The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  Vomerem, atque locis avertit seminis ictum.

  [For the woman hinders or averts conception when passion leads her to withdraw Venus and her buttocks from the man, diverting the flow entirely over her yielding belly; she makes the plough-share leap out of its furrow and broadcasts the seed where it does not belong.]80

  [A] If justice consists in rendering everyone his due, then animals which serve, love and protect those that treat them well and which attack strangers and those that do them harm show some resemblance to aspects of our own justice; as they also do by maintaining strict fair-shares for their young.

  As for loving affection, theirs is incomparably more lively and consistent than men’s. King Lisimachus had a dog called Hircanus. When its master died it remained stubbornly by his bed, refusing to eat or drink; when the day came to cremate the body, it ran dashing into the fire and was burned to death. The dog of a man called Pyrrhus did the same: from the moment he died it would not budge off its master’s bed, and when they bore the body away, it let itself be carried off too, finally throwing itself into the pyre as they were burning its master’s corpse.

  There are also inclinations where our affection arises not from reasoned counsel but by that random chance sometimes called sympathy. Animals are capable of it too. We can see horses grown so attracted to each other that we can hardly get them to live or travel apart. We can see them attracted to a particular kind of coat among their fellow horses, as we are to particular faces; whenever they come across it they straightway approach it with pleasure and display their affection, whereas they dislike or hate a different kind of coat.

  Animals, like us, have a choice of partners and select their females. Nor are they free from our jealousies and great irreconcilable hatreds.

  Desires are either natural and necessary, like eating and drinking; natural and not necessary, such as mating with a female; or else neither natural nor necessary, like virtually all human ones, which are entirely superfluous and artificial. Nature needs wonderfully little to be satisfied and leaves little indeed for us to desire. The activities of our kitchens are not Nature’s ordinance. Stoics say that a man could feed himself on one olive a day. The choiceness of our wines owes nothing to Nature’s teachings, any more than do the refinements we load on to our sexual appetites:

  neque illa

  Magno prognatum deposcit consule cunnum.

  [That does not demand a cunt descended from some great consul.]81

  False opinions and ignorance of the good have poured so many strange desires into us that they have chased away almost all the natural ones, no more nor less than if a multitude of strangers in a city drove out all the citizens who were born there, snuffed out their ancient power and authority, seized the town and entirely usurped it.

  Animals obey the rules of Nature better than we do and remain more moderately within her prescribed limits – though not so punctiliously as to be without something akin to our debaucheries. Just as there have been mad desires driving humans to fall in love with beasts, so beasts have fallen in love with us, admitting monstrous passions across species: witness the elephant which was the rival of Aristophanes the Grammarian for the affection of a young Alexandrian flower-girl and which was every bit as dutiful in its passion as he was: when walking through the fruit market it took fruit in its trunk and brought it to her. It never took its eyes off her except when it had to and sometimes slipped its trunk into her bosom through her neckband and stroked her breasts. We are also told of a dragon which fell in love with a maiden; of a goose enamoured of a boy in the town of Asopus, and of a ram which sighed for Glaucia the minstrel-girl – and baboons falling madly in love with women are an everyday occurrence. You can also see some male animals falling for males of their own kind.

  Oppianus82 and others relate some examples to show that beasts in their couplings respect the laws of kinship, but experience frequently shows us the contrary:

  nec habetur turpe juvencae

  Ferre patrem tergo; fit equo sua filia conjux;

  Quasque creavit init pecudes caper; ipsaque cujus

  Semine concepta est, ex illo concipit ales.

  [The heifer feels no shame if covered by the sire nor does the mare; the billy-goat goes on to the nanny-goats he has fathered, and birds conceive from the semen that begot them.]83

  Has there ever been a more express case of subtle malice than that of the mule of Thales the philosopher? Laden with salt, it chanced to stumble when fording a river, so wetting the sacks; noticing that the salt dissolved and lightened its load, it never failed, whenever it could, to plunge fully loaded into a stream. Eventually its master discovered its trick and ordered it to be laden with wool. Finding its expectations deceived, it gave up that trick.

  Some animals so naturally mirror the face of human avarice that you can see them stealing anything they can and hiding it carefully, even though they never have any use for it.

  As for household management beasts surpass us in the foresight necessary to gather and store for the future, and also possess many of the kinds of knowledge required to do so. When ants notice their grain or seeds going mouldy and smelling badly, they stop them from spoiling or going rotten by spreading them on the ground outside their storehouses, airing, drying and freshening them up. But the measures and precautions they take to gnaw out their grains of corn surpass any imaginable human foresight. Corn does not always stay dry and wholesome but gets soft, flabby and milky, as a step towards germinating and sprouting anew; to stop it turning to seed-corn and losing its nature and properties as grain in store for future use, ants gnaw off the end which does the sprouting.

  As for war – the most grandiose and glorious of human activities – I would like to know whether we want to use it to prove our superiority or, on the contrary, to prove our weakness and imperfection. We know how to defeat and kill each other, to undermine and destroy our own species: not much there, it seems, to make them want to learn from us.

  [B] quando leoni

  Fortior eripuit vitam leo? quo nemore unquam

  Expiravit aper majoris dentibus apri?

  [When has a stronger lion ever torn life from a weaker lion? In what woodlands has a wild boar ever died at the teeth of a stronger?]84

  [A] They are not universally free from this, though – witness the furious encounters of bees and the enterprises of their monarchs in the opposing armies:

  saepe duobus

  Regibus incessit magno discordia motu,

  Continuoque animos vulgi et trepidantia bello

  Corda licet longe praesciscere.

  [Often there arises great strife between two King bees; great movements are afoot; you may imagine the passion and the warlike frenzy which animates the populace.]85

  I can never read that inspired account without thinking that I am reading a description of human vanity and ineptitude.

  The deeds of those warriors which ravish us with their horror and their terror; those tempestuous sounds and cries:

  [B] Fulgur ibi ad coelum se tollit, totaque circum

  Aere renidescit tellus, subterque virum vi

  Excitur pedibus sonitus, clamoreque montes

  Icti rejectant voces ad sidera mundi;

  [There, armour glitters up to heaven and all the surrounding fields shimmer with bronze; the earth shakes beneath the soldiers’ tread; the mountains re-echo to the stars above, the clamour striking against them;]86

  [A] that dread array of thousands upon thousands of soldiers bearing arms; such bravery, ardour, courage: be pleased to consider the pretexts, many and vain, which set them in motion and the pretexts, many and frivolous, which make them cease.

  Paridis propter narratur amorem

  Graecia Barbariae diro collisa duello.

  [They narrate how Greece, for the love of Paris, made fatal war against the Barbarians.]87

  It was because of the lechery of Paris that all Asia was ruined and destroyed: one man’s desires, the annoyance and pleasure of one man, one single f
amily quarrel – causes which ought not to suffice to set two fishwives clawing at each other’s throats – were the soul, the motive-force, of that great discord.

  Do we want to trust the word of those who were the main authors and prime movers of wars like these? Then let us listen to Augustus, the greatest, most victorious and most powerful Emperor there ever has been, sporting and jesting (most amusingly and wittily) about several battles risked on land and sea, the life and limb of the five hundred thousand men who followed his star, and the might and treasure of both parts of the Roman world, exhausted in the service of his adventures:

  Quod futuit Glaphyran Antonius, hanc mihi poenam

  Fulvia constituit, se quoque uti futuam.

  Fulviam ego ut futuam? Quid, si me Manius oret

  Paedicem, faciam? Non puto, si sapiam.

  Aut futue, aut pugnemus, ait. Quid, si mihi vita

  Charior est ipsa mentula? Signa canant!

  [Because Antony fucked Glaphyra, Fulvia decided I had to fuck her – as revenge. Me, fuck Fulvia! Supposing Manius begged me to bugger him? Not if I can help it! ‘Fuck or we fight,’ she said. What if my cock is dearer than life to me?… Sound the war trumpets!]

  (I quote my Latin with freedom of conscience! You, my Patroness, have given me leave.)88

  Now this mighty Body, War, with so many facets and movements, which seems to threaten both earth and heaven –

  [B] Quam multi Lybico volvuntur marmore fluctus,

  Saevus ubi Orion hybernis conditur undis,

  Vel cum sole novo densae torrentur aristae,

  Aut Hermi campo, aut Lyciae flaventibus arvis,

  Scuta sonant, pulsuque pedum tremit excita tellus.

  [As the waves innumerable which roll in the Libyan sea, when fierce Orion plunges into the billows as winter returns; or, as when the summer sun bakes the thick shooting corn on the plains of Hermus or the golden fields of Lycia: so clash the shields, and the stricken land trembles beneath their feet] –

  [A] this mad Monster with all its many arms and legs, is only Man: weak, miserable, wretched Man. An ant-hill disturbed and hot with rage!

  It nigrum campis agmen.

  [The black battalion advances in the plain.]89

  A contrary wind, the croak of a flight of ravens, a stumbling horse, an eagle chancing by, a dream, a word, a sign, a morning mist, all suffice to cast him down and bring him to the ground. Let a ray of sunlight dazzle him in the face, and there he lies, limp and faint. Let a speck of dust blow into his eyes (as our poet Virgil writes of the bees), and all our ensigns, all our legions, even with Pompey the Great himself at the head of them, are broken and shattered… (I believe it was Pompey who was defeated by Sertorius in Spain with such fine arms as these, [B] which also served a turn for others – for Eumenes against Antigonus, and for Surena against Crassus:

  [A] Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta

  Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent.

  [These passionate commotions and these great battles are calmed down with a handful of dust.]90

  [C] Send out a detachment made up of a couple of bees: they will be strong and brave enough to topple the Monster of war. We still recall how the Portuguese were investing the town of Tamly in their territory of Xiatime when the inhabitants, who had hives in plenty, carried a great many of them to their walls and smoked the bees out so vigorously that their enemies were unable to sustain their stinging attacks and were all put to rout. They owed the freedom of their town and their victory to such novel reinforcements – and with so happy an outcome that not one bee was reported missing.91

  [A] The souls of Emperors and of cobblers are cast in the same mould. We consider the importance of the actions of Princes and their weight and then persuade ourselves that they are produced by causes equally weighty, equally important. In that we deceive ourselves. They are tossed to and fro by the same principles as we are. The reasons that make us take issue with a neighbour lead Princes to start a war; the same reason which makes us flog a lackey makes kings lay waste a province. [B] They can do more but can wish as lightly. [A1] The same desires trouble a fleshworm and an elephant.

  [A] As for faithfulness, there is no animal in the world whose treachery can compete with Man’s. Our history books tell of certain dogs which vigorously reacted to the murders of their masters. King Pyrrhus once came across a dog guarding the body of its dead master; when he was told the dog had done this duty for three days, he ordered the corpse to be buried and took the dog away with him. Later, when he was making a general review of his troops the dog recognized the murderers of its master and ran at them barking loudly and angrily. This was the first piece of evidence leading to its master’s murder being avenged; justice was soon done in the courts. The dog of Hesiod the Wise did the same, leading to the sons of Ganistor (a man from Naupactus) being convicted of the murder of its master.

  Another dog was guarding a temple in Athens when it spotted a thief sacrilegiously making off with the finest jewels. It began barking at him as loud as it could, but the temple sextons never woke up; so the dog started to trail the thief and, when day broke, hung behind a little without losing him from sight. When the thief offered it food, it refused to take anything from him, whilst accepting it from others who passed by, treating them all to a good wagging of its tail. When the thief stopped to sleep, so did the dog, in the same place. News of this dog reached the sextons of that church; they set out to find it; by making enquiries about the colour of its coat, they eventually caught up with it at Cromyon. The thief was there too; they brought him back to Athens, where he was punished. In recognition of its good sense of duty, the judges awarded the dog a fixed measure of wheat out of public funds to pay for its keep and ordered the priests to look after it. This happened in Plutarch’s own time and he himself asserts that the account was very thoroughly vouched for.

  As for gratitude – and it seems to me that we could well bring this word back into repute – one example will suffice. Apion relates it as something he had seen himself. He tells how, one day, the people of Rome were given the pleasure of watching several strange animals fight – mainly, in fact, unusually big lions; one of these drew the eyes of the entire audience by its wild bearing, the strength and size of its limbs and its proud and terrifying roar. Amongst the slaves presented to the populace to fight with these beasts was Androdus, a slave from Dacia, belonging to a Roman lord of consular rank. This lion, seeing him from afar, first pulled up short, as though struck with wonder; it then came gently towards him; its manner was soft and peaceful, as if it expected to recognize an acquaintance. Then, having made certain of what it was looking for, it began to wag its tail as dogs do when fondly greeting their masters; it kissed and licked the hands and thighs of that poor wretch, who was beside himself, ecstatic with fear. The gracious behaviour of the lion brought Androdus back to himself so that he fixed his gaze on it, staring at it and then recognizing it. It was a rare pleasure to see the happy greetings and blandishments they lavished on each other. The populace raised shouts of joy; the Emperor sent for the slave to learn how this strange event had come about. He gave him an account, novel and wonderful: ‘My Master’, he said, ‘was a proconsul in Africa; he treated me so cruelly and so harshly, flogging me every day, that I was forced to steal myself from him and run away. I found the quickest way to hide myself safely from a person having such great Provincial authority was to make for that country’s uninhabited sandy deserts, fully resolved, if there was no means of keeping myself in food, to kill myself. The midday sun was so fierce and the heat so intolerable that when I stumbled on a hidden cave, difficult of access, I plunged into it. Soon afterwards this lion came in, its paw all wounded and bloody; it was groaning and whining with pain. I was very frightened when it arrived but, when it saw me hiding in a corner of its lair, it came gently up to me and showed me its wounded paw, as though asking for help. I removed a great splinter of wood; when I had made it a little more used to me, I squeezed out the filthy
pus that had collected in the wound, wiped it and made it as clean as I could. The lion, aware that things were better and that the pain had been relieved, began to rest, falling asleep with its paw in my hands. After that we lived together in that cave for three whole years; we ate the same food since the lion brought me choice morsels of the animals it had killed in the hunt; I had no fire but I fed myself by cooking the meat in the heat of the sun. In the end I grew disgusted with this savage, brutish life and so, when the lion had gone out one day on its usual quest for food, I slipped away. Three days later I was surprised by soldiers who brought me from Africa to Rome and handed me over to my master. He promptly condemned me to die by being exposed to the beasts in the arena. I realize now that the lion was also captured soon afterwards and that it wanted to repay me for my kindness in curing its wound.’

  That is the account which Androdus told to the Emperor and which he also spread from mouth to mouth. Androdus was given his freedom by general acclaim and relieved of his sentence; by order of the people he was made a gift of the lion.

  Ever since, says Apion, we can see Androdus leading the lion about on a short leash, going from tavern to tavern in Rome collecting money, while the lion lets itself be strewn with flowers. All who meet them say: ‘There goes the Lion, host to the Man: there goes the Man, doctor to the Lion.’92

  [B] We often shed tears at the loss of animals which we love: they do the same when they lose us:

  Post, bellator equus, positis insignibus, Aethon