When Fake It Till You Make It Backfires — The Essays of Montaigne

Martial tells of Caelius, who pretended gout to avoid waiting on Rome's great men, anointed and swathed his legs, and copied a gouty face until Fortune made him one indeed. Montaigne thinks he has read in Appian of a man who, hiding from the triumvirs' lists, plastered one eye and later found the sight absolutely gone. Long disuse, he guesses, dulled the faculty, and a shut eye sends its virtue to the other. The heat of ligatures and plasters might also have brought a gouty humour upon Martial's counterfeiter.

In Froissart a troop of young English gentlemen vow to keep their left eyes bound until they have done some notable exploit in France. Montaigne is tickled that they might have returned with but an eye apiece to their mistresses. Mothers have reason to rebuke children who counterfeit a squint or a limp: tender bodies may take an ill bent, and fortune sometimes seems to delight in taking us at our word. He has heard of several who became really sick by only feigning to be so. He himself has always carried a stick, on horseback or on foot, and even affected an elegant air. Many have threatened that this fancy will one day turn into necessity. If so, he would be the first of his family to have the gout.

Pliny reports a man who dreamed he was blind and woke sightless, with no preceding infirmity. Imagination might assist, but Montaigne thinks the body had already begun to take the sight, and the dream only reported it. Seneca tells Lucilius that Harpaste, his wife's fool, has suddenly lost her sight and is not sensible she is blind: she says the house is dark and importunes her keeper to take her abroad. What we laugh at in her happens to every one of us. No one knows himself avaricious or grasping. We say we are not ambitious, but a man cannot live otherwise at Rome; not wasteful, but the city requires the outlay; not our fault if we are choleric, it is youth. Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves. It is in us, planted in our bowels, and not perceiving it makes us harder to cure. Philosophy pleases and heals at once. Seneca has carried Montaigne from his subject, but there is advantage in the change.