The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [C] Nam si, quod satis est homini, id satis esse potesset,

  Hoc sat erat: nunc, cum hoc non est, qui credimus porro

  Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse?

  [This would be enough, if enough could really be enough for any man. Since it never is, why should we believe that any wealth can glut my mind?]

  When Socrates saw a great quantity of wealth (valuable jewels and ornaments) being borne in procession through the city, he exclaimed: ‘How many things there which I do not want!’ [B] Metrodorus lived on twelve ounces a day Epicurus on less; Metrocles slept among his sheep in the winter and, in summer, in the temple porticos; [C] ‘Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit.’ [What nature demands, she supplies.] Cleanthes lived by his hands and boasted that ‘Cleanthes, if he so wished, could support another Cleanthes.’19

  [B] If what Nature precisely and basically requires for the preservation of our being is too little (and how little it is and how cheaply life can be sustained cannot be better expressed than by the following consideration: that it is so little that it escapes the grasp and blows of Fortune) then let us allow ourselves to take a little more: let us still call ‘nature’ the habits and endowments of each one of us; let us appraise ourselves and treat ourselves by that measure:20 let us stretch our appurtenances and our calculations as far as that. For as far as that, it does seem that we have a good excuse: custom is a second nature and no less powerful;21 [C] if I lack anything which I have become used to, I hold that I truly lack it. [B] I would just as soon (almost) that you took my life than have you restrict it or lop it much below the state in which I have lived it for so long. I am not suited any more to great changes nor to throwing myself into some new and unaccustomed way of life – not even a richer one. It is no longer the time to become different. And if some great stroke of luck should fall into my hands now, how sorry I would be that it did not come when I could have enjoyed it.

  Quo mihi fortuna, si non conceditur uti?

  [What is a fortune to me if I am not able to use it?]22

  [C] I would similarly regret any new inward attainment. It is almost better never to become a good man at all than to do so tardily, understanding how to live when you have no life ahead. I am on the way out: I would readily leave to one who comes later whatever wisdom I am learning about dealing with the world. I do not want even a good thing when it is too late to use it. Mustard after dinner! What use is knowledge to a man with no brain left? It is an insult and disfavour of Fortune to offer us presents which fill us with just indignation because they were lacking to us in due season. Take me no farther; I can go on no more. Of all the qualities which sufficiency possesses, endurance alone suffices. Try giving the capabilities of an outstanding treble to a chorister whose lungs are diseased, or [B] eloquence to a hermit banished to the deserts of Arabia! No art is required to decline. [C] At the finish of every task the ending makes itself known. My world is over: my mould has been emptied; I belong entirely to the past; I am bound to acknowledge that and to conform my exit to it. This I will say [‘95] to explain what I mean: [C] the recent suppression of ten days by the Pope has brought me so low that I really cannot wear it:23 I belong to those years when we computed otherwise: so ancient and long-established a custom claims me and summons me back to it. Since I cannot stand novelty even when corrective, I am constrained to be a bit of a heretic in this case. I grit my teeth, but my mind is always ten days ahead or ten days behind; it keeps muttering in my ears: ‘That adjustment concerns those not yet born.’

  Although health – oh so sweet! – comes and finds me spasmodically, it is so as to bring me nostalgia, not right of possession. I no longer have anywhere to put it. Time is quitting me: without time there is no right of possession. What little value would I attribute to those great elective offices-of-state which are bestowed only on those who are on the way out! No one is concerned there with whether you will perform them properly but how short a time you have to fill them. From the moment of your entry they are thinking of your exit.

  [B] Here, I am in short putting the finishing touches to a particular man, not making another one instead. By long accustoming this form of mine has passed into substance and my fortune into nature. So I maintain that each wretched one of us may be pardoned for reckoning as his whatever is comprised within the measure of custom, and also that, beyond those limits, there is nought but confusion. It is the widest extent that we can allow to our rights: the more we increase our needs and possessions the more we expose ourselves to adversities and to the blows of Fortune. The course run by our desires must be circumscribed and restricted to the narrow limits of the most accessible and contiguous pleasures. Moreover their course should be set not in a straight line terminating somewhere else but in a circle both the start and finish of which remain and terminate within ourselves after a short gallop round: any action carried through without such a return on itself – and I mean a quick and genuine one – is [C] wayward24 [B] and diseased: such are those of covetous and ambitious men and of so many others who dash towards a goal, careering ever on and on.

  Most of our occupations are farcical: ‘Mundus universus exercet histrionem.’ [Everybody in the entire world is acting a part.]25 We should play our role properly, but as the role of a character which we have adopted. We must not turn masks and semblances into essential realities, nor adopted qualities into attributes of our self. We cannot tell our skin from our shimmy! [C] It is enough to plaster flour on our faces without doing it to our minds. [B] I know some who transubstantiate and metamorphose themselves into as many new beings and forms as the dignities which they assume: they are prelates down to their guts and livers and uphold their offices on their lavatory-seat. I cannot make them see the difference between hats doffed to them and those doffed to their commissions, their retinue or their mule.26‘Tantum se fortunae permittunt, etiam ut naturam dediscant.’ [They allow so much to their Fortune that they unlearn their own natures.]27 They puff up their souls and inflate their natural speech to the height of the magistrate’s bench.

  The Mayor and Montaigne have always been twain, very clearly distinguished. Just because you are a lawyer or a financier you must not ignore the trickery there is in such vocations: a man of honour is not accountable for the crimes or stupidities of his profession, nor should they make him refuse to practise it; such is the custom of his country: and he gets something from it. We must make our living from the world and use it as it is. Yet even an Emperor’s judgement should be above his imperial sway, seeing it and thinking of it as an extraneous accessory. He should know how to enjoy himself independently of it, talking (at least to himself) as Tom, Dick or Harry.

  I cannot get so deeply and totally involved. When my convictions make me devoted to one faction, it is not with so violent a bond that my understanding becomes infected by it. During the present confusion in this State of ours my own interest has not made me fail to recognize laudable qualities in our adversaries nor reprehensible ones among those whom I follow. [C] People worship everything on their own side: for most of what I see on mine I do not even make excuses. A good book does not lose its beauty because it argues against my cause. [B] Apart from the kernel of the controversy, I have remained balanced and utterly indifferent: [C] ‘Neque extra necessitates belli praecipuum odium gero.’ [And I act with no special hatred beyond what war requires.]28 [B] I congratulate myself for that: it is usual to fall into the opposite extreme: [C] ‘Utatur motu animi qui uti ratione non potest’ [If he cannot be reasonable, let him indulge his emotions!]

  [B] Those who extend their anger and hatred beyond their concerns (as most men do) betray that their emotion arises from something else, from some private cause, just as when a man is cured of his ulcer but still has a fever that shows that it arises from some other and more secret origin. [C] The fact is that they feel no anger at all for the general cause in so far as it inflicts wounds on the interests of all men and on the State: they resent it simply because it bruises their private interes
t. That is why they goad themselves into a private passion which goes beyond public justice and reason: ‘Nam tarn omnia universi quam ea quae ad quemque pertinent singuli carpebant.’ [They did not carp about the terms as a whole but about how they affected them as individuals.]29

  [B] I want us to win, but I am not driven mad if we do not. [C] I am firmly attached to the sanest of the parties, but I do not desire to be particularly known as an enemy of the others beyond what is generally reasonable. I absolutely condemn such defective arguments as, ‘He belongs to the League because he admires the grace of Monsieur de Guise’; ‘He is. Huguenot: the activity of the King of Navarre sends him into ecstasies’; ‘He finds such-and-such lacking in the manners of the King: at heart he is a traitor.’ I did not concede to the magistrate himself that he was right to condemn a book for having named a heretic among the best poets of the age.30 Should we be afraid to say that a thief has nice shins! [’95] Must a whore smell horrid? [C] In wiser ages did they revoke Marcus Manlius’ proud title Capitolinus, awarded him earlier as saviour of the liberty and religion of the State? Did they smother the memory of his generosity, of his feats of arms and the military honours awarded for his valour, because he subsequently hankered after kingship, to the prejudice of the laws of his land?31

  Some start hating a barrister: by next morning they are saying that he is a poor speaker! (I have touched elsewhere on how zeal has driven decent men to similar errors. For my part I can easily say, ‘He does this wickedly, that virtuously.’) Similarly, when the outlook or the outcome of an event is unfavourable, they want each man to be blind and insensible towards his own party, and that our judgement and conviction should serve not the truth but to project our desires. I would rather err to the other extreme, for I fear that my desires may seduce me. Added to which I have a rather delicate mistrust of anything I desire. I have seen in my time amazing examples of the indiscriminate and prodigious facility which peoples have for letting their beliefs be led and their hopes be manipulated towards what has pleased and served their leaders, despite dozens of mistakes piled one upon another and despite illusions and deceptions. I am no longer struck with wonder at those who were led by the nose by the apish miracles of Apollonius and Mahomet:32 their thoughts and their minds had been stifled by their emotions. Their power of discernment could no longer admit anything save that which smiled upon them and favoured their cause.

  I thought this had attained its highest degree in the first of our feverish factions: that other one, born subsequently, imitated it and surpasses it.33 From which I conclude that it is a quality inseparable from mass aberrations: all opinions tumble out after the first one, whipped along like waves in the wind. You do not belong if you can change your mind, if you do not bob along with all the rest. Yet we certainly do wrong to just parties when we would support them by trickery. I have always opposed that. It only works for sick minds: for sane ones there are surer ways (not merely more honourable ones) of sustaining courage and explaining setbacks.

  [B] The heavens have never seen strife as grievous as that between Caesar and Pompey, and never will again. Yet I believe I can detect in both their fair, noble souls a great moderation towards each other. Their rivalry over honour and command did not sweep them into frenzied and indiscriminate hatred. Even in their harshest deeds I can discover some remnants of respect and good-will, which leads me to conclude that, had it been possible, each of them would have wished to achieve his ends without the downfall of his fellow rather than with it.

  Between Marius and Sylla how different things were! Take warning.34 We should not dash so madly after our emotions and selfish interests. When I was young I resisted the advances of love as soon as I realized that it was getting too much hold over me; I took care that it was not so delightful to me that it finally took me by storm and held me captive entirely at its mercy: on all the other occasions upon which my will seizes too avidly I do the same: I lean in the opposite direction when I see it leaping in and wallowing in its own wine; I avoid so far fuelling the advance of its pleasure that I cannot retake it without loss and bloodshed.

  There are souls which, through insensitivity, see only half of anything; they enjoy the good fortune of being less bruised by harmful events. That is a leprosy of the mind which has some appearance of sanity – and of such a sanity as philosophy does not entirely despise; for all that, it is not reasonable to call it wisdom, as we often do. There was a man in antiquity who for just such an affectation mocked Diogenes who, to assay his powers of endurance, went out stark naked and threw his arms round a snowman. He came across him in that attitude. ‘Feeling very cold just now?’ he asked. ‘Absolutely not,’ replied Diogenes. ‘In that case,’ continued the other, ‘what is there hard and exemplary, do you think, about hanging on out there?’35

  To measure steadfastness we must know what is suffered. But let those souls which have to experience the adversities and injuries of Fortune in all their depth and harshness and which have to weigh them at their natural weight and taste them according to their natural bitterness employ their arts to avoid being involved in what causes them and to deflect their approaches. What was it that King Cotys did? He paid handsomely when some beautiful and ornate tableware was offered to him, but since it was unusually fragile he immediately smashed the lot, ridding himself in time of an easy occasion for anger against his servants.36

  [C] I have likewise deliberately avoided confusion of interests; I have not sought properties adjoining those of close relatives or belonging to folk to whom I should be linked by close affection; from thence arise estrangements and dissension.

  [B] I used to like games of chance with cards and dice. I rid myself of them long ago – for one reason only: whenever I lost, no matter what a good face I put on, I still felt a stab of pain. A man of honour, who must take it deeply to heart if he is insulted or given the lie [C] and not be one to accept some nonsense to pay and console him for his loss, [B] should avoid letting controversies grow as well as stubborn quarrels. I avoid like the plague morose men of gloomy complexions, and I do not engage in any discussions which I cannot treat without self-interest or emotion, unless compelled to do so by duty: [C] ‘Melius non incipient, quam desinent.’ [Better that they should never begin than to leave off.]37 [B] The safest way is to be prepared before the event. I am well aware that there have been sages who have adopted a different course: they were not afraid to sink their hooks deep, engaging themselves in several objectives. Those fellows are sure of their fortitude, beneath which they can shelter against all kinds of hostile events, wrestling against evils by the power of their endurance:

  velut rupes vastum quœ prodit in œquor,

  Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto,

  Vim cunctam atque minas perfert cœlique marisque,

  Ipsa immota manens.

  [as a cliff, jutting out into the vast expanse of ocean, exposed to furious winds and confronting the waves, braves the menaces of sea and sky and itself remains unmoved.]38

  Let us not attempt to follow such examples: we shall never manage it. Such men have made up their minds to watch resolutely and unmoved the destruction of their country, which once held and governed all their affection.39 For common souls like ours there is too much strain, too much savagery in that. Cato gave up for his country the most noble life there ever was; little men like us should flee farther from the storm; we should see that there are no pains to feel, no pains to endure, dodging blows not parrying them. [C] When Zeno saw Chremonides, a young man whom he loved, coming to sit beside him, he jumped up. Cleanthes asked why. ‘I understand,’ he replied, ‘that when any part of the body starts to swell the doctors chiefly prescribe rest and forbid emotion.’40 [B] Socrates never says, ‘Do not surrender to the attraction of beauty; resist it; struggle against it.’ He says, ‘Flee it; run from its sight and from any encounter with it, as from a potent poison which can dart and strike you from afar.’ [C] And that good disciple of his, describing either fictionally or historically (
though in my opinion more historically than fictionally) the rare perfections of Cyrus the Great, shows him distrusting his ability to resist the attractions of the heavenly beauty of his captive the illustrious Panthea: it was to a man who was less at liberty than he was that he gave the tasks of visiting her and guarding her.41 [B] And the Holy Ghost likewise says, ‘Ne nos inducas in tentationem.’ [Lead us not into temptation.]42 We pray, not that our reason may not be assailed and overcome by worldly desires, but that it may not even be assayed by them, that we be not led into a position where we have even merely to withstand the approaches, blandishments and temptations of sin, and we beseech our Lord to keep our consciences quiet, wholly and completely delivered from commerce with evil.43

  [C] Those who say that they have got the better of their vindictive feelings or of some other species of blameworthy passion often speak truly of things as they are but not as they were. They are talking to us now that the causes behind their error have been advanced and promoted by themselves. But push farther back; summon those causes back to their first principles: there you will catch them napping. Do they expect their faults to be trivial just because they are older, and that the outcome of an unjust beginning should be just?

  [B] Whoever would wish his country well (as I do) without getting ulcers about it or wasting away will, when he sees it threatening either to collapse in ruin or to continue in a no-less-ruinous state, be unhappy about it but not knocked senseless. O wretched ship of State, ‘hauled in different direction by the waves, the winds and the man at the wheel’: