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234 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
She was seene to dismay and confound all her faculties
by the only biting of a sicke dog, and to containe no
great constancie of discourse, no sufficiencies no vertue,
no philosophicall resolution, no contention of her forces
that might exempt her from the subjection of these
accidents: the spittle or slavering of a mastive dog
shed upon Socrates his hands, to trouble all his wisdome,
to distemper his great and regular imaginations, and so
to vanquish and annull them that no signe or shew of
his former knowledge was left in him :
vis animai
Contu? bafur, ' et divisa seorsum
Disjectatur eodtm illo distracta venenoji
The soules force is disturbed, separated,
Distraught by that same poison, alienated,
And the said venomo to finde no more resistance in
his soule than in that of a childe of foure yeares old, a
venome able to make all Philosophy (were she incarnate)
become furious and mad: so that Cato, who scorned
both death and fortune, could not abide the sight of a
looking glasse or of water; overcome with horrour, and
quelled with amazement, if by the contagion of a mad
dog lie had fallen into that sicknesse which physitians
call hydrophobia, or feare of waters.
• vis morbi distractaper artus
Turbat agens animam, spumantes aequore salso
Ventorum ut vahdis/ervescunt viribus undce,²
The force of the disease disperst through, joints offends,
Driving the soule, us in salt Seas the wave ascends,
Foming by furious force which the wind raging lends.
Now, concerning this point, Philosophy hath indeed
armed man for the enduring of all other accidents,
whether with patience, or if it be overcostly to be
found, with an infallible defeat in conveying her selfe
altogether from the sense: but they are meanes which
¹ LUCR. 1. iii. 501. ² Ib. 495.