A man who enters a crowd must go now this way, now that, keep in his elbows, retreat or advance, nay he must quit the straight path, according to what he encounters. He must live not so much according to himself as according to others; not according to what he proposes to himself, but according to what is proposed to him, according to the times, according to the men, according to the business in hand.
Celuy qui va en la presse, il faut qu'il gauchisse, qu'il serre ses couddes, qu'il recule, ou qu'il avance, voire qu'il quitte le droict chemin, selon ce qu'il rencontre: Qu'il vive non tant selon soy, que selon autruy: non selon ce qu'il se propose, mais selon ce qu'on luy propose: selon le temps, selon les hommes, selon les affaires.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, December 09, 2005
A Man in a Crowd
Montaigne, Essays 3.9 (tr. E.J. Trechmann):