The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  I was offered several medicines: I would not take any of them, being convinced that I was fatally wounded in the head. It would have been – no lying – a very happy way to die, for the feebleness of my reasoning powers kept me from judging anything, and that of my body from feeling anything. I felt myself oozing away so gently, in so gentle and pleasing a fashion, that I can think of hardly any action [C] less grievous than [A] that was.10

  When I began to come back to life and regained my strength,

  [B] Ut tandem sensus convaluere mei,

  [As my senses at last regained their health,]11

  [A] which was two or three hours later, only then did I feel myself all at once linked with pain again, having all my limbs bruised and battered by my fall; and I felt so ill two or three nights later that I nearly died a second time, but of a livelier death! And I can still feel the effects of that battering.

  I must not overlook the following: the last thing I could recover was my memory of the accident itself; before I could grasp it, I got them to repeat several times where I was going to, where I was coming from, what time it happened. As for the manner of my fall, they hid it from me for the sake of the man who had caused it and made up other explanations. But some time later the following day when my memory happened to open up and recall to me the circumstances which I found myself in on that instant when I was aware of that horse coming at me (for I had seen it at my heels and already thought I was dead, but that perception had been so sudden that fear had no time to be engendered by it), it appeared to me that lightning had struck my soul with a jolt and that I was coming back from the other world.

  This account of so unimportant an event is pointless enough but for the instruction I drew from it for my own purposes: for in truth, to inure yourself to death all you have to do is to draw nigh to it. Now, as Pliny says, each man is an excellent instruction unto himself provided he has the capacity to spy on himself from close quarters.12

  Here you have not my teaching but my study: the lesson is not for others; it is for me. [C] Yet, for all that, you should not be ungrateful to me for publishing it. What helps me can perhaps help somebody else. Meanwhile I am not spoiling anything: I am only using what is mine. And if I play the fool it is at my own expense and does no harm to anybody. Such foolishness as I am engaged in dies with me: there are no consequences. We have reports of only two or three Ancients who trod this road and we cannot even say if their manner of doing so bore any resemblance to mine since we know only their names.13 Since then nobody has leapt to follow in their traces. It is a thorny undertaking – more than it looks – to follow so roaming a course as that of our mind’s, to penetrate its dark depths and its inner recesses, to pick out and pin down the innumerable characteristics of its emotions. It is a new pastime, outside the common order; it withdraws us from the usual occupations of people – yes, even from the most commendable ones. For many years now the target of my thoughts has been myself alone; I examine nothing, I study nothing, but me; and if I do study anything else, it is so as to apply it at once to myself, or more correctly, within myself. And it does not seem to me to be wrong if (as is done in other branches of learning, incomparably less useful) I share what I have learned in this one, even though I am hardly satisfied with the progress I have made. No description is more difficult than the describing of oneself; and none, certainly, is more useful. To be ready to appear in public you have to brush your hair; you have to arrange things and put them in order. I am therefore ceaselessly making myself ready since I am ceaselessly describing myself.

  Custom has made it a vice to talk about oneself and obstinately prohibits it, hating the boasting which always seems to be attached to any testimony about oneself. Instead of wiping the child’s nose you cut it off!

  In vitium ducit culpæ fuga.

  [Flying from a fault, we fall into a vice.]14

  I find more evil than good in that remedy. But even if it should be true that engaging people in talk about oneself is inevitably presumption, still, if I am to carry out my plan I must not put an interdict on an activity which makes that sickly quality public, since it is in me and I must not hide that defect; I do not merely practise it: I make a profession of it. Anyway, my belief is that it is wrong to condemn wine because many get drunk on it. You can abuse things only if they are good. I believe that that prohibition applies only to the popular abuse. It is a bridle made to curb calves: it is not used as a bridle by the Saints, who can be heard talking loudly about themselves, nor by philosophers nor by theologians;15 nor by me though I am neither one nor the other. If they do not literally write about themselves, when the occasion requires it they do not hesitate to trot right in front to show off their paces. What does Socrates treat more amply than himself? And what does he most often lead his pupils to do, if not to talk about themselves – not about what they have read in their books but about the being and the movement of their souls? We scrupulously talk of ourselves to God and to our confessors, just as our neighbours do before the whole congregation.16 ‘But,’ somebody will reply, ‘we talk then only of our offences.’ In that case we say it all: for our very virtue is faulty and needs repentance.

  My business, my art, is to live my life. If anyone forbids me to talk about it according to my own sense, experience and practice, let him also command an architect to talk about buildings not according to his own standard but his next-door neighbour’s, according to somebody else’s I knowledge not his own. If publishing one’s own worth is pride, why does not Cicero puff the eloquence of Hortensius, and Hortensius that of Cicero?17

  Perhaps they mean that I should witness to myself by works and deeds not by the naked word alone. But I am chiefly portraying my ways of thinking, a shapeless subject which simply does not become manifest in deeds. I have to struggle to couch it in the flimsy medium of words. Some of the wisest of men and the most devout have lived their lives avoiding any sign of activity. My activities would tell you more about Fortune than about me. They bear witness to their own role not to mine, unless it be by uncertain conjecture: they are samples and reveal only particulars. I am all on display, like a mummy on which at a glance you can see the veins, the muscles and the tendons, each piece in its place. Part of me is revealed – but only ambiguously – by the act of coughing; another by my turning pale or by my palpitations. It is not what I do that I write of, but of me, of what I am. I hold that we must show wisdom in judging ourselves, and, equally, good faith in witnessing to ourselves, high and low indifferently. If I seemed to myself to be good or wise – or nearly so – I would sing it out at the top of my voice. To say you are worse than you are is not modest but foolish. According to Aristotle, to prize yourself at less than you are worth is weak and faint-hearted. No virtue is helped by falsehood; and the truth can never go wrong. To say we are better than we are is not always presumption: it is even more often stupidity. In my judgement, the substance of that vice is to be immoderately pleased with yourself and so to fall into an injudicious self-love.

  The sovereign remedy to cure self-love is to do the opposite to what those people say who, by forbidding you to talk about yourself, as a consequence even more strongly forbid you to think about yourself. Pride lies in our thoughts: the tongue can only have a very unimportant share in it. They think that to linger over yourself is to be pleased with yourself, to haunt and frequent yourself is to hold yourself too dear. That can happen. But that excess arises only in those who merely finger the surface of themselves; who see themselves only when business is over; who call it madness and idleness to be concerned with yourself; for whom enriching and constructing your character is to build castles in the air; who treat themselves as a third person, a stranger to themselves.

  If anyone looks down on others and is drunk on self-knowledge let him turn his gaze upwards to ages past: he will pull his horns in then, discovering many thousands of minds which will trample him underfoot. If he embarks upon some flattering presumption of his own valour let him recall the lives of the
two Scipios and all those armies and peoples who leave him so far behind. No one individual quality will make any man swell with pride who will, at the same time, take account of all those other weak and imperfect qualities which are in him and, finally, of the nullity of the human condition.

  Because Socrates alone had taken a serious bite at his god’s precept to ‘know himself’ and by such a study had reached the point of despising himself, he alone was judged worthy of being called The Sage.18

  If any man knows himself to be thus, let him boldly reveal himself by his own mouth.

  7. On rewards for honour

  [The historic Order of St Michael, of which Montaigne was a knight, had become debased, partly as the result of an inflation of awards during the Wars of Religion. The new Order of the Holy Ghost was instituted by Henry III of France in 1578, ceremonies creating the new knights taking place in December 1578 and January 1579. Montaigne’s reflections lead him to thoughts on the origin of inequality among men.]

  [A] The biographers of Augustus Caesar picked out this point to emphasize in his military discipline: he was wonderfully free with his gifts to those who deserved it; but where rewarding honour itself was concerned he was equally sparing. Yet before he had ever gone to war himself he had had bestowed on him by his uncle all the military awards.

  It was a fine innovation practised by most of the systems of government in the world to establish certain vain and, in themselves, valueless decorations, in order to honour and reward virtue, such as crowns of laurel oak or myrtle Laves, certain forms of dress, the privilege of riding through the city in a coach or with torch-bearers by night, a special seat at public meetings, the prerogative to certain special names and titles, to certain symbols on their coats-of-arms and such-like things; this system was operated differently according to each nation’s set of values, and still is.

  For our part, like many of our neighbours, we have Orders of Chivalry which were instituted for this express purpose. It is, in truth, a very good and beneficial custom to have found a way of recognizing the worth of rare outstanding men and to please and to satisfy them with rewards which are no charge on the people and which cost the monarch nothing. It was always recognized by the experience of the Ancients – and was formerly seen to be so among us French – that men of distinction were more zealous for such rewards than for those which brought gain and profit: that was not unreasonable nor without evident justification. If you introduce other advantages and riches into a prize which should be for honour alone, instead of increasing the prestige you prune it back and degrade it.

  The Order of Saint Michael, which was so long held in high esteem among us, had no greater advantage than its being in no ways associated with any other advantage. As a result there used to be no office or estate whatsoever to which the nobility aspired with so much longing and yearning as they did to that Order, nor was there any rank which comported more respect and dignity, since Virtue more readily aspires to embrace such recompense as is truly her own, more glorious than useful. The other rewards which are bestowed do not have the same dignity; they are1 employed on all sorts of occasions: money rewards the services of a manservant, the diligence of a messenger, dancing, vaulting, talking and the meanest services done for us; yes, and we use it to reward vice, flattery, pimping and treachery. No marvel2 then if Virtue desires and accepts that sort of common currency less willingly than the one which is proper and peculiar to herself. Augustus was right to be much more niggardly and sparing over this one than the other, especially since honour is a privilege, the main essence of which is its rarity. So, too, for Virtue.

  Cui malus est nemo, quis bonus esse potest?

  [For him who thinks no man is bad, can any man be good?]3

  We do not pick out for praise a man who takes trouble over the education of his children, since however right that is it is not unusual, [C] no more than we pick out a tall tree in a forest where all the trees are tall. [A] I do not think that any citizen of Sparta boasted of his valour, for it was the virtue of all the people of their nation; nor did he boast of his reliability or of his contempt for riches. No matter how great it may be, no recompense is allotted to any virtue which has passed into custom: I doubt if we would ever call it great once it was usual.

  Since such distinctions have no other value or prestige than the fact that few men enjoy them, to make them worthless you simply have to be generous with them. Even if there were more men nowadays who merited our Order it still ought not to have its prestige debased.

  And it could easily happen that more deserve it since not one of the virtues can spread so easily as military valour. There is valour of another kind, true, perfect, philosophical (I am not speaking of it here: I use the word valour in accordance with our own usage); it is greater than our kind, it is more ample: it consists in fortitude and assurance of soul, despising all hostile accidents equally; it is calm, uniform and constant; our own kind is but a glimmer of it. Habit, education, example and custom are all-powerful in establishing the valour I am talking about, and can easily make it common, as can be readily seen from our experience in our Civil Wars. [B] If anyone could unite us now and arouse our whole people for some common emprise we would make our ancient [C] military [B] reputation flower again.

  [A] It is certain that in former times this Order was not concerned with valour by itself: it looked much further. It was never earned by a brave soldier but by a famous4 leader: knowing how to obey orders never deserved so honourable a reward then. In former times they were looking out for a more general expert knowledge of warfare, embracing the greater part of the greatest parts of the fighting man – [C] ‘Neque enim eædem militares et imperatoriæ artes sunt’ [For the skills of a soldier and those of a commander are not the same]5 – [A] they sought a man whose circumstances also were worthy of such an honour. But, as I was saying, even if more men were judged worthy than were found in former times, we still must not be more liberal with it, and it would have been better to fail to bestow it on everyone to whom it was due than for ever to lose in practice so useful an innovation. No great-minded man deigns to see any advantage in what he holds in common with many others; and today those who merit it least are the first to affect to despise it in order to range themselves with those who were wronged when a decoration which was peculiarly theirs was unworthily extended and debased.

  Now to wipe out this Order, to abolish it with the expectation of giving a new and sudden prestige to some similar decoration, is an undertaking inappropriate to so licentious and diseased a period as our own present one; what will happen is that the latest Order will, from its inception, incur the same disadvantages which have just ruined the other. To give it authority, the rules governing the awarding of this new Order would need to be extremely tight and restrictive, whereas our troubled times are not susceptible to a short governing-rein. Apart from that, before it could be given any prestige we should need to have lost all memory of the former Order and of the contempt into which it has fallen.

  My topic could lend itself to a discussion of Valiance and of its differences from other virtues. But since Plutarch has often touched on that theme6I would be wasting my time, repeating here what he has already said about it.7 But it is worth considering that our own nation gives the first place among the virtues to valiance as its name shows, vaillance deriving from valeur, worth. By our usage, in the language of the Court and of the nobility, when we say that a man vaut beaucoup (‘has great worth’) or is an homme de bien (‘a good man’) we mean he is a valiant one. The custom of the Romans was similar: they derived their general term for virtue (virtus) from the word for strength (vis).8

  The only, essential, proper form of nobility in France is the profession of arms. It is probable that the first of the virtues to appear among men, giving some of them superiority over others, was the one by which the stronger and the more courageous made themselves masters of the weaker and so acquired individual rank and reputation, from which derive our terms of honour an
d dignity; or else those nations, being most warlike, gave the prize and the title highest in dignity to the virtue which they were most familiar with. So too our passion, our feverish concern, for the chastity of women results in une bonne femme (‘a good woman’), and une femme d’honneur, ou de vertu (‘a woman of honour’ or ‘of virtue’) in reality meaning for us a chaste woman – as though, in order to bind them to that duty, we neglected all the rest and gave them free rein for any other fault, striking a bargain to get them to give up that one.

  8. On the affection of fathers for their children

  [This is one of the most moving and revealing of the chapters: it starts with the bout of melancholy which upset Montaigne’s complexion and led him to write his Essays; it ends with thoughts of the mad frenzy which can lead fathers to fall in love with their own children or brain-children. Some of the examples he cites of strange behaviour concern chagrin (manic-depression) and melancholy itself. The shift from real children to brain-children (a vital platonic commonplace) is given greater urgency by the fact that Montaigne’s children all died in infancy, one daughter excepted. His final examples emphasize that great deeds and books can be not only a man’s ‘sons’ but his ‘daughters’ too.

  The irritability which transpires through his discussion of wills and inheritances reminds us of tensions between him and his mother over the dispositions in Pierre de Montaigne’s last will and testament. An earlier will (1560–61) had left great financial authority to the mother; the last will simply followed the relevant practices of the customary law of Bordeaux, which treated widows generously, though less so than some other legal systems within France. The widow (who died in 1601) harboured resentment until the end, in her own will bitterly accusing Michel de Montaigne’s only daughter, her own granddaughter, of enjoying wealth which ought to have been hers. (See R. M. Calder, ‘Montaigne and Customary Law’, in Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, XLV1I, 1985, pp. 79–85). In this chapter we are far from that balanced serenity which Montaigne often achieves. There are deletions in the Bordeaux manuscript probably not made by the author himself. Two have been reinserted here.