The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  All the glory I claim for my life is to have lived a tranquil one – not tranquil according to the standards of Metrodorus or Arcesilas or Aristippus but my own. Since Philosophy has been able to discover no good method leading to tranquillity which is common to all men, let each man seek his own one as an individual.25

  [A] To whom do Caesar and Alexander owe the measureless greatness of their renown if not to Fortune? How many men has Fortune snuffed out at the very start of their careers and of whom we have no knowledge at all, yet who would have brought to those careers a mind as good as theirs if the mischance of their lot had not stopped them short at the birth of their expeditions! I cannot recall reading that Caesar, in the course of so many and so extreme dangers, was ever wounded. Hundreds have died from lesser perils than [C] the least of [A] those which he passed through safely. Fair deeds without number must be wasted, unwitnessed, before one of them proves profitable. We are not always at the spearhead of a breakthrough nor at the forefront of our army in full view of our general as on a stage. We are taken by surprise between the hedge and the ditch; we must tempt Fortune by attacking a chicken-coop; we have to flush four wretched men armed with harquebuses out of a barn; we must draw away from our unit and go it alone, as necessity requires. And if you take notice you will find from experience that the less spectacular opportunities are the most dangerous ones and that in the wars which have happened in our own times more good men have been killed during trivial unimportant actions – fighting over some shack or other – than in places of honour and dignity.

  [C] Anyone who holds that his death is wasted except on some conspicuous occasion, instead of making his death illustrious is deliberately casting a shadow over his life, meanwhile letting many just occasions for taking risks slip by. And all just occasions are illustrious enough: each man’s conscience can trumpet them – to himself: ‘Gloria nostra est testimonium conscientiae nostrae.’ [Our glory is the testimony of our conscience.]26

  [A] Whoever acts worthily only when others can know of it (and think better of him when they do), whoever never wishes to act well in circumstances where his virtue cannot come to the knowledge of men, is not a man who will be of much use to you:

  Credo che’l resto di quel verno cose

  Facesse degne di tenerne conto;

  Ma fur sin’ a quel tempo si nascose,

  Che non è colpa mia s’hor’ non le conto:

  Perche Orlando a far opre virtuose,

  Piu ch’a narrarle poi, sempre era pronto,

  Ne mai fu alcun’ de li suoi fatti espresso,

  Senon quando hebbe i testimonii apresso.’

  [I believe that during the rest of that winter Roland did deeds worth the telling. It is not my fault if I do not tell them for they have so far remained secret because Roland was ever more ready to do valiant deeds than to relate them afterwards: none of his exploits ever came to light except when there happened to be witnesses present.]27

  We must go to war as a duty: the reward we should expect is one which cannot fail any noble action, however obscure it may be: we should not even think of virtue but of the satisfaction which a well-governed conscience derives from acting well. We must be valiant for our own sakes, and for the advantages of having our minds lodged in a place which is firm and secure against the assaults of Fortune.

  [B] Virtus, repulsæ nescia sordidæ,

  Intaminatis fulget honoribus,

  Nec sumit aut ponit secures

  Arbitrio popularis auræ.

  [Virtue ignores all squalid slights: it gleams with unstained honour; it neither accepts the insignia of Consul nor lays them down at the whim of the plebs.]28

  [A] Our soul must act her part not when on parade but at home within us where no eyes but our own can penetrate. There she shields us from fear of death, of pain, of shame even; she gives us assurance to face the loss of our children, of those whom we love and of our chattels; and when the opportunity arises, she also leads us into the hazards of war: [C] ‘non emolumento aliquo, sed ipsius honestatis decore.’ [not for any sort of gain, but for the seemliness of honour itself.]29 [A] Such profit is much grander and more worthy to be wished for and hoped for than honour and glory, which are no more than the favourable judgement men make of us.

  [B] To adjudicate an acre of land we have to select a dozen men out of an entire nation: yet when it comes to adjudicating our propensities and our actions – the most difficult and most important matter of all – we have recourse to the votes of the common people and of the mob, that mother of ignorance, of injustice and of inconstancy. [C] Is it reasonable to make the life of a man, or depend on the judgement of idiots? ‘An quidquam stultius quam quos singulos contemnas, eos aliquid putare esse universos?’ [Can anything be more stupid than to value collectively those whom we despise as individuals?]30 [B] Whoever aims to please that lot will never finish: such a target is shapeless and cannot be reached. [C] ‘Nihil tam inaestimabile est quanm animi multitudinis.’ [Nothing is less worth esteeming than the mind of the many.]31 Demetrius put it amusingly: he set no more store by the voice of the people when it came out of their tops than out of their bottoms.32 And this one goes further: ‘Ego hoc judico, siquando turpe non sit, tamen non esse non turpe, quum id a multitudine laudetur.’ [My judgement is that, even when a deed is not actually base, it cannot be entirely free from baseness when it is praised by the mob.]33

  [B] No skill, no mental agility, could direct our footsteps if we were to follow so unruly a guide, one so far off course. Amidst that windy babble of popular rumour, report and opinions blowing down upon us, no valid course can be fixed on. Let us not look before us towards a goal so floating and wavering: let us follow after reason with constancy: let public approval – if it can – follow us thither; but since it depends entirely on Fortune we are no more entitled to expect it than if we adopt a different route. Even if I did not follow the right road for its rightness, I would still follow it because I have found from experience that, at the end of the day, it is usually the happiest one and the most useful. [C] ‘Dedit hoc providentia hominibus munus, ut honesta magis juvarent.’ [Honourable conduct is the most profitable: that is Providence’s gift to men.]34

  [B] There was of old a seaman who addressed Neptune thus during a violent storm: ‘O God, if it pleaseth thee thou wilt save me; if it pleaseth thee thou wilst destroy me: but I will ever hold straight to my helm.’

  I have known in my time hundreds of men more devious, more supple more equivocal – and doubtless more worldly-wise – than I am, who, who destroyed themselves while I was saved:

  Risi successu posse carere dolos.

  [I laughed when I saw how trickery could fail.]35

  [C] When Paulus Aemilius set out on his glorious Macedonian expedition he told all the people in Rome not to talk freely about his actions while he was away.36 Licence in judging such things is a great distraction in affairs of public concern, since not every man has the same determination as Fabius did in the face of opposing and harmful popular counsels: he preferred his high reputation to be torn to shreds by the frivolous notions of men rather than to carry out his responsibilities less well – thereby earning approval and popular support.37

  [B] There is an indescribable pleasure in being praised, but we value it far too much.

  Laudari haud metuam, neque enim mihi cornea fibra est;

  Sed recti finemque extremumque esse recuso

  Euge tuum et belle!

  [I am not afraid of being praised; my sensitivities are not horny-hard; but I refuse to accept that the final goal of right-conduct should be, ‘Hooray! How fine!’]38

  [A] I am not so much worried about how I am in the minds of other men as how I am to myself. I want to be enriched by me not by borrowings from others. Those outside us only see events and external appearances: anyone can put on a good outward show while inside he is full of fever and fright. They do not see my mind: they only see the looks on my face.

  We are right to denounce play-acting in war:
what is easier for a cunning man than to dodge danger, acting the fierce fighter while his heart is full of weakness. There are so many ways of avoiding occasions for exposing ourselves to personal risk that we shall have deceived everybody a thousand times before getting into dangerous straits; and even then, once we are caught in them, we can manage to put on a good face for the occasion and speak confident words while our soul is a-tremble within us. [C] And quite a few people, if they had the use of that ring of Plato’s which made the man who wore it on his finger invisible if he gave it a twist towards the flat of his hand,39 would go into hiding just when they ought to be most in evidence and would regret being exposed in a place of such honour, where it is Necessity which makes them valiant:

  [A] Falsus honor juvat, et mendax infamia terret

  Quem, nisi mendosum et mendacem?

  [Who rejoices in unmerited honours or goes in fear of lying infamy save the deceiver and the liar?]40

  That is why all those judgements which are based on external appearances are unbelievably unreliable and dubious, and why there is no more reliable witness than each man is to himself.

  [A1] Where external appearances are concerned, how many batmen are our companions in glory! The man who stands firm in a trench once it is dug, what is he doing which was not done before him by fifty wretched men of the pioneer-corps who open the way for him and protect him at the risk of their bodies for twopence halfpenny a day?

  [B] Non, quicquid turbida Roma

  Elevet, accedas, examenque improbum in illa

  Castiges trutina: nec te quæsiveris extra.

  [Do not accept whatever turbulent Rome decides: do not attempt to rectify her faulty scales: do not seek to base yourself on such externals.]41

  [A] When we spread our name by scattering it into many mouths we call that ‘increasing our renown’; we wish our name to be favourably received there and that it may gain from such an increase. That is what is most pardonable in such a design. But carried to excess this malady makes many seek to be on others’ lips, no matter how. Trogus Pompeius says of Herostratus, and Livy says of Manlius, that they were more desirous of a wide reputation than a good one.42 That is a common vice. We are more concerned that men should talk of us than of how they talk of us; and we are far more concerned that our name should run from mouth to mouth than under what circumstances it should do so.

  It seems that to be known is in some way to have our life and our enduring fame under the protection of others. As for me, I only exist ‘at home’ (in myself); and as for that other life of mine which lies in what those who love me know of me, [C] considered naked and simply in itself, [A] I am well aware that I feel no fruit or joy from it, other than from the vanity of an imagined opinion.

  And when I am dead dead, I shall feel it far, far less [C] and I shall lose completely those true advantages which sometimes happen to attend it; [A] I shall then have no hands to grip hold of reputation or to hang on to it by, no means by which it can touch me or get through to me. As for expecting my name to receive it, well, first of all I have no name which is sufficiently my own. Of the two that I do have, one is common to the whole tribe of us; indeed, to others as well. There is a family in Paris and in Montpellier with the surname Montaigne. There is another in Brittany and another in Saintonge called De la Montaigne: change but one syllable and it will so tangle the threads of our destinies that I shall share in their glory and they, perhaps, in my disgrace; then again, my folks were formerly surnamed Eyquem, a surname which is still of concern to a well-known family in England.43

  As for my Christian name, it is there for anyone who wishes to adopt it. So instead of myself I may bring honour to a porter.

  And then, if I did have a label which was particular to me, what could it label when I am no more? Can it designate and commend nothingness?

  [B] Nunc levior cyppus non imprimit ossa?

  Laudat posteritas: nunc non e manibus illis,

  Nunc non e tumulo fortunataque favilla

  Nascuntur violæ?

  [Does my tombstone press less on my bones now? There is the praise of posterity: for all that, no violets grow now from my remains in this tomb nor from my fortunate ashes.]

  [A] But I have talked of that elsewhere.44

  Moreover, of the ten thousand men who are maimed or killed in a battle, there are not fifteen whom we ever talk about. There must needs be some towering greatness, or some consequence of importance that Fortune has attached to it, to make any personal deed appreciated – not merely an infantryman’s but even a general’s. For to kill a man or two, or even ten, to expose oneself courageously to death, means something to each of us as individuals since our all is at risk: but for everyone else they are such everyday things, so ordinary, and we need so many of them to produce any noticeable results, that we can expect no individual commendation for them.

  [B] casus multis hic cognitus ac jam

  Tritus, et e medio fortunæ ductus acervo.

  […a fate known to many, already well-worn, picked from the middle of Fortune’s heap.]45

  [A] Of the thousands upon thousands of valiant men who have died in France, arms at the ready, over the last fifteen years, not a hundred have come to our knowledge. The memory not only of the leaders but of the battles, of the victories, lies buried. [C] The destinies of half the world stay where they are and, for want of record, do not last but vanish. If I had in my possession all the events which are unknown, I think I could easily supplant the ones we do know in examples of every kind. [A] Why, amid so many writers, so many witnesses and so many rare and noble éxploits, few have come down to us even from the Romans and the Greeks.

  [B] Ad nos vix tenuis famae perlabitur aura.

  [There scarcely wafts to us a thin breath of their fame.]46

  [A] It will already be something if, a hundred years from now, people roughly remember that in our time there were civil wars in France.

  [B] Before going into battle the Spartans would make sacrifices to the Muses, praying that their deeds be well and worthily written about, reckoning it to be a divine and no common favour that beautiful deeds should find witnesses who knew how to make them live on in memory.47

  [A] Do we think that at every volley from harquebuses which concerns us, at every risk that we run, there suddenly appears a clerk to keep a record of it? And, besides, a hundred clerks can jot it down whose accounts will not last three days and will come to nobody’s attention. We do not possess a thousandth part of the writings of the Ancients: it is Fortune’s favour which grants them a short life or a long one [C] (and we may well have cause to wonder if we have the worst part, since we have not even seen the rest). [A] Nobody writes histories about such trivial events: you have to be the head man in conquering an Empire or a Kingdom; you have to have won fifty-two set-piece battles, always with inferior forces, as Caesar did. Ten thousand fine comrades and many great Captains died following him valiantly and courageously whose names lasted only as long as their wives and children lived:

  [B] quos fama obscura recondit.

  [whom a darkened fame has hid.]48

  [A] Even those we see acting well are no more talked of three months, or three years, after they left their bodies on the field than if they had never been. Whoever will reflect, with due measure and proportion, on what kind of people and what kind of glory are kept in remembrance through books, will find that very few of the deeds and very few of the men of our century may claim a place in them.

  How many valiant men have we seen outliving their reputations, men who, while they are still alive, have seen and suffered the eclipse of the honour and glory which they so justly acquired in their younger days? And shall we go and lose that true life which is our essence and plunge ourselves into everlasting death for three years of that fancied imaginary life? Wise men set up a more beautiful, a juster end for so important an undertaking: [C] ‘Recte facti, fecisse merces est;’ [The reward for acting properly is to have done so;] ‘officii fructus ipsum officium est.’
[the recompense of duty is duty done.]49

  [A] It might perhaps be pardonable for a painter or a craftsman, or even a rhetorician or a grammarian, to labour to acquire a name through his works; but virtuous deeds are too noble in themselves to seek any other reward than their own intrinsic worth, and especially to seek it from the vanity of human judgements. And yet if that false opinion serves the public good by keeping men to their duty; [B] if the people are incited to virtue by it; if rulers are influenced by the sight of men blessing Trajan’s memory and abominating Nero’s; if it affects them to see the name of that great criminal, once so fearsome and so formidable, so freely cursed and slighted by the first schoolboy who takes him on: [A] then let it boldly flourish and may it be fostered among us as much as is in our power.

  [C] Even Plato, employing every means to make his citizens virtuous, also counsels them not to disdain a good repute in the judgement of the nations and says that, through some divine inspiration, it turns out that even the wicked can often, in speech and thought, justly distinguish the good people from the bad. That person and his pedagogue are marvellous and bold workmen at introducing divine operations and revelations, anywhere and everywhere, when human strength gives out:50‘ut tragici poetae confugiunt ad deum, cum explicare argumenti exitum non possunt.’ [just as the writers of tragedies resort to a deus ex machina when they cannot disentangle their threads at the end of their plays.] Perhaps that explains why Timon attacked Plato as a great maker of miracles.51