Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 038

was, rushing like a Colossus upon the little man and the little horse,
with such a career of strength and weight, that he turned us both over
and over, topsy-turvy with our heels in the air: so that there lay the
horse overthrown and stunned with the fall, and I ten or twelve paces
from him stretched out at length, with my face all battered and broken,
my sword which I had had in my hand, above ten paces beyond that, and my
belt broken all to pieces, without motion or sense any more than a stock.
‘Twas the only swoon I was ever in till that hour in my life. Those who
were with me, after having used all the means they could to bring me to
myself, concluding me dead, took me up in their arms, and carried me with
very much difficulty home to my house, which was about half a French
league from thence. On the way, having been for more than two hours
given over for a dead man, I began to move and to fetch my breath; for so
great abundance of blood was fallen into my stomach, that nature had need
to rouse her forces to discharge it. They then raised me upon my feet,
where I threw off a whole bucket of clots of blood, as this I did also
several times by the way. This gave me so much ease, that I began to
recover a little life, but so leisurely and by so small advances, that my
first sentiments were much nearer the approaches of death than life:
“Perche, dubbiosa ancor del suo ritorno,
Non s’assicura attonita la mente.”
[“For the soul, doubtful as to its return, could not compose itself”
--Tasso, Gierus. Lib., xii. 74.]
The remembrance of this accident, which is very well imprinted in my
memory, so naturally representing to me the image and idea of death, has
in some sort reconciled me to that untoward adventure. When I first
began to open my eyes, it was with so perplexed, so weak and dead a
sight, that I could yet distinguish nothing but only discern the light:
“Come quel ch’or apre, or’chiude
Gli occhi, mezzo tra’l sonno e l’esser desto.”
[“As a man that now opens, now shuts his eyes, between sleep
and waking.”--Tasso, Gierus. Lib., viii., 26.]
As to the functions of the soul, they advanced with the same pace and
measure with those of the body. I saw myself all bloody, my doublet
being stained all over with the blood I had vomited. The first thought
that came into my mind was that I had a harquebuss shot in my head, and
indeed, at the time there were a great many fired round about us.
Methought my life but just hung upon my, lips: and I shut my eyes, to
help, methought, to thrust it out, and took a pleasure in languishing and
letting myself go. It was an imagination that only superficially floated
upon my soul, as tender and weak as all the rest, but really, not only
exempt from anything displeasing, but mixed with that sweetness that
people feel when they glide into a slumber.
I believe it is the very same condition those people are in, whom we see
swoon with weakness in the agony of death we pity them without cause,
supposing them agitated with grievous dolours, or that their souls suffer
under painful thoughts. It has ever been my belief, contrary to the
opinion of many, and particularly of La Boetie, that those whom we see so
subdued and stupefied at the approaches of their end, or oppressed with
the length of the disease, or by accident of an apoplexy or falling
sickness,
“Vi morbi saepe coactus
Ante oculos aliquis nostros, ut fulminis ictu,
Concidit, et spumas agit; ingemit, et tremit artus;
Desipit, extentat nervos, torquetur, anhelat,
Inconstanter, et in jactando membra fatigat;”
[“Often, compelled by the force of disease, some one as
thunderstruck falls under our eyes, and foams, groans, and trembles,
stretches, twists, breathes irregularly, and in paroxysms wears out
his strength.”--Lucretius, iii. 485.]
or hurt in the head, whom we hear to mutter, and by fits to utter
grievous groans; though we gather from these signs by which it seems as
if they had some remains of consciousness, and that there are movements
of the body; I have always believed, I say, both the body and the soul
benumbed and asleep,
“Vivit, et est vitae nescius ipse suae,”
[“He lives, and does not know that he is alive.”
--Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 12.]
and could not believe that in so great a stupefaction of the members and
so great a defection of the senses, the soul could maintain any force
within to take cognisance of herself, and that, therefore, they had no
tormenting reflections to make them consider and be sensible of the
misery of their condition, and consequently were not much to be pitied.
I can, for my part, think of no state so insupportable and dreadful, as
to have the soul vivid and afflicted, without means to declare itself; as
one should say of such as are sent to execution with their tongues first
cut out (were it not that in this kind of dying, the most silent seems to
me the most graceful, if accompanied with a grave and constant
countenance); or if those miserable prisoners, who fall into the hands of
the base hangman soldiers of this age, by whom they are tormented with
all sorts of inhuman usage to compel them to some excessive and
impossible ransom; kept, in the meantime, in such condition and place,
where they have no means of expressing or signifying their thoughts and
their misery. The poets have feigned some gods who favour the
deliverance of such as suffer under a languishing death:
“Hunc ego Diti
Sacrum jussa fero, teque isto corpore solvo.”
[“I bidden offer this sacred thing to Pluto, and from that body
dismiss thee.”--AEneid, iv. 782.]
both the interrupted words, and the short and irregular answers one gets
from them sometimes, by bawling and keeping a clutter about them; or the
motions which seem to yield some consent to what we would have them do,
are no testimony, nevertheless, that they live, an entire life at least.
So it happens to us in the yawning of sleep, before it has fully
possessed us, to perceive, as in a dream, what is done about us, and to
follow the last things that are said with a perplexed and uncertain
hearing which seems but to touch upon the borders of the soul; and to
make answers to the last words that have been spoken to us, which have
more in them of chance than sense.
Now seeing I have in effect tried it, I have no doubt but I have hitherto
made a right judgment; for first, being in a swoon, I laboured to rip
open the buttons of my doublet with my nails, for my sword was gone; and
yet I felt nothing in my imagination that hurt me; for we have many
motions in us that do not proceed from our direction;
“Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque retractant;”
[“Half-dead fingers grope about, and grasp again the sword.”
--AEneid, x. 396.]
so falling people extend their arms before them by a natural impulse,
which prompts our limbs to offices and motions without any commission
from our reason.
“Falciferos memorant currus abscindere membra . . .
Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod
Decidit abscissum; cum mens tamen atque hominis vis
Mobilitate mali, non quit sentire dolorem.”
[“They relate that scythe-bearing chariots mow off limbs, so that
they quiver on the ground; and yet the mind of him from whom the
limb is taken by the swiftness of the blow feels no pain.”
--Lucretius, iii. 642.]
My stomach was so oppressed with the coagulated blood, that my hands
moved to that part, of their own voluntary motion, as they frequently do
to the part that itches, without being directed by our will. There are
several animals, and even men, in whom one may perceive the muscles to
stir and tremble after they are dead. Every one experimentally knows
that there are some members which grow stiff and flag without his leave.
Now, those passions which only touch the outward bark of us, cannot be
said to be ours: to make them so, there must be a concurrence of the
whole man; and the pains which are felt by the hand or the foot while
we are sleeping, are none of ours.
As I drew near my own house, where the alarm of my fall was already got
before me, and my family were come out to meet me, with the hubbub usual
in such cases, not only did I make some little answer to some questions
which were asked me; but they moreover tell me, that I was sufficiently
collected to order them to bring a horse to my wife whom on the road,
I saw struggling and tiring herself which is hilly and rugged. This
should seem to proceed from a soul its functions; but it was nothing so
with me. I knew not what I said or did, and they were nothing but idle
thoughts in the clouds, that were stirred up by the senses of the eyes
and ears, and proceeded not from me. I knew not for all that, whence I
came or whither I went, neither was I capable to weigh and consider what
was said to me: these were light effects, that the senses produced of
themselves as of custom; what the soul contributed was in a dream,
lightly touched, licked and bedewed by the soft impression of the senses.
Notwithstanding, my condition was, in truth, very easy and quiet; I had
no affliction upon me, either for others or myself; it was an extreme
languor and weakness, without any manner of pain. I saw my own house,
but knew it not. When they had put me to bed I found an inexpressible
sweetness in that repose; for I had been desperately tugged and lugged by
those poor people who had taken the pains to carry me upon their arms a
very great and a very rough way, and had in so doing all quite tired out
themselves, twice or thrice one after another. They offered me several
remedies, but I would take none, certainly believing that I was mortally
wounded in the head. And, in earnest, it had been a very happy death,
for the weakness of my understanding deprived me of the faculty of
discerning, and that of my body of the sense of feeling; I was suffering
myself to glide away so sweetly and after so soft and easy a manner, that
I scarce find any other action less troublesome than that was. But when
I came again to myself and to resume my faculties:
“Ut tandem sensus convaluere mei,”
[“When at length my lost senses again returned.”
--Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 14.]
which was two or three hours after, I felt myself on a sudden involved in
terrible pain, having my limbs battered and ground with my fall, and was.
so ill for two or three nights after, that I thought I was once more
dying again, but a more painful death, having concluded myself as good as
dead before, and to this hour am sensible of the bruises of that terrible
shock. I will not here omit, that the last thing I could make them beat
into my head, was the memory of this accident, and I had it over and over
again repeated to me, whither I was going, from whence I came, and at
what time of the day this mischance befell me, before I could comprehend
it. As to the manner of my fall, that was concealed from me in favour to
him who had been the occasion, and other flim-flams were invented. But a
long time after, and the very next day that my memory began to return and
to represent to me the state wherein I was, at the instant that I
perceived this horse coming full drive upon me (for I had seen him at my
heels, and gave myself for gone, but this thought had been so sudden,
that fear had had no leisure to introduce itself) it seemed to me like a
flash of lightning that had pierced my soul, and that I came from the
other world.
This long story of so light an accident would appear vain enough, were it
not for the knowledge I have gained by it for my own use; for I do really
find, that to get acquainted with death, needs no more but nearly to
approach it. Every one, as Pliny says, is a good doctrine to himself,
provided he be capable of discovering himself near at hand. Here, this
is not my doctrine, ‘tis my study; and is not the lesson of another, but
my own; and if I communicate it, it ought not to be ill taken, for that
which is of use to me, may also, peradventure, be useful to another. As
to the rest, I spoil nothing, I make use of nothing but my own; and if I
play the fool, ‘tis at my own expense, and nobody else is concerned in’t;
for ‘tis a folly that will die with me, and that no one is to inherit.
We hear but of two or three of the ancients, who have beaten this path,
and yet I cannot say if it was after this manner, knowing no more of them
but their names. No one since has followed the track: ‘tis a rugged
road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain,
as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate
internal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble
motions; ‘tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us
from the common and most recommended employments of the world. ‘Tis now
many years since that my thoughts have had no other aim and level than
myself, and that I have only pried into and studied myself: or, if I
study any other thing, ‘tis to apply it to or rather in myself. And yet
I do not think it a fault, if, as others do by other much less profitable
sciences, I communicate what I have learned in this, though I am not very
well pleased with my own progress. There is no description so difficult,
nor doubtless of so great utility, as that of a man’s self: and withal, a
man must curl his hair and set out and adjust himself, to appear in
public: now I am perpetually tricking myself out, for I am eternally upon
my own description. Custom has made all speaking of a man’s self
vicious, and positively interdicts it, in hatred to the boasting that
seems inseparable from the testimony men give of themselves:
“In vitium ducit culpae fuga.”
[“The avoiding a mere fault often leads us into a greater.”
Or: “The escape from a fault leads into a vice”
--Horace, De Arte Poetics, verse 31.]
Instead of blowing the child’s nose, this is to take his nose off
altogether. I think the remedy worse than the disease. But, allowing it
to be true that it must of necessity be presumption to entertain people
with discourses of one’s self, I ought not, pursuing my general design,
to forbear an action that publishes this infirmity of mine, nor conceal
the fault which I not only practise but profess. Notwithstanding, to
speak my thought freely, I think that the custom of condemning wine,
because some people will be drunk, is itself to be condemned; a man
cannot abuse anything but what is good in itself; and I believe that this
rule has only regard to the popular vice. They are bits for calves, with
which neither the saints whom we hear speak so highly of themselves, nor
the philosophers, nor the divines will be curbed; neither will I, who am
as little the one as the other, If they do not write of it expressly, at
all events, when the occasions arise, they don’t hesitate to put
themselves on the public highway. Of what does Socrates treat more
largely than of himself? To what does he more direct and address the
discourses of his disciples, than to speak of themselves, not of the
lesson in their book, but of the essence and motion of their souls? We
confess ourselves religiously to God and our confessor; as our
neighbours, do to all the people. But some will answer that we there
speak nothing but accusation against ourselves; why then, we say all; for
our very virtue itself is faulty and penetrable. My trade and art is to
live; he that forbids me to speak according to my own sense, experience,
and practice, may as well enjoin an architect not to speak of building
according to his own knowledge, but according to that of his neighbour;
according to the knowledge of another, and not according to his own. If
it be vainglory for a man to publish his own virtues, why does not Cicero
prefer the eloquence of Hortensius, and Hortensius that of Cicero?
Peradventure they mean that I should give testimony of myself by works
and effects, not barely by words. I chiefly paint my thoughts, a subject
void of form and incapable of operative production; ‘tis all that I can
do to couch it in this airy body of the voice; the wisest and devoutest
men have lived in the greatest care to avoid all apparent effects.
Effects would more speak of fortune than of me; they manifest their own
office and not mine, but uncertainly and by conjecture; patterns of some
one particular virtue. I expose myself entire; ‘tis a body where, at one
view, the veins, muscles, and tendons are apparent, every of them in its
proper place; here the effects of a cold; there of the heart beating,
very dubiously. I do not write my own acts, but myself and my essence.
I am of opinion that a man must be very cautious how he values himself,
and equally conscientious to give a true report, be it better or worse,
impartially. If I thought myself perfectly good and wise, I would rattle
it out to some purpose. To speak less of one’s self than what one really
is is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under
a man’s value is pusillanimity and cowardice, according to, Aristotle.
No virtue assists itself with falsehood; truth is never matter of error.
To speak more of one’s self than is really true is not always mere
presumption; ‘tis, moreover, very often folly; to, be immeasurably
pleased with what one is, and to fall into an indiscreet self-love, is in
my opinion the substance of this vice. The most sovereign remedy to cure
it, is to do quite contrary to what these people direct who, in
forbidding men to speak of themselves, consequently, at the same time,
interdict thinking of themselves too. Pride dwells in the thought; the
tongue can have but a very little share in it.
They fancy that to think of one’s self is to be delighted with one’s
self; to frequent and converse with one’s self, to be overindulgent; but
this excess springs only in those who take but a superficial view of
themselves, and dedicate their main inspection to their affairs; who call
it mere reverie and idleness to occupy one’s self with one’s self, and
the building one’s self up a mere building of castles in the air; who
look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger. If any one be
in rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, let
him but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be
abated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him
under foot. If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personal
valour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so many
armies, so many nations, that leave him so far behind them. No
particular quality can make any man proud, that will at the same time put
the many other weak and imperfect ones he has in the other scale, and the
nothingness of human condition to make up the weight. Because Socrates
had alone digested to purpose the precept of his god, “to know himself,”
and by that study arrived at the perfection of setting himself at nought,
he only was reputed worthy the title of a sage. Whosoever shall so know
himself, let him boldly speak it out.


ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
Addresses his voyage to no certain, port
All apprentices when we come to it (death)
Any one may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death
Business to-morrow
Condemning wine, because some people will be drunk
Conscience makes us betray, accuse, and fight against ourselves
Curiosity and of that eager passion for news
Delivered into our own custody the keys of life
Drunkeness a true and certain trial of every one’s nature
I can more hardly believe a man’s constancy than any virtue
“I wish you good health.” “No health to thee,” replied the other
If to philosophise be, as ‘tis defined, to doubt
Improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair
It’s madness to nourish infirmity
Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man
Living is slavery if the liberty of dying be wanting.
Look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger
Lower himself to the meanness of defending his innocence
Much difference betwixt us and ourselves
No alcohol the night on which a man intends to get children
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness
Not conclude too much upon your mistress’s inviolable chastity
One door into life, but a hundred thousand ways out
Ordinary method of cure is carried on at the expense of life
Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age
Shame for me to serve, being so near the reach of liberty
Speak less of one’s self than what one really is is folly
Taught to consider sleep as a resemblance of death
The action is commendable, not the man
The most voluntary death is the finest
The vice opposite to curiosity is negligence
Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect
Thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain
Tis evil counsel that will admit no change
Torture: rather a trial of patience than of truth
We do not go, we are driven
What can they suffer who do not fear to die?
Whoever expects punishment already suffers it
Wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can



ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Translated by Charles Cotton
Edited by William Carew Hazlitt
1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 10.
VII. Of recompenses of honour.
VIII. Of the affection of fathers to their children.
IX. Of the arms of the Parthians.
X. Of books.
XI. Of cruelty.
XII. Apology for Raimond Sebond.

CHAPTER VII
OF RECOMPENSES OF HONOUR
They who write the life of Augustus Caesar,--[Suetonius, Life of
Augustus, c. 25.]--observe this in his military discipline, that he was
wonderfully liberal of gifts to men of merit, but that as to the true
recompenses of honour he was as sparing; yet he himself had been
gratified by his uncle with all the military recompenses before he had
ever been in the field. It was a pretty invention, and received into
most governments of the world, to institute certain vain and in
themselves valueless distinctions to honour and recompense virtue, such
as the crowns of laurel, oak, and myrtle, the particular fashion of some
garment, the privilege to ride in a coach in the city, or at night with a
torch, some peculiar place assigned in public assemblies, the prerogative
of certain additional names and titles, certain distinctions in the
bearing of coats of arms, and the like, the use of which, according to
the several humours of nations, has been variously received, and yet
continues.
We in France, as also several of our neighbours, have orders of
knighthood that are instituted only for this end. And ‘tis, in earnest,
a very good and profitable custom to find out an acknowledgment for the
worth of rare and excellent men, and to satisfy them with rewards that
are not at all chargeable either to prince or people. And that which has
always been found by ancient experience, and which we have heretofore
observed among ourselves, that men of quality have ever been more jealous
of such recompenses than of those wherein there was gain and profit, is
not without very good ground and reason. If with the reward, which ought
to be simply a recompense of honour, they should mix other commodities
and add riches, this mixture, instead of procuring an increase of
estimation, would debase and abate it. The Order of St. Michael, which
has been so long in repute amongst us, had no greater commodity than that
it had no communication with any other commodity, which produced this
effect, that formerly there was no office or title whatever to which the
gentry pretended with so great desire and affection as they did to that;
no quality that carried with it more respect and grandeur, valour and
worth more willingly embracing and with greater ambition aspiring to a
recompense purely its own, and rather glorious than profitable. For, in
truth, other gifts have not so great a dignity of usage, by reason they
are laid out upon all sorts of occasions; with money a man pays the wages
of a servant, the diligence of a courier, dancing, vaulting, speaking,
and the meanest offices we receive; nay, and reward vice with it too, as
flattery, treachery, and pimping; and therefore ‘tis no wonder if virtue
less desires and less willingly receives this common sort of payment,
than that which is proper and peculiar to her, throughout generous and
noble. Augustus had reason to be more sparing of this than the other,
insomuch that honour is a privilege which derives its principal essence
from rarity; and so virtue itself:
“Cui malus est nemo, quis bonus esse potest?”
[“To whom no one is ill who can be good?”-Martial, xii. 82.]
We do not intend it for a commendation when we say that such a one is
careful in the education of his children, by reason it is a common act,
how just and well done soever; no more than we commend a great tree,
where the whole forest is the same. I do not think that any citizen of
Sparta glorified himself much upon his valour, it being the universal
virtue of the whole nation; and as little upon his fidelity and contempt
of riches. There is no recompense becomes virtue, how great soever, that
is once passed into a custom; and I know not withal whether we can ever
call it great, being common.
Seeing, then, that these remunerations of honour have no other value and
estimation but only this, that few people enjoy them, ‘tis but to be
liberal of them to bring them down to nothing. And though there should
be now more men found than in former times worthy of our order, the
estimation of it nevertheless should not be abated, nor the honour made
cheap; and it may easily happen that more may merit it; for there is no
virtue that so easily spreads as that of military valour. There is
another virtue, true, perfect, and philosophical, of which I do not
speak, and only make use of the word in our common acceptation, much
greater than this and more full, which is a force and assurance of the
soul, equally despising all sorts of adverse accidents, equable, uniform,
and constant, of which ours is no more than one little ray. Use,
education, example, and custom can do all in all to the establishment of
that whereof I am speaking, and with great facility render it common, as
by the experience of our civil wars is manifest enough; and whoever could
at this time unite us all, Catholic and Huguenot, into one body, and set
us upon some brave common enterprise, we should again make our ancient
military reputation flourish. It is most certain that in times past the
recompense of this order had not only a regard to valour, but had a
further prospect; it never was the reward of a valiant soldier but of a
great captain; the science of obeying was not reputed worthy of so
honourable a guerdon. There was therein a more universal military
expertness required, and that comprehended the most and the greatest
qualities of a military man:
“Neque enim eaedem militares et imperatorix artes sunt,”
[“For the arts of soldiery and generalship are not the same.”
--Livy, xxv. 19.]
as also, besides, a condition suitable to such a dignity. But, I say,
though more men were worthy than formerly, yet ought it not to be more
liberally distributed, and it were better to fall short in not giving it
at all to whom it should be due, than for ever to lose, as we have lately
done, the fruit of so profitable an invention. No man of spirit will
deign to advantage himself with what is in common with many; and such of