Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Essays of Montaigne — Volume 03 by Michel de Montaigne
page 15 of 62 (24%)
vent to those tears and lamentations that the other more potent passion
had till then suspended.

"Tum pavor sapientiam omnem mihiex animo expectorat."

["Then fear drove out all intelligence from my mind."--Ennius, ap.
Cicero, Tusc., iv. 8.]

Such as have been well rubbed in some skirmish, may yet, all wounded and
bloody as they are, be brought on again the next day to charge; but such
as have once conceived a good sound fear of the enemy, will never be made
so much as to look him in the face. Such as are in immediate fear of a
losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual
anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually
poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk. And the
many people who, impatient of the perpetual alarms of fear, have hanged
or drowned themselves, or dashed themselves to pieces, give us
sufficiently to understand that fear is more importunate and
insupportable than death itself.

The Greeks acknowledged another kind of fear, differing from any we have
spoken of yet, that surprises us without any visible cause, by an impulse
from heaven, so that whole nations and whole armies have been struck with
it. Such a one was that which brought so wonderful a desolation upon
Carthage, where nothing was to be heard but affrighted voices and
outcries; where the inhabitants were seen to sally out of their houses as
to an alarm, and there to charge, wound, and kill one another, as if they
had been enemies come to surprise their city. All things were in
disorder and fury till, with prayers and sacrifices, they had appeased
their gods--[Diod. Sic., xv. 7]; and this is that they call panic
DigitalOcean Referral Badge