["Let the wise man bear the name of a madman, the just one of an
unjust, if he seek wisdom more than is sufficient.” 
—­Horace, Ep., i. 6, 15.]

["The wise man is no longer wise, the just man no longer just, if he
seek to carry his love for wisdom or virtue beyond that which is
necessary.”]

This is a subtle consideration of philosophy.  A man may both be too much in love with virtue, and be excessive in a just action.  Holy Writ agrees with this, Be not wiser than you should, but be soberly wise.—­[St. Paul, Epistle to the Romans, xii. 3.]—­I have known a great man,

—­["It is likely that Montaigne meant Henry iii., king of France.  The Cardinal d’Ossat, writing to Louise, the queen-dowager, told her, in his frank manner, that he had lived as much or more like a monk than a monarch (Letter XXIII.) And Pope Sextus V., speaking of that prince one day to the Cardinal de Joyeuse, protector of the affairs of France, said to him pleasantly, ’There is nothing that your king hath not done, and does not do so still, to be a monk, nor anything that I have not done, not to be a monk.’”—­Coste.]

prejudice the opinion men had of his devotion, by pretending to be devout beyond all examples of others of his condition.  I love temperate and moderate natures.  An immoderate zeal, even to that which is good, even though it does not offend, astonishes me, and puts me to study what name to give it.  Neither the mother of Pausanias,

—­["Montaigne would here give us to understand, upon the authority of Diodorus Siculus, that Pausanias’ mother gave the first hint of the punishment that was to be inflicted on her son.  ‘Pausanias,’ says this historian, ’perceiving that the ephori, and some other Lacedoemonians, aimed at apprehending him, got the start of them, and went and took sanctuary m Minerva’s temple:  and the Lacedaemonians, being doubtful whether they ought to take him from thence in violation of the franchise there, it is said that his own mother came herself to the temple but spoke nothing nor did anything more than lay a piece of brick, which she brought with her, on the threshold of the temple, which, when she had done, she returned home.  The Lacedaemonians, taking the hint from the mother, caused the gate of the temple to be walled up, and by this means starved Pausanias, so that he died with hunger, &c. (lib. xi. cap. 10., of Amyot’s translation).  The name of Pausanias’ mother was Alcithea, as we are informed by Thucydides’ scholiast, who only says that it was reported, that when they set about walling up the gates of the chapel in which Pausanias had taken refuge, his mother Alcithea laid the first stone.”—­Coste.]

who was the first instructor of her son’s process, and threw the first stone towards his death, nor Posthumius the dictator, who put his son to death, whom the ardour of youth had successfully pushed upon the enemy a little more advanced than the rest of his squadron, do appear to me so much just as strange; and I should neither advise nor like to follow so savage a virtue, and that costs so dear.