Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne Author:Michel de Montaigne Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 22 DO THINE OWN WORK, AND KNOW THYSELF. authentick testimony of the imbecility of human nature, it is recorded by the ancients, that Diodorus the logician die... more »d upon the place, out of an extream passion of shame, for not having been able in his own school, and in the presence of a great auditory, to disingage himself from a nice argument that was propounded to him. I for my part am very little subject to these violent passions ; I am naturally of a stubborn apprehension, which also by discourse, I every day harden and fortifie more and more. Chap. III.—That Our Affections Carry Themselves Beyond us Such as accuse mankind of the folly of gaping and panting after future things, and advise us to make our benefits of those which are present, and to set up our rest upon them, as having too short a reach to lay hold upon that which is to come, and it being more impossible for us, than to retreive what is past; have hit upon the most universal of human errours, if that may be call'd an errour to which nature it self has dispos'd us, who in order to the subsistence, and continuation of her own work, has, amongst several others, prepossess'd us with this deceiving imagination, as being more jealous of our action, than afraid of our knowledge. For we are never present with, but always beyond our selves. Fear, desire and hope, are still pushing us on towards the future, depriving us in the mean time of the sense and consideration of that, which is to amuse us, with the thought of what shall be, even when we shall be no more. Calamitosus est animus futuri anxius.—Seneca, Epist. 98. A mind that anxious is of things to come, Is still abroad, finding no rest at home. We find this great precept often repeated in Plato, do thine own work, and know thyself. Of which two parts, b...« less