The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  I have certainly been moved to anger at seeing judges use fraud and false hopes of favour or of pardon to tempt criminals to reveal what they have done, even using barefaced lies. It would be helpful to justice (and to Plato, too, who is in favour of that practice)5 to furnish me with other methods, more in keeping with myself. Such justice is crafty: I reckon that it is no less wounded by others than by itself. Not long ago I replied that. I would hardly be one to betray my Prince for a private citizen when I would be deeply grieved to betray any private citizen for my Prince; I not only loathe to deceive, I also loathe others to be deceived about me: I am unwilling even to provide matter or occasion for it. In the little I have had to do with negotiations between our Princes during these disputes and sub-disputes which tear us apart nowadays, I have scrupulously stopped anyone from ‘running himself through with my visor’ – from being deceived by my position. Those in the business hide as much as they can: they present themselves as being as moderate as possible and pretend that their views are very close. For my part I recommend myself by my liveliest opinions and by the manner which is most truly mine. I am a tender novice at negotiating: I would rather let down my negotiations than let down myself. I have been very lucky though so far – and luck certainly plays the major part in this; few men have gone from one armed band to another with less suspicion or more favour and courtesy.

  I have an open manner, readily striking up acquaintance and being trusted from the first encounter. Simpleness and unsullied truth are always opportune and acceptable in any period whatsoever. And then frank speech is less suspect or offensive in men who are not working for some private gain and who can with truth make the reply that Hyperides made to the Athenians who complained of his blunt way of speaking: ‘Gentlemen, do not consider only my frankness but that I am frank without having anything to gain, without restoring my own fortunes.’6 My own frankness, by its vigour, has quickly freed me too from suspicion of deceitfulness (since I do not spare men anything, however hurtful or oppressive, which could be put worse behind their backs); and also by showing my frankness to be simple and unbiased. All I want to gain from doing anything is the fact of having done it: I do not attach distant corollaries and pleadings to it; each thing I do does its job separately: let it succeed if it can.

  I feel, by the way, no driving passion about the great of the land, neither love nor hatred: nor has my will in this matter been throttled by private injury or obligation. [C] I think of our Kings with the simple loyal affection of a subject, neither encouraged nor discouraged by personal interest. I feel pleased with myself over that. [B] I am only moderately devoted to public affairs, and only dispassionately to just ones. I am not enslaved by deep-seated pledges and intimate engagements. Anger and hatred go beyond the duty of justice; they are passions which merely serve those who are not held to their duty uniquely by reason. All loyal and equitable purposes are loyal and equitable in themselves; if they are not so they are soon corrupted into sedition and disloyalty.

  That is what makes me stride forward, head erect, open-faced and open-hearted. I tell you truly that I am not afraid to admit that, if only I could, I would readily follow that old crone’s plan and offer a candle to St Michael and another to his dragon.7 I shall support the good side as far as (but, if possible, excluding) the stake: let Montaigne, my seat, be engulfed in the collapse of the commonwealth if needs be; but, if needs not be, I shall be grateful to Fortune for preserving it. Was it not Atticus who held to the just side, to the losing side, yet saved himself by his moderation in that universal shipwreck of the world among so many schisms and upheavals?

  It is easier for private citizens like he was: in such sorts of turmoil I find that you can, with justice, not be ambitious to get involved unless you are invited to. But I find that to remain vacillating and mongrel, or to keep one’s affections in check, unmoved by civil strife in one’s country and having no preference when the State is divided, is neither beautiful nor honourable: [C] ‘Ea non media, sed nulla via est, velut eventum expectantium quo fortunae consilia sua applicent.’ [That is not the way of moderation: it is no way at all. It is simply awaiting the outcome so as to support those who happen to win.]8 That can be permissible towards the affairs of neighbouring countries: Gelon, the Tyrant of Syracuse, refrained from supporting either side in the war of the Barbarians against the Greeks, keeping an envoy in readiness at Delphi, bearing gifts but waiting to see which side Fortune would favour before seizing the occasion when it was ripe for an alliance with the victor. But it would be a species of treachery to act thus in civil strife at home, in which of necessity [B] we must decide to join one side or other. But (even though I do not exploit it myself) I do find it to be more excusable in a man who has received no express command or office if he does not actually get embroiled in the strife, except in the case of foreign wars (in which however, by our own laws, no man is involved save by choice). Nevertheless even those who become totally committed can still do so with such order and moderation that the storm may pass over their heads without battering them. Were we not right to think that way about the late Bishop of Orleans, the Sieur de Morvilliers?9 And some others that I know, who are now struggling valiantly, have manners which are so equable and gentle that they are the kind who will remain upright no matter what destructive upheavals and collapses Heaven may have in store for us.

  I hold that it is the property of kings alone to feel animosity towards other kings, and I laugh at the types of mind which gaily volunteer for quarrels which are so disproportionate: for a man has no private quarrel with a prince when he marches openly and courageously against him, honourably doing his duty. He may not love that great person but he does something better: he esteems him. And there is always this in favour of the cause of legitimacy, of the defence of the traditional institution: the very ones who disturb it for their personal ends can excuse those who defend it, even though they do not honour them. But we must not (as we do every day) give the name of duty to an inward bitter harshness born of self-interested passion, nor that of courage to malicious and treacherous dealings. What they call zeal is their propensity to wickedness and violence: it is not the cause which sets them ablaze but self-interest: they stoke up war not because it is just but because it is war.

  Nothing stops us from behaving properly even when among mutual enemies – nor loyally either. Comport yourself among them not with an equal good-will (for good-will can allow of varying degrees) but at least with a temperate one, so that you do not become so involved with one of those mutual enemies that he can demand of you your all. Be satisfied too with a modest degree of their favour: do not fish in troubled waters, glide through them!

  The other way, that of offering one’s services to both sides, savours even less of wisdom than it does of morality. The man to whom you betray another’s secrets although you are equally favoured by both realizes, does he not, that you will do the same by him when his turn comes? He listens to you, gets what he can out of you, turns your treachery to his advantage, but regards you as a bad man: men of duplicity are useful for what they bring, but mind you see that they take as little away as possible!

  I never say anything to one side which I cannot say to the other when the time comes, merely changing the emphasis a little. I bring only such information as is already available, or indifferent or useful to all in common. There is no advantage whatsoever for which I would permit myself to lie to them.

  I scrupulously conceal whatever has been entrusted to my silence, but I take care to have as little as possible to conceal. Guarding the secrets of princes when it is not your job to do so is far too much bother. The bargain I am prepared to offer is that, as long as they make few confidences to me, they can certainly place full confidence in whatever I bring with me.

  I have always known more about such things than I wanted to. [C] Open talk opens the way to further talk, as wine does or love. [B] Phillipides replied wisely to King Lysimachus who asked him, ‘Which of my possessions shall I shar
e with you?’ – ‘Whatever you like, provided it be none of your secrets.’10

  I know that everyone rebels if the deeper implications of the negotiations he is employed on are concealed from him and if some ulterior motive is secreted away. Personally I am glad if princes tell me no more than they want me to get on with; I have no desire that what I know should impede or constrain what I have to say. If I have to serve as a means of deception let at least my own conscience be safeguarded. I do not want to be judged so loyal and loving a servant that I would be good for betraying any man. If a man does not keep faith with himself he can pardonably not do so to his master. But these princes will not accept half a man and despise services limited by conditions. There is no other remedy than frankly to state where your boundaries lie: only to Reason should I be a slave – and I can barely do that properly. [C] They are also wrong to require a free man to be as abjectly bound to their service as a man they have bought and made, or whose fate is expressly and individually tied to theirs. [B] Our laws have freed me from great anguish: they have chosen my party for me and have given me a master: all other superior authority is related to the authority of that law; all other obligations are restrained by it. That does not mean that if my affections inclined to the other side that I would immediately lend it my support: our wills and desires are laws unto themselves but our actions must accept law as ordained by the State.

  This way of mine of proceeding jars a bit with our customs; it is not made to achieve great effects nor to endure very long. Innocence herself could not have commerce among us without deception, nor do her business without lying. So public employments are not for my game-bag. Whatever my profession requires of me in such matters I provide in the most private way I can. As a boy I was immersed in politics right up to my ears: it succeeded all right, but I quickly struggled free. Subsequently I have often got out of such engagements, rarely accepted them and never begged for them; I keep my back turned towards ambition – not perhaps like oarsmen who actually proceed backwards but in such a way that my not having embarked upon such a career is less due to my resolve than to my good fortune. For there are paths which are less inimical to my taste and more in conformity with my capacities: if Fortune had ever summoned me to follow those paths towards political service and advancement in worldly renown I know that I would have skipped over my reasoned opinions and followed her.

  Those who counter what I profess by calling my frankness, my simplicity and my naturalness of manner mere artifice and cunning – prudence rather than goodness, purposive rather than natural, good sense rather than good hap – give me more honour than they take from me. They certainly make my cunning too cunning. If any one of those men would follow me closely about and spy on me, I would declare him the winner if he does not admit that there is no teaching in his sect which could counterfeit my natural way of proceeding and keep up an appearance of such equable liberty along such tortuous paths, nor of maintaining so uncompromising a freedom of action along paths so diverse, and concede that all their striving and cleverness could never bring them to act the same. The way of truth is one and artless: the way of private gain and success in such affairs as we are entrusted with is double, uneven and fortuitous.

  I have often seen that counterfeit artful frankness in practice: it is most often unsuccessful. It readily recalls that donkey in Aesop which, to rival the dog, went and gaily threw both its forefeet round its master’s neck: but for such a welcome the wretched donkey received twice as many blows as the dog did caresses.11 [C] ‘Id maxime quemque decet quod est cujusque suum maxime.’ [What best becomes a man is whatever is most peculiarly his own.]

  [B] I do not want to deprive wiliness of its rank: that would be to misunderstand the world. I know that it has often proved profitable and that it feeds and maintains most of the avocations of men. Some vices are legal, just as some deeds are good or pardonable yet illegal. That justice which of itself is natural and universal is ordered differently and more nobly than that other sort of justice, which is [C] particular to one nation and [B] confined by our political necessities. [C] ‘Veri juris germanæque justifiæ solidam et expressam effigiem nullam tenemus; umbra et imaginibus utimur.’ [We possess no expressly sculptured portrait of true Law and absolute Justice: we enjoy mere sketches and shadows];12 [B] so that when Dandamys the Wise heard accounts of the lives of Socrates, Pythagoras and Diogenes, he said that they were in every way great personalities, except for their being too subject to venerating the Law: for, to support Law with its authority, true virtue must doff much of its original vigour; and many vicious deeds are done not merely with the Law’s permission but at its instigation:13 [C] ‘Ex senatusconsultis plebisque scitis scelera exercentur.’ [There are crimes authorized by decrees of the Senate and by plebiscites.] [B] I adopt the ordinary usage which differentiates between things useful and things decent and which leads to certain natural functions, which are not merely useful but necessary, being termed indecent or foul.

  But let us get on with exemplifying treachery.

  Two pretenders to the kingdom of Thrace had fallen into a quarrel over their claims. The Emperor stopped their coming to blows; but one of them, under the pretext of a meeting to establish loving harmony between them, arranged for his rival to feast in his house; he then had him imprisoned and killed. Justice required that the Romans should avenge this crime, but difficulties lay in doing so the normal way: what the Romans could not legally achieve without the hazard of war they therefore undertook to do by treachery. They could not do so ‘honourably’, but they did so ‘usefully’. A certain Pomponius Flaccus was deemed the very man for the job; he ensnared that other pretender with feigned words and assurances and, instead of the honour and favour which he promised him, he dispatched him to Rome bound hand and foot. Here we have one traitor betraying another, which goes against the usual pattern, for traitors are full of mistrust and it is hard to catch them out by cunning like their own – witness the painful experience we have just had.14

  Let whoever will be a Pomponius Flaccus – and there are plenty who would. In my case my word and my bond, like all the rest, form limbs of our commonwealth: they are best employed in serving the State. I take that as granted. But if I were commanded to assume responsibility for the Palace of Justice and its pleas I would reply: ‘I know nothing at all about such things’; if commanded to oversee a corps of pioneers I would say: ‘I am called to play a more honourable role.’ Similarly if anyone should wish to employ me to tell lies, to be treacherous or to perjure myself in some important cause (not to mention assassinations or poisonings), I would say, ‘If I have robbed anyone or stolen anything, send me rather to the galleys.’ It is licit for a man of honour to speak as the Spartans did when, defeated by Antipater, they were agreeing terms with him: ‘You may command us to accept conditions which are as grievous and as damaging as you please: but you will waste your time if you command us to accept shameful and dishonourable ones.’15

  Each of us ought to have sworn to himself the oath which the kings of Egypt made their judges solemnly swear: that as judges they would never stray from their conscience for any command which even they their kings might give.

  There are such evident signs of disapprobation and ignominy in those other commissions; the one who gives them to you is condemning you and, if you grasp it aright, is giving it to you as an accusation and a punishment. The more the affairs of State are mended by your exploit, the worse it goes for your own affairs: the better you do, the worse it is. And it would not be for the first time if the very man who set you the task chastised you for doing it – not without some appearance of justice.

  [C] In some particular case betrayal of trust may be excusable, but only when used to betray and punish another betrayal of trust. [B] There are plenty of treacherous deeds which have been not only disowned but punished by the very ones on whose behalf they were perpetrated. Who does not know the judgement which Fabricius pronounced against the physician of Pyrrhus?16 But further still,
there are cases when the very one who ordered the deed has exacted rigorous revenge on the man whom he employed to do it, disclaiming to have had such authority and power and disowning so abandoned a servility and so cowardly an obedience.

  A Russian duke called Jaropelc bribed an Hungarian nobleman to betray the King of Poland, Boleslaus, either by killing him or by providing the Russians with the means of doing him some resounding harm. That Hungarian acted the honest man and devoted himself to the service of that king; he succeeded in becoming one of his advisers – among the most trusted. Taking advantage of this and choosing an opportune moment when his master was absent, he betrayed Wielickzka to the Russians; that great and flourishing city was entirely burnt and sacked by them; not only did they slaughter the entire population of whatever age or sex but also a large number of noblemen from the surrounding area whom he had assembled there with that end in view.

  Jaropelc, his vengeance and his anger assuaged – and they were not unjustified, since Boleslaus had greatly injured him in a similar manner – was satiated by the fruits of that treacherous deed. He came to reflect on its naked, simple ugliness, seeing it with a saner vision no longer obscured by passion; he was seized with so great revulsion and remorse that he put out the eyes of the perpetrator, cut off his tongue and gelded him.17

  Antigonus persuaded the Argyraspidian guards of his adversary Eumenes (who was their Captain-General) to betray him to him. No sooner did he have him killed after being delivered into his power than he himself desired to become the agent of divine Justice in punishing so loathsome a crime; he gave written orders for those guards to be handed over to the Provincial Governor, expressly commanding him to wipe them out, making their end as horrible as he could. Out of that great multitude not one ever breathed again the air of Macedonia. The greater the service they had done him, the more wicked he judged it to be and the more punishable.