The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

38. Aristotle insists at the outset in his Metaphysics that an ‘art’ (such as medicine) is not based on experience (or experiment) as such, but on reflection on experience, by which general rules are established.

  39. Renaissance medicine was, in the orthodox schools, still dominated by Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna.

  40. Marguerite d’Aure de Gramont, an intimate of Marguerite de Valois.

  41. ’80: which made him, said Tacitus, more concerned…

  Tacitus, Annals, VI, xlvi.

  42. Pliny, Hist. nat., XXIX, xlvi.

  ’80: Gramonts.) Our own doctors are bolder still: for they have a third way…

  43. Plutarch, Life of Pericles.

  44. ’80: violent illness, which will have disturbed the seat of my understanding and my reason. My judgement…

  45. Neither of whom could afford doctors’ fees and so went without doctors.

  46. ’80: humours and thoughts coincide. And perhaps there has never been two identical opinions any more than two identical faces. Their most universal characteristic is diversity and discordance…

  In [C], hairs or seeds replace faces under the influence of Cicero, Academica, II (Lucullus), xxvi, 85, where a case is marshalled against the assertion made here, which is presented as a Stoic one. With this phrase Montaigne discreetly emphasizes the Stoic savour of his argument.

  1. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, III, v, 8 (adapted).

  2. Tacitus, Annals, II, lxxxiii.

  3. Lucretius, II, 1–2.

  4. Perhaps an allusion to the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day.

  5. Plato permitted the magistrates or governor to lie ‘as a medicine’ in the interests of the State and morality. Cf. Republic, 389 b; 459c.

  6. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment on pourra discerner le flatteur d’avec l’amy, 51 A.

  7. A tale told by John Calvin in his Traité des Reliques; then, Cornelius Nepos, Life of Atticus.

  8. Livy, XXXI, xxi; then, Herodotus, VII, clxiii (for Gelon).

  9. As Chancellor of France he showed, despite his bishopric, an understanding for the Protestants.

  10. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la curiosité, 64 F.

  11. Aesop, Fables, 293; then Cicero, De officiis, I, xxi, 113.

  12. Cicero, De officiis, III, xvii, 769.

  13. Plutarch, Life of Alexander, then Seneca, Epist moral., XCV, 30.

  14. Tacitus, Annals, II, lxv-Ixvii.

  15. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment on pourra discerner le flatteur d’avec l’amy, 49 D–E; then, Les dicts notables des anciens Roys, 189 C and Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V, Aegyptii, XXXIII.

  16. The doctor wrote to Fabricius offering to poison Pyrrhus, to whom Fabricius forwarded the letter, telling him to choose his friends better.

  17. Jean Hubert-Fulstin, Hist. des Roys, et Princes de Pologne, 1573. Then, Plutarch, Life of Eumenes.

  18. From the Epitome of Florus, often printed before Livy, XXVII.

  19. Jacques Laverdin, Scanderbeg. Then, for Clovis, Du Haillant, Histoire des Roys de France.

  20. Tacitus, Annals, V, ix; then, Nicolas Chalcocondylas, De la decadence de l’Empire Grec.

  21. Cicero, De officiis, III, xxix, 106.

  22. Cf. I, 38, ‘How we weep and laugh at the same thing’.

  23. Cicero, De officiis, III, xxii, 87. (In the next sentence I follow the reading of ’95, etc.: changement (change of mind), not jugement.)

  24. Cicero, De officiis. III, xxx, 110.

  25. Cf. II, 36, ‘On the most excellent of men’.

  26. Montaigne’s veneration of Epaminondas is shared by Plutarch (his principal source of the details given) throughout his Oeuvres Morales: cf. Amyot’s index s.v. Epaminondas.

  27. Plutarch, lives of Caesar and of Marius.

  28. Before battle the Spartans (the enemy of Epaminondas) tamed their wrath by listening to flute music: Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment il faut refrener la colere, 59F; cf. 51 G-H.

  29. Livy, XXV, xviii; then Ovid, Ex ponto, I, vii, 37–8, and Cicero, De officiis, III, xxiii, 90.

  30. Lucan, Pharsalia, VII, 321–3 (a poet much read because of his subject during the French Civil Wars of Religion).

  31. Tacitus, Hist., III, 1; and III, li; then, Propertius, III, ix, 7.

  32. That is, individual priests and monks are required to be celibate, despite the acknowledged prime usefulness of marriage. Both Plato and Aristotle ranked marriage among the most useful institutions; Stobaeus (Sermo LXV) has a long eulogy on the subject from Hierocles’ book On Marriage.

  1. Propertius, II, i, 69. (For the theme, cf. Erasmus, Opera, 1703–6, V, 488F–461E. Montaigne’s theme of the perennial flux of all things is Heracleitan.)

  2. Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes.

  3. Aristotle’s opinion was normative: all human beings have the same form (soul), the form of Man. What distinguishes each individual person is the union of one particular example of that form with one particular body.

  4. In the ‘chain of being’, Man comes between the beasts and the angels.

  5. ‘Lawful’ by the law of the Church.

  6. Socrates and his fellows. Cf. II, 12, ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’ (beginning); then [C], from Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXXI, 22.

  7. Image and development from Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la tranquillité de l’ame, 75 G.

  8. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXXIX, 6.

  9. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, lxiii; then, De nat. deorum, III, xxxv.

  10. Horace, Odes, IV, x, 7–8.

  11. Cf. the adage attributed variously to Socrates and to Diogenes: ‘Aedibus in nostris quae prava aut recta geruntur” (It is in our own home that good or evil are done): Erasmus, Adages, I, VI, LXXXV.

  12. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Le banquet des sept sages, 155 E (Bias), and Instruction pour ceulx qui manient affaires d’Estat, 162 G (Julius Caesar); then, Life of Agesilas.

  13. Matthew 13:57; Mark 6:4; Luke 4:24; John 4:44.

  14. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, X, vii, 10 (1179 a).

  15. Lucan, Pharsalia, 237–42.

  16. Seneca, Epist. moral., XCIV, 42.

  17. Angels have souls higher than men’s in the chain-of-being: Cato had a soul higher than Montaigne’s within the human scale.

  18. That is, even ordinate actions and reactions are relative insofar as they must be judged ‘according to’ one’s capacities and judgements.

  19. Each man is, in God’s sight, sinful (Romans 3:23; 5:12), and God is the scrutator cordium, ‘He who searches all hearts’ (I Chronicles 28:9); ‘He who searcheth the heart and knoweth the mind’ (Romans 8:27); ‘He that searcheth the reins and the heart’ (Revelations 2:23).

  20. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des anciens Roys…, 197 E.

  21. For the Stoics, causation was absolute: everything is fated and unalterable.

  22. Sophocles, criticized by Epicurus: Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Que l’on ne sçauroit vivre heureusement selon la doctrine d’Epicurus, 283 DE; Quintilian, V, xii.

  23. Plutarch, Life of Antisthenes; Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Antisthenes, XIV.

  24. I Samuel 10: 26, ‘whose hearts God hath touched’. Adapted for the motto of her emblematic picture FRUSTRA (‘in Vain’) by the Protestant author Georgette de Montenay in her Emblemes ou devises chrestiennes (Lyons, 1571).

  25. Temperance is Aristotle’s sōphrosyne (the Mean between two vices, one of excess and one of defect) (Nicomachaean Ethics, II, vi, 3). This Classical virtue, as well as the four Cardinal virtues, were held to apply to Christians, though all needed completing by the three theological virtues (Faith, Hope and Charity). St Paul in Philippians 4:5 counselled, ‘Let your moderation be known to all men.’

  1. Livy, XXXIX, xl.

  2. Seneca, Epist. moral., LVI, 9 (adapted).

  3. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, XXXVIII, 113 (of the learned and erudite).

  4. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, X, viii, 1178 b (referring to theōrētikē, contemplation, intellectual activity).

  5. Cited by Xenophon (Memorabilia, I, iii
, 3). In the Latin form ‘secundum quod potes’ it lends force to Montaigne’s conviction that all is not simple but secundum quid.

  6. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la pluralité des amis, 103 B–C, stressing that great friendships come in pairs, not in groups.

  7. The most famous prudential maxim was, ‘So have a friend that he may be your enemy.’ Aristotle attributes it to Bias, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. In I, 28, Montaigne attributes it to Chilon.

  8. Plato, Laws, VI, 778 A (of slaves, not servants).

  9. Horace, Odes, III, xix, 3–8.

  10. Cf. III, 1, ‘On the useful and the honourable’, note 28.

  11. Juvenal, Satires, VI, 189–91 (adapted).

  12. Seneca, Epist. moral., CXV, 2, condemning the affected style of clothes and speech of dandies.

  13. Much the same reading as Montaigne likes himself (II, 10, ‘On books’), though doubtless presupposing that the books are in French not Latin.

  14. Plutarch, Life of Dion; Hippomachas was a teacher of athletics.

  15. Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum, V, 38 (the wise can appreciate objects of artistic beauty but should not be enslaved by them).

  16. Ovid, Tristia, I, i, 83–4.

  17. Tacitus, Annals, XIII, xlv; then, Plato, Phaedrus, 227 B–228 C.

  18. Philosophy classified sexual intercourse among the physical necessities. Montaigne does not deny that it is so, but insists that sexual fulfilment is more than the physical slaking of an appetite.

  19. Tacitus, Annals, VI, i; then a tale of Flora recounted among others by Brantôme in Les Dames Calantes (Deuxième Discours).

  20. Guillaume Postel, Histoire des Turcs.

  21. Intercourse with friends and with ladies.

  22. Olivier de La March, Mémoires, 1561.

  23. Seneca, Consolatio ad Polybium, XXVI.

  1. Juvenal, Satires, VI, 272–4.

  2. The following taken from Cicero, Tusc. disput., III, xxxi, 77 (where Cicero alludes also to his own (now lost) Consolatio on the death of his daughter).

  3. II, 23, ‘On bad means to a good end’.

  4. Related by Philippe de Commines, Mémoires, II, iii.

  5. Ovid, Metamorphoses, X, 666–7 and context.

  6. Cicero, Tusc. disput., IV, xxxv, 74–5.

  7. Ibid., I, xxxiv, 83–4. Hegesias the Cyrenaic’s pupils who committed suicide are linked by Cicero to Cleombrotus Ambraciotes, who did so after reading Plato; his example is mentioned in II, iii, ‘A custom of the Isle of Cea’, and linked to St Paul’s yearning to die so as to be with Christ.

  8. Tacitus, Annals, XV, lxvii.

  9. Ibid., XVI, ix.

  10. Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 382–4; 387; then, Diogenes Laertius, Life of Xenophon.

  11. Cicero, De finibus, II, xxx, 96; then [C]: Tusc. disput., II, xxvi, 62 (twice); II, xxiv, 59.

  12. Zeno was. Stoic; the following criticism of his arguments, from Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXXII, 9, and LXXXIII, 9. Seneca considers them ‘Greek absurdities’.

  13. The ideal Christian reaction (Matthew 5:39), but not to be pressed at the wrong psychological moment.

  14. Persius, Satires, VI, 73, linked to Lucretius, IV, 1062; then, Lucretius, 1063–4.

  15. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, II, V, V, Dies adimit aegritudinem, citing Iphiclus, ‘Time cures all our ills,’ and Euripides on time as ‘doctor’ of men’s problems.

  16. Cicero, Tusc. disput., III, xv, 32.

  17. Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades.

  18. Lucretius, V, 801–2.

  19. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), consolation envoyée à sa femme, 256 A; then, his Life of Antony.

  20. Lucan, The Civil War, II, 42.

  21. Tiberius, in Plutarch’s Life.

  22. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Polemon, IV, xxvii.

  23. In 1580.

  24. Quintilian, VI, ii – the standard view eventually challenged by Diderot in his Paradoxe sur le comédien.

  25. Montaigne is likening the ecstasy of battle to that of melancholy madness.

  26. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’amitié fraternelle, 88 E-F; De la superstition, 122 C-D; Ravisius Textor, Officina, Fratrum et Sororum interfectores.

  27. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, II, III, XLVIII, Homo bulla.

  28. Propertius, III, J, 7–10.

  1. Ovid, Tristia, IV, i, 4 (adapted); then, Petronius, Satyricon, 128.

  2. Janus, the god of the beginning of the year, had two faces, one looking back, the other forward (Ovid, Fasti, I, 345 etc.).

  3. Martial, Epigrams, X, xxiii, 7; then, Plato, Laws, II, 657 D–E.

  4. Seneca, Epist. moral., CXIX, 17.

  5. Cicero, De officiis, I, xxiv, 84: from lines of Ennius, the ancient Latin poet. In context the word salutem means not ‘his welfare’ but ‘the safety’ of the State.

  6. Cicero, De senectute, XVI, 58.

  7. Horace, Odes, IV, xii, 27.

  8. Cicero, De senectute, XVIII, 65.

  9. Ovid, Ex Ponto, I, v, 18, and Tristia, IV, xi, 22.

  10. The tittle of university professors, especially theologians. Here they are explaining various forms of ecstasy and rapture.

  11. Pseudo-Gallus, I, 125; then, Horace, Epodes, XIII, 7; Bishop Caius Sollius Apollinaris (Sidonius), Epist., I, ix; George Buchanan, Joannes Baptista (prologue); Martial, Epigrams, VII, lvii, 8.

  12. Cicero, Tusc. disput., III, xv, 31; Ravisius Textor, Officina (for both Socrates and Crassus): Severissimi et maxime tetrici.

  13. Source not identified.

  14. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la tranquillité de l’âme, 73. H (for the flies); Du banissement, ou de l’exil, 125 AB (for the leeches).

  15. Seneca, Epist. moral., LIII, 8; he continues: ‘Similarly a confession of one’s evils is proof of a healthy mind’; Montaigne then develops LIII, 6.

  16. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Milesii Thaletis, VII. (Erasmus is also puzzled by this counsel.)

  17. Nicephoros Callistos Xanthopoullos, Ecclesiastical History, V, who asserts that Origen uselessly damned his soul by this act. Montaigne compares Origen’s choice to that of those women of the Reformed Church (the ‘Calvinists’), who would rather consent to commit fornication than consent to the ‘idolatry’ of the Roman Catholic mass, which was indeed often assimilated by their ministers (in Old Testament terms) to ‘whoremongering after strange gods’. All theologians of all Churches agreed that physical sins are far, far less serious than spiritual ones.

  18. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la curiosité, 64 C–D.

  19. This may well imply that Montaigne had never read the Confessions of St Augustine, though he knew the City of God in detail.

  20. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V, Archelaus, V.

  21. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Socrates.

  22. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, IV, ix, 1128 b. (His term, aidōs, covers modesty, bashfulness and shamefacedness. It keeps young men in check: old men should not need it, since they should do nothing shameful.)

  23. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Qu’il fault qu’un Philosophe converse avec les Princes, 134 C; then, Lucretius, I, 6 and 23–4.

  24. Among others Joachim Du Bellay regretted that Ronsard devoted so much time and genius to love-poetry; cf. Regrets, XXIII.

  25. Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 23; then, Johannes Secundus, Elegies, III, 29; Tasso, Gierusalemme liberata, XII, 63–6; Juvenal, Satires, VI, 196.

  26. These are the lines of Virgil alluded to in the chapter heading (Aeneid, VIII, 387–92; 404–6). Cf. below, note 99.

  27. Then a commonplace of traditional Christian morality.

  28. Cf. Andreas Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, XV, 23 ff.; but the reference to Aristotle is puzzling.

  29. Virgil, Georgics, III, 137.

  30. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V, Antigonus Secundus, IV.

  31. Herodotus, VI, lx.

  32. Montaigne’s account of the Hindu caste-system is based on Simon Goulart’s Histoire du Portugal, II, iii.

  33. Catullus, LXIV, 79.

  34. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Socratica, XL; then, Adages, I, I, L
XIX, Homo homini lupus, and I, I, LXX, Homo homini Deus.

  35. Pseudo-Gallus, I, 61.

  36. Juvenal, Satires, IX, 32–4.

  37. Isocrates, the pupil of Gorgias and the friend of Plato. I do not know what Montaigne drew upon for his saying, unless it be a confused memory of Zeno and Cleanthes’ reasons for not becoming citizens of Athens (Plutarch tr. Amyot), Contredicts des Stoïques, 561 F).