The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [A] Why, a little Spartan boy had stolen a fox: [C] (Spartans were more afraid of being mocked for having botched a theft than we are of being punished for one): [A] he stuffed it34 under his cloak and rather than betray himself let it gnaw into his belly. Another lad was carrying incense for the sacrifice when a live coal fell up his sleeve: he let it burn through to the bone so as not to disturb the ceremony. When, according to their educational practices, an assay was made of the bravery of boys at the age of seven, many let themselves be flogged to death rather than change their expressions. [C] Cicero saw crowds fighting each other with feet, fists and teeth, till they collapsed with exhaustion rather than admit defeat. ‘Nunquam naturam mos vinceret: est enim ea semper invicta; sed nos umbris, deliciis, otio, languore, desidia animum infecimus; opinionibus maloque more delinitum mollivimus.’ [Never could habit conquer Nature: Nature is unconquerable; yet we have corrupted our souls with unrealities, luxuries, leisure, idleness, listlessness and sloth; we have made them soft with opinions and evil habits.]35

  [A] Everyone knows the story of Scaevola who had slipped into the enemy’s camp to kill their leader: having failed in this attempt he thought of a strange way to complete his task and deliver his country: not only did he confess his purpose to Porsenna (the king he sought to kill) but added that he had a great number of Roman accomplices within the camp; to show what sort of man he was, a brazier was brought in: he suffered his arm to be grilled and roasted: he stood watching it until that enemy himself, in horror, ordered the brazier removed.36

  What about that man who would not condescend to break off reading his book when they cut him open? And what of that other man who persisted in laughing at the ills done to him and in mocking them until his incensed and cruel torturers, having vainly invented new torments and increased them one after another, had to admit that he was the winner?37

  ‘But then, he was a philosopher’ – Yes, but when one of Caesar’s gladiators suffered his wounds to be probed and cut open he kept on laughing.38 [C] ‘Quis mediocris gladiator ingemuit; quis vultum mutavit unquam? Quis non modo stetit, verum etiam decubuit turpiter? Quis cum decubuisset, ferrum recipere jussus, contraxit?’ [What quite ordinary gladiator has ever made a groan? Which has ever changed his expression? Which has ever behaved shamefully whether still on his feet or beaten to the ground? And having fallen, which of them ever withdrew his neck when ordered to receive the sword?]39

  [A] Women can be brought in to this as well. Who has not heard of that woman of Paris who had herself flayed alive merely to acquire a fresh colour from a new skin? Women have been known to have good sound teeth extracted so as to rearrange them in a better order or in the hope of making their voices softer or fuller. How many examples of contempt for pain does that sex supply! Provided they can hope to enhance their beauty, what do they fear? What can they not do?

  [B] Vellere queis cura est albos a stirpe capillos,

  Et faciem dempta pelle referre novam.

  [Their labour consists in plucking out white hairs and scraping off skin to put on a new face.]40

  [A] I have known women who swallowed sand and ashes, specifically striving to ruin their digestions in order to acquire a pallid hue. And to appear slim in the Spanish fashion what tortures will they suffer, with corsets and braces cutting into the living flesh under their ribs – sometimes even dying from it.

  [C] Many peoples in our own times commonly inflict deliberate wounds on themselves to give credit to their oaths – our own King tells of several memorable examples of this which he saw in Poland and in which he was involved.41 I know some men who imitated that in France; apart from which I personally saw a girl who, to prove the earnestness of her promises as well as her constancy, took the pin she wore in her hair and jabbed herself four or five times in the arm, breaking the skin and bleeding herself in good earnest. The Turks sport great scars for their ladies; to make the marks permanent they immediately apply hot irons to their wounds to staunch the blood and form the scab, keeping them there an incredible time. Those who have seen it have written sworn depositions about it for me. Why, you can find Turks any day who will make a deep gash in their arms or their thighs for a mere ten aspers.42

  [A] I am pleased to find martyrs nearer to hand where we need them more: Christendom provides us with plenty. Following the guidance of our Holy Ensample many, from devotion, have taken up the cross. From a most reliable witness we learn that Saint Louis, when king, wore a hair-shirt until his confessor gave him a dispensation in his old age; every Friday he made his priest flog his shoulders with five iron chains, which, for this purpose, he always bore about with him in a box.43 Guillaume, our last Duke of Guyenne (father of that Aliénor who transmitted the Duchy to the houses of France and England) throughout the last ten or twelve years of his life, as a penance, continuously wore an armoured breast-plate under a monk’s cloak.44 Count Foulk of Anjou went all the way to Jerusalem to be scourged by two of his manservants as he stood with a rope round his neck before Our Lord’s Sepulchre.45 And in various places on Good Fridays do we not still find many men and women flagellating themselves, tearing into their flesh and cutting it to the bone? I have often seen it: there was no trickery. Since they wear masks some are said to witness to another’s devotion in return for cash, showing an even greater contempt for pain in that the spur of devotion is greater than the spur of avarice.

  [C] With calm faces, betraying no signs of grief, Quintus Maximus buried his son the Consul; Marcus Cato buried his son the Praetor elect; and Lucius Paulus, both of his sons within a few days of each other. Some time ago I said (as a quip) that one particular man had even cheated God of his justice: in one day three of his grown-up sons met violent deaths – which we may believe to have been sent to him as a bitter chastisement; yet he took it almost as a blessing.46 I myself have lost two or three children, not without grief but without brooding over it; but they were still only infants. Yet hardly anything which can befall men cuts them more to the quick. I have observed several other misfortunes which commonly cause great affliction, but which I would hardly notice if they happened to me – and when they have done so I have been so contemptuous of some which other people consider to be hideous that I would prefer not to boast of it in public without managing a blush: ‘Ex quo intelligitur non in natura, sed in opinione esse aegritudinem.’ [From which we may learn that grief lies not in nature but opinion.]47

  [B] Opinion is a bold and immoderate advocate. Who ever sought security and repose as avidly as Alexander and Caesar sought insecurity and hardships? Teres, the father of Sitalces, used to say that when he was not waging war he felt that there was no difference between him and his stable-boy.48

  [C] When Cato the Consul sought to secure a number of Spanish towns, many of their citizens killed themselves simply because he forbade them to bear arms: ‘ferox gens nullam vitam rati sine armis esse’ [a fierce people who thought not to bear arms was not to live].49

  [B] How many do we know of who have fled from the sweetness of a calm life at home among people they knew in order to undergo the horrors of uninhabitable deserts, throwing themselves into conditions abject, vile and despised by the world, delighting in them and going so far as to prefer them!50

  Cardinal Borromeo who recently died in Milan was surrounded by debauchery; everything incited him to it: his rank, his immense wealth, the atmosphere of Italy and his youth; yet he maintained a way of life so austere that the same garment served him winter and summer; he slept only on a palliasse; any time left over after the duties of his office he spent on his knees studying, with some bread and water set beside his book – which was all the food he ever took and the only time he did so.

  I have even met men who have knowingly secured profit and preferment from letting themselves be cuckolded – yet that very word terrifies many.

  Sight may not be the most necessary of our senses but it is the most pleasurable; the most useful and pleasurable of our limbs are those which serve to beget us, yet quite a few
men have been seized with a mortal hatred for them simply because they do afford us such pleasure: they rejected them because of their value and worth; the man who plucked out his own eyes held the same opinion.51

  [C] An abundance of children is a blessing for the greater, saner, part of mankind: I and a few others find blessings in a lack of them. When Thales was asked why he did not get married, he replied that he did not want to leave any descendants.52

  That it is our opinion which confers value can be seen from those many things which we do not even bother to look at when making our judgements, looking, rather, at ourselves: we consider neither their intrinsic qualities nor the uses they can be put to but only what it cost us to procure them – as if that were a part of their substance: in their case value consists not in what they give to us but in what we gave for them. While on this subject, I realize that where our expenditure is concerned we are good at keeping accounts: our outgoings cost us so much trouble, and we value them precisely because they do so; our opinion will never allow itself to be undervalued. What gives value to a diamond is its cost; to virtue, its difficulty; to penance, its suffering; to medicines their bitter taste.

  [B] To attain poverty one man cast his golden coins into that self-same sea which others ransack to net and catch riches.53 Epicurus said that being rich does not alleviate our worries: it changes them.54 And truly it is not want that produces avarice but plenty. I would like to tell you my experience of this. Since I grew up I have known three changes of circumstance: the first period (which lasted about twenty years) I spent with only a sporadic income, being at the orders of other people and dependent upon their help; I had no fixed allowance; nothing was laid down for me. I spent my money all the more easily and cheerfully precisely because it depended on the casualness of fortune. I have never lived better: never once did I find my friends’ purses closed to me, since I had convinced myself that none of my other wants exceeded my wanting to pay back loans on the agreed date. Seeing the efforts I made to do so, the terms were extended hundreds of times; I acquired thereby a somewhat spurious reputation for punctilious husbandry. It is in my nature to like paying my debts, as though I were casting off my shoulders that very image of slavery, a weighty burden; in addition I experience a certain pleasure in satisfying others and behaving justly. I make an exception however for the kind of repayments which involve haggling and bargaining: unless I can find somebody to do that job for me I wrongly and disgracefully put it off as long as possible, fearing the sort of quarrel which is totally incompatible with my humour and my mode of speaking. There is nothing I hate more than bargaining. It is a pure exchange of trickery and effrontery: after hours of arguing and haggling both sides go back on their pledged word to gain a few pence more. So I was always at a disadvantage when asking for a loan: I had no wish to make my request in person and relied on letters – a chancy business which is lacking in drive and actually encourages a refusal. Arrangements for my needs I used to leave light-heartedly to the stars – more freely than I later did to my own foresight and good sense.

  Most thrifty people reckon that living in such uncertainty must be horrible. In the first place they fail to realize that most people have to do so. And how many honourable men have cast all their security overboard (and still do so) seeking favourable winds from Prince or Fortune? To become Caesar, Caesar borrowed a million in gold over and above what he possessed.55 And how many merchants begin trading by selling up their farms and dispatching it all to the Indies,

  Tot per impotentia freta!

  [Over so many raging seas!]56

  And even now, in the present dearth of charity, countless thousands of religious houses live properly, expecting every day from the bounty of Heaven whatever they need for dinner.

  In the second place, people fail to realize that they base themselves on a certainty which is hardly less uncertain and chancy than chance itself. I can see Want lurking beyond an income of two thousand crowns as readily as if she were right beside me. [C] Fate57 [B] can make a thousand breaches for poverty to find a way into our riches; [C] often there is no intermediate state between the highest and the lowest fortunes:

  Fortuna vitrea est: tunc cum splendet frangitur.

  [Fortune is glass: it glitters, then it shatters.]58

  [B] Fate can send our dykes and ramparts a-toppling arse over tip; moreover I find that need, for a thousand diverse reasons, can make a home with those who have possessions as often as with those who have none; she is even perhaps less troublesome when she dwells with us alone than when we meet her accompanied by all our riches. [C] Riches are more a matter of ordinate living than of income: ‘Faber est suae quisque fortunae.’ [By each man is his fortune wrought.]59 [B] And it seems to me that a rich man who is worried, busy and under necessary obligations is more wretched than a man who is simply poor. [C] ‘In divitiis inopes, quod genus egestatis gravissimum est.’ [Poverty amidst riches is the most grievous form of want.]60 The greatest and richest of princes are regularly driven to extreme necessity by poverty and lack of cash: for what necessity is more extreme than that which turns them into tyrants, unjustly usurping the property of their subjects?

  [B] In my second stage [C] I did have money. Becoming attached to it61 [B] I soon set aside savings which were considerable for a man of my station, never reckoning a man to have anything except what was over and above his regular outgoings and never believing that he should count on what he hopes to get, however clear that hope may be. ‘What if such-and-such a mishap occurred,’ I would say, ‘and took me by surprise?’ Then, as a result of these vain and vicious thoughts I would ingeniously strive to provide against all eventualities with what I had saved and put aside. I had a reply ready for anyone who maintained that the number of mishaps was infinitely great: ‘I provided against some if not against all.’ None of this happened without painful anxiety. [C] I made a secret of it: I, who dare talk so much about myself, never talked truthfully about my money – like those rich who act poor and those poor who act rich, their consciences dispensed from witnessing truly to what they own.

  What ridiculous and shameful wisdom! [B] Was I setting out on a journey? I never thought I had made adequate provision. The heavier my money the heavier my worries, wondering as I did whether the roads were safe and then about the trustworthiness of the men in charge of my baggage; like others that I know, I was only happy about it when I had it before my eyes. When I left my strong-box at home, what thoughts and suspicions I had, sharp thorny ones and, what is worse, ones I could tell nobody about. My mind forever dwelt on it. [C] When you tot it all up, there is more trouble in keeping money than in acquiring it. [B] And even if I did not actually do all I have just said, stopping myself from doing so cost me dear. I got little profit out of my savings: [C] I had more to spend, but the spending weighed [B] no less heavily on me, for as Bion said, when it comes to plucking out hairs, it hurts the balding no less than the hairy:62 once you have grown used to having a pile of a certain size and have set your mind on doing so, you can no longer use it: [C] you do not even want to slice a bit off the top. [B] It is the kind of structure – so it seems to you – that would tumble down if you even touched it. For you to broach it, Necessity must have you by the throat. Formerly I would pawn my furniture and sell my horse far less unwillingly and with less regret than I would ever have made a breech in that beloved purse which I kept in reserve. The danger lies in its not being easy to place definite limits on such desires – [C] limits are hard to discover for things which seem good – [B] and so to know when to stop saving. You go on making your pile bigger, increasing it from one sum to another until, like a peasant, you deprive yourself of the enjoyment of your own goods: your enjoyment consists in hoarding and never actually using it. [C] If this is ‘using’ money, then the richest in cash are the guards on the walls and gates of a goodly city! To my way of thinking, any man with money is a miser.

  Plato ranks physical or human goods thus: health, beauty, strength, wealth. And wealth,
he says, is not blind but extremely clear-sighted when enlightened by wisdom.63

  [B] The Younger Dionysius acted elegantly in this regard.64 They told him that one of the men in his city of Syracuse had buried a hidden treasure. He commanded him to bring it to him. Which he did, secretly keeping back a part which he went off to spend in another city, where he lost his taste for hoarding money and began to live more expensively. When Dionysius learned of this he sent him the remainder of his treasure, saying that he willingly returned it now he had learned how to use it.

  I remained like this for [C] a few years; then some good daemon or other [B] cast me out65 of it most usefully – like that man of Syracuse – and scattered all my parsimony to the winds, when the joyful undertaking of a certain very expensive journey sent all those silly notions tumbling down.

  That is how I dropped into a third way of life which – and I say what I really feel – is far more enjoyable, certainly, and also more orderly: I make my income and my expenditure run along in tandem: sometimes one pulls ahead, sometimes the other, but only drawing slightly apart. I live from day to day, pleased to be able to satisfy my present, ordinary needs: extraordinary ones could never be met by all the provision in the world.

  [C] And it is madness to expect that Fortune will ever supply us with enough weapons to use against herself. We have to fight with our own weapons: fortuitous ones will let us down at the crucial moment. [B] If I do save up now, it is only because I hope to use the money soon – not to purchase lands [C] that I have no use for [B] but to purchase pleasure. [C] ‘Non esse cupidum pecunia est, non esse emacem vectigal est.’ [Not to want means money: not to spend means income.]66 [B] I have no fear, really, that I shall lack anything: nor [C] have I any wish for more. ‘Divitiarum fructus est in copia, copiam declarat satietas.’ [The fruit of riches consists in abundance: abundance is shown by having enough.] [B] I particularly congratulate myself that this amendment of life should have come to me at an age which is naturally inclined to avarice, so ridding me of a vice67 – the most ridiculous of all human madnesses – which is so common among the old.