Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 083

labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and that noble circumfusa, mother of the
pretty infuses; I disdain those little quibbles and verbal allusions that
have since sprung up. Those worthy people stood in need of no subtlety
to disguise their meaning; their language is downright, and full of
natural and continued vigour; they are all epigram; not only the tail,
but the head, body, and feet. There is nothing forced, nothing
languishing, but everything keeps the same pace:
“Contextus totes virilis est; non sunt circa flosculos occupati.”
[“The whole contexture is manly; they don’t occupy themselves with
little flowers of rhetoric.”--Seneca, Ep., 33.]
‘Tis not a soft eloquence, and without offence only; ‘tis nervous and
solid, that does not so much please, as it fills and ravishes the
greatest minds. When I see these brave forms of expression, so lively,
so profound, I do not say that ‘tis well said, but well thought. ‘Tis
the sprightliness of the imagination that swells and elevates the words:
“Pectus est quod disertum Tacit.”
[“The heart makes the man eloquent.”--Quintilian, x. 7.]
Our people call language, judgment, and fine words, full conceptions.
This painting is not so much carried on by dexterity of hand as by having
the object more vividly imprinted in the soul. Gallus speaks simply
because he conceives simply: Horace does not content himself with a
superficial expression; that would betray him; he sees farther and more
clearly into things; his mind breaks into and rummages all the magazine
of words and figures wherewith to express himself, and he must have them
more than ordinary, because his conception is so. Plutarch says’ that he
sees the Latin tongue by the things: ‘tis here the same: the sense
illuminates and produces the words, no more words of air, but of flesh
and bone; they signify more than they say. Moreover, those who are not
well skilled in a language present some image of this; for in Italy I
said whatever I had a mind to in common discourse, but in more serious
talk, I durst not have trusted myself with an idiom that I could not wind
and turn out of its ordinary pace; I would have a power of introducing
something of my own.
The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off language;
not so much by innovating it, as by putting it to more vigorous and
various services, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to them.
They do not create words, but they enrich their own, and give them weight
and signification by the uses they put them to, and teach them unwonted
motions, but withal ingeniously and discreetly. And how little this
talent is given to all is manifest by the many French scribblers of this
age: they are bold and proud enough not to follow the common road, but
want of invention and discretion ruins them; there is nothing seen in
their writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style, with
cold and absurd disguises, which, instead of elevating, depress the
matter: provided they can but trick themselves out with new words, they
care not what they signify; and to bring in a new word by the head and
shoulders, they leave the old one, very often more sinewy and significant
than the other.
There is stuff enough in our language, but there is a defect in cutting
out: for there is nothing that might not be made out of our terms of
hunting and war, which is a fruitful soil to borrow from; and forms of
speaking, like herbs, improve and grow stronger by being transplanted.
I find it sufficiently abundant, but not sufficiently pliable and
vigorous; it commonly quails under a powerful conception; if you would
maintain the dignity of your style, you will often perceive it to flag
and languish under you, and there Latin steps in to its relief, as Greek
does to others. Of some of these words I have just picked out we do not
so easily discern the energy, by reason that the frequent use of them has
in some sort abased their beauty, and rendered it common; as in our
ordinary language there are many excellent phrases and metaphors to be
met with, of which the beauty is withered by age, and the colour is
sullied by too common handling; but that nothing lessens the relish to an
understanding man, nor does it derogate from the glory of those ancient
authors who, ‘tis likely, first brought those words into that lustre.
The sciences treat of things too refinedly, after an artificial, very
different from the common and natural, way. My page makes love, and
understands it; but read to him Leo Hebraeus--[Leo the Jew, Ficinus,
Cardinal Bembo, and Mario Equicola all wrote Treatises on Love.]--
and Ficinus, where they speak of love, its thoughts and actions, he
understands it not. I do not find in Aristotle most of my ordinary
motions; they are there covered and disguised in another robe for the use
of the schools. Good speed them! were I of the trade, I would as much
naturalise art as they artificialise nature. Let us let Bembo and
Equicola alone.
When I write, I can very well spare both the company and the remembrance
of books, lest they should interrupt my progress; and also, in truth, the
best authors too much humble and discourage me: I am very much of the
painter’s mind, who, having represented cocks most wretchedly ill,
charged all his boys not to suffer any natural cock to come into his
shop; and had rather need to give myself a little lustre, of the
invention of Antigenides the musician, who, when he was asked to sing or
play, took care beforehand that the auditory should, either before or
after, be satiated with some other ill musicians. But I can hardly be
without Plutarch; he is so universal and so full, that upon all
occasions, and what extravagant subject soever you take in hand, he will
still be at your elbow, and hold out to you a liberal and not to be
exhausted hand of riches and embellishments. It vexes me that he is so
exposed to be the spoil of those who are conversant with him: I can
scarce cast an eye upon him but I purloin either a leg or a wing.
And also for this design of mine ‘tis convenient for me for me to write
at home, in a wild country, where I have nobody to assist or relieve me;
where I hardly see a man who understands the Latin of his Paternoster,
and of French a little less. I might have made it better elsewhere, but
then the work would have been less my own; and its principal end and
perfection is to be exactly mine. I readily correct an accidental error,
of which I am full, as I run carelessly on; but for my ordinary and
constant imperfections, it were a kind of treason to put them out. When
another tells me, or that I say to myself, “Thou art too thick of
figures: this is a word of rough Gascon: that is a dangerous phrase (I do
not reject any of those that are used in the common streets of France;
they who would fight custom with grammar are triflers): this is an
ignorant discourse: this is a paradoxical discourse: that is going too
far: thou makest thyself too merry at times: men will think thou sayest a
thing in good earnest which thou only speakest in jest.”--“Yes, I know,
but I correct the faults of inadvertence, not those of custom. Do I not
talk at the same rate throughout? Do I not represent myself to the life?
‘Tis enough that I have done what I designed; all the world knows me in
my book, and my book in me.”
Now I have an apish, imitative quality: when I used to write verses (and
I never made any but Latin), they evidently discovered the poet I had
last read, and some of my first essays have a little exotic taste: I
speak something another kind of language at Paris than I do at Montaigne.
Whoever I steadfastly look upon easily leaves some impression of his upon
me; whatever I consider I usurp, whether a foolish countenance, a
disagreeable look, or a ridiculous way of speaking; and vices most of
all, because they seize and stick to me, and will not leave hold without
shaking. I swear more by imitation than by complexion: a murderous
imitation, like that of the apes so terrible both in stature and
strength, that Alexander met with in a certain country of the Indies, and
which he would have had much ado any other way to have subdued; but they
afforded him the means by that inclination of theirs to imitate whatever
they saw done; for by that the hunters were taught to put on shoes in
their sight, and to tie them fast with many knots, and to muffle up their
heads in caps all composed of running nooses, and to seem to anoint their
eyes with glue; so did those poor beasts employ their imitation to their
own ruin they glued up their own eyes, haltered and bound themselves.
The other faculty of playing the mimic, and ingeniously acting the words
and gestures of another, purposely to make people merry and to raise
their admiration, is no more in me than in a stock. When I swear my own
oath, ‘tis only, by God! of all oaths the most direct. They say that
Socrates swore by the dog; Zeno had for his oath the same interjection at
this time in use amongst the Italians, Cappari! Pythagoras swore By
water and air. I am so apt, without thinking of it, to receive these
superficial impressions, that if I have Majesty or Highness in my mouth
three days together, they come out instead of Excellency and Lordship
eight days after; and what I say to-day in sport and fooling I shall say
the same to-morrow seriously. Wherefore, in writing, I more unwillingly
undertake beaten arguments, lest I should handle them at another’s
expense. Every subject is equally fertile to me: a fly will serve the
purpose, and ‘tis well if this I have in hand has not been undertaken at
the recommendation of as flighty a will. I may begin, with that which
pleases me best, for the subjects are all linked to one another.
But my soul displeases me, in that it ordinarily produces its deepest and
most airy conceits and which please me best, when I least expect or study
for them, and which suddenly vanish, having at the instant, nothing to
apply them to; on horseback, at table, and in bed: but most on horseback,
where I am most given to think. My speaking is a little nicely jealous
of silence and attention: if I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me,
stops me. In travelling, the necessity of the way will often put a stop
to discourse; besides which I, for the most part, travel without company
fit for regular discourses, by which means I have all the leisure I would
to entertain myself. It falls out as it does in my dreams; whilst
dreaming I recommend them to my memory (for I am apt to dream that I
dream), but, the next morning, I may represent to myself of what
complexion they were, whether gay, or sad, or strange, but what they
were, as to the rest, the more I endeavour to retrieve them, the deeper I
plunge them in oblivion. So of thoughts that come accidentally into my
head, I have no more but a vain image remaining in my memory; only enough
to make me torment myself in their quest to no purpose.
Well, then, laying books aside, and more simply and materially speaking,
I find, after all, that Love is nothing else but the thirst of enjoying
the object desired, or Venus any other thing than the pleasure of
discharging one’s vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in
discharging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion
become vicious. According to Socrates, love is the appetite of
generation by the mediation of beauty. And when I consider the
ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wild
motions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage,
the countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of
love, and then that austere air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, in so wanton
an action; that our delights and our excrements are promiscuously
shuffled together; and that the supreme pleasure brings along with it, as
in pain, fainting and complaining; I believe it to be true, as Plato
says, that the gods made man for their sport:
“Quaenam ista jocandi
Saevitia!”
[“With a sportive cruelty” (Or:) “What an unkindness there is in
jesting!”--Claudian in Eutrop. i. 24.]
and that it was in mockery that nature has ordered the most agitative of
actions and the most common, to make us equal, and to put fools and wise
men, beasts and us, on a level. Even the most contemplative and prudent
man, when I imagine him in this posture, I hold him an impudent fellow to
pretend to be prudent and contemplative; they are the peacocks’ feet that
abate his pride:
“Ridentem dicere verum
Quid vetat?”
[“What prevents us from speaking truth with a smile?”
--Horace, Sat., i. I, 24.]
They who banish serious imaginations from their sports, do, says one,
like him who dares not adore the statue of a saint, if not covered with a
veil. We eat and drink, indeed, as beasts do; but these are not actions
that obstruct the functions of the soul, in these we maintain our
advantage over them; this other action subjects all other thought,
and by its imperious authority makes an ass of all Plato’s divinity and
philosophy; and yet there is no complaint of it. In everything else a
man may keep some decorum, all other operations submit to the rules of
decency; this cannot so much as in imagination appear other than vicious
or ridiculous: find out, if you can, therein any serious and discreet
procedure. Alexander said, that he chiefly knew himself to be mortal by
this act and sleeping; sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of
the soul; the familiarity with women likewise dissipates and exhausts
them: doubtless ‘tis a mark, not only of our original corruption, but
also of our vanity and deformity.
On the one side, nature pushes us on to it, having fixed the most noble,
useful, and pleasant of all her functions to this desire: and, on the
other side, leaves us to accuse and avoid it, as insolent and indecent,
to blush at it, and to recommend abstinence. Are we not brutes to call
that work brutish which begets us? People of so many differing religions
have concurred in several proprieties, as sacrifices, lamps, burning
incense, fasts, and offerings; and amongst others, in the condemning this
act: all opinions tend that way, besides the widespread custom of
circumcision, which may be regarded as a punishment. We have,
peradventure, reason to blame ourselves for being guilty of so foolish
a production as man, and to call the act, and the parts that are employed
in the act, shameful (mine, truly, are now shameful and pitiful). The
Essenians, of whom Pliny speaks, kept up their country for several ages
without either nurse or baby-clouts, by the arrival of strangers who,
following this pretty humour, came continually to them: a whole nation
being resolute, rather to hazard a total extermination, than to engage
themselves in female embraces, and rather to lose the succession of men,
than to beget one. ‘Tis said, that Zeno never had to do with a woman but
once in his life, and then out of civility, that he might not seem too
obstinately to disdain the sex.
[Diogenes Laertius, vii. 13.--What is there said, however, is that
Zeno seldom had commerce with boys, lest he should be deemed a very
misogynist.]
Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; to
destroy him a spacious field is sought out in the face of the sun, but,
to make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can: ‘tis a
man’s duty to withdraw himself bashfully from the light to create; but
‘tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to destroy what
we have made: the one is injury, the other favour: for Aristotle says
that to do any one a kindness, in a certain phrase of his country, is to
kill him. The Athenians, to couple the disgrace of these two actions,
having to purge the Isle of Delos, and to justify themselves to Apollo,
interdicted at once all births and burials in the precincts thereof:
“Nostri nosmet paenitet.”
[“We are ashamed of ourselves.”--Terence, Phoymio, i. 3, 20.]
There are some nations that will not be seen to eat. I know a lady, and
of the best quality, who has the same opinion, that chewing disfigures
the face, and takes away much from the ladies’ grace and beauty; and
therefore unwillingly appears at a public table with an appetite; and I
know a man also, who cannot endure to see another eat, nor himself to be
seen eating, and who is more shy of company when putting in than when
putting out. In the Turkish empire, there are a great number of men who,
to excel others, never suffer themselves to be seen when they make their
repast: who never have any more than one a week; who cut and mangle their
faces and limbs; who never speak to any one: fanatic people who think to
honour their nature by disnaturing themselves; who value themselves upon
their contempt of themselves, and purport to grow better by being worse.
What monstrous animal is this, that is a horror to himself, to whom his
delights are grievous, and who weds himself to misfortune? There are
people who conceal their life:
“Exilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant,”
[“And change for exile their homes and pleasant abodes.”
--Virgil, Georg., ii. 511.]
and withdraw them from the sight of other men; who avoid health and
cheerfulness, as dangerous and prejudicial qualities. Not only many
sects, but many peoples, curse their birth, and bless their death; and
there is a place where the sun is abominated and darkness adored. We are
only ingenious in using ourselves ill: ‘tis the real quarry our
intellects fly at; and intellect, when misapplied, is a dangerous tool!
“O miseri! quorum gaudia crimen habent!”
[“O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime!”
--Pseudo Gallus, i. 180.]
Alas, poor man! thou hast enough inconveniences that are inevitable,
without increasing them by throe own invention; and art miserable enough
by nature, without being so by art; thou hast real and essential
deformities enough, without forging those that are imaginary. Dost thou
think thou art too much at ease unless half thy ease is uneasy? dost
thou find that thou hast not performed all the necessary offices that
nature has enjoined thee, and that she is idle in thee, if thou dost not
oblige thyself to other and new offices? Thou dost not stick to infringe
her universal and undoubted laws; but stickest to thy own special and
fantastic rules, and by how much more particular, uncertain, and
contradictory they are, by so much thou employest thy whole endeavour in
them: the laws of thy parish occupy and bind thee: those of God and the
world concern thee not. Run but a little over the examples of this kind;
thy life is full of them.
Whilst the verses of these two poets, treat so reservedly and discreetly
of wantonness as they do, methinks they discover it much more openly.
Ladies cover their necks with network, priests cover several sacred
things, and painters shadow their pictures to give them greater lustre:
and ‘tis said that the sun and wind strike more violently by reflection
than in a direct line. The Egyptian wisely answered him who asked him
what he had under his cloak, “It is hid under my cloak,” said he, “that
thou mayest not know what it is:” but there are certain other things that
people hide only to show them. Hear that one, who speaks plainer,
“Et nudum pressi corpus ad usque meum:”
[“And pressed her naked body to mine” (Or:) “My body
I applied even to her naked side”--Ovid, Amor., i. 5, 24.]
methinks that he emasculates me. Let Martial turn up Venus as high as he
may, he cannot shew her so naked: he who says all that is to be said
gluts and disgusts us. He who is afraid to express himself, draws us on
to guess at more than is meant; there is treachery in this sort of
modesty, and specially when they half open, as these do, so fair a path
to imagination. Both the action and description should relish of theft.
The more respectful, more timorous, more coy, and secret love of the
Spaniards and Italians pleases me. I know not who of old wished his
throat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he
swallowed; it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous
pleasure, especially in such natures as mine that have the fault of being
too prompt. To stay its flight and delay it with preambles: all things
--a glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favour and recompense betwixt
them. Were it not an excellent piece of thrift in him who could dine on
the steam of the roast? ‘Tis a passion that mixes with very little solid
essence, far more vanity and feverish raving; and we should serve and pay
it accordingly. Let us teach the ladies to set a better value and esteem
upon themselves, to amuse and fool us: we give the last charge at the
first onset; the French impetuosity will still show itself; by spinning
out their favours, and exposing them in small parcels, even miserable old
age itself will find some little share of reward, according to its worth
and merit. He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins nothing
unless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no pleasure in the chase but in
the quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more steps
and degrees there are, so much higher and more honourable is the
uppermost seat: we should take a pleasure in being conducted to it, as in
magnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasant
galleries, and many windings. This disposition of things would turn to
our advantage; we should there longer stay and longer love; without hope
and without desire we proceed not worth a pin. Our conquest and entire
possession is what they ought infinitely to dread: when they wholly
surrender themselves up to the mercy of our fidelity and constancy they
run a mighty hazard; they are virtues very rare and hard to be found; the
ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs:
“Postquam cupidae mentis satiata libido est,
Verba nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant;”
[“When our desires are once satisfied, we care little
for oaths and promises.”--Catullus, lxiv. 147.]
And Thrasonides, a young man of Greece, was so in love with his passion
that, having, gained a mistress’s consent, he refused to enjoy her, that
he might not by fruition quench and stupefy the unquiet ardour of which
he was so proud, and with which he so fed himself. Dearness is a good
sauce to meat: do but observe how much the manner of salutation,
particular to our nation, has, by its facilities, made kisses, which
Socrates says are so powerful and dangerous for the stealing of hearts,
of no esteem. It is a displeasing custom and injurious for the ladies,
that they must be obliged to lend their lips to every fellow who has
three footmen at his heels, however ill-favoured he may be in himself:
“Cujus livida naribus caninis
Dependet glacies, rigetque barba . . .
Centum occurrere malo culilingis:”
Martial, vii. 94.
and we ourselves barely gain by it; for as the world is divided, for
three beautiful women we must kiss fifty ugly ones; and to a tender
stomach, like those of my age, an ill kiss overpays a good one.
In Italy they passionately court even their common women who sell
themselves for money, and justify the doing so by saying, “that there are
degrees of fruition, and that by such service they would procure for
themselves that which is most entire; the women sell nothing but their
bodies; the will is too free and too much of its own to be exposed to
sale.” So that these say, ‘tis the will they undertake and they have
reason. ‘Tis indeed the will that we are to serve and gain by wooing.
I abhor to imagine mine, a body without affection: and this madness is,
methinks, cousin-german to that of the boy who would needs pollute the
beautiful statue of Venus made by Praxiteles; or that of the furious
Egyptian, who violated the dead carcase of a woman he was embalming:
which was the occasion of the law then made in Egypt, that the corpses of
beautiful young women, of those of good quality, should be kept three
days before they should be delivered to those whose office it was to take
care for the interment. Periander did more wonderfully, who extended his
conjugal affection (more regular and legitimate) to the enjoyment of his
wife Melissa after she was dead. Does it not seem a lunatic humour in
the Moon, seeing she could no otherwise enjoy her darling Endymion, to
lay-him for several months asleep, and to please herself with the
fruition of a boy who stirred not but in his sleep? I likewise say that
we love a body without a soul or sentiment when we love a body without
its consent and desire. All enjoyments are not alike: there are some
that are hectic and languishing: a thousand other causes besides
good-will may procure us this favour from the ladies; this is not a
sufficient testimony of affection: treachery may lurk there, as well as
elsewhere: they sometimes go to’t by halves:
“Tanquam thura merumque parent
Absentem marmoreamve putes:”
[“As if they are preparing frankincense and wine . . . you might
think her absent or marble.”--Martial, xi. 103, 12, and 59, 8.]
I know some who had rather lend that than their coach, and who only
impart themselves that way. You are to examine whether your company
pleases them upon any other account, or, as some strong-chined groom,
for that only; in what degree of favour and esteem you are with them:
“Tibi si datur uni,
Quem lapide illa diem candidiore notat.”
[“Wherefore that is enough, if that day alone is given us which she
marks with a whiter stone.”--Catullus, lxviii. 147.]
What if they eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing
imagination.
“Te tenet, absentes alios suspirat amores.”
[“She has you in her arms; her thoughts are with
other absent lovers.”--Tibullus, i. 6, 35.]
What? have we not seen one in these days of ours who made use of this act
for the purpose of a most horrid revenge, by that means to kill and
poison, as he did, a worthy lady?
Such as know Italy will not think it strange if, for this subject, I seek
not elsewhere for examples; for that nation may be called the regent of
the world in this. They have more generally handsome and fewer ugly
women than we; but for rare and excellent beauties we have as many as
they. I think the same of their intellects: of those of the common sort,
they have evidently far more brutishness is immeasurably rarer there;
but in individual characters of the highest form, we are nothing indebted
to them. If I should carry on the comparison, I might say, as touching
valour, that, on the contrary, it is, to what it is with them, common and
natural with us; but sometimes we see them possessed of it to such a
degree as surpasses the greatest examples we can produce: The marriages
of that country are defective in this; their custom commonly imposes so
rude and so slavish a law upon the women, that the most distant
acquaintance with a stranger is as capital an offence as the most
intimate; so that all approaches being rendered necessarily substantial,
and seeing that all comes to one account, they have no hard choice to
make; and when they have broken down the fence, we may safely presume
they get on fire:
“Luxuria ipsis vinculis, sicut fera bestia,
irritata, deinde emissa.”
[“Lust, like a wild beast, being more excited by being bound,
breaks from his chains with greater wildness.”--Livy, xxxiv. 4.]
They must give them a little more rein:
“Vidi ego nuper equum, contra sua frena tenacem,