#qohelet

There is nothing new below the sun.

EXTREMA HOMINI SCIENTIA VT RES SVNT BONI CONSVLERE CÆTERA SECVRVM. ECCL.    The ultimate wisdom of man is to consider things as good, and for the rest to be untroubled. Ecclesiastes.    note: these words exist in neither Ecclesiastes, nor Ecclesiasticus, but probably represent Montaigne’s distillation of that book’s spirit.                             ❧ COGNOSCENDI STVDIVM HOMINI DEDIT DEVS EIVS TORQVENDI GRATIA. ECCL.1.    God gave to man the desire for knowledge for the sake of tormenting him. Ecclesiastes 1.    note: a paraphrase of Ecclesiasticus 1:13 which runs:    Et proposui in animo meo quaerere et investigare sapienter de omnibus quae fiunt sub sole. Hanc occupationem pessimam dedit Deus filiis hominum ut occuparentur in ea. [I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under the sky. It is a heavy burden that God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with.]    Montaigne uses this paraphrase in 'Of Presumption' and 'An Apology for Raymond Sebond'.                              ❧ OMNIVM QVÆ SVB SOLE SVNT FORTVNA ET LEX PAR EST. ECCL.9.    Everything under the sun follows the same law and the same destiny. Ecclesiastes 9.    note: a reference to Ecclesiastes 9:3 shows up in a slightly modified form in 'An Apology for Raymond Sebond, 3:2': "Tout ce qui est sous le ciel, dit le sage, court une loy et fortune pareille." Ecclesiasticus has this as: Hoc est pessimism inter omnia, quae sub sole fiunt, quia eadem cunctis eveniunt.                              ❧ NVLLIVS VEL MAGNÆ VEL PARVÆ EARVM RERVM QVAS DEVS TAM MVLTAS FECIT NOTITIA IN NOBIS EST. ECCL.3.    The notion of everything, large and small, of all the innumerable creatures of God, is to be found within us. Ecclesiastes 3:1.                              ❧ SICVT IGNORAS QVOMODO ANIMA CONIVNGATVR CORPORI SIC NESCIS OPERA DEI. ECCL.11 .    You who know nothing of how the soul marries the body, you therefore know nothing of God’s works. Ecclesiastes 11:5.                              ❧ NESCIS HOMO HOC AN ILLVD MAGIS EXPEDIAT AN ÆQVE VTRVMQVE. ECCL.11.    You are unaware if your interest is here rather than there, or if they are alike in value. Ecclesiastes 11.    note: echoes Ecclesiasticus 11:6:    Mane semina semen tuum et vespere ne cesset manus tua; quia nescis quid magis oriatur hoc aut illuf et si utrumque simul melius erit. [In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening don’t withhold your hand; for you don’t know which will prosper, whether this or that, or whether they both will be equally good.]                              ❧ NE PLVS SAPIAS QVAM NECESSE EST NE OBSTVPESCAS. ECCL.7.    Be not overwise lest you become senseless. Ecclesiastes 7:16.                              ❧ RES OMNES SVNT DIFFICILIORES QVAM VT EAS POSSIT HOMO CONSEQVI. ECCL.1.    All things are too difficult for man to understand them. Ecclesiastes 1.    note: the Vulgate of Ecclesiastes 1:8 has:    Cunctae res difficiles, non potest eas homo explicare sermone. [All things are wearisome, more than one can say.]                              ❧ PER OMNIA VANITAS. ECCL.1.    All is vanity. Ecclesiastes 1.    note: the complete Vulgate verse of Ecclesiasticus 1:2 runs:    Vanitas vanitatum, dixit Ecclesiastes: vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas. [Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.]                              ❧ QVID SVPERBIS TERRA ET CINIS. ECCL.10.    Earth and ashes, wherefrom your pride? Ecclesiastes 10.    note: probably a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 10:9: "Whoever carves out stones may be injured by them. Whoever splits wood may be endangered thereby."                              ❧ FRVERE IVCVNDE PRÆSENTIBVS CÆTERA EXTRA TE. ECCL.3    Enjoy pleasantly present things, others are beyond thee. Ecclesiastes 3:22.                              ❧ FECIT DEVS HOMINEM SIMILEM VMBRÆ DE QVA POST SOLIS OCCASVM QVIS IVDICABIT. ECCL.7.    God has made man like a shadow, of which who shall judge after the setting of the sun? Ecclesiastes 7.    note: there is nothing even remotely close to this in chapter 7, Ecclesiastes or anywhere else in scripture. And yet in 'An Apology for Raymond Sebond, 3:5', Montaigne again attributes this to the Bible: "La saincte Parole declare miserables ceux d’entre nous qui s’estiment. Bourbe et cendre, leur dit elle, qu’as tu à te glorfier? Et ailleurs: Dier a faict l’homme semblable à l’ombre; de laquelle qui jugera quand par l’esloignement de la lumiére elle sera esvanouye?" [Holy Scripture declares miserable those who think well of themselves: “Dust and ashes,” it says to them, “what have you to glory in?” And elsewhere: “God has made man like the shadow; who can say of it when it will have vanished with the passing of the light?"]                              ❧ EX TOT DEI OPERIBVS NIHILO MAGIS QVIDQVAM HOMINI COGNITVM QVAM VENTI VESTIGIVM. ECCL.11.    Of all the works of God nothing is more unknown to any man than the track of the wind. Ecclesiastes 11.    note: this text does not exist in Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes 11:4 runs:    Qui observat ventum, non seminat: et qui considerat nubes, nunquam metet; [He who observes the wind won’t sow; and he who regards the clouds won’t reap.]                              ❧ QVARE IGNORAS QVOMODO ANIMA CONJVGITVR CORPORI NESCIS OPERA DEI. ECCL. 11.    As you are ignorant of the way of the spirit, so you do not know the works of God. Ecclesiastes 11.    note: the source is Ecclesiastes 11:5 which in the Vulgate runs:    Quomodo ignoras quae sit via spiritus, et qua ratione compingantur ossa in ventre praegnantis, sic nescis opera Dei qui fabricator est omnium. [As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her who is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.]    cf. 'Apology for Raymond Sebond, 3:5'.

Dove c'è molta sapienza, c'è molto tormento, e se si aumenta il sapere, si aumenta il dolore.

[As often in the Essays, ‘soul’ here includes all aspects of the human personality not strictly corporeal. Montaigne is especially concerned in this chapter with those irrational bursts of choler which are vented in wrath directed against inanimate or guiltless objects and which sweep over great generals every bit as much as over a girl distraught with grief for her brother or over a gouty old man. Our mind (our esprit) is ever like that: prone to be irrational as well as refractory to right rule.] [A] A local gentleman of ours who is marvellously subject to gout would answer his doctors quite amusingly when asked to give up salted meats entirely. He would say that he liked to have something to blame when tortured by the onslaughts of that illness: the more he yelled out curses against the saveloy or the tongue or the ham, the more relief he felt. Seriously though, when our arm is raised to strike it pains us if the blow lands nowhere and merely beats the air; similarly, if a prospect is to be made pleasing it must not be dissipated and scattered over an airy void but have some object at a reasonable distance to sustain it: [B] Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densæ Occurant silvæ spatio diffusus inani; [As winds, unless they come up against dense woods, lose their force and are distended into empty space;]* [A] It seems that the soul too, in the same way, loses itself in itself when shaken and disturbed unless it is given something to grasp on to; and so we must always provide it with an object to butt up against and to act upon. Plutarch says of those who dote over pet monkeys or little dogs that the faculty for loving which is in all of us, rather than remaining useless forges a false and frivolous object for want of a legitimate one. And we can see that our souls deceive themselves in their emotions by erecting some false fantastical object rather than let there be nothing to act upon. [B] Animals are likewise carried away by anger: they attack the stone or piece of iron which has wounded them or else take vengeance on the pain they feel by biting themselves: Pannonis haud aliter post ictum saevior ursa Cum jaculum parva Lybis amentavit habena, Se rotat in vulnus, telumque irata receptum Impetit, et secum fugientem circuit hastam. [Not otherwise does the bear in Pannonia: made more savage by the blow struck by the Libyan hunter with his dart tied to a leather thong, she rolls on her wound and attacks the weapon buried in her flesh and chases it round and round in circles as it flees from her.]* [A] What causes do we not discover for the ills which befall us! What will we not attack, rightly or wrongly, rather than go without something to skirmish against? It is not those blond maiden tresses which you are tearing, nor the whiteness of that bosom which you are beating so cruelly in your distress, which killed your beloved brother with an unlucky musket-ball. [C] When the Roman army in Spain lost those two great commanders who were brothers, Pliny says ‘flere omnes repente et offensare capita’. [at once, they all start weeping and beating their heads.]* A common practice. And was it not amusing of Bion the philosopher to ask of that king who was tearing out his hair in grief: ‘Does he think that alopecia gives relief from sorrow?’* [A] And who has not seen a man sink his teeth into playing-cards and swallow the lot or else stuff a set of dice down his throat so as to have something to avenge himself on for the loss of his money! Xerxes flogged the waters [C] of the Hellespont, put them in shackles and heaped insults upon them [A] and wrote out a challenge defying Mount Athos; Cyrus kept an entire army occupied for several days in taking revenge on the river Gyndus for the fright it gave him when he was crossing it; and Caligula demolished a very beautiful house on account of the pleasure his mother had taken in it.    [C] In my younger days the country-folk used to tell how one of our neighbours’ kings who had received a good cudgelling from God swore to get his revenge on him by ordering that, for ten years, nobody should pray to Him, mention Him nor (insofar as it lay in his power) even believe in Him. By this they meant to portray not so much the folly as the inborn arrogance of the nation about which this story was told. Those vices always go together but, in truth, such actions are more beholden to overweening pride than to stupidity.    [A] When Caesar Augustus had been battered by a storm, he began to defy Neptune, the god of the sea; to get his revenge during the ceremonies at the games in the Roman Circus he removed his statue from its place among the others. In that, he was less excusable than the generals mentioned above–and less than he himself was later on when, having lost in Germany a battle under Quintilius Varus, he kept beating his head against the wall in anger and despair, crying, ‘Varus! Give me back my soldiers!’ Those other cases surpass all folly since they add blasphemy to it when they address [C] themselves thus [A] to God–or even to Fortune as though she had ears subject to our assaults–[C] following the example of the Thracians who revenge themselves like a Titan during thunder and lightning by shooting darts into the sky, seeking to bring God to his senses by a shower of arrows.    [A] Yet as that old poet says in Plutarch: Point ne se faut courroucer aux affaires: II ne leur chaut de toutes nos choleres [There is no point in getting angry against events: they are indifferent to our wrath.]*    [B] But we shall never utter enough abuse against the unruliness of our minds.