The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  Anyone who, in an ailing time like ours, boasts that he can bring a naïve and pure virtue to this world’s service either has no idea what virtue is, since our opinions are corrupted along with our morals – indeed, just listen to them describing it; listen to most of them vaunting of their deeds and formulating their rules: instead of describing virtue they are describing pure injustice and vice, and they present it, thus falsified, in the education of princes – or else, if he does have some notion of it, he boasts wrongfully and, say what he will, does hundreds of things for which his conscience condemns him. In similar circumstances Seneca’s account of his experience I would readily believe, provided that he would talk to me about it unreservedly. In such straits the most honourable mark of goodness consists in freely acknowledging your defects and those of others, while using your powers to resist and retard the slide towards evil, having to be dragged down that slope, while hoping for improvement and desiring improvement.

  During the divisions into which we are fallen, tearing France limb from limb, each man, I notice, strives to defend his cause, but even the best of them with deception and lies. Anyone who wrote bluntly about it would do so inadequately and ill-advisedly, since even the juster party is itself a limb of that rotten, worm-eaten body. Yet in such a body the least affected limb is termed healthy – rightly so: since our qualities are valid only by comparison, civil integrity is measured according to time and place. I would like to see, I must say, Agesilaus praised as follows in Xenophon!

  Having been asked by a neighbouring Prince with whom he had

  formerly been at war for permission to pass through his domains, he

  granted it to him, affording him passage through the Peleponnesus:

  and not only did he not take him prisoner nor poison him, despite

  having him thus at his mercy, but he welcomed him courteously

  without doing him injury.136

  Given the characters of people then, such things were taken for granted: elsewhere, and at other times, men will tell of the noble frankness and magnanimity of that deed! Why, our be-caped baboons of the Collège de Montaigue would laugh at him for it, so little does our French integrity resemble that of the Spartans. We still have men of virtue… but by our norms.137 Whoever has morals fixed to rules above the standards of his time must either distort and blunt his rules or (as I would advise him, rather) draw apart and having nothing to do with us. What would he gain from us?

  Egregium sanctumque virum si cerno, bimembri

  Hoc monstrum puero, et miranti jam sub aratro

  Piscibus inventis, et fœtœ comparo mulœ.

  [When I come across an outstandingly moral man, he seems to me like a kind of freak, like a two child, like fish turning up under an astonished farmer’s ploughshare, or like a pregnant mule.]138

  We can regret better times but we cannot escape from the present; we can wish for better men to govern us but we must nevertheless obey those we have. There is perhaps more merit in obeying the bad than the good. While the ghost of the traditional ancient laws of this our monarchy glows in a corner somewhere, you will see me planted there. If those laws should, to our misfortune, become mutually exclusive or contradictory, producing a hard and dubious choice between two factions, my preference would be for hiding and escaping from that tempest. In the meanwhile, Nature may lend me a hand so may the hazards of war.

  Between Caesar and Pompey I would have declared myself frankly. But if the choice lay between those three crooks who came after them,139 then I would either have fled into hiding or gone the way the wind blew (which I judge to be legitimate, once reason no longer guides us).

  Quo diversus abis?

  [Where are you heading, so far off course?]140

  This padding is rather off my subject. I get lost, but more from licence than carelessness. My ideas do follow on from each other, though sometimes at a distance, and have regard for each other, though somewhat obliquely. [C] I have just looked through one of Plato’s dialogues.141 It is particoloured, a motley of ideas: the top deals with love and all the bottom with rhetoric. They were not afraid of such changes, and have a marvellous charm when letting themselves be blown along by the wind, or appearing to be so. [B] The names of my chapters do not always encompass my subject-matter: often they merely indicate it by some token, like those other [C] titles, Andria or The Eunuch, or like those other [B] names Sylla, Cicero and Torquatus.142

  I love the gait of poetry, all jumps and tumblings. [C] Poetry, says Plato, is an art which is light, winged and inspired by daemons.143 There are works of Plutarch in which he forgets his theme, or in which the subject is treated only incidentally, since they are entirely padded out with extraneous matter: witness how he proceeds in The Daemon of Socrates. My God! what beauty there is in such flights of fancy and in such variation, especially when they appear fortuitous and casual. It is the undiligent reader who loses my subject not I. In a corner somewhere you can always find a word or two on my topic, adequate despite being squeezed in tight. [B] I change subject violently and chaotically. [C] My pen and my mind both go a-roaming. [B] If you do not want more dullness you must accept a touch of madness, [C] so say the precepts of our past masters and, even more so, their example. [B] There are hundreds of poets who drag and droop prosaically, but the best of ancient prose – [C] and I scatter prose here no differently from verse – [B] sparkles throughout with poetic power and daring, and presents the characteristics of its frenzy. We must certainly cede to poetry the mastery and preeminence in prattle. [C] The poet, says Plato, seated on the tripod of the Muses, pours out in rapture, like the gargoyle of a fountain, all that comes to his lips, without weighing it or chewing it; from him there escape things of diverse hue, contrasting substance and jolting motion.144 Plato himself is entirely poetic; and the scholars say that the ancient theology was poetry, as also the first philosophy.145 Poetry is the original language of the gods.

  [B] I intend my subject-matter to stand out on its own: it can show well enough where changes occur, where the beginnings are and the ends, and where it picks up again, without an intricate criss-cross of words, linking things and stitching them together for the benefit of weak and inattentive ears, and without my glossing myself. Where is the author who would rather not be read at all than to be dozed through or dashed through? [C] ‘Nihil est tam utile, quod in transitu prosit.’ [Nothing really useful can be casually treated.]146 If taking up books were to mean taking them in; if glancing at them were to mean seeing into them; and skipping through them to mean grasping them: then I would be wrong to make myself out to be quite so totally ignorant as I am.

  [B] Since I cannot hold my reader’s attention by my weight, manco male [it is no bad thing] if I manage to do so by my muddle. ‘Yes, but [C] afterwards [B] he will be sorry he spent time over it.’ I suppose so: but still he would have done it! And there are humours so made that they despise anything which they can understand and which will rate me more highly when they do not know what I mean. They will infer the depth of my meaning from its obscurity – a quality which (to speak seriously now) I hate [C] most strongly; [B] I would avoid it if there were a way of [C] avoiding [B] myself.147 [B] Aristotle somewhere congratulates himself on affecting it: a depraved [C] affectation!148

  Because the very frequent division into chapters which I first adopted seemed to me to break the reader’s attention before it was aroused and to loosen its hold so that it did not bother for so slight a cause to apply itself and to concentrate, I started making longer chapters which require a decision to read them and time set aside for them. In this kind of occupation, whoever is not prepared to give a man one hour is prepared to give him nothing; and you do nothing for a man if you only do it while doing something else. Besides I may perhaps have some personal quality which obliges me to half-state matters and to speak confusedly and incompatibly.

  [B] It remains for me to add that I wish no good to that chattering buffoon of a reason, and that, while those fantastic speculations
and those oh-so-subtle notions may contain some truth, I find it too dear and too troublesome.149 I, on the contrary, strive to give worth to vanity itself – [C] to doltishness – if it affords me pleasure, [B] and I follow my natural inclinations without accounting for them thus closely.

  – I have ‘already seen elsewhere ruined palaces and sculptures of things in heaven and on earth: and it is ever the work of Man’. That is quite true. Yet, however often I were to revisit the tomb of that great and mighty City, I would feel wonder and awe. We are enjoined to care for the dead: and since infancy I was brought up with those dead. I knew about the affairs of Rome long before those of my family; I knew of the Capitol and its site long before I knew of the Louvre, and of the Tiber before the Seine. My head was full of the characters and fortunes of Lucullus, Metellus and Scipio rather than of any of our own men. – ‘They are dead!’ So is my father, every bit as dead as they: in eighteen years he has gone as far from life and me as they have done in sixteen hundred, yet I do not cease to cherish his memory nor experience his love and fellowship in a perfect union, fully alive. Indeed, of my own humour, it is to the dead that I am most dutiful: since they can no longer help themselves I consider that they need my help the more. It is precisely then that gratitude shines forth resplendent. I favour is less richly bestowed when it can be returned or reflected back.

  When Arcesilaus was visiting the [C] ailing Ctesibius,150 [B] he realized that he was badly off, so he gave him money, slipping it under his pillow. By concealing it from him he was also giving him a quittance from a debt of gratitude. Those who have deserved my love and thanks have never lost anything for being no longer with me: I have repaid them better and more punctiliously when they were absent and unaware. I speak all the more affectionately of those I love when they no longer have any way of knowing it. So I have begun dozens of quarrels in defence of Pompey or the cause of Brutus. Acquaintanceship still endures between us; why, even things present are grasped only by a faculty of the mind.

  Finding myself useless for this present age I fall back on that one. I am such a silly baboon about it that the state of Ancient Rome, free and just and flourishing (for I like neither its birth nor its decline), is of passionate concern to me. That is why I could never so often revisit the site of their streets and their palaces, and their ruins stretching down to the Antipodes, without lingering over them. [C] Is it by nature or an aberrant imagination that the sight of places which we know to have been frequented or inhabited by those whose memory we hold dear moves us somewhat more than hearing a recital of their deeds or reading their writings?151‘Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis. Et id quidem in hac urbe infinitum: quacunque enim ingredimur in aliquam historiam vestigium ponimus.’ [Such powers of evocation are inherent in those places […] And in this City there is no end to them: wherever we go we walk over history.]

  [B] I like thinking about their faces, their bearing and their clothing. I mutter their great names between my teeth and make them resound in my ears. [C] ‘Ego illos veneror et tantis nominibus semper assurgo.’ [I venerate them, and on hearing such names I leap always to my feet.]152 [B] Whenever there are qualities in things which are great and awesome, I feel awe for their ordinary ones as well. I would love to see those men talking, walking and eating. It would be ungrateful to neglect the remains and ghosts of so many honoured and valiant men whom I have watched live and die and who, by their example, provide us with instructions in what is good if we know how to follow them.

  And then this very Rome, the one that we see now, deserves our love as having been so long and by so many titles an ally of our Crown and the only city common to all men and universal. The sovereign magistrate who rules there is similarly acknowledged everywhere; it is the mother city of all Christian peoples: both Frenchman and Spaniard are at home there. To become princes of that state you merely need to belong to Christendom, no matter where. There is nowhere here below upon which the heavens have poured influences so constantly favourable. Even in ruins it is glorious and stately:

  [C] Laudandis preciosior ruinis.

  [More precious for her ruins which deserve our praise.]153

  [B] Even in her tomb she still retains the signs and ghost of empire:

  [C] ‘ut palam sit uno in loco gaudentis opus esse naturae’ [so that it should be obvious that in this one place Nature delights in her work].

  [B] A man might condemn himself and inwardly rebel for feeling stirred by so vain a pleasure. Yet our humours, if they do afford pleasure, are not too vain; whatever they may be, if they afford constant delight to a man capable of common feelings, I would be of no mind to feel sorry for him.

  I am deeply indebted to Fortune in that, up to present, she has done me no outrage, [C] at least, none above what I can bear.154 [B] (Might it not be her style to leave in peace those who do not pester her?)

  Quanto quisque sibi plura negaverit,

  A Diis, plura feret. Nil cupientium

  Nudus castra peto…

  … Multa petentibus

  Desunt multa.

  [The more a man denies himself, the more he will receive from the gods. I am naked but put myself in the camp of those who want nothing… Those who want much, lack much.]155

  If she continues she will dispatch me content and well satisfied:

  nihil supra

  Deos lacesso.

  [for nothing more do I harass the gods.]

  But watch out for the snag! Hundreds founder within the harbour.

  I can easily find consolation over what will happen here below once I am gone: present concerns keep me busy enough:

  fortunœ cœtera mando.

  [the rest I entrust to Fortune.]

  Besides I do not have that strong link which is said to bind a man to the future by sons who bear his name and rank – and if that is what makes sons desirable I should perhaps desire them all the less: of myself I am only too bound to this world and this life.156 I am content to be at grips with Fortune through attributes which are strictly necessary to my being without extending her jurisdiction over me in other ways; and I have never thought that not having sons made life less perfect and less satisfying. There are advantages too in the vocation of childlessness. Sons are to be counted among things which do not have much to make them desired, especially at this moment when it would be hard to make them good – [C] ‘Bona jam nec nasci licet, ita corrupta sunt semina’ [Good things are not born now: the seed is so corrupt]157 – but which, once acquired, are rightly to be regretted by those who lose them.

  He who left me responsible for my household forecast that I would ruin it, seeing how little stay-at-home my humour is. He was wrong. Here I am, just as I inherited it, or perhaps a little better off, yet without appointment or benefice.

  Howbeit, though Fortune has done me no unusually violent outrage, neither has she done me any favour. Whatever gifts of hers are to be found in our home have been there for a hundred years before my time. Not one solid essential good thing do I personally owe to her generosity. To me she has vouchsafed some honorary titular favours, all wind and no substance; and (God knows!) she did not so much vouchsafe them to me as offer them to me – to me who am wholly material, who seek satisfaction in realities (solid ones at that) and who (if I dared to admit it) would scarcely find covetousness any less pardonable than ambition; pain, any less to be avoided than disgrace; health, any less desirable than learning; and wealth than noble rank. Among her vain favours I have none more pleasing to that silly humour in me which feeds on it than an authentic Bull of Roman Citizenship which was granted to me recently when I was there, resplendent with seals and gilded letters, granted moreover with all gracious generosity.158

  Since they are given in a variety of styles, with more favour or less, and since before I had seen one myself I would very much like to have been shown one drawn up in due form, I want to transcribe it here in extenso, to satisfy anyone suffering from the same curiosity as I had.159

  HORATIUS MAXIMUS, MARTUS CECIUS, A
LEXANDER MUTUS,

  CONSERVATORS OF OUR KINDLY CITY, HAVING REPORTED UNTO THE

  SENATE CONCERNING THE GRANTING OF ROMAN CITIZENSHIP TO

  THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS MICHAEL MONTANUS, KNIGHT OF SAINT

  MICHAEL AND GENTLEMAN-IN-WAITING TO THE MOST CHRISTIAN

  KING: THE ROMAN SENATE AND PEOPLE HEREBY DECREE:

  Whereas by Ancient custom and law, men have ever been received among us with eagerness and ardour when, outstanding for their virtue and nobility, they have either done great service to our Republic and enhanced it or may so do in the future: We, aroused by the authority and example of our Forefathers, decree that we should imitate and maintain so noble a custom Wherefore: whereas the illustrious Michael Montanus, Knight of Saint Michael and Gentleman-in-Waiting to the Most. Christian King, is most devoted to the name of Rome and is found most worthy, by the reputation and the splendour of his family and by the merit of his own virtue, to be admitted to Roman Citizenship by the highest judgement of the Roman People and Senate: it has pleased the SPQR that the most illustrious Michael Montanus, in all things most honoured, and most dear to this renowned People, be inscribed, him and his descendants, as Roman Citizens, and be further honoured by all those rewards and distinctions which such enjoy who are Roman Citizens and Patricians by birth or by legal processes duly thereanent. Which doing, the SPQR do not esteem that they are granting him these Rights of Citizenship of their bounty so much as repaying a debt, granting him no greater benefit than he has conferred upon them by accepting this their Citizenship, by which this their City is particularly honoured and enhanced.