that are too severe; Manliana Imperia, says Livy, were not only horrible for the time present, but of a bad example to posterity.  And this historian makes no doubt but such commands would have been actually styled Posthumiana Imperia, if Posthumius had been the first who set so barbarous an example (Livy, lib. iv. cap. 29, and lib. viii. cap. 7).  But, however, Montaigne has Valer.  Maximus on his side, who says expressly, that Posthumius caused his son to be put to death, and Diodorus of Sicily (lib. xii. cap. 19).”—­Coste.]

The archer that shoots over, misses as much as he that falls short, and ’tis equally troublesome to my sight, to look up at a great light, and to look down into a dark abyss.  Callicles in Plato says, that the extremity of philosophy is hurtful, and advises not to dive into it beyond the limits of profit; that, taken moderately, it is pleasant and useful; but that in the end it renders a man brutish and vicious, a contemner of religion and the common laws, an enemy to civil conversation, and all human pleasures, incapable of all public administration, unfit either to assist others or to relieve himself, and a fit object for all sorts of injuries and affronts.  He says true; for in its excess, it enslaves our natural freedom, and by an impertinent subtlety, leads us out of the fair and beaten way that nature has traced for us.

The love we bear to our wives is very lawful, and yet theology thinks fit to curb and restrain it.  As I remember, I have read in one place of St. Thomas Aquinas,—­[Secunda Secundx, Quaest. 154, art. 9.]—­where he condemns marriages within any of the forbidden degrees, for this reason, amongst others, that there is some danger, lest the friendship a man bears to such a woman, should be immoderate; for if the conjugal affection be full and perfect betwixt them, as it ought to be, and that it be over and above surcharged with that of kindred too, there is no doubt, but such an addition will carry the husband beyond the bounds of reason.

Those sciences that regulate the manners of men, divinity and philosophy, will have their say in everything; there is no action so private and secret that can escape their inspection and jurisdiction.  They are best taught who are best able to control and curb their own liberty; women expose their nudities as much as you will upon the account of pleasure, though in the necessities of physic they are altogether as shy.  I will, therefore, in their behalf: 

     —­[Coste translates this:  “on the part of philosophy and theology,”
     observing that but few wives would think themselves obliged to
     Montaigne for any such lesson to their husbands.]—­

teach the husbands, that is, such as are too vehement in the exercise of the matrimonial duty—­if such there still be—­this lesson, that the very pleasures they enjoy in the society of their wives are reproachable if immoderate, and that a licentious and riotous abuse of them is a fault as reprovable here as in illicit connections.  Those immodest and debauched tricks and postures, that the first ardour suggests to us in this affair, are not only indecently but detrimentally practised upon our wives.  Let them at least learn impudence from another hand; they are ever ready enough for our business, and I for my part always went the plain way to work.