The Essays Chapter 8

(1, p. 9v-10).Michel de MontaigneC1 8 De l’oisivetéMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvuMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvu/19v-10

De l’Oisiveté. Chap. VIII.

COmme nous voyons des terres oysives, si elles sont grasses et fertilles, foisonner en cent mille sortes d’herbes sauvages et inutiles, et que, pour les tenir en office, il les faut assubjectir et employer à certaines semences, pour nostre service ; et comme nous voyons que les femmes produisent bien toutes seules, des amas et pieces de chair informes, mais que pour faire une generation bonne et naturelle, il les faut embesoigner d’une autre semence : ainsin est-il des espris. Si on ne les occupe à certain sujet, qui les bride et contreigne, ils se jettent desteiglez, par-cy par là, dans le vague champ des imaginations,

Sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis
Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine Lunae
Omnia pervolitat latè loca, jamque sub auras
Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti.

Et n’est folie ny réverie, qu’ils ne produisent en cette agitation,

aegri somnia, vanae
Finguntur species. L’ame qui n’a point de but estably, elle se perd : car, comme on dict, c’est n’estre en aucun lieu, que d’estre par tout.

Dernierement que je me retiray chez moy, deliberé autant que je pourroy, ne me mesler d’autre chose que de passer en repos, et à part, ce peu qui me reste de vie : il me sembloit ne pouvoir faire plus grande faveur à mon esprit, que de le laisser en pleine oysiveté, s’entretenir soy mesmes, et s’arrester et rasseoir en soy : ce que j’esperois qu’il peut meshuy faire plus aisément, devenu avec le temps plus poisant, et plus meur. Mais je trouve,

variam semper dant otia mentem,

que au rebours, faisant le cheval eschappé, il se donne cent fois plus d’affaire à soy mesmes, qu’il n’en prenoit pour autruy ; et m’enfante tant de chimeres et monstres fantasques les uns sur les autres, sans ordre, et sans propos, que pour en contempler à mon aise l’ineptie et l’estrangeté, j’ay commancé de les mettre en rolle, esperant avec le temps luy en faire honte à luy mesmes.

Chapter VIII. Of idleness.

As we see some grounds that have long lain idle and untilled, when grown

rich and fertile by rest, to abound with and spend their virtue in the

product of innumerable sorts of weeds and wild herbs that are

unprofitable, and that to make them perform their true office, we are to

cultivate and prepare them for such seeds as are proper for our service;

and as we see women that, without knowledge of man, do sometimes of

themselves bring forth inanimate and formless lumps of flesh, but that to

cause a natural and perfect generation they are to be husbanded with

another kind of seed: even so it is with minds, which if not applied to

some certain study that may fix and restrain them, run into a thousand

extravagances, eternally roving here and there in the vague expanse of

the imagination--

"Sicut aqua tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis,

Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine lunae,

Omnia pervolitat late loca; jamque sub auras

Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti."

--in which wild agitation there is no folly, nor idle fancy they do not

light upon:--

"Velut aegri somnia, vanae

Finguntur species."

The soul that has no established aim loses itself, for, as it is said--

"Quisquis ubique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat."

When I lately retired to my own house, with a resolution, as much as

possibly I could, to avoid all manner of concern in affairs, and to spend

in privacy and repose the little remainder of time I have to live, I

fancied I could not more oblige my mind than to suffer it at full leisure

to entertain and divert itself, which I now hoped it might henceforth do,

as being by time become more settled and mature; but I find--

"Variam semper dant otia mentem,"

that, quite contrary, it is like a horse that has broke from his rider,

who voluntarily runs into a much more violent career than any horseman

would put him to, and creates me so many chimaeras and fantastic

monsters, one upon another, without order or design, that, the better at

leisure to contemplate their strangeness and absurdity, I have begun to

commit them to writing, hoping in time to make it ashamed of itself.