The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 18
by Michel de Montaigne

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Title: The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 18

Author: Michel de Montaigne

Release Date: September 17, 2006 [EBook #3598]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE, VOLUME 18 ***

Produced by David Widger

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 18.

X. Of Managing the Will.
XI. Of Cripples.
XII. Of Physiognomy.

CHAPTER X

OF MANAGING THE WILL

Few things, in comparison of what commonly affect other men, move, or, to
say better, possess me: for 'tis but reason they should concern a man,
provided they do not possess him. I am very solicitous, both by study
and argument, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in me
naturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I espouse and
am very much moved with very few things. I have a clear sight enough,
but I fix it upon very few objects; I have a sense delicate and tender
enough; but an apprehension and application hard and negligent. I am
very unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself
wholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb
and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into
it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over
which fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I
so much value, 'tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to
covet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable. A man ought
to moderate himself betwixt the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure:
and Plato sets down a middle path of life betwixt the two. But against
such affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere,
against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power. 'Tis my
opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself
to himself. Were my will easy to lend itself out and to be swayed, I
should not stick there; I am too tender both by n