The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  Even among those who reckoned that his eloquence was, all things considered, beyond compare, there were some who did not omit to draw attention to some defects in it; such as his friend the great Brutus who said it was an eloquence ‘fractam et elumbem’ – ‘broken and dislocated’.24 Orators living near his own time criticized him for the persistent trouble he took to end his periods with lengthy cadences, and noted that he often used in them the words ‘esse videatur’ [it would seem to be].

  Personally I prefer cadences which conclude more abruptly, cut into iambics. He too can, very occasionally, mix his rhythms quite roughly: my own ears pointed this sentence out to me: ‘Ego vero me minus diu senem esse mallem, quam esse senem, antequam essem.’ [I indeed hold being old less long better than being old before I am.]25

  The historians play right into my court. They are pleasant and delightful; and at the same time26 [C] Man in general whom I seek to know appears in them more alive and more entire than in any other sort of writing, showing the true diversity of his inward qualities, both wholesale and retail, the variety of ways in which he is put together and the events which menace him.

  [A] Now the most appropriate historians for me are those who write men’s lives, since they linger more over motives than events, over what comes from inside more than what happens outside. That is why, of historians of every kind, Plutarch is the man for me.

  I am deeply sorry that we do not have Diogenes Laertiuses by the dozen, or that he himself did not spread himself more widely [C] or more wisely, for I consider the lives and fortunes of the great teachers of mankind no less carefully than their ideas and doctrines.27

  [A] In this genre – the study of history – we must without distinction leaf our way through all kinds of authors, ancient and modern, in pidgin and in French, so as to learn about the matter which they treat in their divergent ways. But Caesar seems to me to deserve special study, not only to learn historical facts but on his own account, since his perfection excels that of all others, even including Sallust.

  I certainly read Caesar with rather more reverence and awe than is usual for the works of men, at times considering the man himself through his deeds and the miracle of his greatness, at others the purity and the inimitable polish of his language which not only surpassed that of all other historians, as Cicero said, but [C] perhaps [A] that of Cicero himself.28 There is such a lack of bias in his judgement when he talks of his enemies29 that the only thing you can reproach him with, apart from the deceptive colours under which he seeks to hide his bad cause and the filth of his pernicious ambition, is that he talks of himself too sparingly. For so many great things cannot have been done by him without he himself contributing more to them than he includes in his books.

  I like either very simple historians or else outstanding ones. The simple ones, who have nothing of their own to contribute, merely bringing to their task care and diligence in collecting everything which comes to their attention and chronicling everything in good faith without choice or selection, leave our judgement intact for the discerning of the truth. Among others there is for example that good man Froissart who strides with such frank sincerity through his enterprise that when he has made an error he is never afraid to admit it and to correct it at whatever point he has reached when told about it; and he relates all the various rumours which were current and the differing reports that were made to him. Here is the very stuff of history, naked and unshaped: each man can draw such profit from it as his understanding allows.

  The truly outstanding historians are capable of choosing what is worth knowing; they can select which of two reports is the more likely; from the endowments and humours of princes they can draw conclusions about their intentions and attribute appropriate words to them. Such historians are right to assume the authority of controlling what we accept by what they do: but that certainly belongs to very few.

  Those who lie in between (as most historians do) spoil everything for us: they want to chew things over for us; they give themselves the right to make judgements and consequently bend history to their own ideas: for once our judgement leans to one side we cannot stop ourselves twisting and distorting the narration to that bias. They take on the task of choosing what is worth knowing, often hiding from us some speech or private action which would have taught us much more; they leave out things they find incredible because they do not understand them, and doubtless leave out others because they do not know how to put them into good Latin or French. Let them make a display of their rhetoric and their arguments if they dare to; let them judge as they like: but let them leave us the means of making our own judgements after them; let them not deprave by their abridgements nor arrange by their selection anything of material substance, but rather let them pass it all on to us purely and wholly, in all its dimensions.30

  As often as not, and especially in our own times, historiographers are appointed from among quite commonplace people, simply on account of their knowing how to write well, as though we wanted to learn grammar! They are right, having been paid to do that and having nothing but chatter to sell, to worry mainly about that aspect. And so with many a fine phrase they spin a web of rumours gathered at the crossroads of our cities.

  The only good histories are those written by men who were actually in charge of affairs or who played some part in that charge, [C] or who at least were fortunate enough to have been in charge of others of a similar kind. [A] Such were virtually all the Greek and Roman historians. For, with several eye-witnesses having written on the same subject (as happened in those days when greatness and learning were [C] commonly [A] found together), if an error were made it must have been wonderfully slight, or concern some incident itself open to great doubt.31

  What can we hope from a doctor who writes about war, or a schoolboy writing about the designs of kings?

  To realize how scrupulous the Romans were over this, we need only one example: Asinius Pollio found even in Caesar’s histories some mistakes into which he had fallen because he had not been able to look with his own eyes at every part of his army and had believed individual men who had reported to him things which were often inadequately verified, or else because he had not been carefully enough informed by his commanders-delegate of their conduct of affairs during his absence.32

  We can see from that example what a delicate thing our quest for truth is when we cannot even rely on the commander’s knowledge of a battle he has fought nor on the soldiers’ accounts of what went on round them unless, as in a judicial inquiry, we confront witnesses and accept objections to alleged proofs of the finer points of every occurrence. Truly, the knowledge we have of our own affairs is much slacker. But that has been adequately treated by Bodin, and in conformity with my own ideas.33

  To help my defective and treacherous memory a little – and it is so extremely bad that I have more than once happened to pick up again, thinking it new and unknown to me, a book which I had carefully read several years earlier and scribbled all over with my notes – I have for some time now adopted the practice of adding at the end of each book (I mean of each book which I intend to read only once) the date when I finished reading it and the general judgement I drew from it, in order to show me again at least the general idea and impression I had conceived of its author when reading it. I would like to transcribe here some of those annotations.

  Here is what I put about ten years ago on my Guicciardini (for no matter what language is spoken by my books, I speak to them in my own):34 ‘He is an industrious writer of history, from whom in my judgement we can learn the truth about the affairs of his time more accurately than from any other; moreover he played a part in most of them, holding an honoured position. There is no sign that he ever disguised anything through hatred, favour or vanity; that is vouched for by the unfettered judgements he makes of the great, especially of those by whom he had been promoted to serve in responsible positions, such as Pope Clement VII. As for the quality in which he seems to want most to excel, namely his digressions
and reflections, some are excellent and enriched by beautiful sketches; but he enjoyed them too much: he did not want to leave anything out, yet his subject was a full and ample one – infinite almost – and so he can become sloppy and somewhat redolent of academic chatter. I have also been struck by the following: that among all his judgements on minds and actions, among so many motives and intentions, he attributes not one of them to virtue, religious scruple or conscience, as if those qualities had been entirely snuffed out in our world; and among all those deeds, no matter how beautiful they might seem in themselves, he attributes their cause to some evil opportunity or gain. It is impossible to conceive that among the innumerable actions on which he makes a judgement there were not at least some produced by means of reason. No corruption can have infected everyone so totally that there was not some man or other who escaped the contagion. That leads me to fear that his own taste was somewhat corrupted: perhaps he happened to base his estimates of others on himself.’

  This is what I have on my Philippe de Commines: ‘You will find the language here smooth and delightful, of a natural simplicity; the narration pure, with the good faith of the author manifestly shining through it; himself free from vanity when talking of himself, and of favour and of envy when talking of others, together with a fine zeal for truth rather than any unusual acuteness; and from end to end, authority and weight showing him to be a man of good extraction and brought up to great affairs.’

  And on the Memoirs of Monsieur Du Bellay,35 the following:

  ‘It is always a pleasure to see things written about by those who had assayed how to manage them, but there is no denying that in these two noblemen36 there is clearly revealed a great decline from that shining frankness and freedom in writing found in older authors of their rank such as the Seigneur de Joinville (the close friend of Saint Louis), Eginhard (the Chancellor of Charlemagne) and more recently Philippe de Commines. This is not history so much as pleading the case of King Francis against the Emperor Charles V. I am unwilling to believe that they altered any of the major facts, but they make it their job to distort the judgement of events to our advantage, often quite unreasonably, and to pass over anything touchy in the life of their master: witness the fall from grace of the Seigneur de Montmorency and the Seigneur de Brion, which is simply omitted: indeed the very name of Madame d’Estampes is not to be found in them!37 Secret deeds can be hushed up, but to keep silent about things which everyone knows about, especially things which led to public actions of such consequence, is a defect which cannot be pardoned. In short if you take my advice you should look elsewhere for a full account of King Francis and the events of his time; what can be profitable are the particulars given of the battles and military engagements when these noblemen were present; a few private words and deeds of a few princes of their time; and the transactions and negotiations conducted by the Seigneur de Langey which are chock full of things worth knowing and of uncommon reflections.’38

  11. On cruelty

  [In the previous chapter Montaigne had praised Froissart for admitting that he had changed his mind at whatever point of his book that the change actually occurred. In this chapter Montaigne follows suit, letting us see how he suddenly realized that virtue as conceived by Hesiod or by Cato is inadequate to explain the virtue of Socrates, which Montaigne had come to prefer to the sterner kind. Cruelty, which Montaigne loathed, is not one of the seven deadly sins and was not widely considered wrong in itself. Montaigne sees cruelty as arising from ecstasies of anger or from ecstatic sexual encounters. Even worse are cruelty and torture done for the fun of it.

  The extension of Montaigne’s sensitivity to the rest of creation, especially to Man’s fellow-creatures the animals, is a skilful preparation for one of the major themes of the following chapter, ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’.]

  [A] It seems to me that virtue is something other, something nobler, than those tendencies towards the Good which are born in us. Such souls as are well-endowed and in control of themselves adopt the same gait as virtuous ones and, in their actions, present the same face: but the word virtue has a ring about it which implies something greater and more active than allowing ourselves to be gently and quietly led in reason’s train by some fortunate complexion.

  A man who, from a naturally easy-going gentleness, would despise injuries done to him would do something very beautiful and praiseworthy; but a man who, stung to the quick and ravished by an injury, could arm himself with the arms of reason against a frenzied yearning for vengeance, finally mastering it after a great struggle, would undoubtedly be doing very much more. The former would have acted well: the latter, virtuously; goodness is the word for one of these actions; virtue, for the other; for it seems that virtue presupposes difficulty and opposition, and cannot be exercised without a struggle. That is doubtless why we can call God good, mighty, bountiful and just, but we cannot call him virtuous: his works are his properties and cost him no struggle.

  Among the philosophers take the Stoics, and even more so the Epicureans – and I borrow that ‘even more so’ from the common opinion, which is wrong, [C] despite the clever retort which Arcesilaus made to the philosopher who reproached him with the fact that many people crossed over from his school to the Epicurean one, but never the other way round: ‘I am sure that is so,’ he said; ‘you can make plenty of cocks into capons, but never capons into cocks!’1 – [A] for in truth the Epicurean School in no wise yields to the Stoic in firmness of opinion and rigour of doctrine. A Stoic (who showed better faith than those disputants who, to oppose Epicurus and to make the game easy for themselves, put into his mouth things he never even thought of, sinisterly twisting his words and by the rules of grammar claiming to find other senses in his way of speaking, and beliefs different from those which he showed in mind and manners) declared that he ceased being an Epicurean for this reason among others, that he found their path too steep and unapproachable; [C] ‘et ii qui omnesque virtutes et colunt et retinent.’ [and those who were called ‘lovers of pleasure’ are in fact ‘lovers of honour’ and ‘lovers of justice’, cultivating and practising all the virtues].2

  [A] Among the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers there were, I say, many who judged that it was not sufficient to have our soul in a good state, well under control and ready for virtue; that it was not sufficient to have our powers of reason and our thoughts above all the strivings of Fortune, but that we must do more, seeking occasions to put them to the test. They wish to go looking for pain, hardship and contempt, in order to combat them and to keep our souls in fighting trim: [C] ‘multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita.’ [virtue gains much by being put to the proof.]3

  [A] That is one of the reasons why Epaminondas, who belonged to a third School, rejected the wealth which Fortune put in his hands in the most legitimate of ways, in order, he said, to have to fence against poverty; and he remained extremely poor unto the end. Socrates, it seems to me, assayed himself even more roughly: to exercise his virtue he put up with the malevolence of his wife, which is to assay yourself in good earnest.4

  Metellus alone among all the Roman Senators undertook to withstand by the force of his virtue the violence of Saturninus (the Tribune of the People of Rome, intent on forcing through an unjust law in favour of the plebs); having incurred the death penalty which Saturninus had decreed for those who rejected it, he conversed with those who were escorting him to the Forum in this extremity, saying that to act badly was too easy and too cowardly; to act well when there was no danger, too commonplace; but to act well when danger threatened, was the proper duty of a virtuous man.5

  Those words of Metellus show us clearly what I wanted to prove: that virtue rejects ease as a companion, and that the gentle easy slope up which are guided the measured steps of a good natural disposition is not the path of real virtue. Virtue demands a rough and thorny road:6 she wants either external difficulties to struggle against (which was the way of Metellus) by means of which Fortune is pleased to break up the directness of her course
for her, or else inward difficulties furnished by the disordered passions [C] and imperfections [A] of our condition.

  I have got this far quite easily. But by the end of the above argument the thought occurs to me that the soul of Socrates, which is the most perfect to have come to my knowledge, would be by my reckoning a soul with little to commend it, for I cannot conceive in that great man any onslaught from vicious desires. I cannot imagine any difficulty or any constraint in the progress of his virtue; I know that his reason was so powerful and sovereign within him that it would never have even let a vicious desire be born in him. I cannot put anything face to face with so sublime a Virtue as his: it seems I can see her striding victoriously and triumphantly along, stately and at her ease, without let or hindrance. If Virtue can only be resplendent when fighting opposing desires are we therefore to say that she cannot manage without help from vice, to whom she at least owes the fact that she is held in esteem and honour? And what would become of that bold and noble-minded Pleasure of the Epicureans, who prides herself on nursing Virtue gently in her lap and making her sport there, giving her shame and fevers and poverty and death and tortures to play with? If I postulate that perfect Virtue makes herself known by fighting pain and bearing it patiently, by sustaining attacks from the gout without being shaken in her seat; if I make her necessarily subject to hardship and difficulty, what becomes of that Virtue who has reached such a pinnacle that she not only despises pain but delights in it, taking the stabbings of a strong colic paroxysm as tickling pleasures? Such was the virtue established by the Epicureans, of which several of them have left us by their actions proofs which are absolutely certain.