The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [B] Any man who supports his opinion with challenges and commands demonstrates that his reasons for it are weak. When it is a question of words, of scholastic disputations, let us grant that they apparently have as good a case as that of their objectors: but in the practical consequences that they draw from it the advantages are all with the latter. To kill people, there must be sharp and brilliant clarity; this life of ours is too real, too fundamental, to be used to guarantee these supernatural and imagined events.

  As for the use of compounds and potions, I leave it out of account: that is murder of the worst sort.16 Yet even there it is said that we should not always be content with the confessions of such folk, for they have been known to accuse themselves of killing people who have later been found alive and well. As for those other accusations which exceed the bounds of reason I would like to say that it is quite enough for any man – no matter how highly esteemed he is – to be believed about matters human: in the case of whatever is beyond his comprehension and produces supernatural results he should be believed only when supernatural authority confirms it.

  That privilege which God has granted to some of our testimonies must not be debased or lightly made common.17 They have battered my ears with hundreds of stories like this: three men saw him in the east on a particular day; the following morning, in such-and-such a time and place and dress, he was seen in the west. I would certainly never trust my own testimony over such a matter: how much more natural and probable it seems to me that two men should lie, rather than that, in twelve hours, one man should go like the wind from east to west; how much more natural that our mind should be enraptured from its setting by the whirlwind of our own deranged spirit than that, by a spirit from beyond, one of us humans, in flesh and blood, should be sent flying on a broomstick up the flue of his chimney. We, who are never-endingly confused by our own internal delusions, should not go looking for unknown external ones. It seems to me that it is excusable to disbelieve any wonder, at least in so far as we can weaken its ‘proof’ by diverting it along some non-miraculous way. I am of Saint Augustine’s opinion, that in matters difficult to verify and perilous to believe, it is better to incline towards doubt than certainty.18

  A few years ago I was passing through the domains of a sovereign prince who, as a courtesy to me and to overcome my disbelief, graciously allowed me to see, in a private place when he was present, ten or a dozen of this kind of prisoner, including one old woman, truly a witch as far as ugliness and misshapenness was concerned, and who had long been most famous for professing witchcraft. I was shown evidence and voluntary confessions as well as some insensitive spot or other on that wretched old woman;19 I talked and questioned till I had had enough, bringing to bear the most sane attention that I could – and I am hardly the man to allow my judgement to be muzzled by preconceptions – but in the end, and in all honesty, I would have prescribed not hemlock for them but hellebore:20 [C] ‘Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis similis visa.’ [Their case seemed to be more a matter of insane minds rather than of delinquents.]21 [B] Justice has its own remedies for such maladies.22

  As for the objections and arguments put to me there, and often elsewhere, by decent men, none ever seemed to tie me fast: all seemed to have a solution more convincing than their conclusions. It is true, though, that I never attempt to unknot ‘proofs’ or ‘reasons’ based on [C] experience nor on [B] a fact: they have no ends that you can get hold of; so, like Alexander cutting his knot, I often slice through them.23 After all, it is to put a very high value on your surmises to roast a man alive for them.

  [C] Praestantius – and we have various examples of similar accounts – tells how his father fell into a profound sleep, deeper far than normal sleep at its best: he thought that he was a mare, serving soldiers as a beast of burden. And he actually became what he thought he was.24 Now even if wizards dream concrete dreams like that; even if dreams can at times take on real bodies: still I do not believe that our wills should be held responsible to justice for them. [B] I say that, as one who am neither a king’s judge nor counsellor, and who consider myself far from worthy of being so; I am an ordinary man, born and bred to obey State policy in both word and deed. Anyone who took account of my ravings, to the prejudice of the most wretched law, opinion or custom of his village, would do great wrong to himself and also to me. [C] I warrant you no certainty for whatever I say, except that it was indeed my thought at the time… my vacillating and disorderly thought. I will talk about anything by way of conversation, about nothing by way of counsel. ‘Nec me pudent, ut istos, fateri nescire quod nesciam.’ [Nor, like those other fellows, am I ashamed to admit that I do not know what I do not know.]25

  [B] I would not be so rash of speech if it were my privilege to be believed on this matter. And I replied thus to a great nobleman who complained of the sharpness and tension of my exhortations: ‘Knowing that you are braced and prepared on one side, I set out the other side for you as thoroughly as I can, not to bind your judgement but to give it some light. God holds sway over your mind: he will allow you a choice. I am not so presumptuous as to desire that my opinions should weigh even slightly in a matter of such importance: it is not my lot to groom them to influence such mighty and exalted decisions.’

  It is certain that I have not only a great many humours but also quite a few opinions which I would willingly train a son of mine to find distasteful, if I had one that is. Why! What if even the truest of them should not always be the most appropriate for Man, given that his make-up is so barbarous?

  On the point or off the point, no matter; it is said as a common proverb in Italy that he who has not lain with a lame woman does not know Venus in her sweet perfection. Chance, or some particular incident, long ago put that saying on the lips of the common people. It is applied to both male and female, for the Queen of the Amazons retorted to the Scythian who solicited her: ‘The lame man does it best.’26

  In that Republic of women, in order to avoid the dominance of the male, they crippled their boys in childhood – arms, legs and other parts which give men the advantage over women – and exploited men only for such uses as we put women to in our part of the world.

  Now I would have said that it was the erratic movements of the lame woman which brought some new sensation to the job and some stab of pleasure to those who assayed it: but I have just learned that ancient philosophy itself has decided the matter: it says that the legs and the thighs of lame women cannot receive (being imperfect) the nourishment which is their due, with the result that the genital organs which are sited above them become more developed, better fed and more vigorous. Alternatively, since this defect discourages exercise, those who are marked by it dissipate their strength less and so come more whole to Venus’ sports which is also why the Greeks disparaged women who worked at the loom, saying they were lustier than others because of their sedentary occupation which is without much physical exertion.

  At this rate, what can we not reason about! Of those women weavers I could just as well say that the shuttling to and fro which their work imposes on them while they are squatting down stimulates and arouses them just as the jerking and shaking of their coaches do for our ladies.

  Do not these examples serve to prove what I said at the outset: that our reasons often run ahead of the facts and enjoy such an infinitely wide jurisdiction that they are used to make judgements about the very void and nonentity. Apart from the pliancy of our inventive powers when forging reasons for all sorts of idle fancies, our imagination finds it just as easy to receive the stamp of false impressions derived from frivolous appearances: for on the sole authority of the ancient and widespread currency of that saying, I once got myself to believe that I had derived greater pleasure from a woman because she was deformed, even counting her deformity among her charms.

  In his comparison between France and Italy Torquato Tasso says that he had noticed that we have skinnier legs than the gentlemen of Italy and attributes the cause of it to our being c
ontinually on our horses. Now that is the very same ‘cause’ which leads Suetonius to the opposite conclusion: for he says, on the contrary, that Germanicus had fattened his legs by the constant practice of that same exercise!27

  There is nothing so supple and eccentric as our understanding. It is like Theramenes’ shoe: good for either foot.28 It is ambiguous and faces both ways; matters, too, are ambiguous and facing both ways: ‘Give me a silver penny,’ said a Cynic philosopher to Antigonus. ‘That is no present from a king,’ he replied. ‘Give me half a hundredweight of gold then’ – ‘That is no present for. Cynic!’29

  Seu plures calor ille vias et cœca relaxat

  Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in herbas;

  Seu durat magis et venas astringit Mantes,

  Ne tenues pluviœ, rapidive potentia solis

  Acrior, out Boreœ penetrabile frigus adurat.

  [It is either because the heat opens up new ways through the secret pores in the soil, along which the sap rises to the tender plants, or else because it hardens that soil and constricts its gaping veins, thus protecting it from the drizzling rain, the heat of the burning sun and the penetrating cold of the north wind.]30

  ‘Ogni medaglia ha suo riverso.’ [Every medal has its obverse.] That is why Clitomachus said in ancient times that Carneades had surpassed the labours of Hercules by having wrenched assent away from Man (that is, conjecturing and rashness in judging).31

  That idea of Carneades – such a vigorous one – was born, I suggest, in antiquity because of the shamelessness of those whose profession was knowledge and their overweaning arrogance.

  Aesop was put on sale with two other slaves. The purchaser asked the first what he could do: he, to enhance his value, answered mountains and miracles: he could do this and he could do that. The second said as much or more of himself. When it was Aesop’s turn to be asked what he could do he said, ‘Nothing! These two have got in first and taken the lot: they know everything!’32

  That is what happened in the school of philosophy. The arrogance of those who attributed to Man’s mind a capacity for everything produced in others (through irritation and emulation) the opinion that it has a capacity for nothing. Some went to the same extreme about ignorance as the others did about knowledge, so that no one may deny that Man is immoderate in all things and that he has no stopping-point save necessity, when too feeble to get any farther.

  12. On physiognomy

  [Renaissance books on physiognomy all gave pride of place to Zopyrus the Physiognomist, who judged by his art that Socrates was a bad man and a bom womanizer. (Socrates admitted this, adding that he had ‘re-formed’ his soul.) Montaigne compares and contrasts himself to Socrates and shows how his own frank expression served him well. This chapter corrects much of what had been said in I, 20 (‘To philosophize is to learn how to die’) and takes even farther Montaigne’s respect for Nature and the wisdom of the beasts expounded in ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’. In this most personally anecdotal of chapters, Montaigne has discovered the moral greatness of simple folk faced with certain death. And he hints at his hopes that Henry of Navarre will bring peace to France.]

  [B] Virtually all the opinions which we have are held on authority and trust. That is no bad thing: in so ailing a time as this we could do nothing worse than to make our own choices. That portrait of the conversations of Socrates which his friends have bequeathed to us receives our approbation only because we are overawed by the general approval of them. It is not from our own knowledge, since they do not follow our1 practices: if something like them were to be produced nowadays there are few who would rate them highly. We can appreciate no graces which are not pointed, inflated and magnified by artifice. Such graces as flow on under the name of naïvety and simplicity readily go unseen by so coarse an insight as ours: they have a delicate, secret beauty: to uncover their hidden light requires sight which is purged and pure. For us, is not naïvety close kin to simplemindedness and a quality worthy of reproach?2 Socrates makes his soul move with the natural motion of the common people: thus speaks a peasant; thus speaks a woman. [C] He has nothing on his lips but draymen, joiners, cobblers and masons. [B] His inductions and comparisons are drawn from the most ordinary and best-known of men’s activities; anyone can understand him. Under so common a form we today would never have discerned the nobility and splendour of his astonishing concepts; we [C] who judge any which are not swollen up by erudition to be base and commonplace and [B] who are never aware of riches except when pompously paraded. Our society has been prepared to appreciate nothing but ostentation: nowadays you can fill men up with nothing but wind and then bounce them about like balloons. But this man, Socrates, did not deal with vain notions: his aim was to provide us with matter and precepts which genuinely and intimately serve our lives:

  servare modum, finemque tenere,

  Naturamque sequi.

  [to keep the mean; to hold fast to the limit; and to follow nature.]3

  He was ever one, ever the same: he raised himself up to the highest level of vigour not by sallies but by complexion. Or (to put it better) he raised nothing, but rather brought it down and back to its natural and original level, by which he moderated vigour, hardships and difficulties.

  In the case of Cato we can clearly see that his manner is strained far above the normal: in the brave actions of his life and death we know that he is riding high as his tallest horses. Socrates however keeps his feet on the ground, dealing with the most useful subjects at a quiet and everyday pace, advancing at the rate of human life towards both death and the harshest ordeals that can ever occur. Fortunately it turned out that the man most worthy of being known and of being set before the world as an example was precisely the one we have the surest knowledge about.4 He was observed by the most observant men there ever have been: the testimonies that we have of him are astonishing by their fidelity and their skill. Happily for us he could so order the purest and most child-like thoughts that, without stretching them or perverting them, he could produce by them the most beautiful actions of our souls. He portrays the soul as neither high-soaring nor abundantly endowed: he portrays it simply as sane, though with a pure and lively sanity. From such commonplace natural principles, from such ordinary everyday ideas, without being carried away and without goading himself on, he formed beliefs, actions and morals which were not simply the best regulated but also the most sublime and most forceful that ever have been. [C] He it was who brought human wisdom back from the heavens where she was wasting her time and returned her to mankind, in whom lies her most proper and most demanding task as well as her most useful one.5 [B] See him pleading his case before his judges; see with what arguments he awakens his mind for the hazards of war; see what reasons strengthen his endurance when confronted by lies, tyranny and death, as well as by his wife’s pig-headedness. Nothing there is lifted from the arts or sciences: the simplest folk can recognize in him their own means and strengths. It is not possible to be less pretentious or more lowly. He did a great favour to human nature by showing how much she can do by herself. We are richer than we think, each one of us. Yet we are schooled for borrowing and begging! We are trained to make more use of other men’s goods than of our own.

  In nothing does Man know how to halt at the point of his need; be it pleasure, wealth or power, he clasps at more than he can hold: his greed is not susceptible to moderation. It is the same, I find, with his curiosity for knowledge: he hacks out for himself much greater tasks than he needs or can achieve, [C] making the extent of knowledge and the usefulness of knowledge co-equal: ‘Ut omnium return, sic litterarum quoque intemperantia laboramus.’ [In learning as in everything else, we suffer from lack of temperance.]6 And Tacitus is right to praise the mother of Agricola for having restrained in her son too seething an appetite for knowledge:7 like the rest of men’s goods, knowledge is one which, if we look at it steadily, has much inherent vanity and natural feebleness. And it costs us dear. To acquire such pabulum is more hazardous than the acquirin
g of other food or drink;8 for in other cases whatever food we have bought we can carry home in containers – which gives us time to decide on its worth, and on how much of it we shall take and when. But from the outset all kinds of learning can be put into no container but our soul: as we buy them we ingest them, leaving the market-place either already contaminated or else improved. Some of them, instead of nourishing us, burden us and hamper us; others still, under pretence of curing us, poison us.

  [B] I have taken pleasure in hearing of men somewhere or other who, from piety, make vows of ignorance similar to vows of chastity, poverty and penance. To take the edge off that cupidity which goads us towards the study of books, and to deprive our souls of that pleasurable self-satisfaction which thrills us with the opinion that we know something is farther to castrate our disordered desires. [C] And it is to fulfil the vow of poverty abundantly to be also poor in spirit.9

  [B] We need but little doctrine to live at our ease. And Socrates teaches us that it lies within us, as well as how to find it there and how to make it help us.10 All that capacity of ours for exceeding what is [C] natural is more or less [B] vain and superfluous:11 it is much if it does not burden and bother us more than it serves us: [C] ‘Paucis opus est litteris ad mentem bonam.’ [To produce a good mind you need only a few books.] [B] They are the feverish excesses of our mind, a confused and disquieted tool.

  Contemplate yourself. You will find within you Nature’s arguments concerning death – true arguments, most fit to serve you in your need: they it is which make a farm-labourer, as well as entire nations, die with as much constancy as a philosopher.12 [C] Would I have died any the less happily before reading the Tusculan Disputations? I judge that I would not. And now that I find that I must really face death, I realize that my tongue has been enriched by them but not at all my mind, which is as Nature forged it for me: its buckler in that combat is to approach it as do the common people. Books have been useful to me less for instruction than as training. What if [B] erudition, while making an assay at arming us with new defences against natural ills, should have imprinted on our thoughts the weight of those ills and their size rather than her subtle arguments for protecting us against them! [C] For subtle arguments they are, by which erudition most vainly alerts us. Just see how writers – even the most wise and succinct of them – strew additional trivial arguments round about one good one, arguments which, if you look at them closely, have no body in them. They are nothing but verbal contortions by which we are deceived. Yet, in so far as they may serve a purpose, I have no wish to pluck them any barer. Here and there within these covers there are enough arguments of that sort, either borrowed or imitated. Nevertheless we must be careful not to give the name of fortitude to what is but the conduct of a gentleman, nor call solid what is but clever, nor good what is but beautiful – ‘quae magis gustata quant potato delectant’ [things which are more pleasant to sip than to quaff].13 And, ‘ubi non ingenii sed animi negotium agitur’ [whenever we are concerned with the soul not the mind], not everything that we fancy feeds us.