CHAPTER XII.
LAST WORDS.
"By carrying calves Milo, 'tis said, grew strong, Until with ease he bore a bull along." It is, I believe, unquestionable that, if he ever lived, a man who had attained to absolute control over his own mind, must have been the most enviable of mortals.

MONTAIGNE illustrates such an ideal being by a quotation from VIRGIL: "Velut rupes vastum quae prodit in aequor Obvia ventorum furiis, exposta que ponto, Vim cunctum atque minas perfert caelique marisque Ipsa immota manens." "He as a rock among vast billows stood, Scorning loud winds and the wild raging flood, And firm remaining, all the force defies, From the grim threatening seas and thundering skies." And MONTAIGNE also doubted whether such self-control was possible.

He remarks of it: "Let us never attempt these Examples; we shall never come up to them.
This is too much and too rude for our common souls to undergo.

CATO indeed gave up the noblest Life that ever was upon this account, but it is for us meaner spirited men to fly from the storm as far as we can." Is it?
I may have thought so once, but I begin to believe that in this darkness a new strange light is beginning to show itself.

The victory may be won far more easily than the rather indolent and timid Essayist ever imagined.