The feebleness of our condition is such that things cannot, in their natural simplicity and purity, fall into our use. The elements we enjoy are changed, and so it is with metals: gold must be debased with some other matter to fit it for our service. Neither the virtue so simple as that which Aristo, Pyrrho, and the Stoics made the end of life, nor the Cyrenaic and Aristippic pleasure, has been without mixture useful to it. Of the pleasure and goods we enjoy, there is not one exempt from some mixture of ill and inconvenience. Lucretius finds that from the very fountain of our pleasure something rises that is bitter, which even in flowers destroys. Our extremest pleasure has some sort of groaning and complaining in it. Would you not say that it is dying of pain? When we frame the image of it in its full excellence, we stuff it with sickly and painful epithets: languor, softness, feebleness, faintness. The most profound joy has more of severity than gaiety in it. Even felicity, unless it moderate itself, oppresses. Pleasure chews and grinds us. According to the old Greek verse, the gods sell us all the goods they give us: they give us nothing pure and perfect, and we do not purchase but at the price of some evil. Labour and pleasure, very unlike in nature, associate nevertheless by some natural conjunction. Socrates says some god tried to mix pain and pleasure in one mass and, not being able to do it, bethought him at least to couple them by the tail. Metrodorus said that in sorrow there is some mixture of pleasure. Montaigne is of opinion that there is design, consent, and complacency in giving a man's self up to melancholy, some shadow of delight that smiles even in the very lap of melancholy. Attalus in Seneca says the memory of our lost friends is as grateful as bitterness in wine when too old is to the palate, and as apples that have a sweet tartness. Painters hold that the same motions and grimaces of the face that serve for weeping serve for laughter too, and the extreme of laughter does at last bring tears.
When Montaigne imagines man abounding with all the conveniences that are to be desired, all his members always seized with a pleasure like that of generation in its most excessive height, he feels him melting under the weight of his delight, utterly unable to support so pure, so continual, and so universal a pleasure. The man is running away whilst he is there, and naturally makes haste to escape, as from a place where he cannot stand firm. When Montaigne religiously confesses himself to himself, he finds that the best virtue he has has in it some tincture of vice. He is afraid that Plato, in his purest virtue, if he had listened and laid his ear close to himself, would have heard some jarring note of human mixture, faint and only perceptible to himself. Man is wholly and throughout but patch and motley. Even the laws of justice themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice. Plato says they undertake to cut off the hydra's head who pretend to clear the law of all inconveniences. Tacitus says every great example has in it some mixture of injustice, which recompenses the wrong done to particular men by the public utility. For the use of life and the service of public commerce, there may be some excesses in the purity and perspicacity of our minds. That penetrating light has in it too much of subtlety and curiosity. We must a little stupefy and blunt them to render them more obedient to example and practice, and a little veil them, the better to proportion them to this dark and earthly life. Common and less speculative souls are found more proper for and more successful in the management of affairs, and the elevated and exquisite opinions of philosophy unfit for business.
This sharp vivacity of soul, and the supple and restless volubility attending it, disturb our negotiations. We are to manage human enterprises more superficially and roughly, and leave a great part to fortune. It is not necessary to examine affairs with so much subtlety and so deep. A man loses himself in the consideration of many contrary lustres and so many various forms. It is what the ancients say of Simonides: by reason his imagination suggested to him, upon the question King Hiero had put to him, several sharp and subtle considerations, whilst he doubted which was the most likely, he totally despaired of the truth. He who dives into and in his inquisition comprehends all circumstances and consequences hinders his election. A little engine well handled is sufficient for executions, whether of less or greater weight. The best managers are those who can worst give account how they are so, while the greatest talkers, for the most part, do nothing to purpose. Montaigne knows one of this sort of men, a most excellent discourser upon all sorts of good husbandry, who has miserably let a hundred thousand livres yearly revenue slip through his hands. He knows another who talks, who better advises than any man of his counsel, and there is not in the world a fairer show of soul and understanding than he has. Nevertheless, when he comes to the test, his servants find him quite another thing, not to make any mention of his misfortunes.
