The Essays of Montaigne/Book I/Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXII. That we are to avoid pleasures, even at the expense of life.
[edit]I had long ago observed most of the opinions of the ancients to concur in
this, that it is high time to die when there is more ill than good in
living, and that to preserve life to our own torment and inconvenience is
contrary to the very rules of nature, as these old laws instruct us.
["Either tranquil life, or happy death. It is well to die when life
is wearisome. It is better to die than to live miserable."
—Stobaeus, Serm. xx.]
But to push this contempt of death so far as to employ it to the removing
our thoughts from the honours, riches, dignities, and other favours and
goods, as we call them, of fortune, as if reason were not sufficient to
persuade us to avoid them, without adding this new injunction, I had
never seen it either commanded or practised, till this passage of Seneca
fell into my hands; who advising Lucilius, a man of great power and
authority about the emperor, to alter his voluptuous and magnificent way
of living, and to retire himself from this worldly vanity and ambition,
to some solitary, quiet, and philosophical life, and the other alleging
some difficulties: "I am of opinion," says he, "either that thou leave
that life of thine, or life itself; I would, indeed, advise thee to the
gentle way, and to untie, rather than to break, the knot thou hast
indiscreetly knit, provided, that if it be not otherwise to be untied,
thou resolutely break it. There is no man so great a coward, that had
not rather once fall than to be always falling." I should have found
this counsel conformable enough to the Stoical roughness: but it appears
the more strange, for being borrowed from Epicurus, who writes the same
thing upon the like occasion to Idomeneus. And I think I have observed
something like it, but with Christian moderation, amongst our own people.
St. Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, that famous enemy of the Arian heresy,
being in Syria, had intelligence thither sent him, that Abra, his only
daughter, whom he left at home under the eye and tuition of her mother,
was sought in marriage by the greatest noblemen of the country, as being
a virgin virtuously brought up, fair, rich, and in the flower of her age;
whereupon he wrote to her (as appears upon record), that she should
remove her affection from all the pleasures and advantages proposed to
her; for that he had in his travels found out a much greater and more
worthy fortune for her, a husband of much greater power and magnificence,
who would present her with robes and jewels of inestimable value; wherein
his design was to dispossess her of the appetite and use of worldly
delights, to join her wholly to God; but the nearest and most certain way
to this, being, as he conceived, the death of his daughter; he never
ceased, by vows, prayers, and orisons, to beg of the Almighty, that He
would please to call her out of this world, and to take her to Himself;
as accordingly it came to pass; for soon after his return, she died, at
which he expressed a singular joy. This seems to outdo the other,
forasmuch as he applies himself to this means at the outset, which they
only take subsidiarily; and, besides, it was towards his only daughter.
But I will not omit the latter end of this story, though it be for my
purpose; St. Hilary's wife, having understood from him how the death of
their daughter was brought about by his desire and design, and how much
happier she was to be removed out of this world than to have stayed in
it, conceived so vivid an apprehension of the eternal and heavenly
beatitude, that she begged of her husband, with the extremest
importunity, to do as much for her; and God, at their joint request,
shortly after calling her to Him, it was a death embraced with singular
and mutual content.