The Complete Essays (184 page)

Tandem efficaci do manus scientiæ!
[At last I yield to thy effective Art!]
⁶⁷

Those disciplines which promise to maintain our bodies in health and our souls in health promise a great deal:
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yet none keeps their promises less than they do; and those who profess those Arts in our own time show the effects of them less than any other men. The most you can say of them is that they trade in the
materia medica
of those healing Arts: that they are
healers you cannot say. I have lived long enough now to give an account of the regimen which has got me thus far. Should anyone want to try it, I have assayed it first as his taster. Here are a few items as memory supplies them. [C] (There is no practice of mine which has not been varied according to circumstances, but I note here those which, so far, I have most often seen at work and which are rooted in me.)

[B] My regimen is the same in sickness as in health: I use the same bed, same timetable, same food and same drink. I add absolutely nothing except for increasing and decreasing the measure depending on my strength and appetite. Health means for me the maintaining of my usual route without let or hindrance. I can see that my illness has blocked one direction for me: if I put trust in doctors they will turn me away from the other, so there I am off my route either by destiny or their Art; there is nothing that I believe so certainly as this: that carrying on with anything to which I have so long been accustomed cannot do me harm. It is for custom to give shape to our lives, such shape as it will – in such matters it can do anything. It is the cup of Circe which changes our nature as it pleases. How many peoples are there, not three yards from us, who think that our fear of the cool evening air – which ‘so evidently’ harms us – is ludicrous; and our boatsmen and our peasants laugh at us too.

You make a German ill if you force him to lie in bed on a straw mattress, as you do an Italian on a feather one, or a Frenchman without bed-curtains or a fire. The stomach of a Spaniard cannot tolerate the way we eat: nor can ours the way the Swiss drink. I was amused by a German in Augsburg who attacked our open hearths, emphasizing their drawbacks with the same arguments which we normally use against their stoves! And it is true that those stoves give out an oppressive heat and that the materials of which they are built produce when hot a smell which causes headaches in those who are not used to them: not however in me. On the other hand since the heat they give out is even, constant and spread over-all, without the visible flame, the smoke and the draught produced for us by our chimneys, it has plenty of grounds for standing comparison with ours. (Why do we not imitate the building methods of the Romans, for it is said that in antiquity their house-fires were lit outside, at basement level; from there hot air was blown to all the house through pipes set within the thickness of the walls which surrounded the areas to be heated. I have seen that clearly suggested somewhere in Seneca, though I forget where.)
⁶⁹
That man in Augsburg, on hearing me praise the advantages and beauties
of his city (which indeed deserved it) started to pity me because I had to leave it; among the chief inconveniences he cited to me was the heavy head I would get ‘from those open hearths yonder’. He had heard somebody make this complaint and linked it with us, custom preventing him from noticing the same thing at home.

Any heat coming from a fire makes me weak and drowsy. Yet Evenus maintained that fire was life’s condiment.
⁷⁰
I adopt in preference any other way of escaping the cold.

We avoid wine from the bottom of the barrel; in Portugal they adore its savour: it is the drink of princes. In short each nation has several customs and practices which are not only unknown to another nation but barbarous and a cause of wonder.

What shall we do with those people who will receive only printed testimony, who will not believe anyone who is not in a book, nor truth unless it be properly aged? [C] We set our stupidities in dignity when we set them in print. [B] For these people there is far more weight in saying, ‘I have read that…’ than if you say, ‘I have heard tell that…’ But I (who have the same distrust of a man’s pen as his tongue; who know that folk write with as little discretion as they talk and who esteem this age as much as any other former one) as willingly cite a friend of mine as Aulus Gellius or Macrobius, and what I have seen as what they have written. [C] And just as it is held that duration does not heighten virtue,
⁷¹
I similarly reckon that truth is no wiser for being more ancient.

[B] I often say that it is pure silliness which sets us chasing after foreign and textbook exemplars. They are produced no less abundantly nowadays than in the times of Homer and Plato. But are we not trying to impress people by our quotations rather than by the truth of what they say? – as though it were. [C] greater thing [B] to borrow our proofs from the bookshops of Vascosan and Plantin than from our village?
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Or is it that we do not have wit enough to select and exploit whatever happens in front of us or to judge it so acutely as to draw examples from it? For if we say that we lack the requisite authority to produce faith in our testimony we are off the point: in my opinion the most ordinary things, the most commonplace and best-known can constitute, if we know how to present
them in the right light, the greatest of Nature’s miracles and the most amazing of examples, notably on the subject of human actions.
⁷³

Now on this topic of mine (leaving aside any examples I know from books [C] and what Aristotle said of Andros the Argive who traversed the arid sands of Lybia without once drinking),
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[B] a nobleman who has acquitted himself with honour of several charges stated in my presence that he had journeyed without drinking from Madrid to Lisbon in the height of summer. He is vigorous for his age and there is nothing in his way of life which goes beyond the normal Order except that he can, so he told me, do without drinking for two or three months or even a year. He feels a little thirsty but lets it pass: he maintains that it is a craving which can easily weaken by itself. He drinks more on impulse than from necessity, or for enjoyment.

Here is another. Not long ago I came across one of the most learned men in France – a man of more than moderate wealth; he was studying in a corner of his hall which had been partitioned off with tapestries; around him were his menservants making the most disorderly racket. He told me – [C] and Seneca said much the same of himself
⁷⁵
– [B] that he found their hubbub useful: it was as though, when he was being battered by that din, he could withdraw and close in on himself so as to meditate, and that those turbulent voices hammered his thoughts right in. When he was a student at Padua his work-room was for so long subject to the clatter of wagons and the tumultuous uproar of the market-place that he had trained himself not merely to ignore the noise but to exploit it in the service of his studies. [C] When Alcibiades asked in amazement how Socrates could put up with the sound of his wife’s perpetual nagging, he replied: ‘Just like those who get used to the constant grating of wheels drawing water from the well.’
⁷⁶
[B] I am quite the opposite: I have a mind which is delicate and easy to distract: when it withdraws aside to concentrate, the least buzzing of a fly is enough to murder it!

[C] When Seneca was a young man, having been keenly bitten by the example of Sextius, he ate nothing that had been slaughtered. For a whole year he did without meat – with great pleasure as he relates. He did give
up that diet, but only to avoid the suspicion of being influenced by certain new religions which were disseminating it. He had adopted at the same time one of the precepts of Attalus: never to lie on soft mattresses; until his death he continued to use the kinds which do not yield to the body.
⁷⁷
That which the customs of his day led him to count as an austerity our own make us think of as an indulgence.

[B] Consider the diversity between the way of life of my farm-labourers and my own. Scythia and the Indies have nothing more foreign to my force or my form. And this I know: I took some boys off begging into my service: soon afterwards they left me, my cuisine and their livery merely to return to their old life. I came across one of them gathering snails from the roadside for his dinner: neither prayer nor menace could drag him away from the sweet savour he found in poverty. Beggars have their distinctions and their pleasures as do rich men, and, so it is said, their own political offices and orders.

Such are the effects of Habituation: she can not only mould us to the form which pleases her (that is why, say the wise, we must cling to the best form, which she will straightway make easy for us)
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but also mould us for change and variation (which are the noblest and most useful of her crafts). Of my own physical endowments the best is that I am flexible and not stubborn: some of my inclinations are more proper to me than others, more usual and more agreeable, but with very little effort I can turn away from them and glide easily into an opposite style. A young man ought to shake up his regular habits in order to awaken his powers and stop them from getting lazy and stale. And there is no way of life which is more feeble and stupid than one which is guided by prescriptions and instilled habit:
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Ad primum lapidem vectari cum placet, hora
Sumitur ex libro; si prurit frictus ocelli
Angulus, inspecta genesi collyria quærit
.

[Does he want to be borne as far as the first milestone? Then he consults his almanack to find out the best time. Has he got a sore in the corner of an eye? Then he consults his horoscope before buying some ointment.]
⁸⁰

If he trusts me a young man will often jump to the other extreme: if he does not, the least excess will undermine him: he makes himself disagreeable and clumsy in society. The most incompatible quality in a gentleman is to be over-nicely bound to one fixed idiosyncratic manner: and idiosyncratic it is, if it is not pliable and supple. There is disgrace in being incapable or afraid to do what your companions are up to. Such men should stay in their kitchens! Unbecoming it is, in everyone else: in a warrior it is vile and not to be endured; he, as Philopoemen said, must get accustomed to all kinds of this life’s changes and hardships.
⁸¹

Although I was brought up, as much as is humanly possible, for freedom and flexibility, nevertheless as I grow older I am becoming through indifference more fixed in certain forms (I am past the age for elementary schooling; now old age has no other concern than to look after itself); without my noticing it, custom has imprinted its stamp on me so well where some things are concerned that any departure from it I call excess; and I cannot, without turning it into an assay of myself, sleep by day, eat snacks between meals, nor eat breakfast, nor go to bed after supper without having a considerable gap, [C] say three hours or more, [B] nor have sexual intercourse except before going to sleep, nor do it standing up, nor remain soaking with sweat, nor drink either water or wine unmixed, nor remain for long with my head uncovered, nor have my haircut after dinner. I would feel just as ill at ease without gloves or shirt, or without a wash on leaving the table and when getting up in the morning, or lying in a bed without canopy and curtains, as I would if forced to do without things which really matter.

I could dine easily enough without a tablecloth, but I feel very uncomfortable dining without a clean napkin as the Germans do. I dirty my napkins more than they or the Italians and rarely seek the aid of spoon or fork. I regret that we have not continued along the lines of the fashion started by our kings, changing napkins like plates with each course.

We are told that as Marius grew older, tough old soldier though he was, he became choosy about his wine and would only drink it out of his own special goblet. [C] I too incline
⁸²
towards glasses of a particular shape and I no more like drinking out of a common cup than I would like eating
out of common fingers; and I dislike all metals compared with clear transparent materials. Let my eyes too taste it to the full.

[B] Several such foibles I owe to habit: on the other hand Nature has contributed her own, such as my not being able to stand more than two proper meals a day without overloading my stomach, nor to go without a meal altogether without filling myself with wind, parching my mouth and upsetting my appetite; nor can I stand a long exposure to the evening dew. During these last few years when a whole night has to be spent (as often happens) on some military task, my stomach begins to bother me after five or six hours; I have splitting headaches and can never get through to morning without vomiting. Then, while the others go to breakfast, I have a sleep; after which I am quite happy again.

I had always been taught that evening dew formed only after night-fall, but upon frequenting a nobleman who was imbued with the belief that such dew is more dangerous and severe two or three hours before sunset (when he scrupulously avoids going out) he made such an impression on me that I almost not so much believed it as felt it. Well now, that very doubt and concern for our health can hammer our thought-process and change us. Those who slide precipitously down slopes such as that bring disaster upon themselves. There are several gentlemen for whom I feel pity: through the stupidity of their doctors they shut themselves up indoors while still young and healthy; it would be better to put up with a chill rather than forever to forgo joining in common everyday life outdoors. [C] What a grievous skill medicine is, disparaging for us the more delightful hours of the day. [B] Let us extend our hold on things by every means we possess. Usually if you stubborn things out you toughen yourself up, correcting your complexion by despising it and seducing it, as Caesar did his epilepsy. We should give ourselves, but not enslave ourselves, to the best precepts, except in such cases (if there be any) in which constraint and slavery serve a purpose.