28. Sedition is a sin for Christians. St Paul classifies ‘seditions’ with ‘heresies’ as works of the flesh (Galatians 5:20).
29. In Roman Law parricide was not limited to killing fathers but used of all foul murders to mark the height of their impiety. (Cf. Spiegel’s Lexicon juris civilis.)
30. Livy, XXXIX, xvi; then, Plato, Republic, II, 361 A. (Cf. Cicero, De officiis, I, xiii, 41.)
31. Virgil, Eclogues, I, 11–12; then, Ovid, Tristia, III, x, 65–6, and Claudianus, In Eutropium, I, 244.
32. Montaigne lived in a region dominated by the Reformed Church; he was an active Roman Catholic who never hid his allegiance.
33. ’88: unspoken and hidden suspicions, for which…
34. Montaigne’s term conscience, like conscientia often in Latin, means not conscience here but a good conscience, the consciousness of having done right. In Montaigne as in the Renaissance generally it rarely means what it now does in English.
35. Cicero, De nat. deorum, III, iv, 9 (applied when a case is self-evident).
36. Horace, Epistles, I, xviii, 107–8.
37. Seneca, Epist. moral., XC, 34.
38. Livy, XXX, xliv.
39. ’88: Of course I do. But as…
40. ’88: strange and unheard of effects… Then, Horace, Odes, I, xxviii, 11–12.
41. Virgil, Georgia, III, 476–7.
42. ’88: make us taste death quite differently…
43. Diodorus Siculus, XVII, xxiii.
44. Livy, XXII, li.
45. Echo of Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’amour envers les enfans, 100 F. (Also the general influence of Que les bestes brutes usent de raison, 271 A–273 G).
46. A tiro (a recruit or beginner) practises (meditat) the difficulties he must overcome. Cf. note 56, below. Two clauses of Seneca conflated: Epist. moral., XCI, 8; CVII, 4: (Here begins a major rejection of aspects of Seneca’s stoicism.)
47. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXIV, 4: Seneca used against himself.
48. ’88: especially all such ills as may befall you, at least the more extreme ones.
49. Seneca, Epist. moral., XIII, 12–13; 10; XXIV, 2 (conflated).
50. Virgil, Georgics, I, 123.
51. Quintilian, I, xii, 11.
52. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXX, 7.
53. Propertius, II, xxvii, 1–2 (adapted); then Pseudo-Gallus, Elegeia, I, 277–8.
54. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxx, 74. Cicero is citing Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus, 67 D, but changes melētema, ‘practising’ dying, into commentatio, a ‘diligent meditation’ upon dying. Montaigne is correcting in the light of experience what he wrote in I, 20, ‘To philosophize is to learn how to die’. He now believes that most of mankind should neither ‘practise’ dying nor ‘meditate’ upon dying.
55. Horace, Epistles, I, i, 15.
56. Suetonius, Life of Caesar, lxxxvii. In 1588 Montaigne wrote ‘… by death itself and his long premeditation. That is why Caesar opined that the happiest and least burdensome death is the least premeditated.’ In [C] Montaigne twice replaces the notion of ‘premeditation’ by words which cannot evoke the philosophical meaning of praemeditatio, that is, an advance ‘practising’ of death in rapture or ecstasy. (Cf. the final pages of the last chapter, III, 13, ‘On experience’.) The quotation is from Seneca, Epist. moral., XCVIII, 8.
57. ’88: endure ills, which is greater than ours… insensitivity and beast-like understanding…
58. ’88: some more inner knowledge…
59. ’88: good or evil. You will therefore issue such orders as you like. As a plea…
In [C] Montaigne’s Socrates stresses that he should be treated secundum se, ‘in keeping’ with his deeds and character.
60. Based on Plato’s Apology for Socrates. Cicero resumes it, with eulogies, in De Oratore I, liv, 232. (Cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Socratica, LXVI.) Honoured guests were lodged, wined and dined in the Pyrtaneum. The quotation from Homer is from the Odyssey, XIX, 163, cited by Socrates, Apology, 23 B.
61. ’88: not child-like, unimaginably sublime…
62. Cicero, De oratore, cited in note 60.
63. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’envie et de la haine, 108 EF.
64. ’88: exhibits Nature’s primary concept. While…
65. ’88: the task of this world…
Then, Lucretius, II, 74; Ovid, Fasti, I, 330.
66. ’88: lives. Let us look at the beasts: one can see…
67. ’88: while swans celebrate it but even… (The swan-song, sung at death, has become proverbial. Erasmus, Adages, I, II, LV, Cygnea Cantio.)
68. Antiquity generally denied that the beasts have reason as Man has. The Roman populace believed however that elephants in the gladiatorial arena sometimes asked to die (cf. Chanet, De l’instinct et la connaissance des animaux, La Rochelle, 1640, p. 178).
69. ’88: enough to enrich this treatise…
70. In Plato’s dialogue bearing that name.
71. Probably not an exaggeration. Such legal works cited legal authorities and maxims by the hundreds.
72. [B] in place of [C] to the end of the paragraph: I conceal my larcenies and disguise them: others put their larcenies on parade and into their accounts: thereby acquiring a better claim in law than I do; like those who disguise horses I stain their mane and their tail, and sometimes I poke out an eye: if their first master used them as amblers I make them trot; if used for the saddle, I use them for packs. If I had wanted…
73. ’88: seventy…
74. [B], instead of [C]: mind, it is not credible that such dissonance should occur without some accident which ruptured the normal development. As Socrates said…
75. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxxiii, 80.
76. Socrates’ famous reply to Zopyrus the physiognomist: he was indeed born with lecherous tendencies but had re-formed his soul. (Cicero, De fato, V, 10; Tusc. disput., IV, 80; Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Socratica, LXXX. Cf. above, III, 5, ‘On some lines of Virgil’, note 163.)
77. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Aristoteles Stagirites, XV: ‘ “Beauty,” he said, “is more efficacious than any written testimonial.” Some attribute that [not to Aristotle but] to Diogenes. Aristotle used to call beauty “a gift”, because it approached the nature of grace. Socrates called it “a brief tyranny”, because the grace of beauty soon wilted; Plato, a “privilege of nature” because it came to few. Theophrastus called it “a silent deception”, since it persuaded without words; Theocritus an “ivory harm” since, though it was fair to view, it was the cause of many inconveniences; Carneades “a kingdom without protection”, since the beautiful obtain whatever they will, no force impeding them. [Diogenes] Laertius relates this.’ (In the City of God, XV, xxii, St Augustine makes beauty a gift of God, given to both good and evil persons.)
78. Cited probably after Erasmus by Tiraquellus (De legibus connubialibus, II, 61), with reference to Quintilian, Athenaeus, Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, Propertius, etc., etc. That Phryne’s parting her garment to reveal her bosom was more effective than the best rhetoric became proverbial.
79. The term kalokagathos in Greek combined kalos (beautiful) and agathos (good). ‘Beautiful’ is used, rather, for ‘good’ in the Greek Bible: e.g. the ‘good’ fish in Matthew 13:48 which were gathered into vessels while the bad were cast away are termed ta kala (the ‘beautiful’ ones); similarly the ‘good’ seed in the parable of the sower is kalon sperma (‘beautiful’ seed). There are many other examples, especially in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, of which Montaigne possessed a copy).
80. Plato, Corgias, VII, 452.
81. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Aristotle, V, 20. Cf. H. Estienne’s Apophthegmata, s.v. Aristoteles.
82. This was the aim of the art or science of physiognomy, highly developed during the Renaissance.
83. ’88: such questions I leave undecided…
84. The great precept of Classical philosophy. Cf. Cicero, Laelius, V, 19; XII, 42.
85. ’88: my
natural complexions by education and the power of reason…
86. ’88:1 have a face which is…
87. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, I, i, 42; Pseudo-Gallus, I, 238.
88. ’88: air and bearing have put…
89. ’88: dead and defeated, having been come across when in disorder and widely separated from each other. Very naively…
90. ’88: my house, notwithstanding the vain truce in which we then were, might be…
91. ’88: Fortune wiser than me. There…
92. ’88: masked gentlemen, well mounted and well armed, followed…
93. Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 261.
94. Catullus, LXVI, 65.
95. ’88: ride over to me, no longer with his threats but with words full of courtesy, putting…
96. ’88: find them, the principal ones of which he returned to me, not excluding my purse and my strong-box…
97. ’88: his name. (I would love, in my turn, to assay what expression he would show in a similar event.) He then…
98. ’88: other and worse dangers which…
99. Not identified by Marie de Gournay or others. (The general theme is that of Tiraquellus in De poenis legum temporandis.)
100. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Aristoteles Stagirites V.
101. ’88:I am only. Knave of Clubs…
The gentleman in Montaigne had second thoughts about the term varlet (knave) even when used in a metaphor, so he replaced varlet by escuyer, squire (a knight’s attendant). Both terms were used more or less indifferently, just as we use both Jack and Knave for the playing-cards.
102. Plutarch puts the contrasting point of view in his Life of Lycurgus, iv. On other occasions he condemns Charillus: cf. De l’envie et de la haine, 108 C; Les dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 215 D; Comment on pourra discerner le flatteur d’avec l’amy, 44 B. Erasmus (Apophthegmata, I, Archidamas, XXXVIII) also blames it, adding, ‘That outstanding man Archidamas perceived that mercy needs to be associated with justice. Otherwise what is a prince’s leniency towards offenders but cruelty toward the good?’
1. The opening sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
2. Manilius, Astronomica, I, 62–3.
3. ’88: weaker and baser means: but truth…
4. ’88: from the comparison between events…
Montaigne is contesting Aristode’s assertion that arts and sciences derive from judgements upon experiences.)
5. ’Collating objects’: Montaigne’s term image des choses is technical and based on Latin usage: imago in this sense is the comparison of form with form by some likeness between them.
6. Erasmus, Adages, I, V, X, Non tam ovum ovo simile (as we say, ‘As alike as two eggs’), citing Montaigne’s example of the ‘man at Delphi’ (or, rather, the men at Delos) who had this skill, from Cicero, Academica, II, (Lucullus) xviii, 58–9.
7. Tribonian, the ‘architect of the Pandects’ of Justinian. He ‘cut their slices’ by carving up the Roman laws into gobbets. For an attack on him in the same terms, cf. Rabelais, Tiers Livre, TLF, XLIIII, 82–94.
8. Tacitus, Annals, III, xxv.
9. The poets stressed that in the Golden Age, ‘there was no mine and thine’; and Ovid, in the Metamorphoses, I, 89 ff., stresses that no law was needed since each was guided by his innocent natural sense of right and wrong.
10. Given Montaigne’s assimilation of Indians to happy primitive tribes in the Golden Age, those nations are doubtless to be sought in the Americas.
11. Guillaume Bouchet, Serées, IX; Plato, Republic, III, 405 A.
12. Experts in the ‘art’ of law were often, even on the title-pages of their own books, referred to as ‘princes’.
13. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXXIX, 3.
14. Quintilian, X, iii, 16 (explaining why peasants and uneducated folk speak more directly and less hesitantly).
15. Ulpian, the great second-century jurisconsult; the other two are Italian medieval glossators. Criticisms of such glossators was common in France among partisans of certain schools of legal methodology who included Guillaume Budé and Rabelais (cf. Pantagruel, TLF, IX bis, 76–100, etc.).
16. Erasmus, Adages, II, III, LXVIII.
17. [B] instead of [C]: path to it, and killed themselves. It is…
18. Not Crates but Socrates, not the proverbially obscure Heraclitus, but a certain Delius; cf. Erasmus, Adages, I, III, XXXVI, Davus sum non Oedipus, linking the saying to Heraclitus and to Diogenes Laertius, Life of Socrates, II, xxii.
19. A step in the argument from the opening quotation from Metaphysics, I, i: see the Introduction, p. xlv.
20. ’88: consists in doubt and uncertainty…
21. Cf. III, 11, ‘On the lame’, note 9. Apollo was surnamed loxias, ‘obscure’.
22. Etienne de La Boëtie, A Marguerite de Carle.
23. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, II, vii, 12, 1108a.
24. A true statement. Geneseolutherans, Philippists (Melanchthonians), etc. formed hostile schools.
25. The example of a perfect definition, which can be used both ways: you can start from the definition and arrive at Man: start from Man and arrive at this definition: Priscian, Opera, 1527, XVII, 1180.
26. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, I, X, IX, Hydram Secas; you cut off one head of the serpent Hydra and several others grow in its place. (Well-known from Plato in the Republic, I, 427 A, where it is applied to the multiplicity of laws in an ill-governed state.)
27. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la vertu, 31, CD.
28. St Augustine, City of God, XXI, viii.
29. Cf. Cicero, Academica, II (Lucullus), 56.
30. ’88: some fine drawn-out, forced…
31. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Diets notables des anciens Roys, 192 B.
32. Plutarch (tr. Amyot): of. Jason, Tyrant of Thessalia; Instruction pour ceulx qui manient affaires d’estat, 173 F; Pourquoy la justice divine differe quelquefois la punition des malefices, 265 C (analogy with medicine).
33. A surprising statement. The Stoics took Nature as their standard of value. But their conception of Nature was paradoxical and, as such, attacked by Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Que les Stoïques disent des choses plus estranges que les poëtes (560C – 561A); Les contredicts des Philosophes Stoïques (561A – 574 C); Des communes conceptions contre les Stoïques (574 C – 588 F). Montaigne’s assertion may possibly be read into such objections, but one would expect him to have some definite authority behind him.
34. From Diogenes Laertius, Life of Aristippus, II, xciii and xcix; Coelius Richerius Rhodiginus, Antiquae lectiones, XIV, vi.
35. Cf. Henry Estienne, Apophthegmata, s. v. Alcibiades.
36. ’88: on a man who is not merely free from evil-doing but who acts better than others. Our justice…
37. China, increasingly known, especially from Jesuit sources, vastly widened the horizons of Renaissance moralists. Montaigne’s account doubtless derives from Juan Gonzalez, whose Historia de las cosas mas notables de la China (Rome, 1585) was rapidly translated into French by L. de la Porte (Paris, 1588).
38. Cicero contrasts justice with equity (De oratore, I, lvi, 240). It was a legal contention that, in law, equity is above all to be observed (Spiegel, Lexicon Juris Civilis, s.v. Aequitas).
39. [B] instead of [C]: no other. If anyone obeys the law because it is just, obeys it not. Our French laws…
40. That is, a study of his own self replaces a study of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Physics.
41. Propertius, III, v, 26–30, 31; then a line interpolated from Lucan, Pharsalia, I, 417.
42. ’88: than on Plato. Were I…
43. ’88: Were it not that I see nothing but lying and that others do…
44. Virgil, Aeneid, VII, 528–30.
45. The Know Thyself of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. (Cf. III, 9, ‘On vanity’, note 160).
46. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, I, VII, XCV, Nosce teipsum (citing Plato, Charmides, 164 D); Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, ii, 24 ff, and his portrait of Socrates in general.
47. Plato, Men
o, XIV, 80.
48. Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, ii, 29–40.
49. Cicero, Academica, I, xii, 45. (The standard reading today is adsensionem, assent, not assertionem, assertion.)
50. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’amitié fraternelle, 81 F.
51. Lucan, Pharsalia, IV, 599–60; of Anthaeus, one of the giants called Sons of Earth; cf. Du Bellay, Antiquités de Rome, TLF, 12 and 11.
52. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Antisthenes II and XLIV.
[B] instead of [C]: through Socrates, the wisest man there ever was by the testimony of the gods and men. This application…
53. Virgil, Georgics, II, 103–4.
54. ’88: ordinary vile souls…
55. Cicero, De finibus, III, vii, 24.
56. King Perses (or Perseus, as Livy calls him) was the last king of Macedonia and was conquered by Paulus Aemilius. For his character cf. Livy, XLI, xx.
57. This bold judgement is made on the character of a king, doubtless Henry of Navarre (Henri Quatre). A rejected manuscript reading in the Bordeaux copy is: ‘I have since seen one other king to whom…’ Henry (King of Navarre, 1572–1610) became King of France in 1589. He is sure of himself enough, it is suggested, to accept frank criticism.
The Complete Essays Page 174
