus: why should he not cozen in crowns since he does it

in pins, than as they do, who say they only play for pins, they would not

do it if it were for money? Children should carefully be instructed to

abhor vices for their own contexture; and the natural deformity of those

vices ought so to be represented to them, that they may not only avoid

them in their actions, but especially so to abominate them in their

hearts, that the very thought should be hateful to them, with what mask

soever they may be disguised.

I know very well, for what concerns myself, that from having been brought

up in my childhood to a plain and straightforward way of dealing, and

from having had an aversion to all manner of juggling and foul play in my

childish sports and recreations (and, indeed, it is to be noted, that the

plays of children are not performed in play, but are to be judged in them

as their most serious actions), there is no game so small wherein from my

own bosom naturally, and without study or endeavour, I have not an

extreme aversion from deceit. I shuffle and cut and make as much clatter

with the cards, and keep as strict account for farthings, as it were for

double pistoles; when winning or losing against my wife and daughter,

'tis indifferent to me, as when I play in good earnest with others, for

round sums. At all times, and in all places, my own eyes are sufficient

to look to my fingers; I am not so narrowly watched by any other, neither

is there any I have more respect to.

I saw the other day, at my own house, a little fellow, a native of

Nantes, born without arms, who has so well taught his feet to perform the

services his hands should have done him, that truly these have half

forgotten their natural office; and, indeed, the fellow calls them his

hands; with them he cuts anything, charges and discharges a pistol,

threads a needle, sews, writes, puts off his hat, combs his head, plays

at cards and dice, and all this with as much dexterity as any other could

do who had more, and more proper limbs to assist him. The money I gave

him--for he gains his living by shewing these feats--he took in his foot,

as we do in our hand. I have seen another who, being yet a boy,

flourished a two-handed sword, and, if I may so say, handled a halberd

with the mere motions of his neck and shoulders for want of hands; tossed

them into the air, and caught them again, darted a dagger, and cracked a

whip as well as any coachman in France.

But the effects of custom are much more manifest in the strange

impressions she imprints in our minds, where she meets with less

resistance. What has she not the power to impose upon our judgments and

beliefs? Is there any so fantastic opinion (omitting the gross

impostures of religions, with which we see so many great nations, and so

many understanding men, so strangely besotted; for this being beyond the

reach of human reason, any error is more excusable in such as are not

endued, through the divine bounty, with an extraordinary illumination

from above), but, of other opinions, are there any so extravagant, that

she has not planted and established for laws in those parts of the world

upon which she has been pleased to exercise her power? And therefore

that ancient exclamation was exceeding just:

"Non pudet physicum, id est speculatorem venatoremque naturae,

ab animis consuetudine imbutis petere testimonium veritatis?"

I do believe, that no so absurd or ridiculous fancy can enter into human

imagination, that does not meet with some example of public practice, and

that, consequently, our reason does not ground and back up. There are

people, amongst whom it is the fashion to turn their backs upon him they

salute, and never look upon the man they intend to honour. There is a

place, where, whenever the king spits, the greatest ladies of his court

put out their hands to receive it; and another nation, where the most

eminent persons about him stoop to take up his ordure in a linen cloth.

Let us here steal room to insert a story.

A French gentleman was always wont to blow his nose with his fingers (a

thing very much against our fashion), and he justifying himself for so

doing, and he was a man famous for pleasant repartees, he asked me, what

privilege this filthy excrement had, that we must carry about us a fine

handkerchief to receive it, and, which was more, afterwards to lap it

carefully up, and carry it all day about in our pockets, which, he said,

could not but be much more nauseous and offensive, than to see it thrown

away, as we did all other evacuations. I found that what he said was not

altogether without reason, and by being frequently in his company, that

slovenly action of his was at last grown familiar to me; which

nevertheless we make a face at, when we hear it reported of another

country. Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature,

and not according to the essence of nature the continually being

accustomed to anything, blinds the eye of our judgment. Barbarians are

no more a wonder to us, than we are to them; nor with any more reason, as

every one would confess, if after having travelled over those remote

examples, men could settle themselves to reflect upon, and rightly to

confer them, with their own. Human reason is a tincture almost equally

infused into all our opinions and manners, of what form soever they are;

infinite in matter, infinite in diversity. But I return to my subject.

There are peoples, where, his wife and children excepted, no one speaks

to the king but through a tube. In one and the same nation, the virgins

discover those parts that modesty should persuade them to hide, and the

married women carefully cover and conceal them. To which, this custom,

in another place, has some relation, where chastity, but in marriage, is

of no esteem, for unmarried women may prostitute themselves to as many as

they please, and being got with child, may lawfully take physic, in the

sight of every one, to destroy their fruit. And, in another place, if a

tradesman marry, all of the same condition, who are invited to the

wedding, lie with the bride before him; and the greater number of them

there is, the greater is her honour, and the opinion of her ability and

strength: if an officer marry, 'tis the same, the same with a labourer,

or one of mean condition; but then it belongs to the lord of the place to

perform that office; and yet a severe loyalty during marriage is

afterward strictly enjoined. There are places where brothels of young

men are kept for the pleasure of women; where the wives go to war as well

as the husbands, and not only share in the dangers of battle, but,

moreover, in the honours of command. Others, where they wear rings not

only through their noses, lips, cheeks, and on their toes, but also

weighty gimmals of gold thrust through their paps and buttocks; where, in

eating, they wipe their fingers upon their thighs, genitories, and the

soles of their feet: where children are excluded, and brothers and

nephews only inherit; and elsewhere, nephews only, saving in the

succession of the prince: where, for the regulation of community in goods

and estates, observed in the country, certain sovereign magistrates have

committed to them the universal charge and overseeing of the agriculture,

and distribution of the fruits, according to the necessity of every one

where they lament the death of children, and feast at the decease of old

men: where they lie ten or twelve in a bed, men and their wives together:

where women, whose husbands come to violent ends, may marry again, and

others not: where the condition of women is looked upon with such

contempt, that they kill all the native females, and buy wives of their

neighbours to supply their use; where husbands may repudiate their wives,

without showing any cause, but wives cannot part from their husbands, for

what cause soever; where husbands may sell their wives in case of

sterility; where they boil the bodies of their dead, and afterward pound

them to a pulp, which they mix with their wine, and drink it; where the

most coveted sepulture is to be eaten by dogs, and elsewhere by birds;

where they believe the souls of the blessed live in all manner of

liberty, in delightful fields, furnished with all sorts of delicacies,

and that it is these souls, repeating the words we utter, which we call

Echo; where they fight in the water, and shoot their arrows with the most

mortal aim, swimming; where, for a sign of subjection, they lift up their

shoulders, and hang down their heads; where they put off their shoes when

they enter the king's palace; where the eunuchs, who take charge of the

sacred women, have, moreover, their lips and noses cut off, that they may

not be loved; where the priests put out their own eyes, to be better

acquainted with their demons, and the better to receive their oracles;

where every one makes to himself a deity of what he likes best; the

hunter of a lion or a fox, the fisher of some fish; idols of every human

action or passion; in which place, the sun, the moon, and the earth are

the 'principal deities, and the form of taking an oath is, to touch the

earth, looking up to heaven; where both flesh and fish is eaten raw;

where the greatest oath they take is, to swear by the name of some dead

person of reputation, laying their hand upon his tomb; where the

newyear's gift the king sends every year to the princes, his vassals, is

fire, which being brought, all the old fire is put out, and the

neighbouring people are bound to fetch of the new, every one for

themselves, upon pain of high treason; where, when the king, to betake

himself wholly to devotion, retires from his administration (which often

falls out), his next successor is obliged to do the same, and the right

of the kingdom devolves to the third in succession: where they vary the

form of government, according to the seeming necessity of affairs: depose

the king when they think good, substituting certain elders to govern in

his stead, and sometimes transferring it into the hands of the

commonality: where men and women are both circumcised and also baptized:

where the soldier, who in one or several engagements, has been so

fortunate as to present seven of the enemies' heads to the king, is made

noble: where they live in that rare and unsociable opinion of the

mortality of the soul: where the women are delivered without pain or

fear: where the women wear copper leggings upon both legs, and if a louse

bite them, are bound in magnanimity to bite them again, and dare not

marry, till first they have made their king a tender of their virginity,

if he please to accept it: where the ordinary way of salutation is by

putting a finger down to the earth, and then pointing it up toward

heaven: where men carry burdens upon their heads, and women on their

shoulders; where the women make water standing, and the men squatting:

where they send their blood in token of friendship, and offer incense to

the men they would honour, like gods: where, not only to the fourth, but

in any other remote degree, kindred are not permitted to marry: where the

children are four years at nurse, and often twelve; in which place, also,

it is accounted mortal to give the child suck the first day after it is

born: where the correction of the male children is peculiarly designed to

the fathers, and to the mothers of the girls; the punishment being to

hang them by the heels in the smoke: where they circumcise the women:

where they eat all sorts of herbs, without other scruple than of the

badness of the smell: where all things are open the finest houses,

furnished in the richest manner, without doors, windows, trunks, or

chests to lock, a thief being there punished double what they are in

other places: where they crack lice with their teeth like monkeys, and

abhor to see them killed with one's nails: where in all their lives they

neither cut their hair nor pare their nails; and, in another place, pare

those of the right hand only, letting the left grow for ornament and

bravery: where they suffer the hair on the right side to grow as long as

it will, and shave the other; and in the neighbouring provinces, some let

their hair grow long before, and some behind, shaving close the rest:

where parents let out their children, and husbands their wives, to their

guests to hire: where a man may get his own mother with child, and

fathers make use of their own daughters or sons, without scandal: where,

at their solemn feasts, they interchangeably lend their children to one

another, without any consideration of nearness of blood. In one place,

men feed upon human flesh; in another, 'tis reputed a pious office for a

man to kill his father at a certain age; elsewhere, the fathers dispose

of their children, whilst yet in their mothers' wombs, some to be

preserved and carefully brought up, and others to be abandoned or made

away. Elsewhere the old husbands lend their wives to young men; and in

another place they are in common without offence; in one place

particularly, the women take it for a mark of honour to have as many gay

fringed tassels at the bottom of their garment, as they have lain with

several men. Moreover, has not custom made a republic of women

separately by themselves? has it not put arms into their hands, and made

them raise armies and fight battles? And does she not, by her own

precept, instruct the most ignorant vulgar, and make them perfect in

things which all the philosophy in the world could never beat into the

heads of the wisest men? For we know entire nations, where death was not

only despised, but entertained with the greatest triumph; where children

of seven years old suffered themselves to be whipped to death, without

changing countenance; where riches were in such contempt, that the

meanest citizen would not have deigned to stoop to take up a purse of

crowns. And we know regions, very fruitful in all manner of provisions,

where, notwithstanding, the most ordinary diet, and that they are most

pleased with, is only bread, cresses, and water. Did not custom,

moreover, work that miracle in Chios that, in seven hundred years, it was

never known that ever maid or wife committed any act to the prejudice of

her honour?

To conclude; there is nothing, in my opinion, that she does not, or may

not do; and therefore, with very good reason it is that Pindar calls her

the ruler of the world. He that was seen to beat his father, and

reproved for so doing, made answer, that it was the custom of their

family; that, in like manner, his father had beaten his grandfather, his

grandfather his great-grandfather, "And this," says he, pointing to his

son, "when he comes to my age, shall beat me." And the father, whom the

son dragged and hauled along the streets, commanded him to stop at a

certain door, for he himself, he said, had dragged his father no farther,

that being the utmost limit of the hereditary outrage the sons used to

practise upon the fathers in their family. It is as much by custom as

infirmity, says Aristotle, that women tear their hair, bite their nails,

and eat coals and earth, and more by custom than nature that men abuse

themselves with one another.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature,

proceed from custom; every one, having an inward veneration for the

opinions and manners approved and received amongst his own people,

cannot, without very great reluctance, depart from them, nor apply

himself to them without applause. In times past, when those of Crete

would curse any one, they prayed the gods to engage him in some ill

custom. But the principal effect of its power is, so to seize and

ensnare us, that it is hardly in us to disengage ourselves from its

gripe, or so to come to ourselves, as to consider of and to weigh the

things it enjoins. To say the truth, by reason that we suck it in with

our milk, and that the face of the world presents itself in this posture

to our first sight, it seems as if we were born upon condition to follow

on this track; and the common fancies that we find in repute everywhere

about us, and infused into our minds with the seed of our fathers, appear

to be the most universal and genuine; from whence it comes to pass, that

whatever is off the hinges of custom, is believed to be also off the

hinges of reason; how unreasonably for the most part, God knows.

If, as we who study ourselves have learned to do, every one who hears a

good sentence, would immediately consider how it does in any way touch

his own private concern, every one would find, that it was not so much a

good saying, as a severe lash to the ordinary stupidity of his own

judgment: but men receive the precepts and admonitions of truth, as

directed to the common sort, and never to themselves; and instead of

applying them to their own manners, do only very ignorantly and

unprofitably commit them to memory. But let us return to the empire of

custom.

Such people as have been bred up to liberty, and subject to no other

dominion but the authority of their own will, look upon all other form of

government as monstrous and contrary to nature. Those who are inured to

monarchy do the same; and what opportunity soever fortune presents them

with to change, even then, when with the greatest difficulties they have

disengaged themselves from one master, that was troublesome and grievous

to them, they presently run, with the same difficulties, to create

another; being unable to take into hatred subjection itself.

'Tis by the mediation of custom, that every one is content with the place

where he is planted by nature; and the Highlanders of Scotland no more

pant after Touraine; than the Scythians after Thessaly. Darius asking

certain Greeks what they would take to assume the custom of the Indians,

of eating the dead bodies of their fathers (for that was their use,

believing they could not give them a better nor more noble sepulture than

to bury them in their own bodies), they made answer, that nothing in the

world should hire them to do it; but having also tried to persuade the

Indians to leave their custom, and, after the Greek manner, to burn the

bodies of their fathers, they conceived a still greater horror at the

motion.-- --Every one does the same, for use veils

from us the true aspect of things.

"Nil adeo magnum, nec tam mirabile quidquam

Principio, quod non minuant mirarier omnes Paullatim."

Taking upon me once to justify something in use amongst us, and that was

received with absolute authority for a great many leagues round about us,

and not content, as men commonly do, to establish it only by force of law

and example, but inquiring still further into its origin, I found the

foundation so weak, that I who made it my business to confirm others, was

very near being dissatisfied myself. 'Tis by this receipt that Plato

-- --undertakes to cure the unnatural and preposterous

loves of his time, as one which he esteems of sovereign virtue, namely,

that the public opinion condemns them; that the poets, and all other

sorts of writers, relate horrible stories of them; a recipe, by virtue of

which the most beautiful daughters no more allure their fathers' lust;

nor brothers, of the finest shape and fashion, their sisters' desire; the

very fables of Thyestes, OEdipus, and Macareus, having with the harmony

of their song, infused this wholesome opinion and belief into the tender

brains of children. Chastity is, in truth, a great and shining virtue,

and of which the utility is sufficiently known; but to treat of it, and

to set it off in its true value, according to nature, is as hard as 'tis

easy to do so according to custom, laws, and precepts. The fundamental

and universal reasons are of very obscure and difficult research, and our

masters either lightly pass them over, or not daring so much as to touch

them, precipitate themselves into the liberty and protection of custom,

there puffing themselves out and triumphing to their heart's content:

such as will not suffer themselves to be withdrawn from this original

source, do yet commit a greater error, and subject themselves to wild

opinions; witness Chrysippus,-- --who, in so many of his writings, has strewed the little account he

made of incestuous conjunctions, committed with how near relations

soever.

Whoever would disengage himself from this violent prejudice of custom,

would find several things received with absolute and undoubting opinion,

that have no other support than the hoary head and rivelled face of

ancient usage. But the mask taken off, and things being referred to the

decision of truth and reason, he will find his judgment as it were

altogether overthrown, and yet restored to a much more sure estate. For

example, I shall ask him, what can be more strange than to see a people

obliged to obey laws they never understood; bound in all their domestic

affairs, as marriages, donations, wills, sales, and purchases, to rules

they cannot possibly know, being neither written nor published in their

own language, and of which they are of necessity to purchase both the

interpretation and the use? Not according to the ingenious opinion of

Isocrates,-- --who counselled his king to make

the traffics and negotiations of his subjects, free, frank, and of profit

to them, and their quarrels and disputes burdensome, and laden with heavy

impositions and penalties; but, by a prodigious opinion, to make sale of

reason itself, and to give to laws a course of merchandise. I think

myself obliged to fortune that, as our historians report, it was a Gascon

gentleman, a countryman of mine, who first opposed Charlemagne, when he

attempted to impose upon us Latin and imperial laws.

What can be more savage, than to see a nation where, by lawful custom,

the office of a judge is bought and sold, where judgments are paid for

with ready money, and where justice may legitimately be denied to him

that has not wherewithal to pay; a merchandise in so great repute, as in

a government to create a fourth estate of wrangling lawyers, to add to

the three ancient ones of the church, nobility, and people; which fourth

estate, having the laws in their own hands, and sovereign power over

men's lives and fortunes, makes another body separate from nobility:

whence it comes to pass, that there are double laws, those of honour and

those of justice, in many things altogether opposite one to another; the

nobles as rigorously condemning a lie taken, as the other do a lie

revenged: by the law of arms, he shall be degraded from all nobility and

honour who puts up with an affront; and by the civil law, he who

vindicates his reputation by revenge incurs a capital punishment: he who

applies himself to the law for reparation of an offence done to his

honour, disgraces himself; and he who does not, is censured and punished

by the law. Yet of these two so different things, both of them referring

to one head, the one has the charge of peace, the other of war; those

have the profit, these the honour; those the wisdom, these the virtue;

those the word, these the action; those justice, these valour; those

reason, these force; those the long robe, these the short;--divided

betwixt them.

For what concerns indifferent things, as clothes, who is there seeking to

bring them back to their true use, which is the body's service and

convenience, and upon which their original grace and fitness depend; for

the most fantastic, in my opinion, that can be imagined, I will instance

amongst others, our flat caps, that long tail of velvet that hangs down

from our women's heads, with its party-coloured trappings; and that vain

and futile model of a member we cannot in modesty so much as name, which,

nevertheless, we make show and parade of in public. These

considerations, notwithstanding, will not prevail upon any understanding

man to decline the common mode; but, on the contrary, methinks, all

singular and particular fashions are rather marks of folly and vain

affectation than of sound reason, and that a wise man, within, ought to

withdraw and retire his soul from the crowd, and there keep it at liberty

and in power to judge freely of things; but as to externals, absolutely

to follow and conform himself to the fashion of the time. Public society

has nothing to do with our thoughts, but the rest, as our actions, our

labours, our fortunes, and our lives, we are to lend and abandon them to

its service and to the common opinion, as did that good and great

Socrates who refused to preserve his life by a disobedience to the

magistrate, though a very wicked and unjust one for it is the rule of

rules, the general law of laws, that every one observe those of the place

wherein he lives.

And now to another point. It is a very great doubt, whether any so

manifest benefit can accrue from the alteration of a law received, let it

be what it will, as there is danger and inconvenience in altering it;

forasmuch as government is a structure composed of divers parts and

members joined and united together, with so strict connection, that it is

impossible to stir so much as one brick or stone, but the whole body will

be sensible of it. The legislator of the Thurians-- --ordained, that whosoever would go about either to

abolish an old law, or to establish a new, should present himself with a

halter about his neck to the people, to the end, that if the innovation

he would introduce should not be approved by every one, he might

immediately be hanged; and he of the Lacedaemonians employed his life to

obtain from his citizens a faithful promise that none of his laws should

be violated.-- --The Ephoros who so

rudely cut the two strings that Phrynis had added to music never stood to

examine whether that addition made better harmony, or that by its means

the instrument was more full and complete; it was enough for him to

condemn the invention, that it was a novelty, and an alteration of the

old fashion. Which also is the meaning of the old rusty sword carried

before the magistracy of Marseilles.

For my own part, I have a great aversion from a novelty, what face or

what pretence soever it may carry along with it, and have reason, having

been an eyewitness of the great evils it has produced. For those which

for so many years have lain so heavy upon us, it is not wholly

accountable; but one may say, with colour enough, that it has

accidentally produced and begotten the mischiefs and ruin that have since

happened, both without and against it; it, principally, we are to accuse

for these disorders:

"Heu! patior telis vulnera facta meis."

They who give the first shock to a state, are almost naturally the first

overwhelmed in its ruin the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed

by him who was the first motor; he beats and disturbs the water for

another's net. The unity and contexture of this monarchy, of this grand

edifice, having been ripped and torn in her old age, by this thing called

innovation, has since laid open a rent, and given sufficient admittance

to such injuries: the royal majesty with greater difficulty declines from

the summit to the middle, then it falls and tumbles headlong from the

middle to the bottom. But if the inventors do the greater mischief, the

imitators are more vicious to follow examples of which they have felt and

punished both the horror and the offence. And if there can be any degree

of honour in ill-doing, these last must yield to the others the glory of

contriving, and the courage of making the first attempt. All sorts of

new disorders easily draw, from this primitive and ever-flowing fountain,

examples and precedents to trouble and discompose our government: we read

in our very laws, made for the remedy of this first evil, the beginning

and pretences of all sorts of wicked enterprises; and that befalls us,

which Thucydides said of the civil wars of his time, that, in favour of

public vices, they gave them new and more plausible names for their

excuse, sweetening and disguising their true titles; which must be done,

forsooth, to reform our conscience and belief:

"Honesta oratio est;"

but the best pretence for innovation is of very dangerous consequence:

"Aden nihil motum ex antiquo probabile est."

And freely to speak my thoughts, it argues a strange self-love and great

presumption to be so fond of one's own opinions, that a public peace must

be overthrown to establish them, and to introduce so many inevitable

mischiefs, and so dreadful a corruption of manners, as a civil war and

the mutations of state consequent to it, always bring in their train, and

to introduce them, in a thing of so high concern, into the bowels of

one's own country. Can there be worse husbandry than to set up so many

certain and knowing vices against errors that are only contested and

disputable? And are there any worse sorts of vices than those committed

against a man's own conscience, and the natural light of his own reason?

The Senate, upon the dispute betwixt it and the people about the

administration of their religion, was bold enough to return this evasion

for current pay:

"Ad deos id magis, quam ad se, pertinere: ipsos visuros,

ne sacra sua polluantur;"

according to what the oracle answered to those of Delphos who, fearing to

be invaded by the Persians in the Median war, inquired of Apollo, how

they should dispose of the holy treasure of his temple; whether they

should hide, or remove it to some other place? He returned them answer,

that they should stir nothing from thence, and only take care of

themselves, for he was sufficient to look to what belonged to him.

-- .--

The Christian religion has all the marks of the utmost utility and

justice: but none more manifest than the severe injunction it lays

indifferently upon all to yield absolute obedience to the civil

magistrate, and to maintain and defend the laws. Of which, what a

wonderful example has the divine wisdom left us, that, to establish the

salvation of mankind, and to conduct His glorious victory over death and

sin, would do it after no other way, but at the mercy of our ordinary

forms of justice subjecting the progress and issue of so high and so

salutiferous an effect, to the blindness and injustice of our customs

and observances; sacrificing the innocent blood of so many of His elect,

and so long a loss of so many years, to the maturing of this inestimable

fruit? There is a vast difference betwixt the case of one who follows

the forms and laws of his country, and of another who will undertake to

regulate and change them; of whom the first pleads simplicity, obedience,

and example for his excuse, who, whatever he shall do, it cannot be

imputed to malice; 'tis at the worst but misfortune:

"Quis est enim, quem non moveat clarissimis monumentis

testata consignataque antiquitas?"

besides what Isocrates says, that defect is nearer allied to moderation

than excess: the other is a much more ruffling gamester; for whosoever

shall take upon him to choose and alter, usurps the authority of judging,

and should look well about him, and make it his business to discern

clearly the defect of what he would abolish, and the virtue of what he is

about to introduce.

This so vulgar consideration is that which settled me in my station, and

kept even my most extravagant and ungoverned youth under the rein, so as

not to burden my shoulders with so great a weight, as to render myself

responsible for a science of that importance, and in this to dare, what

in my better and more mature judgment, I durst not do in the most easy

and indifferent things I had been instructed in, and wherein the temerity

of judging is of no consequence at all; it seeming to me very unjust to

go about to subject public and established customs and institutions, to

the weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy (for

private reason has but a private jurisdiction), and to attempt that upon

the divine, which no government will endure a man should do, upon the

civil laws; with which, though human reason has much more commerce than

with the other, yet are they sovereignly judged by their own proper

judges, and the extreme sufficiency serves only to expound and set forth

the law and custom received, and neither to wrest it, nor to introduce

anything, of innovation. If, sometimes, the divine providence has gone

beyond the rules to which it has necessarily bound and obliged us men,

it is not to give us any dispensation to do the same; those are

masterstrokes of the divine hand, which we are not to imitate, but to

admire, and extraordinary examples, marks of express and particular

purposes, of the nature of miracles, presented before us for

manifestations of its almightiness, equally above both our rules and

force, which it would be folly and impiety to attempt to represent and

imitate; and that we ought not to follow, but to contemplate with the

greatest reverence: acts of His personage, and not for us. Cotta very

opportunely declares:

"Quum de religione agitur, Ti. Coruncanium, P. Scipionem,

P. Scaevolam, pontifices maximos, non Zenonem, aut Cleanthem,

aut Chrysippum, sequor."

God knows, in the present quarrel of our civil war, where there are a

hundred articles to dash out and to put in, great and very considerable,

how many there are who can truly boast, they have exactly and perfectly

weighed and understood the grounds and reasons of the one and the other

party; 'tis a number, if they make any number, that would be able to give

us very little disturbance. But what becomes of all the rest, under what

ensigns do they march, in what quarter do they lie? Theirs have the same

effect with other weak and ill-applied medicines; they have only set the

humours they would purge more violently in work, stirred and exasperated

by the conflict, and left them still behind. The potion was too weak to

purge, but strong enough to weaken us; so that it does not work, but we

keep it still in our bodies, and reap nothing from the operation but

intestine gripes and dolours.

So it is, nevertheless, that Fortune still reserving her authority in

defiance of whatever we are able to do or say, sometimes presents us with

a necessity so urgent, that 'tis requisite the laws should a little yield

and give way; and when one opposes the increase of an innovation that

thus intrudes itself by violence, to keep a man's self in so doing, in

all places and in all things within bounds and rules against those who

have the power, and to whom all things are lawful that may in any way

serve to advance their design, who have no other law nor rule but what

serves best to their own purpose, 'tis a dangerous obligation and an

intolerable inequality:

"Aditum nocendi perfido praestat fides,"

forasmuch as the ordinary discipline of a healthful state does not

provide against these extraordinary accidents; it presupposes a body that

supports itself in its principal members and offices, and a common

consent to its obedience and observation. A legitimate proceeding is

cold, heavy, and constrained, and not fit to make head against a

headstrong and unbridled proceeding. 'Tis known to be to this day cast

in the dish of those two great men, Octavius and Cato, in the two civil

wars of Sylla and Caesar, that they would rather suffer their country to

undergo the last extremities, than relieve their fellow-citizens at the

expense of its laws, or be guilty of any innovation; for in truth, in

these last necessities, where there is no other remedy, it would,

peradventure, be more discreetly done, to stoop and yield a little to

receive the blow, than, by opposing without possibility of doing good,

to give occasion to violence to trample all under foot; and better to

make the laws do what they can, when they cannot do what they would.

After this manner did he-- --who suspended them for

four-and-twenty hours, and he who, for once shifted a day in the

calendar, and that other-- --who of the month of

June made a second of May. The Lacedaemonians themselves, who were so

religious observers of the laws of their country, being straitened by

one of their own edicts, by which it was expressly forbidden to choose

the same man twice to be admiral; and on the other side, their affairs

necessarily requiring, that Lysander should again take upon him that

command, they made one Aratus admiral; 'tis true, but withal, Lysander

went general of the navy; and, by the same subtlety, one of their

ambassadors being sent to the Athenians to obtain the revocation of some

decree, and Pericles remonstrating to him, that it was forbidden to take

away the tablet wherein a law had once been engrossed, he advised him to

turn it only, that being not forbidden; and Plutarch commends

Philopoemen, that being born to command, he knew how to do it, not only

according to the laws, but also to overrule even the laws themselves,

when the public necessity so required.