CHAPTER XIOF

CRUELTY
I fancy virtue to be something else, and something more noble, than good nature,
and the mere propension to goodness, that we are born into the world withal. Well-
disposed and well-descended souls pursue, indeed, the same methods, and represent in
their actions the same face that virtue itself does: but the word virtue imports, I know
not what, more great and active than merely for a man to suffer himself, by a happy
disposition, to be gently and quietly drawn to the rule of reason. He who, by a natural
sweetness and facility, should despise injuries received, would doubtless do a very
fine and laudable thing; but he who, provoked and nettled to the quick by an offence,
should fortify himself with the arms of reason against the furious appetite of revenge,
and after a great conflict, master his own passion, would certainly do a great deal
more. The first would do well; the latter virtuously: one action might be called
goodness, and the other virtue; for methinks, the very name of virtue presupposes
difficulty and contention, and cannot be exercised without an opponent. 'Tis for this
reason, perhaps, that we call God good, mighty, liberal and just; but we do not call
Him virtuous, being that all His operations are natural and without endeavour.
[Rousseau, in his Emile, book v., adopts this passage almost in the same words.] It
has been the opinion of many philosophers, not only Stoics, but Epicureansand this
addition
["Montaigne stops here to make his excuse for thus naming the
Epicureans with the Stoics, in conformity to the general opinion
that the Epicureans were not so rigid in their morals as the Stoics,
which is not true in the main, as he demonstrates at one view. This
involved Montaigne in a tedious parenthesis, during which it is
proper that the reader be attentive, that he may not entirely lose
the thread of the argument. In some later editions of this author,
it has been attempted to remedy this inconvenience, but without
observing that Montaigne's argument is rendered more feeble and
obscure by such vain repetitions: it is a licence that ought not to
be taken, because he who publishes the work of another, ought to
give it as the other composed ft. But, in Mr Cotton's translation,
he was so puzzled with this enormous parenthesis that he has quite
left it out"Coste.]
I borrow from the vulgar opinion, which is false, notwithstanding the witty conceit
of Arcesilaus in answer to one, who, being reproached that many scholars went from
his school to the Epicurean, but never any from thence to his school, said in answer, "I
believe it indeed; numbers of capons being made out of cocks, but never any cocks
out of capons." [Diogenes Laertius, Life of Archesilaus, lib. iv., 43.]For, in truth,
the Epicurean sect is not at all inferior to the Stoic in steadiness, and the rigour of
opinions and precepts. And a certain Stoic, showing more honesty than those
disputants, who, in order to quarrel with Epicurus, and to throw the game into their
hands, make him say what he never thought, putting a wrong construction upon his
words, clothing his sentences, by the strict rules of grammar, with another meaning,
and a different opinion from that which they knew he entertained in his mind and in
his morals, the Stoic, I say, declared that he abandoned the Epicurean sect, upon this
among other considerations, that he thought their road too lofty and inaccessible;
["And those are called lovers of pleasure, being in effect
lovers of honour and justice, who cultivate and observe all
the virtues."Cicero, Ep. Fam., xv. i, 19.]
These philosophers say that it is not enough to have the soul seated in a good place,
of a good temper, and well disposed to virtue; it is not enough to have our resolutions
and our reasoning fixed above all the power of fortune, but that we are, moreover, to
seek occasions wherein to put them to the proof: they would seek pain, necessity, and
contempt to contend with them and to keep the soul in breath:
"Multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita."

["Virtue is much strengthened by combats."
or: "Virtue attacked adds to its own force."
Seneca, Ep., 13.]
'Tis one of the reasons why Epaminondas, who was yet of a third sect, [The
Pythagorean.]refused the riches fortune presented to him by very lawful means;
because, said he, I am to contend with poverty, in which extreme he maintained
himself to the last. Socrates put himself, methinks, upon a ruder trial, keeping for his
exercise a confounded scolding wife, which was fighting at sharps. Metellus having,
of all the Roman senators, alone attempted, by the power of virtue, to withstand the
violence of Saturninus, tribune of the people at Rome, who would, by all means, cause
an unjust law to pass in favour of the commons, and, by so doing, having incurred the
capital penalties that Saturninus had established against the dissentient, entertained
those who, in this extremity, led him to execution with words to this effect: That it
was a thing too easy and too base to do ill; and that to do well where there was no
danger was a common thing; but that to do well where there was danger was the
proper office of a man of virtue. These words of Metellus very clearly represent to us
what I would make out, viz., that virtue refuses facility for a companion; and that the
easy, smooth, and descending way by which the regular steps of a sweet disposition of
nature are conducted is not that of a true virtue; she requires a rough and stormy
passage; she will have either exotic difficulties to wrestle with, like that of Metellus,
by means whereof fortune delights to interrupt the speed of her career, or internal
difficulties, that the inordinate appetites and imperfections of our condition introduce
to disturb her.
I am come thus far at my ease; but here it comes into my head that the soul of
Socrates, the most perfect that ever came to my knowledge, should by this rule be of
very little recommendation; for I cannot conceive in that person any the least motion
of a vicious inclination: I cannot imagine there could be any difficulty or constraint in
the course of his virtue: I know his reason to be so powerful and sovereign over him
that she would never have suffered a vicious appetite so much as to spring in him. To
a virtue so elevated as his, I have nothing to oppose. Methinks I see him march, with a
victorious and triumphant pace, in pomp and at his ease, without opposition or
disturbance. If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites,
shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is
from her that she derives her reputation and honour? What then, also, would become
of that brave and generous Epicurean pleasure, which makes account that it nourishes
virtue tenderly in her lap, and there makes it play and wanton, giving it for toys to
play withal, shame, fevers, poverty, death, and torments? If I presuppose that a perfect
virtue manifests itself in contending, in patient enduring of pain, and undergoing the
uttermost extremity of the gout; without being moved in her seat; if I give her troubles
and difficulty for her necessary objects: what will become of a virtue elevated to such
a degree, as not only to despise pain, but, moreover, to rejoice in it, and to be tickled
with the throes of a sharp colic, such as the Epicureans have established, and of which
many of them, by their actions, have given most manifest proofs? As have several
others, who I find to have surpassed in effects even the very rules of their discipline.
Witness the younger Cato: When I see him die, and tearing out his own bowels, I am
not satisfied simply to believe that he had then his soul totally exempt from all trouble
and horror: I cannot think that he only maintained himself in the steadiness that the
Stoical rules prescribed him; temperate, without emotion, and imperturbed. There
was, methinks, something in the virtue of this man too sprightly and fresh to stop
there; I believe that, without doubt, he felt a pleasure and delight in so noble an action,
and was more pleased in it than in any other of his life:
"Sic abiit a vita, ut causam moriendi nactum se esse gauderet."

["He quitted life rejoicing that a reason for dying had arisen."
Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 30.]