The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [C] The slave who betrayed the hiding-place of his master Publius Sulpicius was set free, in accordance with the promise of Sylla’s proclamation; but in accordance with State policy, freeman as he was, he was cast down from the Tarpeian Rock. They have such men hanged with their gains slung in a purse round their necks: they first fulfil their secondary, special sort of promise, and then they fulfil the general one, the primary one.18

  Mahomet II, jealous of his power in accordance with his family tradition, wanted to rid himself of his brother. He employed one of his officers to do so, who choked him by forcing him to imbibe a great quantity of water all at once. After this was done Mahomet II, to expiate the crime, handed the murderer over to the dead man’s mother – they were brothers only by their father. She, in his presence, slit open the murderer’s bosom and, hot with passion, fumbled inside, tore out his heart and threw it to the dogs.19 And our own King Clovis had the three servants of Cannacre hanged after they had betrayed their master: yet he had bribed them to do so. [B] Even worthless men find it pleasant, once they have profited from a vicious deed, to go and quite safely fasten upon it some mark of goodness and of justice, as though their conscience wished to make up for it and put things right. [C] To which may be added the fact that the agents of such horrific wickedness are a reproach to them: so they seek through their deaths to smother any knowledge witnessing to such conspiracies.

  [B] Now even if it should happen that you do get a reward so as not to deprive raison d’état of so extreme and desperate a remedy, the one who rewards you will not fail to regard you as a man accursed and abominable – unless that is he is one himself. And he will think you a bigger traitor than does the man you betrayed; for he proves the malevolence of your heart at the touchstone of your hands, with no possible denial or objection. He exploits you just as we do those degraded men, Public Executioners of High Justice – an office as useful as it is shameful.

  Apart from the baseness of such commissions, there is the prostitution of your conscience. Since the daughter of Sejanus was a virgin and therefore not punishable by death according to a specific judicial formula in Rome, in order to have scope to apply the law she was raped by the hangman before he strangled her: not merely his hand but his mind was the slave of the interests of State.20

  [C] When Amurath I, to increase the severity of his punishment of those subjects who had supported the sacrilegious revolt of his son against him, commanded that their closest kinsmen should take part in their execution, I find it most honourable in some of them to have preferred to be held, with gross injustice, guilty of another’s sacrilege rather than to serve another’s justice by sacrilege of their own. And in my own time when I have seen some rabble, after we have stormed their wretched hovels, saving their own skins in return for the hanging of their friends and relatives, I have always thought that they were worse off than the ones we hanged. It is said that in former days Prince Vitold of Lithuania proclaimed as law that condemned criminals must execute their sentences by their own hand, finding it monstrous that a third party, who was innocent of their crime, should be burdened with the task of homicide.

  [B] As for a prince, whenever some urgent necessity or some violent unforeseeable event affecting the needs of his State obliges him to go back on his pledged word, or otherwise forces him from the ordinate path of duty, he must consider it as a scourging by the rod of God; vice it is not, for he has abandoned his own right-reason for a more powerful universal one: but it is indeed a calamity. So when I was asked, ‘What remedy is there?’ I replied, ‘None: if the prince was really torn between those two extremes, then he had to do it’ – [C] ‘Sed videat ne quaeratur latebra perjurio’ [But let him be sure not to seek any pretexts for such perjury]21 – [B] ‘But if he had no regrets about doing it, if it did not weigh upon him, then that is a sign that his conscience has gone astray.’

  [C] (Even if a Prince could be found with so tender a conscience that no cure seemed worth such a grievous remedy, I would not think any the less of him. He could never lose out more excusably or more decorously. We cannot do everything. Come what may we are often obliged to commit our ship to the sole guidance of Heaven as our ultimate refuge. For what more just necessity is that Prince keeping himself in store? Is there anything more impossible for him to do than what he can only do at the expense of his faith and his honour, attributes which ought perhaps to be dearer to him than his own preservation – and indeed the preservation of his people? If he should simply fold his arms and call on God for help, would he not have grounds to hope that God in his goodness is not such as to refuse the favour of his hand, beyond the normal Order, to a hand so pure and just?)

  [B] Those are dangerous examples, rare and sick exceptions to our rules of nature. Yield to them we must, but with great moderation and circumspection. No private good is worth our doing such violence to our consciences; the common good: well, all right, when it is most apparent and when it really matters.

  [C] Timoleon with the tears he shed rightly saved himself from the monstrous quality of his deed, remembering that he had killed the tyrant with the hand of a brother; and it rightly pricked his conscience that he had been obliged to purchase the common good at the price of his moral honour. The very Senate which he served to free from slavery dared not plainly make up its mind about so deep a deed which presented two such grievous and contrary faces: when the citizens of Syracuse opportunely, at that very moment, send to beg protection from the Corinthians, asking for a leader worthy of restoring their city to its former splendour and of cleansing Sicily of the many petty tyrants which oppressed it, the Senators deputed Timoleon, declaring, with a new ruse, that their decision would be in favour of the liberator of his country or against the murderer of his brother depending on whether he acquitted himself of his charge well or badly.22

  That fanciful verdict did however have the excuse of the dangerous nature of his example and the implications of so self-contradictory a deed; they did well to free their judgement of such a burden and to base it on some other independent considerations. Now Timoleon’s behaviour during that expedition soon threw light on his case, so worthily and so virtuously did he act in every way; and the good fortune which accompanied him during the hardships he had to overcome in that noble task seemed to them to have been sent by the gods, united in favour of vindicating him.

  If ever an aim was worthy of pardon, that aim was Timoleon’s. But the convenience of increasing the State revenue, which served as a pretext to the Roman Senate in the filthy decree that I am about to relate, is not strong enough to warrant such an injustice. Certain cities had ransomed themselves for cash and regained their freedom from Lucius Scylla by the permission and decree of the Senate. Their case, it so happened, had to be considered afresh: the Senate condemned them to be taxable as before, declaring that the money used for their ransom should be forfeited.23

  Civil wars often produce base examples of our punishing private citizens for trusting in us when we once thought differently, and the very same magistrate makes someone who had nothing to do with it bear the penalty of his own change of mind. The master flogs the pupil because he was willing to learn, and the guide flogs the blind man. A horrifying image of our justice. There are rules in philosophy which are false and weak. The example which it propounds to us to enable private advantage to prevail over our plighted troth is not sufficiently justified by the weight of the attendant circumstances: ‘Thieves have captured you; they have set you free after exacting from you an oath to pay a certain sum.’ It would be quite wrong to say that a good man, once out of their hands, would be free of his oath without paying up! He is nothing of the sort! Whatever fear has made me want to do once, I am obliged to want to do when freed from that fear. And if fear had merely forced my tongue without my will, I am still bound by my word down to the last farthing. In my own case when my tongue has, without reflection, gone beyond my intentions, it has been a point of conscience not to disavow it for that reason. Otherwise, step by
step, we will reach the point where it will overthrow any right that a third party acquires by our promises and our oaths: ‘Quasi vero forti viro vis possit adhiberi.’ [As though force could be used against a man of fortitude.]24 In one thing alone does private interest excuse our failure to keep a promise: if we have promised something which is wicked and iniquitous in itself; for the right of virtue must take precedence over the rights of our obligation.

  I have already placed Epaminondas among the foremost ranks of outstanding men and I have no wish to unsay what I said.25 How far would he go, out of consideration for his private duty? He never killed a man he had vanquished; he scrupled to kill, without due form of law, a tyrant [C] or his accomplices, [B] even for the inestimable good of restoring freedom to his country; he thought it wicked of a man, no matter how good a citizen he might be, if he did not spare his friend and host among his enemies even in battle. There you have a soul compounded of noble elements! To the harshest and most violent of human activities he married goodness and humanity – indeed the most exquisite to be found in the school of philosophy. That mind so great, so rigid and so obstinate in the face of pain, death and poverty: was it nature or art which had made it tender to the point of extreme gentleness and of affability of humour? Terrifying with blood and sword, he goes smashing and shattering a nation unbeatable save by him alone, only to turn aside in the midst of the melee when he comes upon his friend and host. Truly that man was genuinely in command of War when he compelled her mouth to answer to the bit of his kindness at the highest point of her most blazing ardour, all enflamed as she was and foaming with frenzy and slaughter. It is a miracle to bring even the image of Justice into actions such as that: to the righteous Epaminondas alone it belonged to bring in mildness, most gentle-mannered benevolence [C] and pure innocence.26

  [B] Whereas one leader said to the Mammertines that statute-law did not apply to men under arms; whereas another said to the Tribune of the People that the times of war and of justice were two different things, while a third declared that the din of arms prevented his hearing the voice of the laws:27 Epaminondas was never prevented from hearing the laws of kindness and of unsullied courtesy. Had he not borrowed from his enemies the practice of sacrificing to the Muses as he went to war in order to temper by their gentleness and gaiety the harshness and frenzy of Mars?28 After so great a preceptor let us not fear to think [C] that some things are unlawful even when done to enemies or [B] that the common interest cannot require all men to sacrifice all private interest always, [C] ‘manente memoria etiam in dissidio publicorum foederum privati juris’ [the memory of individual rights subsisting even in the strife of public abominations] ;29

  [B] et nulla potentia vires

  Præstandi, ne quid peccet amicus, habet;

  [no might has the power to authorize a friend to act wickedly;]

  and that not all things are legitimate to a man of honour at the service [C] of his king or [B] of the cause of the commonwealth and its laws. [C] ‘Non etiam patria praestat omnibus officiis, et ipsi conducit pios habere cives in parentes.’ [The claims of our country are not paramount over all other duties: it is good for it to have citizens who are dutiful to their kindred.]

  [B] There you have a lesson proper to our own times. It is enough that the ironplate of our armour should give us calloused shoulders: there is no need to allow it to make our minds callous as well; it is enough to plunge our pens in ink without plunging them in blood. If it is greatness of mind and a deed of rare and special virtue to hold in contempt the bonds of love, our private obligations, our word and our kinsfolk in the interests of the common good and of obedience to officers of State, then for us to decline such greatness it suffices that it cannot find lodging within the greatness of mind of Epaminondas.

  I hold in abomination the frenetic exhortations of that other man with his disordered mind:

  dum tela micant, non vos pietatis imago

  Ulla, nec adversa conspecti fronte parentes

  Commoveant; vultus gladio turbate verendos.

  [while your weapons flash, let no thought of duty to your parents move you, nor the sight of your fathers on the other side: slash with your swords at the faces which you should venerate.]30

  Let us deprive wicked treacherous natures, athirst for blood, of such a pretext of justification. Let us cast aside such abnormal and insane justice and cling to models which are more humane. Think what examples can do over time! In an engagement against Cinna during the Civil War, one of Pompey’s soldiers unintentionally killed his brother on the other side; from shame and sorrow he killed himself then and there on the field; yet a few years later, in another Civil War between the same nations, a soldier killed his brother and then asked his officers for a reward for doing so.31 We wrongly adduce the honour and beauty of an activity from its usefulness, and our conclusion is wrong if we reckon that all are bound to perform it, [C] and that it is honourable for each to do so, [B] provided it be useful:

  [C] Omnia non pariter rerum sunt omnibus apta.

  [Not all things are equally fitted to all men.]

  [B] Select the most necessary, the most useful activity of human society: that will be marriage. Yet the counsel of the Saints finds the opposing party to be more worthy of honour and excludes from marriage the vocation which is most to be revered among men, just as we assign to our studs the beasts we value less.32

  2. On repenting

  [Montaigne does not deal here primarily with the sacrament of repentance but with the act of repenting in domains religious, moral and practical. In this sense repenting consists not in regret but in denying the rightness of what one had formerly willed. Like Rabelais’s good giant Gargantua, Montaigne knows that a man may live as a Christian gentleman: ‘without reproach though not of course without sin’. And Montaigne’s sense of sin is not a matter of wishing in old age that he had not committed the sins (especially the sensual sins) of his youth nor the worse sins of old men; neither is it a matter of wishing that he had been vouchsafed a higher Form than Man (that of an angel) or a better human Form than his own botched one (a Form like Cato’s). In practical affairs, however they turn out, Montaigne sees no cause for repenting of decisions honourably made within Man’s limitations; in his dealings with others in peace and civil war he knows he has acted as an honourable gentleman, far better than most. Where sins against the Christian God are concerned, Montaigne never hid from himself the ugly face which lurks behind their stormy beauty; that is where repentance comes in; real repentance – of the demanding, ultimate kind which alone moves Montaigne – is an agonizing matter: we must see ourselves throughly, as with the eyes of God who searches the reins and the bowels and from whom no secrets are hidden. To do that ‘God must touch our hearts’ – an act of grace which became the superscription of a religious emblem.]

  [B] Others form Man; I give an account of Man and sketch a picture of a particular one of them who is very badly formed and whom I would truly make very different from what he is if I had to fashion him afresh. But it is done now. The brush-strokes of my portrait do not go awry even though they do change and vary. The world is but a perennial see-saw. Everything in it – the land, the mountains of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt – all waver with a common motion and their own.1 Constancy itself is nothing but a more languid rocking to and fro. I am unable to stabilize my subject: it staggers confusedly along with a natural drunkenness. I grasp it as it is now, at this moment when I am lingering over it. I am not portraying being but becoming: not the passage from one age to another (or, as the folk put it, from one seven-year period to the next) but from day to day, from minute to minute. I must adapt this account of myself to the passing hour. I shall perhaps change soon, not accidentally but intentionally. This is a register of varied and changing occurrences, of ideas which are unresolved and, when needs be, contradictory, either because I myself have become different or because I grasp hold of different attributes or aspects of my subjects. So I may happen to contradict myself but
, as Demades said, I never contradict truth.2 If my soul could only find a footing I would not be assaying myself but resolving myself. But my soul is ever in its apprenticeship and being tested. I am expounding a lowly, lacklustre existence. You can attach the whole of moral philosophy to a commonplace private life just as well as to one of richer stuff. Every man bears the whole Form of the human condition.3 [C] Authors communicate themselves to the public by some peculiar mark foreign to themselves; – the first ever to do so – by my universal being, not as a grammarian, poet or jurisconsult but as Michel de Montaigne. If all complain that I talk too much about myself, I complain that they never even think about their own selves.

  [B] But is it reasonable that I who am so private in my habits should claim to make public this knowledge of myself? And is it also reasonable that I should expose to a world in which grooming has such credit and artifice such authority the crude and simple effects of Nature – and of such a weakling nature too? Is writing a book without knowledge or art not like building a wall without stones and so on? The fancies of the Muses are governed by art: mine, by chance. But I have one thing which does accord with sound teaching: never did man treat a subject which he knew or understood better than I know and understand the subject which I have undertaken: in that subject I am the most learned man alive! Secondly, no man ever [C] went more deeply into his matter, ever stripped barer its own peculiar members and consequences, or ever [B] reached more precisely or more fully the goal he had proposed for his endeavour. To finish the job I only need to contribute fidelity: and fidelity is there, as clean and as pure as can be found. I tell the truth, not enough to make me replete but as much as I dare – and as I grow older I dare a little more, for custom apparently concedes to old age a greater licence to chatter more indiscreetly about oneself. What cannot happen here is what I often find elsewhere: that the craftsman and his artefact thwart each other: ‘How can a man whose conversation is so decent come to write such a scurrilous book?’ or ‘How can such learned writings spring from a man whose conversation is so weak?’