The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [B] For all that, I do not understand how anyone can prolong the pleasure of drinking beyond his thirst, forging in his mind an artificial appetite which is contrary to nature. My stomach would never get that far: it has enough bother dealing with what it takes in for its needs. [C] I am so constituted that I care little for drink except at dessert; that is why my last draught is usually my biggest. Anacharsis was amazed that the Greeks should drink out of bigger glasses at the end of their meals;18 it was I think for the same reason that the Germans do: that is when they start their drinking contests.

  Plato forbids young people to drink before the age of eighteen and to get drunk before forty. But men over forty he tells to enjoy it and to bring copiously into their banquets the influence of Dionysius, that kind god who restores gaiety to grown men and youth to the old ones, who calms and softens the passions of the soul just as iron is softened by the fire. And in his Laws he considers convivial drinking to be useful (provided that the group has a leader to ensure that order is maintained), since getting drunk is a good and certain trial of each man’s character and, at the same time, has the property of giving older men the idea of enjoying themselves in music and dancing, useful pastimes which they would not dare to engage in when of settled mind. Wine also has the capacity of tempering the soul and giving health to the body. Nevertheless he liked the following restrictions, partly borrowed from the Carthaginians: that it should be done without on military expeditions; that all statesmen and judges should abstain when about to perform their duties and to deliberate on matters of public concern; that the daytime should be avoided – that is owed to other activities – as well as any night when we intend to beget children.19

  They say that the philosopher Stilpo, weighed down by old age, deliberately hastened his death by drinking his wine without water. A similar cause suffocated the failing powers of the aged philosopher Arcesilaus, but that was unintentional.20

  [A] Whether the soul of a wise man should be such as to surrender to the power of wine is an old and entertaining question:

  Si ‘munitae adhibet vim sapientiae’.

  [Whether ‘wine should be able to make an assault on secure wisdom’.]21

  To what inanities are we driven by that good opinion we men have of ourselves! The best governed Soul in the world has quite enough to do to stay on her feet and to keep herself from falling to the ground from her own weakness. Not one in a thousand can stand up calm and straight for one instant in her life; it can even be doubted, given her natural condition, whether she ever can. But if you add constancy as well, then that is her highest perfection: I mean if nothing should shake it, something which hundreds of events can do. It was no good that great poet Lucretius philosophizing and bracing himself: a love-potion drove him insane. Do they think that an apoplexy will not make Socrates lose his wits as much as a porter? Some have forgotten their own names by the force of an illness, and a light wound has struck down the judgement of others. A man can be as wise as he likes: he is still a man; and what is there more frail, more wretched, more a thing of nothing, than man? Wisdom cannot force our natural properties:

  [B] Sudores itaque et pallorem existere toto

  Corpore, et infringi linguam, vocemque aboriri,

  Caligare oculos, sonere aures, succidere artus,

  Denique concidere ex animi terrore videmus.

  [Then we see sweat and pallor take over his whole body, his tongue grows incoherent, his voice fails, his eyes are troubled, his ears begin to ring, his legs give way and he falls to the ground, as panic seizes his mind.]22

  [A] When he is threatened with a blow nothing can stop a man closing his eyes, or trembling if you set him on the edge of a precipice, [C] just like a child, Nature reserving to herself these signs of her authority, signs slight but unattackable by reason or Stoic virtue, in order to teach Man that he is mortal and silly. [A] He becomes livid with fear; he reddens with shame; he bewails an attack of colic paroxysms if not with a loud cry of despair at least with a cry which is broken and wheezing.

  Humani a se nihil alienum putet!

  [Let him realize that nothing human is a stranger to him!]23

  Poets [C] who can make up anything they like [A] dare not relieve their heroes even of the burden of weeping:

  Sic fatur lachrymans, classique immittit habenas.

  [Thus spoke Aeneas through his tears and his fleet sailed unbridled away.]24

  It suffices that a man should rein in his affections and moderate them, for it is not in his power to suppress them. And my very own Plutarch – so perfect, so outstanding a judge of human actions – when confronted by Brutus and Torquatus killing their children was led to doubt whether virtue could really get that far, and whether those great men had not in fact been shaken by some passion or other.25 All actions which exceed the usual limits are open to sinister interpretations, since higher things are no more to our taste than inferior ones.

  [C] Let us leave aside that other School which makes an express profession of pride.26 Yet even in that third School which is reckoned to be the most indulgent of them all we hear similar boastings from Metrodorus:27‘Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi; omnesque aditus tuos interclusi, ut ad me aspirare non posses.’ [I have forestalled you, O Fortune and I have caught you; I have blocked off all your approaches, you cannot get near me.]

  When Anaxarchus, on the orders of Nicocreon, Tyrant of Cyprus, was put into a stone mortar and beaten to death with blows from an iron pestle, he never ceased to cry, ‘Go on! Strike, bash on, you are not pounding Anaxarchus but his casing’;28 [A] when we hear our Christian martyrs shouting out to the tyrant from the midst of the flames, ‘It is well roasted on this side; chop it off and eat it; it is cooked just right: now start on the other side’; when we hear in Josephus29 of the boy who was torn to pieces with clawed pincers and bored through by the bradawls of Antiochus, yet who still defied him, crying out in a firm assured voice: ‘Tyrant! You are wasting your time! I am still here, quite comfortable! Where is this pain, where are those tortures you were threatening me with? Is this all you can do? My constancy hurts you more than your cruelty hurts me! You cowardly beggar! It is you who are surrendering: I am growing stronger! Make me lament, make me give way, make me surrender, if you can! Goad on your henchmen and your hangmen: they have lost heart and can do nothing more! Give them weapons! Egg them on!’ – then we have to admit that there is some change for the worse in their souls, some frenzy, no matter how holy.

  When we hear such Stoic paradoxes as, ‘I would rather be raging mad than a voluptuary’ [C] – that is the saying of Antisthenes,30 [A] – when Sextius tells us that he would rather be transfixed by pain than by pleasure; when Epicurus decides to treat gout as though it were tickling him, refuses rest and good health, light-heartedly defies ills and, despising less biting pains, will not condescend to struggle in combat against them but summons and even wishes for pains which are strong and anguishing and worthy of him:

  Spumantemque dari pecora inter inertia votis

  Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem;

  [Amidst his placid flock he prays to be vouchsafed some slavering boar, or that some wild lion will come down from the mountain;]31

  who does not conclude that those are the cries of a mind which is leaping out of its lodgings? Our Soul cannot reach so high while remaining in her own place. She has to leave it and rise upwards and, taking the bit between her teeth, bear her man off, enrapture him away so far that afterwards he is amazed by what he has done; just as in war, the heat of the combat often makes the valiant soldiers take such hazardous steps that they are the first to be struck with astonishment once they have come back to themselves; so too the poets are often seized by amazement by their own works and no longer recognize the defiles through which they had passed at so fine a gallop. In their case too it is called frenzy and mania. And just as Plato says that a sedate man knocks in vain at poetry’s door, so too Aristotle says that no outstanding soul is free from a mixture of fol
ly.32 He is right to call folly any leap – however praiseworthy it might be – which goes beyond our reason and our discourse. All the more so in that wisdom is a controlled handling of our soul, carried out, on our Soul’s responsibility, with measure and proportion.

  [C] Plato contends that the faculty of prophesying is ‘above ourselves’; that we must be ‘outside ourselves’ when we accomplish it; our prudence must be darkened by some sleep or illness, or else snatched out of its place by a heavenly rapture.33

  3. A custom of the Isle of Cea

  [Montaigne shows with examples and pro et contra arguments that philosophy has its own way of favouring self-destruction and of opposing it with equally strong reasons. Traditionally, theology classed suicide as a crime (we ‘commit’ suicide). That was because it is defined as the prime example of despair, whereas hope is one of the three theological virtues: Montaigne (after due submission to the will of God) shows that suicide does not always arise from despair: it can be provoked by many motives including hope. He is often said to be bold or even anti-Christian in his attitudes. That judgement cannot stand a comparison between what Montaigne writes and what was written on the subject by Jesuit casuists and theological students of morals, some of whom he had evidently read and who use the same arguments and exempla as he does.]

  [A] If, as they say, to philosophize is to doubt, then, a fortiori, to fool about and to weave fantasies as I do must also be to doubt. For it is the role of apprentices to ask questions and to debate: the professor provides the solutions from his chair. My professor is the authority of God’s Will, which undeniably governs us and which ranks way above vain human controversies.

  When Philip had entered the Peleponnesus with his army, somebody told Damidas that the Spartans would have sufferings in plenty if they did not get back into his favour. ‘Coward,’ he replied; ‘what can men suffer who do not fear death?’ Agis was similarly asked how a man could live in freedom: ‘By holding death in contempt,’ he replied. These and a thousand similar assertions which agree on this matter evidently mean something more than merely patiently waiting for death to come. For in life there are many events harder to suffer than death itself. Witness that Spartan boy who was captured by Antigonus then sold as a slave: when his master pressed him to perform some abject task he said: ‘I will show you what you have bought; it would be shameful for me to be a slave when freedom is at hand.’ And so saying, he jumped to his death from the top of the house. When Antipater was uttering bitter threats against the Spartans to force them to acquiesce in one of his demands, their answer was: ‘If you are threatening us with something worse than death, we will be all the more willing to die.’1 [C] And when Philip wrote to them that he would thwart all their undertakings, ‘What,’ they said, ‘will you stop us from dying?’

  [A] The saying goes that a wise man lives not as long as he can but as long as he should, and that the greatest favour that Nature has bestowed on us, and the one which removes all grounds for lamenting over our human condition, is the one which gives us the key to the garden-gate; Nature has ordained only one entrance to life but a hundred thousand exits.2

  [B] We may not have enough land to live off but (as Boiocalus said to the Romans) we shall never lack land to die on. [A] Why raise plaints about this world? It has no hold on you; if you live in anguish the cause lies with your cowardice: to end your life you need only the will to do so:

  Ubique mors est: optime hoc cavit Deus,

  Eripere vitam nemo non homini potest;

  At nemo mortem: mille ad hanc aditus patent.

  [Death can be found everywhere. It is a great favour from God that no man can wrest death from you, though he can take your life; a thousand open roads lead to it.]3

  And it is not the prescription for one single illness: death is the prescription for all our ills. Death is an assured haven, never to be feared, often to be sought. It comes to the same thing if a man makes an end to himself or passively accepts it; whether he runs to meet his last day or simply awaits it; wherever death comes from, it is always his death; no matter where the thread may break, the whole thread is broken: there is no more life on the spindle.

  The fairest death is one that is most willed. Our lives depend on the will of others: our death depends on our own. In nothing whatever should we bow to our humour more than in this. Reputation has nothing to do with such an undertaking: to take it into account is madness. Living is slavery if the freedom to die is wanting.

  Cures are normally effected at the expense of life: we are cut about and cauterized; they lop off our limbs, they deprive us of food or of blood: one more step and they have cured you once and for all! Why is the vein in our gullet not as much at our command as the vein used for bleeding? Strong diseases need strong remedies. When Servius the grammarian suffered from gout, the best thing he could do, he decided, was to rub in poison and kill off his legs. [C] Let them be as gouty as they liked, as long as he could not feel them. [A] God gives us ample leave to go when he reduces us to the state where living is worse than dying. [C] It is weakness to give in to evils, but madness to tend them.

  According to the Stoics, ‘living in conformity with Nature’ means that the wise man can even depart from this life while still enjoying good fortune, provided that he does so opportunely; but it also means that the fool can remain alive even when he is wretched, provided that he still has the benefit of most of the things which they define as being ‘in accord with Nature’.4

  Just as I break no laws against theft when I make off with my own property or cut my own purse, nor the laws against arson if I burn my own woods, so too I am not bound to the laws against murder if I take my own life. Hegesias said that both the circumstances of our life and the circumstances of our death should depend on our choice. And when Diogenes met Speucippus the philosopher, long afflicted with dropsy and being borne on a litter, he was greeted thus: ‘I wish you good health, Diogenes’; but he retorted, ‘No good health to you, who allow yourself to live in such a condition.’ And, truly, soon afterwards Speucippus did have himself put to death, distraught by the painful circumstances of his life.5

  [A] That does not go by without opposition. For [A1] many hold [A] that6 we may not leave our guard-duty in this world without the express commandment of Him who has posted us here; that it is for God (who has sent us here not for ourselves alone but for his glory and for the service of others) to grant us leave-of-absence when he wishes; it is not ours for the taking; [C] that we were not born for ourselves alone but for our country also; that the law can sue us for damages and bring an action for homicide against us; [A] otherwise, as deserters from our duty we are punished in this world and the next:7

  Proxima deinde tenent mæsti loca, qui sibi lætum

  Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi

  Projecere animas.

  [Then, nearby, was the region where, overwhelmed with sadness, stand the just who had killed themselves by their own hand and, loathing the light of day, had thrown away their souls.]8

  There is more constancy in wearing out our chains than in breaking them and a greater test of firmness in Regulus than in Cato.9 It is rashness and impatience which hasten our steps. No mishap can make living Virtue turn her back: she goes looking for ills and pains and feeds on them. The threats of tyrants, torture and executioners are life and soul to her:

  Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus

  Nigræ feraci frondis in Algido,

  Per damna, per cædes, ab ipso

  Ducit opes animumque ferro.

  [Like an oak-tree lopped of its leafy boughs by harsh axes on dark-leaved Mount Algidus: its wounds, its losses, the very iron which strikes it, give it fresh vigour.]10

  Or, as they say:

  Non est, ut putas, virtus, pater,

  Timere vitam, sed malis ingentibus

  Obstare, nec se vertere ac retro dare…

  [Virtue is not as you think, Father, fearing life; it is confronting huge evils without turning one’s back or retreatin
g…]11

  Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere mortem:

  Fortius ille facit qui miser esse potest.

  [In adversity it is easy to despise death: stronger is the man who can live in misery.]12

  It is the role of Cowardice not Virtue to avoid the blows of Fortune by crouching in a hollow grave beneath a massive tombstone. Virtue never breaks off her journey or slackens her pace, no matter what the storm.

  Si fractus illabatur orbis,

  Inpavidam ferient ruinæ.

  [If the world were to shatter and fall on him, its ruins would strike him hut fear would not.]13

  As often as not, flying from other ills brings us to this one; indeed, flying from death often means running towards it:

  [C] Hic, rogo, non furor est, ne moriare, mori!

  [I ask you! Is it not madness to perish in order to avoid death!]14

  [A] It is like those who are afraid of heights and then jump off the edge:

  multos in summa pericula misit

  Venturi timor ipse mali; fortissimus ille est,

  Qui promptus metuenda pati, si cominus instent,