Happy New Year everyone. I close 2024 and welcome the new year with this excerpt from Montaigne’s 10th essay, To Philosophize is to Learn to Die:
Life is neither good nor evil in itself: it is the scene of good and evil according as you give them room.
And if you have lived a day, you have seen everything. One day is equal to all days. There is no other light, no other night. This sun, this moon, these stars, the way they are arranged, all is the very same your ancestors enjoyed and that will entertain your grandchildren:
Your ancestors beheld no other one, nor shall Your nephews see another. (Manilius)
And at worst, the distribution and variety of all the acts of my comedy runs its course in a year. If you have taken note of the revolution of my four seasons, they embrace the infancy, the youth, the manhood, and the old age of the world. It has played its part. It knows no other trick than to begin again. It will always be just this:
We turn in the same circle, and never leave (Lucretius); And on itself the year revolves along its track. (Virgil)
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