The Complete Essays of Montaigne

by Michel de Montaigne

seems reasonable, when a man talks of retiring from the world, that he should set his gaze outside of it. These men do so only halfway. They indeed arrange their affairs for the time when they will no longer be there; but by a ridiculous contradiction they still aspire to reap the fruit of their plan from the world when they have left it. The idea of those who seek solitude for religious reasons, filling their hearts with the certainty of divine promises for the other life, is much more sane and consistent. They set before their eyes God, an object infinite both in goodness and in power; in him the soul has the wherewithal to satisfy its desires abundantly in complete freedom. Afflictions, sufferings, come to them as profit, being used for the acquisition of eternal health and rejoicing; death is to be desired, being the passage to so perfect a state. The harshness of their rules is promptly smoothed by habit; and the carnal appetites are frustrated and then put to sleep by denial, for nothing keeps them up but use and exercise. Only this one goal of another life, happily immortal, rightly deserves that we abandon the comforts and pleasures of this life of ours. And he who can really and constantly kindle his soul with the flame of that living faith and hope, builds himself in solitude a life that is voluptuous and delightful beyond any other kind of life.