The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [A] What I am obliged to answer for is for getting myself tangled up, or if there is any inanity or defect in my reasoning which I do not see or which I am incapable of seeing once it is pointed out to me. Faults can often escape our vigilance: sickness of judgement consists in not perceiving them when they are revealed to us. Knowledge and truth can lodge within us without judgement; judgement can do so without them: indeed, recognizing our ignorance is one of the surest and most beautiful witnesses to our judgement that I can find.

  I have no sergeant-major to marshal my arguments other than Fortune. As my ravings present themselves, I pile them up; sometimes they all come crowding together: sometimes they drag along in single file. I want people to see my natural ordinary stride, however much it wanders off the path. I let myself go along as I find myself to be; anyway the matters treated here are not such that ignorance of them cannot be permitted nor talking of them casually or rashly. I would very much love to grasp things with a complete understanding but I cannot bring myself to pay the high cost of doing so. My design is to spend whatever life I have left gently and unlaboriously. I am not prepared to bash my brains for anything, not even for learning’s sake however precious it may be. From books all I seek is to give myself pleasure by an honourable pastime: or if I do study, I seek only that branch of learning which deals with knowing myself and which teaches me how to live and die well:

  [B] Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus.

  [This is the winning-post towards which my sweating horse must run.]4

  [A] If I come across difficult passages in my reading I never bite my nails over them: after making a charge or two I let them be. [B] If I settled down to them I would waste myself and my time, for my mind is made for the first jump. What I fail to see during my original charge I see even less when I stubborn it out.

  I can do nothing without gaiety: persistence [C] and too much intensity [B] dazzle my judgement, making it sad and weary. [C] My vision becomes confused and dissipated: [B] I must tell it to withdraw and then make fresh glancing attacks, just as we are told to judge the sheen of scarlet-cloth by running our eyes over it several times, catching various glimpses of it, sudden, repeated and renewed.

  [A] If one book wearies me I take up another, applying myself to it only during those hours when I begin to be gripped by boredom at doing nothing. I do not have much to do with books by modern authors, since the Ancients seem to me to be more taut and ample; nor with books in Greek, since my judgement [C] cannot do its job properly on the basis of a schoolboy, apprenticed [A] understanding.5

  [A] Among books affording plain delight, I judge that the Decameron of Boccaccio, Rabelais and the Basia of Johannes Secundus (if they are to be placed in this category)6 are worth spending time on. As for the Amadis and such like, they did not have enough authority to captivate me even in childhood.7 I will also add, boldly or rashly, that this aged heavy soul of mine can no longer be tickled by good old Ovid (let alone Ariosto): his flowing style and his invention, which once enraptured me, now hardly have the power of holding my attention.

  I freely say what I think about all things – even about those which doubtless exceed my competence and which I in no wise claim to be within my jurisdiction. When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing. When I find that I have no taste for the Axiochus of Plato – a weak book, considering its author8 – my judgement does not trust itself: it is not so daft as to oppose the authority of so many [C] other judgements, famous and ancient, which it holds as its professors and masters: rather is it happy to err with them.9 [A] It blames itself, condemning itself either for stopping at the outer rind and for being unable to get right down to the bottom of things, or else for looking at the matter in some false light. My judgement is quite content merely to protect itself from confusion and unruliness: as for its weakness, it willingly acknowledges it and avows it. What it thinks it should do is to give a just interpretation of such phenomena as its power of conception presents it with: but they are feeble ones and imperfect. Most of Aesop’s fables have several senses and several ways of being understood. Those who treat them as myths select some aspect which squares well with the fable; yet [B] in most cases [A] that is only the first surface facet of them: there are other facets, more vivid, more of their essence, more inward, to which they never manage to penetrate; that is what I do.

  But to get on: it has always seemed to me that in poetry Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus and Horace rank highest by far – especially Virgil in his Georgics, which I reckon to be the most perfect achievement in poetry; by a comparison with it one can easily see that there are passages in the Aeneid to which Virgil, if he had been able, would have given a touch of the comb. [B] And in the Aeneid the fifth book seems to me the most perfect. [A] I also love Lucan and like to be often in his company, not so much for his style as for his own worth and for the truth of his opinions and judgements. As for that good poet Terence – the grace and delight of the Latin tongue – I find him wonderful at vividly depicting the emotions of the soul and the modes of our behaviour; [C] our own actions today constantly bring me back to him. [A] However often I read him I always find some new grace and beauty in him.

  Those who lived soon after Virgil’s time complained that some put Lucretius on a par with him. My opinion is that such a comparison is indeed between unequals; yet I have quite a job confirming myself in that belief when I find myself enthralled by one of Lucretius’ finer passages. If they were irritated by that comparison what would they say of the animal stupidity and barbarous insensitivity of those who now compare Ariosto with him? And what would Ariosto himself say?

  [Al] O seclum insipiens et infacetum!

  [O what a silly, tasteless age!]10

  [A] I reckon that the Ancients had even more reason to complain of those who put Plautus on a par with Terence (who savours much more of the nobleman) than of those who did so for Lucretius and Virgil. [C] It does much for Terence’s reputation and superiority that the Father of Roman Eloquence has him – alone in his class – often on his lips, and so too the verdict which the best judge among Roman poets gave of his fellow-poet.11

  [A] It has often occurred to me that those of our contemporaries who undertake to write comedies (such as the Italians, who are quite good at it) use three or four plots from Terence or Plautus to make one of their own. In one single comedy they pile up five or six tales from Boccaccio. What makes them so burden themselves with matter is their lack of confidence in their ability to sustain themselves with their own graces: they need something solid to lean on; not having enough in themselves to captivate us they want the story to detain us. In the case of my author, Terence, it is quite the reverse: the perfections and beauties of the fashioning of his language make us lose our craving for his subject: everywhere it is his elegance and his graciousness which hold us; everywhere he is so delightful –

  liquidas puroque simillimus amni

  [flowing exactly like a pure fountain]12

  – and he so fills our souls to the brim with his graces that we forget those of his plot.

  Considerations like these encourage me to go further: I note that the good poets of Antiquity avoided any striving to display not only such fantastic hyperboles as the Spaniards and the Petrarchists do but even those sweeter and more restrained acute phrases which adorn all works of poetry in the following centuries. Yet not one sound judge regrets that the Ancients lacked them nor fails to admire the incomparable even smoothness and the sustained sweetness and flourishing beauty of the epigrams of Catullus above the sharp goads with which Martial enlivens the tails of his. The reason for this is the same as I stated just now, and as Martial said of himself: ‘Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit, in cujus locum materia successerat.’ [He had less need to strive after originality, its place had been taken by his matter.]13 Those earlier poets achieve their effects without getting excited and goading themselves on; they find laughter everywhere: they do not have to go and
tickle themselves! The later ones need extraneous help: the less spirit they have, the more body they need. [B] They get up on their horses because they cannot stand on their own legs. [A] It is the same with our dancing: those men of low estate who teach it are unable to copy the deportment and propriety of our nobility14 and so try to gain favour by their daring footwork and other strange acrobatics. [B] And it is far easier for ladies to cut a figure in dances which require a variety of intricate bodily movements than in certain other stately dances in which they merely have to walk with a natural step and display their native bearing and their usual graces. [A] Just as some excellent clowns whom I have seen are able to give us all the delight which can be drawn from their art while wearing their everyday clothes, whereas to put us in a laughing mood their apprentices and those who are less deeply learned in that art have to put flour on their faces, dress up in funny clothes and hide behind silly movements and grimaces.

  Better than any other way this idea as I conceive it can be understood from a comparison between the Aeneid and the Orlando furioso. We can see the Aeneid winging aloft with a firm and soaring flight, always pursuing its goal: the Orlando furioso we see hopping and fluttering from tale to tale as from branch to branch, never trusting its wings except to cross a short distance, seeking to alight on every hedge lest its wind or strength should give out,

  Excursusque breves tentat.

  [Trying out its wings on little sorties.]15

  So much, then, for the authors who delight me most on that kind of subject.

  As for my other category of books (that which mixes a little more usefulness with the delight16 and from which I learn how to control my humours and my qualities), the authors whom I find most useful for that are Plutarch (since he has become a Frenchman)17 and Seneca. They both are strikingly suited to my humour in that the knowledge that I seek from them is treated in pieces not sewn together (and so do not require me to bind myself to some lengthy labour, of which I am quite incapable). Such are the Moral Works of Plutarch, as well as the Epistles of Seneca which are the most beautiful part of his writings and the most profitable. I do not need a great deal of preparation to get down to them and I can drop them whenever I like, for one part of them does not really lead to another. Those two authors are in agreement over most useful and true opinions; they were both fated to be born about the same period; both to be the tutors of Roman Emperors; both came from foreign lands and both were rich and powerful.18 Their teachings are some of the cream of philosophy and are presented in a simple and appropriate manner. Plutarch is more uniform and constant: Seneca is more diverse and comes in waves. Seneca stiffens and tenses himself, toiling to arm virtue against weakness, fear and vicious appetites; Plutarch seems to judge those vices to be less powerful and to refuse to condescend to hasten his step or to rely on a shield. Plutarch holds to Plato’s opinions, which are gentle and well-suited to public life: Seneca’s opinions are Stoic and Epicurean, farther from common practice but in my judgement more suited [C] to the individual [A] and firmer. It seems that Seneca bowed somewhat to the tyranny of the Emperors of his day, for I hold it for certain that his judgement was under duress when he condemned the cause of those great-souled murderers of Caesar; Plutarch is a free man from end to end. Seneca is full of pithy phrases and sallies; Plutarch is full of matter. Seneca enflames you and stirs you: Plutarch is more satisfying and repays you more. [B] Plutarch leads us: Seneca drives us.

  [A] As for Cicero, the works of his which are most suitable to my projects are those which above all deal with moral philosophy. But to tell the truth boldly (for once we have crossed the boundaries of insolence there is no reining us in) his style of writing seems boring to me, and so do all similar styles. For his introductory passages, his definitions, his sub-divisions and his etymologies eat up most of his work; what living marrow there is in him is smothered by the tedium of his preparations. If I spend an hour reading him (which is a lot for me) and then recall what pith and substance I have got out of him, most of the time I find nothing but wind, for he has not yet got to the material which serves my purposes and to the reasoning which actually touches on the core of what I am interested in. For me, who am only seeking to become more wise not more learned [C] or more eloquent, [A] all those marshallings of Aristotelian logic are irrelevant; I want authors [C] to begin with their conclusion: [A] I know19 well enough what is meant by death or voluptuousness: let them not waste time dissecting them; from the outset I am looking for good solid reasons which teach me how to sustain their attacks. Neither grammatical subtleties nor ingenuity in weaving words or arguments help me in that. I want arguments which drive home their first attack right into the strongest point of doubt: Cicero’s hover about the pot and languish. They are all right for the classroom, the pulpit or the Bar where we are free to doze off and find ourselves a quarter of an hour later still with time to pick up the thread of the argument. You have to talk like that to judges whom you want to win over whether you are right or wrong, or to schoolboys and the common people [C] to whom you have to say the lot and see what strikes home. [A] I do not want authors to strive to gain my attention by crying Oyez fifty times like our heralds. The Romans in their religion used to cry Hoc age! [This do!], [C] just as in our own we cry Sursum corda [Lift up your hearts];20 [A] for me they are so many wasted words. I leave home fully prepared: I need no sauce or appetizers: I can eat my meat quite raw; and instead of whetting my appetite with those preliminaries and preparations they deaden it for me and dull it.

  [C] Will the licence of our times excuse my audacious sacrilege in thinking that even Plato’s Dialogues drag slowly along stifling his matter, and in lamenting the time spent on those long useless preparatory discussions by a man who had so many better things to say? My ignorance may be a better excuse, since I can see none of the beauty of his language.

  In general I ask for books which use learning not those which trim it up.

  [A] My first two, as well as Pliny and their like, have no Hoc age: they want to deal with people who are already on the alert – or if they do have one it is an Hoc age of substance with its own separate body.

  I also like reading Cicero’s Letters to Atticus,21 not only because they contain much to teach us about the history and affairs of his time but, even more, so as to find out from them his private humours. For as I have said elsewhere I am uniquely curious about my authors’ soul and native judgement. By what their writings display when they are paraded in the theatre of the world we can indeed judge their talents, but we cannot judge them as men nor their morals.

  I have regretted hundreds of times that we have lost the book which Brutus wrote about virtue: it is a beautiful thing to learn the theory from those who thoroughly know the practice; yet seeing that the preacher and the preaching are two different things, I am just as happy to see Brutus in Plutarch as in a book of his own. I would rather have a true account of his chat with his private friends in his tent on the eve of a battle than the oration which he delivered next morning to his army, and what he did in his work-room and bedroom than what he did in the Forum or Senate.

  As for Cicero, I share the common opinion that, erudition apart, there was little excellence in his soul. He was a good citizen, affable by nature as fat jolly men like him frequently are; but it is no lie to say that his share of weakness and ambitious vanity was very great. I cannot excuse him for reckoning his poetry worth publishing; it is no great crime to write bad verses but it was an error of judgement on his part not to have known how unworthy they were of the glory of his name.

  As for his eloquence it is beyond compare; I believe no one will ever equal it.22 The younger Cicero, who resembled his father only in name, when in command of Asia found there were several men whom he did not know seated at his table: among others there was Caestius at the foot of it, where people often sneak in to enjoy the open hospitality of the great. Cicero asked one of his men who he was and was told his name; but, as a man whose thoughts were elsewhere and who kept
forgetting the replies to his questions, he asked it him again two or three times. The servant, to avoid the bother of having to go on repeating the same thing and so as to enable Cicero to identify the man by something about him, replied, ‘It is that man called Caestius who is said not to think much of your father’s eloquence compared to his own.’ Cicero, suddenly provoked by that, ordered his men to grab hold of that wretched Caestius and, in his presence, to give him a good flogging. A most discourteous host!23