The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  The citizens of Abydoss, invested by Philip, made the same resolution. But they had too little time. King Philip, horrified by the desperate haste of their preparations (and having already seized the treasures and the portable property they had each condemned to destruction by fire or water) withdrew his soldiers and allowed the townsfolk three days’ grace to kill themselves, days which they filled with blood and murder exceeding any enemy’s cruelty; not one person was saved who had power over himself.

  There are countless similar examples of mass resolution: they seem all the more horrible for applying to everyone; but they are less horrible in fact than when done individually. What reason cannot do for each man separately it can do for them all together, their enthusiasm as a group ravishing each individual judgement.

  [B] In the time of Tiberius the condemned men who waited to be executed forfeited their property and were denied funeral rites: those who anticipated it by killing themselves were buried and allowed to make a will.

  [A] But sometimes we can desire death out of hope for a greater good: ‘I want’, said St Paul, ‘to be loosened asunder so as to be with Jesus Christ,’ and, ‘Who shall deliver me from these bonds?’ Cleombrotus Ambraciota, having read the Phaedo of Plato, entered into so great a yearning for the life to come that, without further cause, he cast himself into the sea. [C] That clearly shows how incorrect we are to call this deliberate ‘loosening asunder’ despair: we are often brought to it by a burning hope – often, also, by a calm and certain propensity of our judgement.44

  [A] During the journey to Outremer made by Saint Louis, Jacques du Chastel the Bishop of Soissons saw that the King and the whole army were preparing to return to France leaving their religious affairs unfinished; he resolved, rather, to leave for Paradise: having said God speed to his friends, he charged single-handed into the enemy in full view of everyone and was cut to pieces.45

  [C] In one particular kingdom in a recently discovered country46 there is a day of solemn procession during which the idol that is worshipped there is carried in public on a festival-car of astonishing dimensions; many can be seen cutting off chunks of their living flesh to offer to the idol and, in addition, a number of others prostrate themselves in the main square to be crushed and smashed to pieces by the wheels in order to win such veneration as saints after their death as is indeed rendered to them.

  The death of that Bishop, arms in hand, has more nobility but implies less pain, since the zeal of battle would have partly deadened his sense of feeling.

  [A] Some forms of government have been concerned to decide when suicide may be legal and opportune. In our own city of Marseilles in former times they used to keep a supply of a poison based on hemlock always available at public expense to all those who wished to hasten their days; they first had to get their reasons approved by their Senate (called the Six Hundred); it was not permissible to lay hands on oneself, save by leave of the magistrate and for lawful reasons.47

  This same law was also found elsewhere. When sailing to Asia, Sextus Pompeius went via the island of Cea in the Aegean. As one of his company tells us, it chanced when Pompeius was there that a woman of great authority, who had just explained to the citizens why she had decided to die, begged him to honour her death with his presence; which he did; and having long vainly assayed to deflect her from her purpose with his eloquence (at which he was wonderfully proficient) and with his powers of dissuasion, he finally allowed her to do what pleased her. She had lived to be ninety, blessed in mind and body; now she was lying on her bed (made more ornate than usual) and was propped up on her elbow. ‘Sextus Pompeius,’ she said, ‘may the gods be kind to you (especially the gods I leave behind rather than those I am about to discover) for you did not despise being my counsellor in life and my witness in death. For my part I have assayed only the kindlier face of Fortune; fearing that the desire to go on living might make me see an adverse one, I am with this happy death giving leave of absence to the remnant of my soul and leaving behind me two daughters and a legion of grandchildren.’ She then addressed her relations, urging them to agree in peace and unity; divided her property and commended her household gods to her elder daughter; then with a steady hand she took the cup containing the poison; and having addressed her vows to Mercury, praying to be taken to some seat of happiness in the next world, she abruptly swallowed that mortal potion. She then kept the company informed of the progress of the poison as it worked through her body, telling how her limbs grew cold, one after another, until she was finally able to say it had reached her inward parts and her heart; whereupon she called on her daughters to do one last duty: to close her eyes.

  Pliny gives an account of a certain Hyperborean people whose climate is so temperate that the inhabitants do not usually die before they actually want to; when they become weary, having had their fill of life and reached an advanced age, they hold a joyful celebration and then leap into the sea from a high cliff set aside for this purpose.48

  [B] Of all incitements [C] unbearable [B] pain and a worse death seem to me the most pardonable.

  4. ‘Work can wait till tomorrow’

  [Montaigne discovered Amyot’s French translation of Plutarch’s Lives and his Moral Works after he had embarked on the Essays. His respect for Plutarch’s wisdom and style does not stop him from drawing different moral conclusions from his examples. On the contrary: he is moved to imitate and rival Plutarch’s admired wisdom and judgement. Amyot’s translation was, even at the time, criticized for inaccuracy: Montaigne, without comparing it in scholarly detail with the Greek, is sure that Amyot had grasped the essence of Plutarch’s mind. Both French and English readers have indeed found in Amyot’s Plutarch a lasting source of pleasure and wisdom – North’s famous English Plutarch is translated from Amyot’s French, not from the original Greek. Scholars can, did and do find errors in them both, but it is they who are read, not Xylander or Cruserius or even more recent translators from among the scholars.]

  [A] It seems to me that I am justified in awarding the palm, above all our writers in French, to Jacques Amyot, not merely for the simplicity and purity of his language in which he excels all others, nor for his constancy during such a long piece of work, nor for the profundity of his knowledge in being able to disentangle an author so complex and thorny (for you can say what you like: I cannot understand the Greek, but everywhere in his translation I see a meaning so beautiful, so coherent and so consistent with itself that either he has definitely understood the true meaning of his author or else, from a long frequentation with him, he has planted in his own soul a vigorous generic Idea of Plutarch’s, and has at least foisted upon him nothing which belies him or contradicts him); but above all I am grateful to him for having chosen and selected so worthy and so appropriate a book to present to his country. Ignorant people like us would have been lost if that book had not brought us up out of the mire: thanks to it, we now dare to speak and to write – and the ladies teach the dominies; it is our breviary.

  If that good man is still alive I would assign him Xenophon to do just as well with: that is an easier task – one therefore all the more suited to his advanced years. And it somehow seems to me that, even though Amyot can slip very briskly and neatly round some tight corners, his style is nevertheless more at home when it is untrammelled and can roll easily along.

  I recently came upon the passage where Plutarch tells us that when he himself was delivering a declamation in Rome Rusticus, who was in the audience, received a packet of letters from the Emperor and put off opening it until the end. For which, he says, all the audience most highly praised the dignity of that man. Indeed, since Plutarch was on the subject of curiosity (that avid passion, greedy for news, which leads us to drop everything indiscriminately and impatiently so as to entertain every newcomer and, losing all sense of respect and politeness, to tear open the letters they bring us no matter where we may be) he was right to praise Rusticus’ dignity; and he could also have gone on to praise his decency and his courtesy i
n not wanting to interrupt his declamation.1

  But I doubt whether Rusticus could be praised for his wisdom: for since he was receiving those letters unexpectedly, and from an Emperor at that, to put off reading them might have had grave consequences.

  The opposite vice to curiosity is lack of concern, [B] which my complexion manifestly inclines me to, and [A] which is so extreme in many men I have known that you can find them with unopened letters in their pockets brought three or four days earlier.

  [B] I not only never open any letter entrusted to me but not even any which Fortune may pass through my hands; I feel guilty if, when standing beside some great man, my eyes inadvertently thieve some knowledge from the important letter he is reading. Never was anyone less inquisitive, less given to poking about in another man’s affairs.

  [A] In our fathers’ time Monsieur de Boutières nearly lost Turin because he was enjoying good company at dinner and put off reading a warning sent to him of some treachery being plotted against that town, which was under his command. And I also learned from Plutarch that Julius Caesar would have saved himself if he had read a note which was handed to him that day on his way to the Senate where the conspirators killed him.2

  Plutarch relates too how Archias, the Theban Tyrant, on the evening before Pelopidas executed his plan to kill him and so restore freedom to his country, was written to by another Archias, an Athenian, to inform him point by point of what was being prepared against him. This missive was delivered to him during dinner; he put off opening it, saying words which later became Greek proverb: ‘Work can wait till tomorrow.’3

  In my opinion a wise man can (out of concern for others, such as not impolitely interrupting a social event, as was Rusticus’ case, or so as not to break into some other affair of importance) put off reading any news brought to him; but, particularly if he holds some public office, to do so for his own interest or pleasure – not interrupting his dinner or even his sleep – is unpardonable. And in ancient Rome the ‘consular place’ as they called it was the most honoured seat at table, since it was the one most readily accessible to those who might come [C] and consult the man seated there.4 [A] Which shows that even at table the Romans did not cut themselves off from dealing with other matters and with unexpected occurrences.5

  But when all has been said, it is not easy in any human activity to lay down a rule so well grounded on reasoned argument that Fortune fails to maintain her rights over it.

  5. On conscience

  [Conscience originally meant connivance. Conscience in the sense of our individual consciousness of right and wrong or of our own guilt or rectitude fascinated Montaigne. It became a vital concern of his during the Wars of Religion with their cruelties, their false accusations and their use of torture on prisoners. Such moral basis as there was for the ‘question’ (judicial torture) seems, curiously enough, to have been a respect for the power of conscience – of a man’s inner sense of his guilt or innocence which would strengthen or weaken his power to withstand pain. A major source of Montaigne’s ideas here is St Augustine and a passionate note by Juan Luis Vives in his edition of the City of God designed to undermine confidence in torture.]

  [A] During our civil wars I was travelling one day with my brother the Sieur de la Brousse when we met a gentleman1 of good appearance who was on the other side from us; I did not know anything about that since he feigned otherwise. The worst of these wars is that the cards are so mixed up, with your enemy indistinguishable from you by any clear indication of language or deportment, being brought up under the same laws, manners and climate, that it is not easy to avoid confusion and disorder. That made me fear that I myself would come upon our own troops in a place where I was not known, be obliged to state my name and wait for the worst. [B] That did happen to me on another occasion: for, from just such a mishap, I lost men and horses. Among others, they killed one of my pages, pitifully: an Italian of good family whom I was carefully training; in him was extinguished a young life, beautiful and full of great promise.

  [A] But that man of mine was so madly afraid! I noticed that he nearly died every time we met any horsemen or passed through towns loyal to the King; I finally guessed that his alarm arose from his conscience. It seemed to that wretched man that you could read right into the very secret thoughts of his mind through his mask and the crosses on his greatcoat.2 So wondrous is the power of conscience! It makes us betray, accuse and fight against ourselves. In default of an outside testimony it leads us to witness against ourselves:

  Occultum quatiens animo tortore flagellum.

  [Lashing us with invisible whips, our soul torments us.]3

  The following story is on the lips of children: a Paeonian called Bessus was rebuked for having deliberately destroyed a nest of swallows, killing them all. He said he was right to do so: those little birds kept falsely accusing him of having murdered his father! Until then this act of parricide had been hidden and unknown; but the avenging Furies of his conscience made him who was to pay the penalty reveal the crime.4

  Hesiod corrects that saying of Plato’s, that the punishment follows hard upon the sin. He says it is born at the same instant, with the sin itself; to expect punishment is to suffer it: to merit it is to expect it. Wickedness forges torments for itself,

  Malum consilium consultori pessimum,

  [Who counsels evil, suffers evil most,]5

  just as the wasp harms others when it stings but especially itself, for it loses sting and strength for ever:

  Vitasque in vulnere ponunt.

  [In that wound they lay down their lives.]6

  The Spanish blister-fly secretes an antidote to its poison, by some mutual antipathy within nature. So too, just when we take pleasure in vice, there is born in our conscience an opposite displeasure, which tortures us, sleeping and waking, with many painful thoughts.7

  [B] Quippe ubi se multi, per somnia sæpe loquentes,

  Aut morbo delirantes, procraxe ferantur,

  Et celata diu in medium peccata dedisse.

  [Many indeed, often talking in their sleep or delirious in illness, have proclaimed, it is said, and betrayed long-hidden sins.]8

  [A] Apollodorus dreamed that he saw himself being flayed by the Scythians then boiled in a pot while his heart kept muttering, ‘I am the cause of all these ills.’ No hiding-place awaits the wicked, said Epicurus, for they can never be certain of hiding there while their conscience gives them away.9

  Prima est hæc ultio, quod se

  Judice nemo nocens absolvitur.

  [This is the principal vengeance: no guilty man is absolved: he is his own judge.]10

  Conscience can fill us with fear, but she can also fill us with assurance and confidence. [B] And I can say that I have walked more firmly through some dangers by reflecting on the secret knowledge I had of my own will and the innocence of my designs.

  [A] Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra

  Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo.

  [A mind conscious of what we have done conceives within our breast either hope or fear, according to our deeds.]11

  There are hundreds of examples: it will suffice to cite three of them about the same great man.

  When Scipio was arraigned one day before the Roman people on a grave indictment, instead of defending himself and flattering his judges he said: ‘Your wishing to judge, on a capital charge, a man through whom you have authority to judge the Roman world, becomes you well!’

  Another time his only reply to the accusations made against him by a Tribune of the People was not to plead his cause but to say: ‘Come, fellow citizens! Let us go and give thanks to the gods for the victory they gave me over the Carthaginians on just such a day as this!’ Then as he started to walk towards the temple all the assembled people could be seen following after him – even his prosecutor.

  Again when Petilius, under the instigation of Cato, demanded that Scipio account for the monies that had passed through his hands in the province of Antioch, Scipio c
ame to the Senate for this purpose, took his account-book from under his toga and declared that it contained the truth about his receipts and expenditure; but when he was told to produce it as evidence he refused to do so, saying that he had no wish to act so shamefully towards himself; in the presence of the Senate he tore it up with his own hands. I do not believe that a soul with seared scars could have counterfeited such assurance. [C] He had, says Livy, a mind too great by nature, a mind too elevated by Fortune, even to know how to be a criminal or to condescend to the baseness of defending his innocence.12

  [A] Torture is a dangerous innovation; it would appear that it is an assay not of the truth but of a man’s endurance. [C] The man who can endure it hides the truth: so does he who cannot. [A] For why should pain make me confess what is true rather than force me to say what is not true? And on the contrary if a man who has not done what he is accused of is able to support such torment, why should a man who has done it be unable to support it, when so beautiful a reward as life itself is offered him?

  I think that this innovation is founded on the importance of the power of conscience. It would seem that in the case of the guilty man it would weaken him and assist the torture in making him confess his fault, whereas it strengthens the innocent man against the torture. But to speak the truth, it is a method full of danger and uncertainty. What would you not say, what would you not do, to avoid such grievous pain?