The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  Nobody’s soul is so brutish and wretched that, within it, some peculiar faculty cannot be seen to shine; no soul is buried so deep that some corner of it cannot break out. How it happens that a soul which is blind and dull to everything else is found to be lively, clear and outstanding in some definite activity peculiar to itself is something you will have to inquire from the experts. But the most beautiful of souls are those universal ones which are open and ready for anything, [C] untaught perhaps but not unteachable. [A] And I say that to indict my own: for whether by weakness or indifference – and it is far from being part of my beliefs that we should be indifferent to what lies at our feet, is ready to hand or closely regards the conduct of our lives – no soul is so unfit or ignorant as mine concerning many commonplace matters of which you cannot be ignorant without shame.

  I must relate a few examples.

  I was born and brought up in the country, surrounded by agriculture; farming and its concerns have been in my hands ever since those who previously owned the lands which I enjoy moved over for me; yet I cannot do sums with either abacus or pen. Most of our coins I do not recognize; unless it is all too obvious I do not know the difference between one grain and another, neither in the ground nor in the barn; and in my vegetable garden I can scarcely tell my cabbages from my lettuces. I do not even know the names of the most elementary farming implements nor even the most basic principles of agriculture such as children know; [B] still less do I know anything about the manual arts, about the nature of merchandise and its trade, about the natural qualities and varieties of fruit, wine and foodstuffs, about training a hawk or curing a horse or a hound. [A] And since I must reveal the whole of my shame, only a month ago I was caught not knowing that yeast is used to make bread [C] and what was meant by ‘fermenting’ wine. [A] It was inferred once in Athens that a man had an aptitude for mathematics when it was seen how he arranged a pile of brushwood into faggots. They would certainly draw the opposite conclusion from me: give me a complete set of kitchen equipment and I would still go famished!37

  From these details of my confession you can imagine others to my disadvantage. But no matter how I may appear when I make myself known, provided that I do make myself known such as I am, I have done what I set out to do. Yet I make no apology for daring to commit to writing such ignoble and frivolous matters: the ignobility of my subject [C] restricts me to them. If you will you may condemn my project: but the way I do it, you may not. [A] I can see well enough, without other people telling me, how little all this weighs and is worth and the [C] madness [A] of my design.38 It is already something if my judgement, of which these are the assays, does not cast a shoe in the process.

  Nasutus sis usque licet, sis denique nasus,

  Quantum noluerit ferre rogatus Athlas,

  Et possis ipsum tu deridere Latinum,

  Non potes in nugas dicere plura meas,

  Ipse ego quam dixi: quid dentem dente juvabit

  Rodere? came opus est, si satur esse velis.

  Ne perdas operam: qui se mirantur, in illos

  Virus habe; nos hæc novimus esse nihil.

  [Go on: wrinkle your nose – a nose so huge that Atlas would not carry it if you asked him – mock the famous mocker Latinus if you can, yet you will never succeed in saying more against my trifles than I have said myself. What use is there in champing your teeth? To be satisfied you need to sink them into meat. Save your energy. Keep your venom for those who admire themselves: I know my work is worthless.]

  I am under no obligation not to say daft things, provided that I do not deceive myself in recognizing them as such. It is so usual for me to know I am going wrong that I hardly ever go wrong any other way: I never go wrong by chance. It is a slight thing for me to attribute my silly actions to the foolhardiness of my humour, since I know no way of avoiding regularly attributing my vicious ones to it.

  I saw one day in Bar-Le-Duc King Francis II being presented with a self-portrait by King René of Sicily as a souvenir of him. Why is it not equally permissible to portray yourself with your pen as he did with his brush?39So, unfit though it is to be brought out in public, I have no wish to overlook another of my scabs: my inability to reach decisions, a most inconvenient defect when transacting the world’s business. When there are doubts about an enterprise I do not know what decision to make:

  [A1] Ne si, ne no, nel cor mi suona intero.

  [My mind neither says firmly Yea nor firmly Nay.]

  [B] I can defend an opinion all right, but I cannot select it.

  [A] No matter what side we incline to in the affairs of men, many likely arguments come to confirm our choice – [C] that is why Chrysippus the philosopher said that he merely wanted to learn the dogmas of his Masters Zeno and Cleanthes: as for proofs and reasons he would supply them himself40 – [A] Therefore no matter what side I turn to I can furnish myself with cause and true-sounding reasons for remaining there. So I maintain within me my doubt and my freedom to choose until the occasion becomes urgent, when, to tell the truth, I ‘toss a feather to the wind’ (as the saying goes) and put myself at the mercy of Fortune: the slightest of inclinations or circumstances then carries me away.

  Dum in dubio est animus, paulo momento huc atque illuc impellitur.

  [When the mind is in doubt, it wavers hither and thither at the merest impulse.]41

  The indecision of my judgement is so equally balanced in most encounters that I would willingly have recourse to deciding by lots and by dice. And I note as having great relevance to our human weakness the examples which Holy Writ itself has left us of this practice of referring decisions of choice in matter of doubt to the hazard of Fortune: ‘Sors cecidit super Mathiam.’ [The lot fell upon Matthias.]42

  – [C] Human reason is a dangerous two-edged sword. Just see how, even in the hands of Socrates, its most familar and intimate friend, it is a stick with a great many ends to it.

  [A] And so I am fitted only for following, and easily allow myself to be persuaded by the crowd. I do not trust enough in my powers to undertake to guide or to command. I am very happy to find my path trodden out for me by others. If I must run the hazard of an uncertain choice, I prefer that that choice should be guided by someone who trusts to his opinions and is more wedded to them than I am to my own, [B] the very foundations and basis of which I find inclined to slip. Yet I do not easily change my opinions, since I find the opposite ones equally weak. [C] ‘Ipsa consuetudo assentiendi periculosa esse videtur et lubrica.’ [The very habit of giving one’s assent seems to be slippery and dangerous.]43 [A] Notably in affairs of state there is a wide field for vacillation and controversy:

  Justa pari premitur veluti cum pondere libra

  Prona, nec hac plus parte sedet, nec surgit ab illa.

  [As when a just balance weighs equal weights, neither comes down on this side nor rises on the other.]

  The discourses of Machiavelli, for example, were solid enough, given their subject, yet it was extremely easy to attack them; and those who have done so left it just as easy to attack theirs too.44 On such a subject there would always be matters for counter-arguments, counter-pleas, replications, triplications, fourth surrejoinders and that endless web of argument which our chicanery has stretched out as far as may be in favour of legal actions –

  Cædimur, et totidem plagis consumimus hostem,

  [The foe hits at us and we return blow for blow,]

  – because such reasoning has no other basis than experience while the diversity of events offers us an infinity of examples of every kind of type.45 A great learned person of our own time says that, when our almanacs predict cold or wet, if anyone were to put warm or dry, always saying the opposite to their predictions, he would not care which side he was on if he had to bet on the outcome except for forecasts which permit no doubt (such as predicting extreme heat at Christmas or the rigours of winter on Midsummer Day). I think the same about debates on politics: whatever role you are given your game is as easy as your opponent’s, provided that you do no
violence to the most obvious and evident of principles. That is why, for my humour, there is no system so bad (provided it be old and durable) as not to be better than change and innovation. Our manners are corrupt in the extreme and wondrously inclined to get worse; many of our French laws and customs are monstrous and barbaric: yet, because of the difficulty of putting ourselves into a better state, and because such is the danger of collapse into ruin, if I could jam the brake on our wheel and stop it dead at this point I would happily do so.

  [B] nunquam adeo fædis adeoque pudendis

  Utimur exemplis ut non pejora supersint.

  [none of the examples which we cite is so infamous and shameful that there be not worse to come.]46

  [A] I find that the worst aspect of the state we are in is our lack of stability and that our laws cannot adopt one fixed form any more than our fashions can. It is easy enough to condemn a polity as imperfect since all things mortal are full of imperfection; it is easy enough to generate in a nation contempt for its ancient customs: no man has ever tried to do so without reaching his goal; but as for replacing the conditions you have ruined by better ones, many who have tried to do that have come to grief.

  [C] In my own activities I allow but a small part to my intelligence: I readily let myself be led by the public order of this world. Blessed are they who, without tormenting themselves about causes, do what they are told rather than tell others what to do; who, as the Heavens roll, gently roll with them. When a man reasons and pleads causes, his obedience is neither tranquil nor pure.

  [A] To get back to myself, the only quality, in short, for which I reckon I am worth anything is the one which no man ever believed he lacked; what I commend in myself is plebeian, commonplace and ordinary, for whoever thought he lacked [C] sense? [A] That would be an assertion which implied its own contradiction; [C] lack of sense is a malady which never exists if you can see it: it is tenacious and strong, yet the first ray darting from the sufferer’s eye pierces it and dispels it as the face of the sun dispels a dense mist; in this case to bring a charge is to grant a discharge, [A] and to condemn yourself would be to acquit yourself. Never was there hodman nor womanling but thought they had sense enough for their needs. In others we readily acknowledge superior courage, [C] physical [A] strength, experience, agility and beauty: but superior judgement we concede to none. And such arguments in another as derive from pure inborn wit we think that [C] we would have discovered too if only we had looked at things from the same angle. [A] The erudition, the style and such-like that we see in the works of others we can easily acknowledge when they surpass our own; but when it comes to the pure products of the intelligence, each man thinks that he has it in him to hit upon exactly the same things; only with difficulty can he perceive the weight and labour of it all [C] unless, that is, it is incomparably and extremely beyond him – and even then, only just. [A] So this is an exercise of judgement from which I must expect very little praise and honour; [C] It is a kind of writing of little renown.47

  Moreover, whom are you writing for? The scholars whose concern it is to pass judgement on books recognize no worth but that of learning and allow no intellectual activity other than that scholarship and erudition. Mistake one Scipio for the other, and you have nothing left worth saying, have you! According to them, fail to know your Aristotle and you fail to know yourself. But as for souls which are commonplace and ordinary, they cannot perceive the grace and the weight of sustained elegant discourse. And those two species occupy the whole world! Men of the third species, the one which falls to your lot, composed of minds which are strong and well-adjusted, are so rare that, precisely, they have no name or rank among us; to aspire and strive to please them is time half wasted.

  [A] It is commonly held that good sense is the gift which Nature has most fairly shared among us, for there is nobody who is not satisfied with what Nature has allotted him. [C] And is that not reasonable? Anyone who would peer beyond it would be peering beyond what his sight can reach. [A] I believe that my opinions are sound and good (who does not?). One of the best proofs that I have of that’s being true is that I do not think highly of myself; for if these opinions had not been firm and assured, they would easily have been led astray by the singular affection I have for myself, referring as I do virtually everything back to myself and not squandering much affection on others. All that affection which other men scatter over a boundless multitude of friends and acquaintances (and over their glory and greatness) I devote entirely to my peace of mind and to me. Whatever does escape from me elsewhere is strictly not according to the dispensation of my reasoning:

  mihi nempe valere et vivere doctus.

  [I am learned in living and flourishing for myself.]48

  Now as for my opinions I find them infinitely blunt and tenacious in condemning me for inadequacy. Truly, more than any other, that is also a subject in which I exercise my judgement. All men gaze ahead at what is confronting them: I turn my gaze inwards, planting it there and keeping it there. Everybody looks before himself: I look inside myself; I am concerned with no one but me; without ceasing I reflect on myself, I watch myself, savour myself. Other men (if they really think about it) always forge straight ahead:

  nemo tentat in sese descendere.

  [no one attempts to go down into himself.]

  I turn round and round in myself. I owe chiefly to myself the capacity – [A1] such as it is in me [A] – for sifting the truth and my freeman’s humour for not easily enslaving my beliefs: for the firmest universal reasons that I have were, so to say, born in me. They are natural ones and entirely mine. I brought them forth crude and uncomplicated – products which are bold and strong but somewhat confused and imperfect. I subsequently confirmed and strengthened them by other men’s authority and by the sound reasonings of those Ancients with whom I found myself in agreement in judgements; they made my hold on them secure and gave me the full enjoyment of their possession.

  [B] Everyone seeks a reputation for a lively ready mind: I claim a reputation for steadiness; they seek a reputation for some conspicuous and signal activity or for individual talent: I claim one for the ordinate quality, the harmony and the tranquillity of my opinions and morals: [C] ‘Omnino, si quidquam est decorum, nihil est profecto magis quam æquabilitas universæ vitæ, tum singularum actionum: quam conservare non possis, si, aliorum naturam imitans, omittas tuam.’ [If anything at all is becoming, then nothing is more so than the even consistency of your entire life and of every one of its activities: and you cannot maintain that if you imitate other men’s natures and neglect your own.]49

  [A] There then you have the extent to which I feel guilty of that first characteristic which I attributed to the vice of presumption.50 As for the second, which consists in not thinking highly enough of others, I do not know that I can plead so innocent to that – for, cost me what it will, I am determined to tell things as they are.

  Perhaps because of the constant commerce I have with the humours of the Ancients and of the ideal I have formed of the richly endowed souls of the men of former times, I feel a distaste for others and for myself. Perhaps we really do live in a time which begets nothing but the mediocre. However that may be, I know nothing worthy of any great ecstasy of admiration nowadays; moreover I know hardly any men with the intimacy needed to judge them; the ones whom my circumstances commonly bring me among are not on the whole concerned with cultivating their higher faculties but are men to whom has been proposed no beatitude but honour and no perfection but valour.

  Whatever of beauty I do find in others I am most ready to praise and to value: indeed I often go farther than I really think, and to that extent permit myself to lie, not being able, though, to invent falsehoods entirely. I readily bear witness to those I love of what I find praiseworthy in them: if they are worth a foot I make it a foot and a half; but what I cannot do is to attribute qualities to them which they do not have; nor can I frankly defend their imperfections.

  [B] Whatever witness I owe to the honour of my
very enemies I bear unambiguously. [C] My sympathies change but not my judgement; [B] I do not confound my quarrel with other circumstances which have nothing to do with it and I am so jealous for my freedom of judgement that I find it hard to give it up for any passion whatsoever. [C] By telling lies I harm myself more than the one I lie about. Attention is drawn to the laudable and noble custom of the people of Persia who, both in speaking of their mortal enemies and in waging total war against them, do so with such honour and equity as their virtue deserves.51

  [A] I know plenty of men with specific endowments of great beauty: some have intelligence; others courage, skill, conscience, eloquence, learning and so on. But as for the kind of man who is great over all and who has so many beautiful qualities all at once [A1], or one of them to such a degree of excellence, [A] that we should be thunderstruck by him and compare him with those from times past whom we hold in honour, I have not had the good fortune to meet even one. And the greatest man I ever knew during his lifetime – I mean great for the inborn qualities of his soul and his natural endowments – was Etienne de La Boëtie; his was indeed an ample soul, beautiful from every point of view, a soul of the Ancient mould which would have brought forth great achievements if his fate had so allowed, having greatly added to its natural richness by learning and assiduous study. I do not know how it happens [C] (though it certainly does) [A] but there is more triviality and weakness of understanding in those who profess to have most ability, who engage in the literary professions and whose responsibilities are concerned with books than in any other kind of person; it is because we demand more from them and expect more, so that we cannot pardon everyday defects in them; or is it because their reputation for knowledge makes them bolder in displaying and revealing themselves so intimately that they give themselves away and condemn themselves? A craftsman gives surer proof of his stupidity when he has some rich substance in his hands and prepares it and mixes it contrary to the rules of his art than when he is working on some cheap stuff; and we are more offended by defects in a statue made of gold than in one made of plaster; so too with the learned: when they exploit materials which in themselves and in their right place would be good they use them without discernment, honouring their power of memory rather than their understanding. It is Cicero, Galen, Ulpian and St Jerome that they honour: themselves they make ridiculous.52