Sophocles and Dionysius the Tyrant died of happiness; Talva died in Corsica upon reading the news of the honours conferred on him by the Senate. Apart from these it is claimed that in our own century Pope Leo X entered into such an excess of joy upon being told of the capture of Milan (his desire for which had been extreme) that he took fever and died.
And there is an even more noteworthy witness to [C] human [A] weakness: 12 the Ancients recorded that Diodorus the Dialectician ‘fell in the field’, overcome by an extreme sense of shame at being unable to refute arguments put to him in public in the presence of his followers.
[B] Violent emotions like these have little hold on me. By nature my sense of feeling has a hard skin, which I daily toughen and thicken by arguments.
4. How the soul discharges its emotions against false objects when lacking real ones
[As often in the
Essays,
‘soul’
here includes all aspects of the human personality not strictly corporeal. Montaigne is especially concerned in this chapter with those irrational bursts of choler which are vented in wrath directed against inanimate or guiltless objects and which sweep over great generals every bit as much as over a girl distraught with grief for her brother or over a gouty old man. Our mind (our
esprit)
is ever like that: prone to be irrational as well as refractory to right rule.]
[A] A local gentleman of ours who is marvellously subject to gout would answer his doctors quite amusingly when asked to give up salted meats entirely. He would say that he liked to have something to blame when tortured by the onslaughts of that illness: the more he yelled out curses against the saveloy or the tongue or the ham, the more relief he felt. Seriously though, when our arm is raised to strike it pains us if the blow lands nowhere and merely beats the air; similarly, if a prospect is to be made pleasing it must not be dissipated and scattered over an airy void but have some object at a reasonable distance to sustain it:
[B]
Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densæ
Occurant silvæ spatio diffusus inani
;
[As winds, unless they come up against dense woods, lose their force and are distended into empty space;] 1
[A] it seems that the soul too, in the same way, loses itself in itself when shaken and disturbed unless it is given something to grasp on to; and so we must always provide it with an object to butt up against and to act upon. Plutarch says of those who dote over pet monkeys or little dogs that the faculty for loving which is in all of us, rather than remaining useless forges a false and frivolous object for want of a legitimate one. 2 And wecan see that our souls deceive themselves in their emotions by erecting some false fantastical object rather than let there be nothing to act upon. [B] Animals are likewise carried away by anger: they attack the stone or piece of iron which has wounded them or else take vengeance on the pain they feel by biting themselves:
Pannonis haud aliter post ictum saevior ursa
Cum jaculum parva Lybis amentavit habena,
Se rotat in vulnus, telumque irata receptum
Impetit, et secum fugientem circuit hastam
.
[Not otherwise does the bear in Pannonia: made more savage by the blow struck by the Libyan hunter with his dart tied to a leather thong, she rolls on her wound and attacks the weapon buried in her flesh and chases it round and round in circles as it flees from her.] 3
[A] What causes do we not discover for the ills which befall us! What will we not attack, rightly or wrongly, rather than go without something to skirmish against? It is not those blond maiden tresses which you are tearing, nor the whiteness of that bosom which you are beating so cruelly in your distress, which killed your beloved brother with an unlucky musket-ball. [C] When the Roman army in Spain lost those two great commanders who were brothers, Pliny says
‘flere omnes repente et offensare capita’
. [at once, they all start
And there is an even more noteworthy witness to [C] human [A] weakness: 12 the Ancients recorded that Diodorus the Dialectician ‘fell in the field’, overcome by an extreme sense of shame at being unable to refute arguments put to him in public in the presence of his followers.
[B] Violent emotions like these have little hold on me. By nature my sense of feeling has a hard skin, which I daily toughen and thicken by arguments.
4. How the soul discharges its emotions against false objects when lacking real ones
[As often in the
Essays,
‘soul’
here includes all aspects of the human personality not strictly corporeal. Montaigne is especially concerned in this chapter with those irrational bursts of choler which are vented in wrath directed against inanimate or guiltless objects and which sweep over great generals every bit as much as over a girl distraught with grief for her brother or over a gouty old man. Our mind (our
esprit)
is ever like that: prone to be irrational as well as refractory to right rule.]
[A] A local gentleman of ours who is marvellously subject to gout would answer his doctors quite amusingly when asked to give up salted meats entirely. He would say that he liked to have something to blame when tortured by the onslaughts of that illness: the more he yelled out curses against the saveloy or the tongue or the ham, the more relief he felt. Seriously though, when our arm is raised to strike it pains us if the blow lands nowhere and merely beats the air; similarly, if a prospect is to be made pleasing it must not be dissipated and scattered over an airy void but have some object at a reasonable distance to sustain it:
[B]
Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densæ
Occurant silvæ spatio diffusus inani
;
[As winds, unless they come up against dense woods, lose their force and are distended into empty space;] 1
[A] it seems that the soul too, in the same way, loses itself in itself when shaken and disturbed unless it is given something to grasp on to; and so we must always provide it with an object to butt up against and to act upon. Plutarch says of those who dote over pet monkeys or little dogs that the faculty for loving which is in all of us, rather than remaining useless forges a false and frivolous object for want of a legitimate one. 2 And wecan see that our souls deceive themselves in their emotions by erecting some false fantastical object rather than let there be nothing to act upon. [B] Animals are likewise carried away by anger: they attack the stone or piece of iron which has wounded them or else take vengeance on the pain they feel by biting themselves:
Pannonis haud aliter post ictum saevior ursa
Cum jaculum parva Lybis amentavit habena,
Se rotat in vulnus, telumque irata receptum
Impetit, et secum fugientem circuit hastam
.
[Not otherwise does the bear in Pannonia: made more savage by the blow struck by the Libyan hunter with his dart tied to a leather thong, she rolls on her wound and attacks the weapon buried in her flesh and chases it round and round in circles as it flees from her.] 3
[A] What causes do we not discover for the ills which befall us! What will we not attack, rightly or wrongly, rather than go without something to skirmish against? It is not those blond maiden tresses which you are tearing, nor the whiteness of that bosom which you are beating so cruelly in your distress, which killed your beloved brother with an unlucky musket-ball. [C] When the Roman army in Spain lost those two great commanders who were brothers, Pliny says
‘flere omnes repente et offensare capita’
. [at once, they all start
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