The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  Those who under pretext of their security teach princes so watchful a distrust teach them their downfall and their shame. Nothing noble is achieved without risk. I know one [C] whose mind is of a most martial and positive complexion [B] whose good fortune is daily corrupted by such arguments as urge him to remain surrounded by his own men; not to hear of any reconciliation with his former enemies; to keep aloof and never entrust himself to stronger hands, no matter what promises are made nor what advantage he might gain from doing so.11 [C] (I know another12 who has unexpectedly improved his fortune by having taken quite contrary advice. When need arises, that bravery which men seek so avidly may be shown as magnificently in a doublet as in armour, in a closet as on the battlefield, when our hands are folded as when our fist is raised.) [B] So sensitive and circumspect a wisdom is the mortal enemy of great undertakings. [C] (To gain the support of Syphax, Scipio13 knew how to leave his army, quit Spain while still doubtful of that new conquest, cross over to Africa with only two small vessels and, in a hostile land, entrust his fate to a Barbarian King whose faith was untried; he was without bond or hostage, simply trusting surely in the greatness of his own heart, in his good fortune and in the promise of his high hopes: ‘habita fides ipsam plerumque fidem obligat.’ [Our own trust frequently binds the trust of others.])14

  [B] For a life ambitious for fame, a man must, on the contrary, yield little to suspicions and keep them on a tight rein: fear and distrust attract hostile actions: it invites them.

  The most mistrustful of our kings made himself secure mainly by voluntarily surrendering his life and entrusting his liberty to the hands of his foes, showing complete trust in them so that they might learn trust from him.15 Against legions, mutinous and under arms, Caesar simply opposed the authority of his countenance and his proud words; he trusted so much in himself and in his good fortune that he did not fear to yield and entrust them to a rebellious and seditious army.

  [C] Stetit aggere fulti

  Cespitis, intrepidus vultu, meruitque timeri

  Nil metuens.

  [With intrepid face he stood upon a mound of turf, deserving to be feared since he feared nothing.]16

  [B] It is however quite true that this strong confidence can only be manifested, natural and entire, by those who are not terrified by the thought of death or of the worst that can happen to them in the end: for to manifest it tremulously, still doubting and unsure, contributes nothing of value towards a great reconciliation. It is an excellent way to win the heart and mind of another man to go and trust him, putting yourself in his power – provided it be done freely, quite unconstrained by necessity, and on condition that the trust we bring is clear and pure, and that at least our brow is not weighed down by hesitations.

  When a boy I saw the commander of a great city, a nobleman, who was in real difficulties from the violence of an enraged populace;17 in order to snuff out this disturbance from the start he decided to leave the very safe place he was in and to put himself in the power of that mutinous mob; things went badly for him and he was ignominiously killed. But to me his error lay not in going out to them – the blame usually attached to his memory – but in adopting the way of submissiveness and weakness, wishing to appease that frenzy more by following than by giving a lead, by begging than by remonstrating; I believe that a military bearing full of assurance and confidence, a gracious severity becoming his rank and the dignity of his office, would have succeeded better, and at least more honourably and more fittingly. Nothing is less to be hoped from that monster18 thus aroused than mildness or humanity; it will be more open to awe and to fear. I would also reproach him in that, having made a decision which to my taste was more brave than foolhardy, he cast himself into that stormy sea of furious men, weak and in his doublet; he ought to have drunk the cup to the dregs and never given up the part he was playing: whereas when he saw the danger at close quarters he did flinch, subsequently changing the modest ingratiating look he had assumed into one of terror, his voice and his eyes burdened with amazement and contrition. By trying to creep away and hide he set them ablaze and invited them to attack him.

  It was decided once to hold a review of the various troops under arms19 – such being just the place for secret plans of revenge: nowhere can you, in such security, carry them out. There were notorious public signs that it would be most unsafe for some of those on whom the obligation of reviewing the troops mainly fell. Several different pieces of advice were given, as was to be expected in a difficult matter of such weight and consequence. My own advice was not to give any sign of apprehension but to go there and walk between the ranks, faces frank and heads erect; rather than cut anything out (the direction towards which the majority opinion tended) we should on the contrary invite the captains to advise their men to make their welcoming volleys fair and hearty, not sparing their powder. This pleased the troops which we had had our doubts about, and it engendered from then on a most useful mutual confidence.

  [A] I find the most beautiful of all courses was that adopted by Julius Caesar. First he assayed making even his enemies love him by mildness and clemency: when conspiracies were uncovered he simply let it be known that he had been told about them; then, he made the very noble resolve to await the outcome without worry or fear, surrendering himself to the protection of the gods and entrusting himself to Fortune: such was the position when he was murdered.20

  [B] There was a foreigner who noised abroad that, in return for a good sum of money, he could teach Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse, an infallible way of perceiving and uncovering any plots which his subjects should contrive against him. Dionysius was told of this and summoned him to come and enlighten him about an art so indispensable for his protection. The stranger told him that his art merely consisted in accepting half a hundredweight of silver from him and then boasting of having revealed such a very special secret to him. Dionysius approved of the idea and had six hundred crowns paid over to him: for it was not believable that he should have given so large a sum of money to an unknown man except as a recompense for being initiated into some very useful art; this consideration served to make his enemies fear him.21

  Princes are wise to publish any information which they receive warning them of plots against their life so as to make people believe that they are indeed well-informed and that nothing can be undertaken without their having wind of it. [C] The Duke of Athens did many silly things when consolidating his recent Tyranny over Florence, but the most noteworthy was when he first received warning from Matteo Morozo, one of the accomplices, of the conspiracies that people were plotting against him: he put him to death, to suppress news of this warning and to prevent it being known that anyone in that city could be discontented with his upright rule!22

  [A] I read an account once, I remember, of a Roman of high rank who was fleeing from the tyranny of the Triumvirate; he had already escaped his pursuers hundreds of times by subtle tricks he had invented. One day a troop of horsemen responsible for arresting him passed close by some bushes behind which he was crouching; they failed to spot him. But he thought at this juncture of the toil and hardships he had so long undergone to save himself from the endless searches they were diligently making for him everywhere; of the little joy he could hope from such a life; of how much better it would be to die once than to remain forever in such dread: so he called them back and let them see where he was hiding. He voluntarily gave himself up to their cruelty to relieve both them and himself of further hardship.23

  Issuing invitations to the hands of an enemy is a rather rash decision, yet I believe it would be better to take it than to remain in a continual sweat over an outcome which cannot be remedied. But since such provisions as we can make are full of uncertainty and anguish, it is better to be ready to face with fair assurance anything that can happen, while drawing some consolation from not being sure that it will.

  25. On schoolmasters’ learning

  [This chapter – Du Pédantisme in French – is not limited to what we mean by ped
antry today. Its main butt was originally dominees and dons who may impress the young but are parrots unfitted for real life; they know things off by rote but are not wise; they resemble the sophists mocked in Antiquity rather than true philosophers who, even then, were laughed at (but for reasons which did them honour). The later editions, especially [C], emphasize that true philosophers are an elite who know the limits of their knowledge.

  Montaigne, writing consciously as a gentleman, partly has in mind Baldassari Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, which was written in Italian for Francis I of France as a means of making his court more elegant.

  The unnamed German who taught Montaigne to speak Latin as his first language was Albert Horstanus, some of whose letters have been preserved (cf. Hartmann, Amerbach-korrespondenz, IX – 2, p. 504).]

  [A] when I was a schoolboy I was often upset when I saw schoolmasters treated as buffoons in Italian comedies – (and among us French the title of Magister can scarcely be said to imply much more respect).1 Placed as I was under their control and tutelage, the least I could do was to be jealous of their reputation. I tried to make excuses for them in terms of the natural conflict between the common man and men of rare judgement and outstanding learning – an inevitable one since their courses run flat opposite to each other. But the effort was wasted: it was the most civilized of men who held them in the greatest contempt; witness our excellent Du Bellay:

  Mais je hay par sur tout un sçavoir pédantesque.

  [But most of all I loathe schoolmasterish erudition.]2

  [B] This attitude goes back to the Ancients: for Plutarch says that scholar and Greek were terms of abuse among the Romans; they were insults.3

  [A] As I grew older I found that they were absolutely right and that ‘magis magnos clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes’ [‘them most biggest clerks ain’t the most wisest’].4 Yet how it can happen that a soul enriched by so much knowledge should not be more alert and alive, or that a grosser, commonplace spirit can without moral improvement lodge within itself the reasonings and judgements of the most excellent minds which the world has ever produced: that still leaves me wondering.

  [B] A young woman, the foremost of our Princesses,5 said to me of a particular man that, by welcoming in as he did the brains of others, so powerful and so numerous, his own brain was forced to squeeze up close, crouch down and contract in order to make room for them all!

  [A] I would like to suggest that our minds are swamped by too much study [C] and by too much matter [A] just as plants are swamped by too much water [C] or lamps by too much oil; [A] that our minds, held fast and encumbered by so many diverse preoccupations, may well lose the means of struggling free, remaining bowed and bent under the load; except that it is quite otherwise: the more our souls are filled, the more they expand; examples drawn from far-off times show, on the contrary, that great soldiers and statesmen were also [C] great [A] scholars.6

  Those philosophers who did withdraw from all affairs of state were indeed mocked by the comic licence of their times7 [C] since their opinions and manners made them look ridiculous: can you expect men like that to judge of rights in a law-suit or to judge a man’s deeds? How fit they are to do that, I must say! They are still trying to find out whether there is such a thing as life or motion; whether Man differs from Ox; what is meant by active and passive; what sort of creatures law and justice are! When they talk of or to a man in authority they show an uncouth and disrespectful licence. Do they hear a king or their own ruler praised? To them he is but an idle shepherd who spends his time exploiting his sheep’s wool and milk, only more harshly than a real shepherd does. Do you think a man may be more important because he possesses as his own a couple of thousand acres? They laugh at that, used as they are to treating the whole world as their own. Do you pride yourself on your nobility, since you reckon to have seven rich forebears? They do not think much of you: you have no conception of the universality of Nature – nor of the great many forebears each of us has – rich ones, poor ones, kings, lackeys, Greeks, Barbarians… Even if you were fiftieth in line from Hercules they would think you frivolous to value such a chance endowment. And so the common man despised them, as men who knew nothing about basic everyday matters or as men ignorant and presumptuous.

  But that portrait drawn from Plato is far removed from what is lacking in the kind of people we are talking about. [A] The others were envied for being above the common concerns, as being contemptuous of public duties, and as men who had constructed a way of life which was private, inimitable, governed by definite, high and unusual principles; the men we are talking about are despised as inferior to the common model, as incapable of public duties, as men dragging their lives and their base vile morals way behind the common sort of men.

  [C] Odi homines ignava opera, philosopha sententia.

  [I hate men whose words are philosophical but whose deeds are base.]8

  [A] Those other philosophers, I say, were great in learning, greater still in activities of every kind. As in the tale of that geometrician of Syracuse9 who was interrupted in his contemplations in order to put some of them to practical use in the defence of his country: he set about at once producing frightful inventions, surpassing human belief; yet he himself despised the work of his hands, thinking that he had compromised the dignity of his art, of which his inventions were but apprentice-toys: so too with them; when they were at times put to the test of action they were seen to fly aloft on so soaring a wing that that it was clear that their understanding had indeed wondrously enriched their hearts and minds. But [C] some, observing that the fortress of political power had been taken over by incompetents, withdrew: the man who asked Crates how long one had to go on philosophizing, was told, ‘Until our armies are no longer led by mule-drivers.’ Heraclitus made over his kingdom to his brother; and to the citizens of Ephesius who reproached him for spending his time playing with the children in front of the temple he retorted: ‘Is doing that not more worthwhile than sharing the control of affairs with the likes of you?’10 [A] Others, who had their thoughts set above the fortunes of this world, found the seats of Justice and the very thrones of kings to be base and vile: [C] Empedocles rejected the offer of kingship made by the men of Agrigentum. [A] When Thales condemned preoccupations with thrift and money-making he was accused of sour grapes like the fox. It pleased him, for fun, to make a revealing experiment; for this purpose he debased his knowledge in the service of profit and gain, setting up a business which in one year brought in as much wealth as the most experienced in the trade were hard put to match in a lifetime.11

  [C] Aristotle tells of some people who called Thales, Anaxagoras and their like wise but not prudent, in that they did not concern themselves enough with the more useful matters;12 I cannot easily swallow that verbal distinction, but apart from that it provides no excuse for the people I am talking about: judging from the base and needy lot they are satisfied with, they are both not wise and not prudent.

  [A] But leaving aside this first explanation, I think it is better to say that the evil arises from their tackling the sciences in the wrong manner and that, from the way we have been taught, it is no wonder that neither master nor pupils become more able, even though they do know more. In truth the care and fees of our parents aim only at furnishing our heads with knowledge: nobody talks about judgement or virtue. When someone passes by, try exclaiming, ‘Oh, what a learned man!’ Then, when another does, ‘Oh, what a good man!’ Our people will not fail to turn their gaze respectfully towards the first. There ought to be a third man crying, ‘Oh, what blockheads!’13

  We readily inquire, ‘Does he know Greek or Latin?’ ‘Can he write poetry and prose?’ But what matters most is what we put last: ‘Has he become better and wiser?’ We ought to find out not who understands most but who understands best. We work merely to fill the memory, leaving the understanding [C] and the sense of right and wrong [A] empty. Just as birds sometimes go in search of grain, carrying it in their beaks without tasting it to st
uff it down the beaks of their young, so too do our schoolmasters go foraging for learning in their books and merely lodge it on the tip of their lips, only to spew it out and scatter it on the wind.

  [C] Such foolishness fits my own case marvellously well. Am I for the most part not doing the same when assembling my material? Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me – not so as to store them up (for I have no storehouses) but so as to carry them back to this book, where they are no more mine than they were in their original place. We only know, I believe, what we know now: ‘knowing’ no more consists in what we once knew than in what we shall know in the future.

  [A] But what is worse, their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn: the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it off, to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were merely counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no other use or currency. [C] ‘Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum’ [They have learned how to talk with others, not with themselves]: ‘Non est loquendum, sed gubemandum.’ [We do not need talk but helmsmanship.]14

  Nature, to show that nothing beneath her sway is really savage, has brought forth among peoples whom art has least civilized things which rival the best that art can produce. There is a Gascon proverb, drawn from a country flute-song, which has just the right nuance for my purpose: ‘Bouha prou bouha, mas a remuda lous ditz qu’em.’ [‘Puff and blow as you will: what concerns us is the movement of the fingers.’]

  [A] We know how to say, ‘This is what Cicero said’; ‘This is morality for Plato’; ‘These are the ipsissima verba of Aristotle.’ But what have we got to say? What judgements do we make? What are we doing? A parrot could talk as well as we do.15