The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  My physical predisposition is as flexible, and my tastes as catholic, as any man’s in the world. The diversity of custom between one nation and another touches me only by the pleasure of variety; each has its reason. Let the dishes be of pewter, wood or earthenware, consist of boiled meats or roasts, with butter, chestnut oil or olive oil, be hot or cold: it is all the same to me – so much so that, now I am getting old, I condemn such magnanimous facility and shall need discernment and selection to put a stop to my appetite’s lack of discrimination and to look after my stomach occasionally.

  [C] When I have been elsewhere than in France and people have courteously inquired whether I want to eat French cooking, I have always laughed at the idea and hastened straight for the sideboards most crowded with foreigners. [B] I am ashamed at the sight of our Frenchmen befuddled by that stupid humour which shies away from fashions which conflict with their own. Once out of their villages they feel like fish out of water. Wherever they go they cling to their ways and curse foreign ones. If they come across a fellow-coutryman in Hungary, they celebrate the event: there they are, hobnobbing and sticking together and condemning every custom in sight as barbarous. And why not barbarous since they are not French! And those are the cleverer ones: as they speak ill of those customs, they have at least noticed them. Most go abroad merely to return. With a morose and taciturn prudence they travel about wrapped up in their cloaks and protecting themselves from the contagion of an unknown clime.

  What I have said about them recalls something similar which I have noticed at times among some of our young courtiers. They mix only with their own kind, staring at us with disdain and pity as men from some other world. Strip them of their talk about the mysteries of the court and they are outside their hunting-grounds, as raw and awkward to us as we are to them. It is true what men say: a proper gentleman is a man of parts.

  I on the contrary, as one who has had his fill of our customs, do not go looking for Gascons in Sicily – I have left enough of them at home. I look for Greeks, rather, or Persians. I make their acquaintance and study them. That is what I devote myself to and work on. And, what is more, I seem hardly ever to have come across any customs which are not worth quite as much as our own. I am not risking much by that assertion: I have hardly been out of sight of my own weathercocks.110

  Meanwhile, most of the companions you chance to meet on the road are more an encumbrance than a pleasure I never latch on to them – even less so nowadays when old age singles me out and sets me somewhat apart from the usual pattern. Either you are putting up with them or they with you. Both awkwardnesses weigh heavy, but the latter seems harsher to me. It is a rare stroke of fortune, but an inestimable pleasure, to have a gentleman who likes to accompany you, a man with manners which conform to your own. I have greatly missed one on all my travels. But such a companion must be selected and secured from the outset. No pleasure has any taste for me when not shared with another: no happy thought occurs to me without my being irritated at bringing it forth alone with no one to offer it to. [C] ‘Si cum hac exceptione detur sapientia ut illam inclusam teneam nec enuntiem, rejiciam.’ [If even wisdom were granted me on condition that I shut it away unspoken, I would reject it.]111 This next author raised that a tone higher: ‘Si contigerit ea vita sapienti ut, omnium return affluentibus copiis, quamvis omnia quœ cognitione digna sunt summo otio secum ipse consideret et contempletur, tarnen si solitudo tanta sit ut hominem videre non possit, excedat e vita.’ [Supposing it were granted to a sage to live in every abundance, his time entirely free to study and reflect upon everything worth knowing: yet if his solitude were such that he could never meet another man he would quit this life.]

  [B] I agree with the opinion of Archytas that there would be no pleasure in travelling through the heavens among those great immortal celestial bodies without the presence of a companion.112 Yet it remains better to be alone than in silly boring company. Aristippus preferred to live as an alien everywhere.

  Me si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam

  Auspiciis,

  [As for me, if the fates were to allow me to spend my life as I pleased,]113

  I would choose to spend it with my arse in the saddle,

  visere gestiens,

  Qua parte debacchentur ignes,

  Qua nebulœ pluviique rores.

  [happy to see where the heat rages, or the clouds or the dripping rain.]

  ‘Do you not have easier ways of spending your time? What do you lack? Is your house not set in a fine healthy climate; is it not adequately furnished and more than adequately spacious? [C] The King’s Majesty in his splendour more than once put up with it!114 [B] Has your family not left behind many more families whose standards are below it than it has families above it in eminence? Is there something about the place so inordinate and [C] indigestible [B] that it gives you an ulcer,115

  quœ te nunc coquat et vexet sub pectote fixa?

  [and which, rooted in your stomach, burns you and distresses you?]

  Where do you think you can ever be without fuss and bother? “Nunquam simpliciter fortuna indulget.” [Fortune never sends unmixed blessings.] You really should realize that nobody is in your way but yourself, and that you will be following yourself about everywhere, and moaning to yourself everywhere,116 for there is no contentment here below except for souls like those of beasts or gods.117 Where can a man expect to find contentment if he is not content when he has such good cause? How many thousands of men are there whose aspirations do not exceed such circumstances as yours? Simply remould your Form: in such a matter you can do anything, whereas in face of Fortune you have no right but to endure. [C] “Nulla placida quies est, nisi quam ratio composait.” [There is no tranquil calm unless soothed by reason.]’118

  [B] I can see the reasonableness of such counsel, see it very well. But it would have been quicker and more apposite simply to say to me one thing: ‘Be wise!’ Such a solution as yours lies the other side of wisdom: wisdom makes it and produces it. It is As though a doctor kept yelling at a wretched, languishing patient to feel merry: he would be prescribing a little less stupidly if he said, ‘Get well!’ As for me, I am merely a man [C] with a base Form.119

  [B] ‘Be content with what is yours’ (that is, ‘with reason’). That is a sound precept, definite and easy to understand; but sages can no more put it into effect than I can. There is a saying – popular, but appalling in its extent (what is not included in it?) – ‘All things are subject to qualification and [C] limitation.’120

  [B] I am well aware that, taken literally, this delight in travelling bears witness to restlessness and inconstancy. But those are indeed our dominant master-qualities. Yes. I admit it. Even in my wishes and dreams I can find nothing to which I can hold fast. The only things I find rewarding (if anything is) are variety and the enjoyment of diversity. When on my travels the very fact that I can stop without hindrance and conveniently make a diversion bolsters me up.

  I love living a private life because I do so by my own choice, not because I am unsuited to a public one (which doubtless equally accords with my complexion). I serve my Prince all the more happily because that is the free choice of my judgement and reason, [C] without any private obligation, [B] and because I am not constrained or forced back to it by being unacceptable to all the other parties or disliked by them. And so on. I detest such helpings as necessity carves for me. Any advantage would have me by the throat if I had to rely on it alone.

  Alter remus aquas, alter mihi radat arenas.

  [Let one oar sweep the water and the other sweep the strand.]121

  One cord is never enough to hold me in place.

  ‘There is vanity,’ you say, ‘in such a pastime.’ – Yes. Where is there not? Those fine precepts are all vanity, and all wisdom is vanity: [C] ‘Dominus novit cogitationes sapientium, quoniam vanae sunt.’ [The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.]122 [B] Those exquisite subtleties are only good for sermons: they are themes which seek to drive us into the next
world like donkeys. But life is material motion in the body, an activity, by its very essence, imperfect and unruly: I work to serve it on its own terms.

  Quisque suos patimur manes.

  [Each suffers his own torments.]123

  [C] ‘Sic est faciendum ut contra naturam universam nihil coritendamus; ea tamen conservata, propriam sequamur.’ [We must so live as not to struggle against Nature in general; having safeguarded such things, we should follow our own nature.]

  [B] What is the use of those high philosophical peaks on which no human being can settle and those rules which exceed our practice and our power? I am well aware that people often expound to us ideas about life which neither the speaker nor the hearers have any hope of following or (what is more) any desire. The judge filches a bit of the very same paper on which he has just written the sentence on an adulterer in order to send a billet-doux to the wife of a colleague. [C] The woman you have just been having an illicit tumble with will soon, in your very presence, be screaming harsher condemnations of a similar fault in a friend of hers than Portia would. [B] Some condemn people to death for crimes which they do not actually believe to be even mistakes. When I was a youth I saw a fine gentleman offering to the public, with one hand, poetry excelling in beauty and eroticism both, and with the other, at the same instant, the most cantankerous reformation of theology that the world has had for breakfast for many a long year.124

  That is the way humans proceed. We let the laws and precepts go their own way: we take another – not only because of unruly morals but often because of contrary opinions and judgement. Listen to the recital of a philosophical discourse: its invention, eloquence and appositeness at once strike your attention and move your emotions. But there is nothing there which stings or pricks your conscience: it was not addressed to it, was it? Yet Ariston said that neither a bath nor a lecture bears any fruit unless they cleanse you and get the filth off.125 You can linger over the hide, but only after extracting the marrow, just as it is only after we have drunk the wine that we examine the engravings and workmanship of a beautiful goblet.

  In all the chambers of the ancient philosophers you will find that the same author, at the same time, publishes rules for temperance and works of love and debauchery. [C] Xenophon wrote against Aristippus’ concept of pleasure while lying in the lap of Clinias. [B] Those were not miraculous conversions sweeping over them in waves. First it is Solon presenting himself in the guise of a lawgiver, and then as himself: at one time he is speaking for the many, at another for himself alone and (certain as he is that he is firmly and totally well) he takes for himself the free and natural rules:

  Curentur dubii medicis majoribus ægri!

  [Let the dangerously ill call in great doctors!]126

  [C] Antisthenes allows his sage to like anything he finds appropriate, and to do it in his own fashion without heeding the laws, since he has a better judgement than they do and a greater knowledge of virtue. His disciple Diogenes said that we should counter perturbations by reason; fortune, by courage; laws, by nature.127 [B] It is for tender stomachs that we have restricted, artificial diets: [C] sound ones simply follow the prescriptions of their natural appetite. [B] Thus do our doctors eat melons and drink cool wine while keeping their patients on syrups and pap.

  ‘I know nothing of their books,’ said Laïs the courtesan, ‘nor of their wisdom and philosophy, but those fellows come knocking at my door as often as anyone.’128 Since our licence always takes us beyond what is lawful and permissible, we have often made the precepts and laws for our lives stricter than universal reason requires.

  Nemo satis credit tantum delinquere quantum

  Permittas.

  [Nobody thinks that his own transgressions exceed what is allowable.]129

  It would be preferable if there were more proportion between commands and obedience. A target we cannot reach appears unfair. No man is so moral but that, if he submitted his deeds and thoughts to cross-examination by the laws, he would be found worthy of hanging on ten occasions in his lifetime – yes, even the kind of man whom it would be a great scandal to punish and a great injustice to execute.

  Olle, quid ad te

  De cute quid faciat ilk, vel illa sua?

  [What concern is it of yours, Ollus, what he does with his own skin and she with hers?]

  And one who deserves no praise as a man of virtue [C] and whom philosophy could most justly cause to be flogged [B] may well break no laws, so confused and unfair is the correspondence between law and virtue. We do not care to be decent folk by the standards of God: we could never be so by our own. Human wisdom has never managed to live up to the duties which it has prescribed for itself; and if it had done so, it would have prescribed itself more, further beyond them still, towards which it could continue to strive and aspire, so hostile is our condition to immobility. [C] Man commands himself to be necessarily at fault. It is not very clever of him to tailor his obligations to the standards of a different kind of being. He expects no one to do it, so whom is he prescribing it for? Is it wrong of Man not to do what is impossible for him to do? The very laws which condemn us to be unable blame us for being so.

  [B] If the worst comes to the worst, that deformed licence to present themselves in two ways, their actions in one fashion and their rhetoric in another, may be conceded to those who tell of things: it cannot apply to those who tell of themselves as I do my pen must go the same way as my feet. I life lived in society must bear some relationship to other lives. Cato’s virtue was excessively rigorous by the standards of his age; and in a man occupied in governing others and destined to serve the commonwealth, we could say that his justice, if not unjust, was at least vain and unseasonable. [C] My own manners deviate from current morality by hardly more than an inch, yet even that makes me untractable for this age and unsociable. I do not know whether I am unreasonable in losing my taste for the society I frequent, but I do know that it would be unreasonable if I complained that it had lost its taste for me more than I for it.

  [B] The virtue allotted to this world’s affairs is a virtue with many angles, crinkles and corners so that it can be applied and joined to our human frailty; it is complex and artificial, not straight, clear-cut, constant, nor purely innocent. To this very day our annals criticize one of our kings for allowing himself to be too naively influenced by the persuasions which his confessor addressed to his conscience.130 Affairs of state have their own bolder precepts:

  exeat aula

  Qui vult esse pius.

  [he who would be pious should quit the court.]131

  Once I made an assay at using in the service of some political manoeuvrings, such opinions and rules of life as were born in me or instilled into me by education – rough, fresh, unpolished and unpolluted ones, the virtues of a schoolboy or a novice, which I practise, [C] if not [B] conveniently [C] at least surely, [B] in my private life. I found that they were inapplicable and dangerous. Anyone who goes into the throng must be prepared to side-step, to squeeze in his elbows, to dodge to and fro and, indeed, to abandon the straight path according to what he encounters; he must live not so much by his norms but by those of others; not so much according to what he prescribes to himself but to what others prescribe to him, and according to the time, according to the men, according to the negotiations…132

  [C] Plato says that anyone who escapes with unsmirched linen from the management of the world’s affairs does so by a miracle. He also says that when he laid it down that his philosopher should rule the state he was not speaking of corrupt polities such as that of Athens (and even less of ones like our own, faced with which even Wisdom would forget her Latin), since a seedling transplanted into a soil very different in character from itself conforms itself to it rather than reforming it.133

  [B] If I had thoroughly to prepare myself for such occupations, I know that I would need many changes and adjustments. Even if I could manage it (and why should I not do so, given time and trouble?) I would not want to. The little I have assayed of su
ch a vocation was quite enough to put me off. Sometimes I do feel some temptations towards ambition smouldering in my soul, but I tense myself and obstinately resist.

  At tu, Catulle, obstinatus obdura!

  [Come on Catullus! Be obstinately obdurate!]134

  I am rarely summoned: and I just as seldom volunteer. [C] My master qualities, liberty and laziness, are qualities which are diametrically opposed to such a trade. [B] We do not know how to distinguish the faculties of men: they have fine divisions and their boundaries are hard to select. To infer a capacity for the affairs of State from a capacity for private affairs is to make I bad inference. A man may control himself but not others, [C] being able to produce Essays but nothing effective; another [B] may organize a good siege but not a battle he may speak well in private but badly in public or before his prince. Indeed, evidence that he can do one perhaps suggests that he cannot do the other.

  [C] I find that higher intellects are hardly less suited to lowlier matters than lowly intellects are to the higher. Who would ever have expected Socrates to have furnished the Athenians with a good laugh at his expense because he was never able to add up the votes of his tribe and report them to the Council?135 The veneration that I feel for the perfections of that great man certainly deserves that it should be his fortune to supply such a magnificent example to excuse my chief imperfections!

  [B] Our ability is chopped up into little bits. My own has no breadth, and is also numerically weak. Saturninus said to those who had conferred on him the supreme command: ‘You have lost a fine captain, Comrades, to make a poor general.’