Judgment is useful to all subjects, and is mixed with everything. For this reason, in the trials I make of it here, I employ all sorts of opportunities. If it is a subject that I do not understand, I try it anyway, sounding the ford from afar; and then, finding it too deep for my size, I stay on the bank: and this recognition of not being able to go any further is a trait of its effect, even of those of which it boasts the most. Sometimes, I try to see if he will find something to give it substance, and to support and stabilize it, in a vain and empty subject. Sometimes I take him to a noble and troubled subject, to which he has nothing to find of himself, the path being so cleared that he can only walk on the trail of others. There he plays his game of choosing the road that seems best to him, and, of a thousand paths, he dictates that this one, or that one, has been the best choice. I take fortune’s first argument. They are equally good to me. And never intends to produce them in their entirety.
For I see nothing of the whole: Those who promise to show it to us do nothing. Of the hundred members and faces that each thing has, I take one now and then only to lick, now and then to touch lightly; and sometimes to pinch to the bone. I give it a point, not as widely as I can, but as deeply as I know how. And I like to seize them more often by some unusual luster. I would risk treating any subject in depth if I knew myself less. Sowing a word here, another there, samples taken from their context, scattered, without design or promise, I am not obliged to make good, nor to stick to them myself, without varying when it pleases me; and to surrender to doubt and uncertainty, and to my mistress form, which is ignorance. Every movement reveals us. That same spirit of Caesar, which is seen in the ordering and marshalling of the battle of Pharsalia, is also seen in the marshalling of idle and amorous dalliances. A horse is judged not only by seeing him handled on a racecourse, but also by seeing him walk, even to see him at rest in the stable.
Among the functions of the soul there are base ones: he who does not see it there, does not fully know it. And perhaps one notices better where it is going when it is simple. The winds of passion take hold of it more in these lofty realms. It is concerned with each subject in its entirety, and deals with it in its entirety, never dealing with more than one at a time. And it deals with it, not according to the subject, but according to itself. Subject matters may have their own weights and measures and conditions, but within us, it cuts them as it sees fit. Death is dreadful to Cicero, desirable to Cato, indifferent to Socrates. Health, conscience, authority, science, wealth, beauty and their opposites strip themselves at the entrance, and receive from the soul a new garment, and the dye that it pleases it: brown, green, light, dark, sour, sweet, deep, superficial, and as it pleases each of them: for they have not verified their styles, rules and forms in common: each is Queen in her own right. Therefore let us no longer make excuses for the external qualities of things: it is up to us to realize them. Our good and our evil depend only on us. Let us offer our offerings and our vows to it, not to fortune: it can do nothing about our morals: on the contrary, they draw it in their wake and mold it to their form.
Why should I not judge Alexander at table, conversing and drinking just as much? Or if he were to play chess, what part of his mind would not be touched and employed by this silly and childish game? I hate and flee it, because it is not playful enough, and because it amuses us too seriously, being ashamed to give it the attention that would be enough for something worthwhile. He was no more capable of organizing his glorious voyage to the Indies; nor this other one of untying a passage on which the salvation of the human race depends. See how much our soul enlarges and deepens this ridiculous amusement: if all its nerves are not tensed: how fully it gives each person the opportunity to know themselves, and to judge themselves fairly. I see and taste myself more universally in no other posture. What passion does it not arouse in us?
Anger, spite, hatred, impatience and a vehement ambition to conquer, in a thing in which it would be more excusable to be ambitious to be defeated. For rare and above-average precellence befits a man of honor in a frivolous thing. What I am saying in this example can be said in all others: every part, every occupation of man accuses him and shows him as much as any other. Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, the former of whom, finding the human condition vain and ridiculous, only went out in public with a mocking and laughing face; Heraclitus, having pity and compassion for this same condition of ours, wore a continually saddened face, and eyes full of tears,
The other laughed whenever he moved one to the threshold and put out his foot; the other, on the contrary, wept. (Juvenal)
I prefer the first humor, not because it is more pleasant to laugh than to cry, but because it is more disdainful, and it condemns us more than the other: and it seems to me that we can never be sufficiently despised according to our merit. Lamentation and commiseration are mixed with some estimation of the thing that is lamented; the things that are mocked are esteemed without importance. I do not think that there is as much misfortune in us as there is vanity, nor as much malice as foolishness: we are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not so miserable as we are vile.
Thus Diogenes, who dawdled apart, rolling his barrel and wagging his nose at the great Alexander, considering us flies or wind-filled bladders, was a much sharper and more poignant judge, and consequently more just, in my opinion, than Timon, the man who was nicknamed the hater of men. Because what we hate, we take to heart. This one wished us harm, was passionate about the desire for our ruin, fled our conversation as dangerous, of wicked and depraved nature; the other esteemed us so little that we could neither trouble nor alter him by our contagion, he left us company, not out of fear, but out of disdain for our company: he did not consider us capable of either doing good or doing evil.
The response of Statilius, to whom Brutus spoke in order to involve him in the conspiracy against Caesar, was of the same kind: he considered the undertaking just, but did not consider the men worthy, and no effort was made in their regard, in accordance with the discipline of Hegesias, who said that the wise man should do nothing except for himself: especially since he alone is worthy for whom one faces; and to that of Theodorus, that it is unjust for the wise to risk themselves for the good of their country, and to put wisdom in peril for fools. Our own particular condition is as ridiculous as it is laughable.