The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [B] When Tiberius Gracchus went on an official government mission he was voted fivepence-halfpenny a day: he was then the highest man in Rome.1

  53. On one of Caesar’s sayings

  [This short chapter, concerned as it is with that contextura corporis, that ‘bodily structure’, which interested Lucretius, is one of many which contributed thoughts and ideas to ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’ (II, 12).]

  [A] If we were occasionally to linger over an examination of ourselves and were to save the time which we spend on finding out about others and in learning about externals so as to use it to make soundings of ourselves, we would soon realize how this structure of ours is made up of weak and deficient elements. Is it not a peculiar sign of our imperfections that we cannot settle our happiness on any single thing, and that even in our wishes and our thoughts we are incapable of choosing the things which we need? Corroboration of this fact is provided by that great dispute which has ever divided philosophers over Man’s sovereign good: it still goes on, and will go on for ever, with no conclusion and no agreement:

  [B] dum abest quod avemus, id exuperare videtur

  Cætera; post aliud cum contigit illud avemus,

  Et sitis æqua tenet,

  [as long as we do not have it, the object of our desire seems greater than anything else: as soon as we enjoy it, we long for something different with an equal craving.]1

  [A] No matter what falls within our knowledge, no matter what we enjoy, it fails to make us content and we go gaping after things outside our knowledge, future things, since present goods never leave us satisfied – not in my judgement because they are inadequate to satisfy us but because we clasp them in a sick and immoderate grip:

  [B] Nam, cum vidit hic, ad usum quæ flagitat usus,

  Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata,

  Divitiis homines et honore et laude potentes

  Affluere, atque bona natorum excellere fama,

  Nec minus esse domi cuiquam tamen anxia corda,

  Atque animum infestis cogi servire querelis:

  Intellexit ibi vitium vas efficere ipsum,

  Omniaque illius vitio corrumpier intus,

  Quæ collata foris et commoda quæque venirent.

  [For when Epicurus saw that almost everything necessary for Man’s life is at his disposal; when he saw men who were replete with honour and wealth and reputation and who were proud of their sons’ good fame, not one of whom was not full of inner anxiety or whose mind was not racked by grievous lamentations: then he realized that the fault was in the vessel itself, corrupting internally any good which came in to it from the outside.]2

  [A] Our appetite lacks decision and is uncertain: it can neither have anything nor enjoy anything in the proper way. Man, reckoning that the defect lies in those things themselves, feeds to the full on other things which he neither knows nor understands, and honours and reveres them; as Caesar says: ‘Communi fit vitio naturæ ut invisis, latitantibus atque incognitis rebus magis confidamus, vehementiusque exterreamur.’ [By a defect of nature common to all men, we place our trust, rather, in things unseen, hidden and unknown, and are terrified to distraction by them.]3

  54. On vain cunning devices

  [Montaigne is brought to wonder what his Essays are worth and to draw an important distinction between good naïf Christians or good Christian mystics (who both make excellent believers) and the middling mediocre minds which do so much harm but might appreciate his Essays. The background of his distinction between good Christians and mediocre ones derives from the vital commonplaces of Christian ‘folly’.]

  [A] There are those kinds of cunning devices, frivolous and vain, through which a reputation is sought by some men, such as those poets who compose entire works from lines all beginning with the same letter; and we can see that by increasing or shortening the length of their lines the ancient Greeks would form poems of various shapes such as eggs, balls, wings and axe-heads.1 Of such a kind was the art of the man who spent his time counting the number of ways in which he could arrange the letters of the alphabet and found that they came to that incredible number we can find in Plutarch.2

  I agree with the opinion of the man to whom was presented another man who was an expert at throwing grains of millet so cleverly that they infallibly went through the eye of a needle; he was asked afterwards to bestow a reward for such a rare ability: whereupon he commanded – very amusingly and correctly, if you ask me – that the man who did it should be given two or three baskets of millet so that so fine a skill should not remain unpractised!3 It is a [C] wonderful [A] testimony of the weakness of Man’s judgement that things which are neither good nor useful it values on account of their rarity, novelty and, even more, their difficulty.

  At home we have just been playing at who can find most things which meet at extremes – such as Sire, which is the title given to the highest person in our State, the king, and also to common folk such as tradesmen but is never used for anyone in between. Women of the nobility are called Dames; middle-ranking women are called Damoiselles; and we use Dames again for the lowest women of all. [B] Canopies are hung over tables only in princely houses and in taverns.

  [A] Democritus said that gods and beasts have senses more acute than men, who are at the stage in between. The Romans wore the same clothes for days of mourning and for festival-days. It is certain that extreme cowardice and extreme bravery disturb the stomach and are laxative. [C] The nickname of Trembler given to King Sancho XII of Navarre4 serves as a reminder that boldness can make your limbs shake just as much as fear. And the man whom his squires assayed to reassure by minimizing the dangers as they helped him into his armour and saw his flesh a-quiver said to them: ‘You know me badly: if my skin realized where my heart was soon to take it, it would fall flat on the ground in a faint.’

  [A] That incapacity which comes over us in the sports of Venus from lack of ardour or attraction can also do so from too ecstatic an ardour or too unruly a passion. Food can be roasted and cooked by extreme cold as well as extreme heat: Aristotle says that lead ingots will melt and turn liquid with the cold in a rigorous winter as readily as in an intensely hot summer. [C] The stages above pleasure and below pleasure can be filled with pain by both desire and satiety. [A] Animal-stupidity and wisdom converge in the way they feel and resist the misfortunes men must endure: wise men bully misfortune and master it: the others ignore it; the latter are on this side of misfortune so to speak: the former are beyond it; they first weigh and consider what misfortunes are and then judge them for what they are; they leap above them by the force of a vigorous mind; they despise them and trample them underfoot; they have souls so strong and so solid that when the arrows of Fortune strike against them they can only bounce back and be blunted, having met an obstacle which they cannot dent. Men of ordinary middling capacities are lodged between these two extremes, which is where men perceive adversities, feel them and find them unbearable. Babyhood and extreme old age meet in mental imbecility; so do avarice and profligacy, in their like desire to grab and acquire.

  [B] It may be plausibly asserted that [C] there is an infant-school ignorance which precedes knowledge and another doctoral ignorance which comes after it, an ignorance made and engendered by knowledge just as it unmade and slaughtered the first kind. [B] Good Christians are made from simple minds, incurious and unlearned, which out of reverence and obedience have simple faith and remain within prescribed doctrine. It is in minds of middling vigour and middling capacity that are born erroneous opinions, for they follow the apparent truth of their first impressions and do have a case for interpreting as simplicity and animal-stupidity the sight of people like us who stick to the old ways, fixing on us who are not instructed in such matters by study. Great minds are more settled and see things more clearly: they form another category of good believers; by long and reverent research they penetrate through to a deeper, darker light of Scripture and know the sacred and mysterious secret of our ecclesiastical polity. That is why we can see some
of them arrive at the highest level via the second, with wondrous fruit and comfort, reaching as it were the ultimate bounds of Christian understanding and rejoicing in their victory with alleviation of sorrow, acts of thanksgiving, reformed behaviour and great modesty. I do not intend to place in that rank those other men who, to rid themselves of the suspicion of their past errors and to reassure us about themselves, become extremists, men lacking all discretion and unjust in the way they uphold our cause, besmirching it with innumerable reprehensible acts of violence.

  [C] The simple peasants are honest people; honest, too, are philosophers, insofar as we have any nowadays with natures strong and clear, enriched by wide learning in the useful sciences. Half-breeds who have turned with contempt from the first state (illiterate ignorance) and who are incapable of reaching the other (their arses between two stools, like me and lots of others) are dangerous, absurd and troublesome: such men bring disturbances to the world. That is why, for my part, I draw back as far as I can into that first and natural state, which I had vainly made an assay at leaving behind.

  Popular and purely natural poetry has its naïf charms and graces by which it can stand comparison with that chief of beauties we find in artistically perfect poetry. That can be seen from our Gascony villanelles and from those songs which have been reported from nations which have no knowledge of any science nor even of writing. But that middling poetry which remains between the two is despised and is without honour or price.

  [A] But, because I have discovered that once our mind has found an opening we have, as usual, mistaken for a difficult task and a rare topic something which is nothing of the sort, and that once our capacity for research has been aroused we can find an infinite number of like examples, I will merely add the following: that if these Essays were worthy of being judged, it could turn out in my opinion that they will hardly please common vulgar minds nor unique and outstanding ones: the former would never get enough of their meaning; the latter would understand them only too easily. These Essays might eke out an existence in the middle region.

  55. On smells

  [An early compilation which progressively becomes more personal: the topic itself may have been suggested by a commonplace of the Querelle des femmes (the centuries-long series of works for and against women and marriage).].

  [A] Of some such as Alexander the Great it is said that their sweat smelt nice (because of some rare complexion outside the natural Order, the cause of which was sought by Plutarch and others).1 But the normal fashioning of our bodies works contrary to that: the best characteristic we can hope for is to smell of nothing. The sweetness of the purest breath consists in nothing more excellent than to be without any offensive smell, as the breath of healthy children. That is why Plautus says, ‘Mulier tum bene olet, ubi nihil olet’, ‘A woman smells nice when she smells of nothing,’ [B] just as we say that the best perfume for her actions is for her to be quiet and discreet.2 [A] And when people give off nice odours which are not their own we may rightly suspect them, and conclude that they use them to smother some natural stench. That is what gives rise to those adages of the ancient poets which claim that the man who smells nice in fact stinks:

  Rides nos Coracine, nil olentes.

  Malo quam bene olere, nil olere.

  [You laugh at us, Coracinus, because we emit no smell: I would rather smell of nothing than smell sweetly.]

  And again,

  Posthume, non bene olet, qui bene semper olet.

  [A man who always smells nice, Posthumus, actually stinks.]3

  [B] However I am myself very fond of living amongst good smells and I immeasurably loathe bad ones, which I sense at a greater distance than anyone else:

  Namque sagacius units odoror,

  Polypus, an gravis hirsutis cubet hircus in alis,

  Quant canis acer ubi lateat sus.

  [I have a nose with with more flair, Polypus, for sensing the goaty smell of hairy armpits than any hound on the track of a stinking hoar.]4

  [C] The simpler, more natural smells seem to me to be the most agreeable. A concern for smells is chiefly a matter for the ladies. In deepest Barbary the Scythian women powder themselves after washing and smother their whole face and body with a certain sweet-smelling unguent, native to their soil; when they take off this cosmetic they find themselves smooth and nice-smelling for an approach to their menfolk.

  [B] Whatever the smell, it is wonderful how it clings to me and how my skin is simply made to drink it in. The person who complained that Nature left Man with no means of bringing smells to his nose was in error: smells do it by themselves. But, in my particular case the job is done for me by my thick moustache: if I bring my glove or my handkerchief anywhere near it, the smell will linger there all day. It gives away where I have just come from. Those close smacking kisses of my youth, [C] gluey and greedy, [B] would stick to it and remain there for hours afterwards. Yet I find myself little subject to those mass illnesses which are caught by social intercourse and spring from infected air; and I have been spared those of my own time, of which there have been several kinds in our towns and among our troops. [C] We read that although Socrates never left Athens during several recurrences of the plague which so often racked that city, he alone suffered no harm.5

  [B] It seems to me that doctors could make better use of smells than they do, for I have frequently noticed that, depending on which they are, they variously affect me and work upon my animal spirits;6 which convinces me of the truth of what is said about the invention of odours and incense in our Churches (a practice so ancient and so widespread among all nations and religions): that it was aimed at making us rejoice, exciting us and purifying us so as to render us more capable of contemplation.

  [C] In order to judge it I wish I had been invited to experience the culinary art of those chefs who know how to season wafting odours with the savour of various foods, as was particularly remarked in our time in the case of the King of Tunis who landed at Naples for face to face talks with the Emperor Charles. His meats were stuffed with sweet-smelling ingredients, so luxuriously that a peacock and two pheasants cost a hundred ducats to prepare in their manner. And when those birds were cut up they filled not merely the hall but all the rooms of his palace and even the neighbouring houses with a delicious mist which was slow to evaporate.

  [B] When choosing where to stay, my principal concern is to avoid air which is oppressive and stinking. My liking for those fair cities Venice and Paris is affected by the pungent smell of the marshes of one and the mud of the other.7

  56. On prayer

  [We are given here a deeper insight into the austerer, rigorist side of Montaigne’s Catholicism. The additions, which are numerous, beginning with those of 1582, marked [A1], are partly designed to meet the criticisms raised by the Maestro di Palazzo at the Vatican about Montaigne’s assertion ‘that a man when he prays must be free of sinful inclinations during that time’. Such a doctrine savours of that ‘puritanism’ of which the Roman Catholic Church was ever suspicious. Together with III, 2, ‘On repenting’ we can see here how demanding Montaigne’s Catholicism was beneath its urbane exterior. We can also understand his work better: he is writing philosophy not theology; and philosophy has its own rules and its own language. As usual Montaigne is suspicious of words, even liturgical words, without deeds. To many in his Church his theological position appeared rigorous to the point of heresy where sin-free prayer was concerned. But he himself presents his thoughts as a kind of disputabilis opinio, that is, as analogous to an unresolved topic or paradox, subject to open debate in the universities.]

  [A1] The notions which I am propounding have no form and reach no conclusion. (Like those who advertise questions for debate in our Universities I am seeking the truth not laying it down.) I submit them to the judgement of those whose concern it is to govern not only my actions and my writings but my very thoughts. Both condemnation and approbation will be equally welcome, equally useful, [C] since I would loathe to be found saying anything ig
norantly or inadvertently against the holy teachings of the Church Catholic, Apostolic and Roman, in which I die and in which I was born.1 [A1] And so, while ever submitting myself to the authority of their censure, whose power over me is limitless, I am emboldened to treat all sorts of subjects – as I do here.

  [A] I may be mistaken but, seeing that we have been granted by special grace and favour a set form of prayer prescribed and dictated to us, word by word, by God’s own mouth, it has always seemed to me that we should use it more commonly.2 If it depended on me I would like to see Christians saying the Lord’s Prayer as a grace before and after meals, when we get up and go to bed and on all those special occasions where we normally include prayers, [C] saying it always if not exclusively. [A] The Church may lengthen or vary prayers according to her need to instruct us; for I am well aware that the matter is identical and always substantially the same. But this prayer ought to have the prerogative of being on people’s lips at all times, since it is certain that it says everything necessary and that it is always most appropriate on all occasions. [C] It is the only prayer that I say everywhere; instead of varying it I repeat it. That explains why it is the only prayer I can ever remember.

  [A] I was wondering recently how the error arose which leads us to have recourse to God in all our doings and designs, [B] calling upon him in every kind of need and in any place whatsoever where our weakness needs support, without once considering whether the occasion is just or unjust. No matter how we are or what we are doing – however sinful it may be – we invoke God’s name and power. [A] He is of course our only and unique Protector, [C] able to do anything whatever to help us; [A] but even though he does vouchsafe to grant us that sweet honour of being our Father by adoption,3 he is as just as he is good [C] and powerful; but he uses his justice more often than his power; [A] and he grants us his favours according to [C] its criteria not our petitions.4