I do not have this common error of judging others according to how I am. I readily believe various things about myself. To feel committed to a form, I do not oblige others to it, as the rest do; and believe and conceive a thousand contrary ways of life; and, contrary to the common, more easily accept the difference than the resemblance in ourselves. I am willing to release another being from my conditions and principles, and consider him simply in himself, without relation, making him on his own model. Not to be continent, I do not fail to sincerely acknowledge the continence of the Feuillans and the Capuchins, and to like the air of their behavior: I imagine myself very well in their place. And I love and honor them all the more because they are different from me. I particularly desire that we be judged each one separately, and that I not be drawn into the common examples. My weakness in no way alters the opinions I must have of the strength and vigor of those who deserve it.
There are those who praise nothing except what they trust they can imitate. (Cicero)
Crawling on the earth’s silt, I cannot help but give thanks, even to the skies, for the inimitable height of any heroic souls. It is a lot for me to have my judgment regulated, if the effects cannot be, and to keep at least this master part free from corruption. It is something to have good will when my legs fail me. This century in which we live, at least for our climate, is so bleak that, I do not say the execution, but the very imagination of virtue is at stake; and it seems to be nothing more than college jargon:
They think words are virtue, as trees are a grove. (Horace)
Which they should fear, even if they could not perceive. (Cicero)
It is an affair to be hung in a cabinet, or at the end of the tongue, as at the end of the ear, for show. Virtuous action is no longer recognized: those who bear its face do not, however, have its essence, because profit, glory, fear, habit and other such extraneous causes lead us to produce it. The justice, valor, and goodness that we display during it can be so named for the consideration of others and the face they present in public, but for the worker it is not virtue at all; there is another proposed end, another moving cause. Now virtue confesses nothing but what is done by it and for it alone. In the great battle of Potidaea that the Greeks under Pausanias won against Mardonius and the Persians, the victors, according to their custom, having shared the glory of the exploit among themselves, attributed to the Spartan nation the pre-eminence of valor in this combat.
The Spartans, excellent judges of virtue, when they came to decide which individual should receive the honor of having done the best on that day, found that Aristodemus had most courageously risked himself; but they did not award him the prize, because his virtue had been incited by the desire to purge himself of the reproach that he had incurred at Thermopylae, and an appetite to die courageously to redeem his past shame. Our judgments are still sick, and follow the depravity of our morals. I see most of the minds of my time being ingenious in obscuring the glory of beautiful and generous ancient actions, giving them some vile interpretation, and inventing vain occasions and causes for them. Great subtlety! Give me the most excellent and pure action, and I can see myself providing fifty vicious intentions for it. God knows, for those who want to extend them, what a diversity of images our internal will does not suffer. The ingenious do not so much maliciously as heavily and rudely do all their slander. I will gladly take the same trouble that is taken to detract from these great names, and the same license, to lend them some flippancy to raise them up.
These rare figures, chosen for the example of the world by the consent of the wise, I would not hesitate to load them with honor, as much as my invention could interpret and favorable circumstances. But it must be believed that the efforts of our conception are far below their merit. It is the duty of good people to paint virtue as beautifully as possible; and we would not be ashamed, when passion transports us to the favor of such holy forms. On the contrary, what these do, they do either out of malice, or through the vice of bringing their belief within their reach, which I have just spoken of, or, as I think rather, because they do not have the vision strong and clear enough to conceive the splendor of virtue in its naive purity, nor trained to do so: as Plutarch said that, in his time, some attributed the cause of the death of the young Cato to the fear he had had of Caesar: for which he rightly took offense; and one can judge from this how much more offended he was by those who attributed it to ambition. Foolish people!
It would have been better if he had done a good deed, generously and justly, rather with ignominy, than for the sake of glory. This character was truly a patron that nature chose to show the limits of human virtue and firmness. But I am not here to deal with this rich argument. I only want to bring together the features of five Latin poets on the praise of Cato, and for Cato’s interest, and, incidentally, for theirs too. Now the well-nurtured child should find, at the expense of the others, the first two quite good, the third one greener, but which has been brought down by the extravagance of its force; consider that there would be room there for one or two more degrees of invention to reach the fourth, at which point he will clasp his hands in admiration.
At last, first of some space, but which he will swear cannot be filled by any human mind, he will be astonished, he will be transfixed. Here is a marvel: we have many more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to make it than to recognize it. To a certain low degree, it can be judged by precepts and art. But the good, the excessive, the divine is above rules and reason. Whoever discerns its beauty with a steady and calm gaze does not see it, any more than the splendor of a flash of lightning. It does not practice our judgment: it ravishes and ravages it. The fury that pierces he who knows how to penetrate it, still incites a third party to hear him speak of it: like magnetism, it not only attracts a needle, but also instills in it its ability to attract others.
And it is more clearly seen in theaters, that the sacred inspiration of the muses, having first stirred the poet to anger, mourning, hatred, and out of himself wherever they want, strikes again through the poet the actor, and through the actor consecutively an entire people. It is the threading of our needles, suspended from one another. From my earliest childhood, poetry has had that effect, piercing and transporting me. But this very lively resentment that is naturally in me has been handled in different ways, not so much higher and lower (for they were always the highest in each species) as different in color: first a gay and ingenious fluidity; then a sharp and spicy subtlety; finally a dead and constant force. The example will say it better: Ovid, Lucan, Virgil. But here are our people on the career.
Let Cato, while he lives, be greater than even Caesar,
says one (Martial)
And Cato, unconquered, defeated by death,
says the other. (Manilius) And the other, speaking of the civil wars between Caesar and Pompey,
The victorious cause pleased the gods, but the defeated one pleased Cato. (Lucan)
And the fourth, on the praises of Caesar:
And all the world was subdued, Except the atrocious mind of Cato. (Horace)
And the master of the chorus, after having displayed the names of the greatest Romans in his painting, ended in this way:
Cato giving them the law. (Virgil)