Some people, when they retire from a life of public service, are told that they still have many talents, which should be used in opposing tyrants, poverty, injustice and other evils. It’s a good argument.
But Montaigne said that after a period of public service, we should invest in ourselves.
It is time to slip our knots with society now that we can contribute nothing to it. A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing. Our powers are failing: let us draw them in and keep them within ourselves. Whoever can turn round the duties of love and fellowship and pour them into himself should do so. In that decline which makes a man a useless encumbrance importunate to others, let him avoid being an encumbrance, importunate and useless to himself. Let him pamper himself, cherish himself, but above all control himself, so respecting his reason and so fearing his conscience that he cannot stumble in their presence without shame.
He added a quotation from Quintilian: “It is rare for anybody to respect himself enough.”
I hope people choose the course that seems best to them. I also hope people are aware there’s more than one viewpoint about the ethical thing to do.
• Source: Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, translated by M.A. Screech; London: Penguin Books, 1993, p. 272. The quotation is in “On Solitude.”
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