body and the soul — and (as I understand him) remove ourselves from the government of the body by the soul, which makes our greatest comfort. But this view finds a pseudo-contradiction in an opinion expressed just before, to the effect, seemingly, that the soul would do well to let the body entirely alone.
Then in his favorite fashion, he cites examples: the endurance of the pains of child-birth; the constancy of Lacedæmonian children; the feats of Mucius Scævola: the contempt of pain that women show in the pursuit of beauty; the wounds given as pledges of good faith —in which connection he tells of an incident he had witnessed, about which we may wonder whether it had any personal interest for him; and the self-inflicted tortures of pious and fanatic souls — which he himself had seen often. Then comes an inserted passage of instances of composure at death of friends and children, where occurs one of the personal expressions which have been foolishly misjudged. He says that he has borne the loss of two or three of his children, who died when babies, not without regret, but without fascherie; that is, without grief, distress (the meaning of the word in his day).[1] And he adds that while by the greater number and the most healthy-minded among men it is considered that to have many children is a great good fortune, “I and some others consider the lack of them good fortune.” We may well believe that this feeling originated in part from the disastrous condition of public affairs in that age — one of the most tragic in history. Montaigne could meet them himself with equanimity, but he recognised the manifold sufferings of every kind which they caused to countless individuals. Childless parents were to be congratulated.
All this shows that, as Cicero said, “the source of suffering is not in the nature of things but in our opinion of them.”
If our opinion may make us disregard what is commonly counted as evil, so, on the other hand, it may enhance the value of good. And (after a rather incoherent and difficult page added many years later) he proceeds to show this by his own example in relation to the use of his property, through diffuse and wandering pages, concluding finally: “Affluence then and indigence depend on each man’s opinion.”
His last word is that among all the reasons for despising death and enduring pain there must be some which each man can accept. If not, “What can be done for him who has no courage to support either death or life?”
It may be observed that Montaigne borrowed much in this Essay from Seneca, especially from Epistle 78.
- ↑ An illustration of such use may be quoted from a contemporary writer, Pierre de Changy: “Homere recite d’Hector qui previt la cité de Troye devoir estre enflammée et destruicte, n’avoir eu telle anxieté et fasherie de pere, mere, freres, parens et pays, qu’il eut de sa femme.” (Translation of a Latin work of Vivès, 1442.)
M. Strowski, writing of the neo-stoicisme of the sixteenth century, remarks: “Ce mot de facherie, tant reproché à Montaigne, a un sens strict dans la langue de ce neo-stoicisme; Du Vair fait de la facherie une des passions de l’âme.”
