The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 11
by Michel de Montaigne

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Title: The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 11

Author: Michel de Montaigne

Release Date: September 17, 2006 [EBook #3591]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE, VOLUME 11 ***

Produced by David Widger

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 11.

XIII. Of judging of the death of another.
XIV. That the mind hinders itself.
XV. That our desires are augmented by difficulty.
XVI. Of glory.
XVII. Of presumption.

CHAPTER XIII

OF JUDGING OF THE DEATH OF ANOTHER

When we judge of another's assurance in death, which, without doubt, is
the most remarkable action of human life, we are to take heed of one
thing, which is that men very hardly believe themselves to have arrived
to that period. Few men come to die in the opinion that it is their
latest hour; and there is nothing wherein the flattery of hope more
deludes us; It never ceases to whisper in our ears, "Others have been
much sicker without dying; your condition is not so desperate as 'tis
thought; and, at the worst, God has done other miracles." Which happens
by reason that we set too much value upon ourselves; it seems as if the
universality of things were in some measure to suffer by our dissolution,
and that it commiserates our condition, forasmuch as our disturbed sight
represents things to itself erroneously, and that we are of opinion they
stand in as much need of us as we do of them, like people at sea, to whom
mountains, fields, cities, heaven and earth are tossed at the same rate
as they are:

"Provehimur portu, terraeque urbesque recedunt:"

["We sail out of port, and cities and lands recede."
--AEneid, iii. 72.]

Whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past and condemn the present
time, laying the fault of his misery and discontent upon the world and
the manners of men?

"Jamque caput quassans, grandis suspirat arator.
Et cum tempora tempo