The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  posterior res illa reperta,

  Perdit, et immutat sensus ad pristina quaeque.

  [When we find something new, the recent destroys the older and makes us change our taste for it.]343

  [B] Whatever people preach to us and whatever we may learn from them, never forget that the giver is a man and so is the taker; a mortal hand presents it to us: a mortal hand takes it from him. Only such things as come to us from Heaven have the right and the authority to carry conviction; they alone bear the mark of Truth; but even they cannot be seen with our human eyes, nor do we obtain them by our own means: so great and so holy an Image could never dwell in so wretched a dwelling, unless God first makes it ready for that purpose, unless he forms it anew and fortifies it by his special grace and supernatural favour.

  [A] Our condition is subject to error: that ought, at very least, to lead us to be more moderate and restrained in making changes. We ought to admit that, no matter what we allow into our understanding, it often includes falsehoods which enter by means of the same tools which have often proved contradictory and misleading.

  It is not surprising that they should prove contradictory, since they are so easily biased and twisted by the lightest of occurrences. It is certain that our conceptions, our judgement and our mental faculties in general are all affected by the changes and alterations of the body. Those alterations are ceaseless. Are our minds not more alert, our memory more ready, our reasoning powers more lively when we are well rather than ill? Does not everything present a different aspect to our minds under the influence of joy and gaiety or of chagrin and melancholy? Do you think that the poems of Catullus or Sappho delight a miserable old miser as they do a vigorous and ardent youth? [B] Cleomenes the son of Anaxandridas being ill, his friends reproached him with having new and unaccustomed humours and ideas. ‘I am not surprised,’ he replied; ‘I am not the same person when I am well: being different, my opinions and ideas are different too.’344

  [A] There is a saying current in the legal chicanery of our law-courts applied to a criminal who comes before judges who happen to be in a good, gentle, generous mood: GAUDEAT DE BONA FORTUNA ‘Let him enjoy this good luck’: for it is certain that we sometimes come across minds whose judgement is prickly, sharp and poised to condemn and which, at other times, are less difficult, more affable, more given to finding excuses. A judge may leave home suffering from the gout, jealous, or incensed by a thieving valet: his entire soul is coloured and drunk with anger: we cannot doubt that his judgement is biased towards wrath. [B] The august Senate of the Areopagus held their sessions at night, lest the sight of the plaintiff should influence their justice. [A] The very air and calm weather have power to change us – as that Greek poem says which Cicero cited:

  Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse

  Juppiter auctifera lustravit lampade terras.

  [The minds of men are such as Father Jupiter wills them to be, as he bathes the earth in fruitful light.]345

  It is not only fevers, potions and great events which upset our judgement: the lightest thing can send it spinning. If a continual fever lays our minds prostrate, you can be sure that a three day fever will have a proportionately bad effect on them, even though we are not aware of it. If apoplexy can dim and totally snuff out our mental vision, you can be sure that even a cold will confuse it. Consequently, there can hardly be found a single hour in an entire lifetime when our powers of judgement are settled in their proper place; our bodies are subject to so many sustained changes and are composed of so many kinds of principles that there is always one pulling the wrong way –I trust the doctors over that!

  This malady, moreover, is not so easy to detect unless it is extreme and past all cure; Reason always hobbles, limps and walks askew, in falsehood as in truth, so that it is hard to detect when she is mistaken or unhinged.

  By reason I always mean that appearance of rationality which each of us constructs for himself – the kind of reason which can characteristically have a thousand contrary reactions to the same subject and is like a tool of malleable lead or wax: it can be stretched, bent or adapted to any size or to any bias; if you are clever, you can learn to mould it.

  Take a judge; however well-intentioned he may be, he must watch himself carefully (and not many people spend much time doing that), otherwise some inclination toward friend, relation, beauty or revenge (or even something far less weighty, such as that chance impulse which leads us to favour one thing rather than another, or which enables us to choose, without any sanction of reason, between two identical objects – or even some more shadowy cause, equally vain) will encourage some sneaking sympathy or hostility toward one of the parties to slip, unnoticed, into his judgement and tip the balance.

  I spy closely on myself and keep my eyes constantly directed on myself alone – I do not have much else to do:

  quis sub Arcto

  Rex gelidae metuatur orae,

  Quid Tyridatem terreat, unice

  Securus

  [Quite indifferent to what ruler of the frozen North inspires great fear, or what dangers frighten Tiridates]346 –

  yet even I hardly dare to tell of the vanity and the weakness which I find in myself. I have such wobbly legs, I am so unsteady on my feet, I totter about so and cannot even trust my eyesight, with the result that I feel quite a different person before and after a meal; when good health and a fine sunny day smile at me, I am quite debonair; give me an ingrowing toe-nail, and I am touchy, bad-tempered and unapproachable. [B] My horse’s gait seems sometimes rough, sometimes gentle; the very same road, now short, now much longer, and the same form of action more agreeable or less so. [A] Now, I am ready to do anything; later, ready to do nothing; what is nice now can be nasty later on. [A1] A thousand chance emotions, unbidden, are in turmoil within me; sometimes a melancholic humour gets hold of me; at others, a choleric one; sometimes grief or joy dominate me, for reasons of their own. [A] I pick up some books: I may have discovered outstanding beauties in a particular passage which really struck home: another time I happen upon the same passage and it remains an unknown, shapeless lump for me, however much I twist it, and pat it and bend it or turn it. [B] Even in the case of my own writings I cannot always recover the flavour of my original meaning; I do not know what I wanted to say and burn my fingers making corrections and giving it some new meaning for want of recovering the original one – which was better. I go backwards and forwards: my judgement does not always march straight ahead, but floats and bobs about,

  velut minuta magno

  Deprensa navis in mari vesaniente vento.

  [Like a tiny boat buffeted on the ocean by a raging tempest.]347

  Many’s the time I have taken an opinion contrary to my own and (as I am fond of doing) tried defending it for the fun of the exercise: then, once my mind has really applied itself to that other side, I get so firmly attached to it that I forget why I held the first opinion and give it up. Almost any inclination, no matter which, takes me with it and carries me along by my own weight. Almost anybody could say much the same of himself if he watched himself [C] as I do. [B] Preachers know that the emotion which comes upon them as they speak moves them towards belief; and we know that when we are in a temper we devote ourselves to defending an assertion, impressing it upon ourselves and embracing it with furious approbation, far more than we ever do in cold-blooded calm.

  You give your lawyer a simple statement of your case; he replies, hesitantly, doubtfully: you feel that he is quite indifferent which side he is to defend. But if you offer him a good fee to get stuck into it and all worked up about it, does he not begin to take a real interest and, once his will is inflamed, do not his arguments and forensic skills become inflamed as well? A clear and indubitable truth comes and presents itself to his understanding. He finds that your case sheds quite a new light: he really believes in it and convinces himself accordingly. I even wonder whether ardour, born of despite and of obstinacy, when confronted by pressure from a magistrate or by violent
threats – [C] (or even simply a concern for reputation) – [B] has not brought some men to be burned in defence of an opinion for which, when at liberty among friends, they would never even have burned their finger-tips.

  [A] The jolts and shocks which our soul receives from the passions of the body greatly affect her, but her own proper passions do so even more. They have such a hold on her that it could perhaps be maintained that her motions and propulsion come from her own tempests: without those agitations she would be becalmed like a ship on the open sea, abandoned by the helpful winds.348 Anyone who did maintain that, [C] following the Peripatetics, [A] would do us little wrong, since it is recognized that most of the finer actions of the soul require – and can only arise from – such passionate impulses. It is said that valour cannot be achieved without the help of anger –

  [C] Semper Ajax fortis, fortissimus tamen in furore

  [Ajax was always brave, but bravest when mad with fury]349 –

  that we do not attack the wicked or our foes vigorously enough, unless we are angry; and that, to get justice out of judges, counsel must move them to anger. Strong desires motivated Themistocles; they motivated Demosthenes and forced philosophers to travel far and work late: and they lead us too towards useful ends: honour, learning, health.

  In addition, our soul’s weakness when faced with pain and suffering serves to nurture repentance and remorse within our conscience and to feel the chastisements with which God scourges us as well as the chastisements of political punishment. [A] Compassion acts as a stimulus to [B] clemency; prudent self-preservation350 [C] and self-control [B] are awakened by our fear; and how many fair actions are awakened by ambition? And how many by arrogance? [A] In short, not one eminent or dashing virtue can exist without some strong, unruly emotion. Was this one of the considerations which moved the Epicureans to relieve God of all care and concern for the affairs of men, since even the very actions of his goodness could not be directed towards us without disturbing his repose with passions – which are the goads and the incitements which drive the soul towards virtuous actions? [C] Or else did they think differently, taking the passions to be like storms, shamefully deflowering the soul of her tranquillity? ‘Ut maris tranquillitas intelligitur, nulla ne minima quidem aura fluctus commovente: sic animi quietus et placatus status cernitur, quum perturbatio nulla est qua moveri queat’ [We know the sea is tranquil when not even the slightest breath of wind ruffles the surface; so too the soul is calm and at peace when there is no emotion seeking to disturb it].351

  [A] What varied thoughts and reasons, what conflicting notions, are presented to us by our varied passions! What certainty can we find in something so changeable and unstable as the soul, subject by her condition to the dominance of perturbations, [C] and who never moves except under external constraint. [A] If our judgement is in the hands of illness itself and of turbulence; if it is obliged to receive its impressions from foolhardiness and madness: what certainty can we expect from it?

  [C] Is it not somewhat bold of Philosophy to think that men perform their greatest deeds, those nearest to the divine, when they are beside themselves, frenzied and out of their senses? Our amendment comes when our reason slumbers or when we are deprived of it; the two natural ways of entering into the council chamber of the gods and to have foreknowledge of Destiny are sleep and frenzy.352

  Here is a pleasant thought: when the passions bring dislocation to our reason, we become virtuous; when reason is driven out by frenzy or by sleep, that image of death, we become prophets and seers. I have never been more inclined to believe Philosophy! It was a pure enthusiasm – breathed into the spirit of Philosophy by holy Truth herself – which wrenched from her, against her normal teaching, that the tranquil state of our soul, the quiet state, the sanest state that Philosophy can obtain for her, is not her best state. Our waking sleeps more than our sleeping; our wisdom is less wise than our folly; our dreams are worth more than our discourse; and to remain inside ourselves is to adopt the worst place of all.

  But does Philosophy not realize that we are clever enough to notice that that maxim which makes the spirit so great, so perfect, and so clear-sighted when detached from Man, and yet so dark, so ignorant and so earthy when it remains in Man, is produced by the very spirit which itself forms part of dark, ignorant and earthy Man. And so, for that very cause, is neither to be trusted nor believed?353

  [A] Being of a soft and heavy complexion, I do not have much experience of those disturbances which bear the mind away and which mostly take our souls by surprise without giving them time to know themselves. But there is a passion in the heart of the young (induced, they say, by idleness); those who have assayed resisting its power, even when it takes an untrammelled, moderate course, find that it gives a good idea of the abrupt changes and deteriorations which our judgement can suffer. There was a time when I tensed myself to resist and parry its assaults (for I am so far from being one who welcomes vices, that I never give in to them unless they compel me to); despite my resistance, I would feel it within me as it was born, and as it grew and developed; I was lively: my eyes were open. Yet it would seize me, possess me. It was like a kind of drunkenness; everything took on an unaccustomed appearance; I would see the woman I yearned for becoming manifestly more attractive, her qualities swelling and growing as the wind of my imagination blew upon them; the difficulties facing my courtship would seem to become easy and smooth; my reason and conscience would withdraw into the background. Then, with lightning speed, at the very instant when my fire had burned itself out, my soul would recover another state, another judgement, another way of looking at things; it was now the difficulties of getting out of it which seemed immense and insurmountable; the very same things took on very different tastes and appearances from the ones offered me by inflamed desire.

  Which was right? Pyrrho knows nothing about that!

  We are never free from illness: fevers blow hot and cold; we drop straight from symptoms of a burning passion into symptoms of a shivery one. [B] The more I jumped forward, the more I now leap back:

  Qualis ubi alterno procurrens gurgite pontus

  Nunc ruit ad terras, scopulisque superjacit undam,

  Spumeus, extremamque sinu perfundit arenam;

  Nunc rapidus retro atque aestu revoluta resorbens

  Saxa fugit, littusque vado labente relinquit.

  [Thus does the sea with alternate tides now dash up the beach, covering the rocks with its foaming billows, and seeking out the deep recesses of the sand; and then it quickly turns, sucking back the shingle and fleeing the rocks, as its sinking waters relinquish the beach.]354

  [A] This very awareness of my mutability has had the secondary effect of engendering a certain constancy in my opinions. I have hardly changed any of my first and natural ones, since whatever likelihood novelty may appear to have, I do not change easily, for fear of losing in the exchange. As I do not have the capacity for making a choice myself, I accept Another’s choice and remain where God put me. Otherwise I would not know how to save myself from endlessly rolling.

  [AI] And thus, by God’s grace, without worry or a troubled conscience, I have kept myself whole, within the ancient beliefs of our religion, through all the sects and schisms that our century has produced. [A] The writings of the Ancients – I mean the good, ample, solid ones – tempt me and stir me almost at will; the one I am reading always seems the most firm. All appear right in their turn, even though they do contradict each other. The ease with which good minds can make anything they wish seem likely, so that there is nothing so strange but that they will set about lending it enough colour to take in a simple man like me, shows how weak their proofs really are. For three thousand years the skies and the stars were all in motion; everyone believed it; then [C] Cleanthes of Samos or, according to Theophrastus, Nicetas of Syracuse [A] decided to maintain that it was the Earth which did the moving,355 [C] revolving on its axis through the oblique circle of the Zodiac; [A] and in our own time Copernicus has given such a
good basis to this doctrine that he can legitimately draw all the right astronomical inferences from it. What lesson are we to learn from that, except not to worry about which of the two opinions may be true? For all we know, in a thousand years’ time another opinion will overthrow them both.356

  Sic volvenda aetas conmmutat tempora rerum:

  Quod fuit in pretio, fit nullo denique honore;

  Porro aliud succedit, et e contemptibus exit,

  Inque dies magis appetitur, floretque repertum

  Laudibus, et miro est mortales inter honore.

  [Thus the rolling years give various things their time; what used to be highly esteemed is now worthless; something else comes out from discredit and succeeds the old; it is daily sought for; everyone praises it and it is wondrously honoured among mortal men.]357