Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 087

puissant kings, who were ever draining their mines to make this vast heap
of vessels and statues for the decoration of their palaces and temples;
whereas our gold is always in motion and traffic; we cut it into a
thousand small pieces, and cast it into a thousand forms, and scatter and
disperse it in a thousand ways. But suppose our kings should thus hoard
up all the gold they could get in several ages and let it lie idle by
them.
Those of the kingdom of Mexico were in some sort more civilised and more
advanced in arts than the other nations about them. Therefore did they
judge, as we do, that the world was near its period, and looked upon the
desolation we brought amongst them as a certain sign of it. They
believed that the existence of the world was divided into five ages, and
in the life of five successive suns, of which four had already ended
their time, and that this which gave them light was the fifth. The first
perished, with all other creatures, by an universal inundation of water;
the second by the heavens falling upon us and suffocating every living
thing to which age they assigned the giants, and showed bones to the
Spaniards, according to the proportion of which the stature of men
amounted to twenty feet; the third by fire, which burned and consumed
all; the fourth by an emotion of the air and wind, which came with such
violence as to beat down even many mountains, wherein the men died not,
but were turned into baboons. What impressions will not the weakness of
human belief admit? After the death of this fourth sun, the world was
twenty-five years in perpetual darkness: in the fifteenth of which a man
and a woman were created, who restored the human race: ten years after,
upon a certain day, the sun appeared newly created, and since the account
of their year takes beginning from that day: the third day after its
creation the ancient gods died, and the new ones were since born daily.
After what manner they think this last sun shall perish, my author knows
not; but their number of this fourth change agrees with the great
conjunction of stars which eight hundred and odd years ago, as
astrologers suppose, produced great alterations and novelties in the
world.
As to pomp and magnificence, upon the account of which I engaged in this
discourse, neither Greece, Rome, nor Egypt, whether for utility,
difficulty, or state, can compare any of their works with the highway to
be seen in Peru, made by the kings of the country, from the city of Quito
to that of Cusco (three hundred leagues), straight, even, five-and-twenty
paces wide, paved, and provided on both sides with high and beautiful
walls; and close by them, and all along on the inside, two perennial
streams, bordered with beautiful plants, which they call moly. In this
work, where they met with rocks and mountains, they cut them through, and
made them even, and filled up pits and valleys with lime and stone to
make them level. At the end of every day’s journey are beautiful
palaces, furnished with provisions, vestments, and arms, as well for
travellers as for the armies that are to pass that way. In the estimate
of this work I have reckoned the difficulty which is especially
considerable in that place; they did not build with any stones less than
ten feet square, and had no other conveniency of carriage but by drawing
their load themselves by force of arm, and knew not so much as the art of
scaffolding, nor any other way of standing to their work, but by throwing
up earth against the building as it rose higher, taking it away again
when they had done.
Let us here return to our coaches. Instead of these, and of all other
sorts of carriages, they caused themselves to be carried upon men’s
shoulders. This last king of Peru, the day that he was taken, was thus
carried betwixt two upon staves of gold, and set in a chair of gold in
the middle of his army. As many of these sedan-men as were killed to
make him fall (for they would take him alive), so many others (and they
contended for it) took the place of those who were slain, so that they
could never beat him down, what slaughter soever they made of these
people, till a horseman, seizing upon him, brought him to the ground.


CHAPTER VII
OF THE INCONVENIENCE OF GREATNESS
Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge our selves by railing at
it; and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything to proclaim its
defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how
much to be coveted soever. Greatness has, in general, this manifest
advantage, that it can lower itself when it pleases, and has, very near,
the choice of both the one and the other condition; for a man does not
fall from all heights; there are several from which one may descend
without falling down. It does, indeed, appear to me that we value it at
too high a rate, and also overvalue the resolution of those whom we have
either seen or heard have contemned it, or displaced themselves of their
own accord: its essence is not so evidently commodious that a man may
not, with out a miracle, refuse it. I find it a very hard thing to
undergo misfortunes, but to be content with a moderate measure of
fortune, and to avoid greatness, I think a very easy matter. ‘Tis,
methinks, a virtue to which I, who am no conjuror, could without any
great endeavour arrive. What, then, is to be expected from them that
would yet put into consideration the glory attending this refusal,
wherein there may lurk worse ambition than even in the desire itself,
and fruition of greatness? Forasmuch as ambition never comports itself
better, according to itself, than when it proceeds by obscure and
unfrequented ways.
I incite my courage to patience, but I rein it as much as I can towards
desire. I have as much to wish for as another, and allow my wishes as
much liberty and indiscretion; but yet it never befell me to wish for
either empire or royalty, or the eminency of those high and commanding
fortunes: I do not aim that way; I love myself too well. When I think to
grow greater, ‘tis but very moderately, and by a compelled and timorous
advancement, such as is proper for me in resolution, in prudence, in
health, in beauty, and even in riches too; but this supreme reputation,
this mighty authority, oppress my imagination; and, quite contrary to
that other,--[Julius Caesar.]--I should, peradventure, rather choose to
be the second or third in Perigord than the first at Paris at least,
without lying, rather the third at Paris than the first. I would neither
dispute with a porter, a miserable unknown, nor make crowds open in
adoration as I pass. I am trained up to a moderate condition, as well by
my choice as fortune; and have made it appear, in the whole conduct of my
life and enterprises, that I have rather avoided than otherwise the
climbing above the degree of fortune wherein God has placed me by my
birth; all natural constitution is equally just and easy. My soul is
such a poltroon, that I measure not good fortune by the height, but by
the facility.
But if my heart be not great enough, ‘tis open enough to make amends, at
any one’s request, freely to lay open its weakness. Should any one put
me upon comparing the life of L. Thorius Balbus, a brave man, handsome,
learned, healthful, understanding, and abounding in all sorts of
conveniences and pleasures, leading a quiet life, and all his own, his
mind well prepared against death, superstition, pain, and other
incumbrances of human necessity, dying, at last, in battle, with his
sword in his hand, for the defence of his country, on the one part; and
on the other part, the life of M. Regulus, so great and high as is known
to every one, and his end admirable; the one without name and without
dignity, the other exemplary and glorious to a wonder. I should
doubtless say, as Cicero did, could I speak as well as he.
[Cicero, De Finibus, ii. 20, gives the preference to Regulus, and
proclaims him the happier man.]
But if I was to compare them with my own, I should then also say that the
first is as much according to my capacity, and from desire, which I
conform to my capacity, as the second is far beyond it; that I could not
approach the last but with veneration, the other I could readily attain
by use.
Let us return to our temporal greatness, from which we are digressed. I
disrelish all dominion, whether active or passive. Otanes, one of the
seven who had right to pretend to the kingdom of Persia, did as I should
willingly have done, which was, that he gave up to his competitors his
right of being promoted to it, either by election or by lot, provided
that he and his might live in the empire out of all authority and
subjection, those of the ancient laws excepted, and might enjoy all
liberty that was not prejudicial to these, being as impatient of
commanding as of being commanded.
The most painful and difficult employment in the world, in my opinion, is
worthily to discharge the office of a king. I excuse more of their
mistakes than men commonly do, in consideration of the intolerable weight
of their function, which astounds me. ‘Tis hard to keep measure in so
immeasurable a power; yet so it is that it is, even to those who are not
of the best nature, a singular incitement to virtue to be seated in a
place where you cannot do the least good that shall not be put upon
record, and where the least benefit redounds to so many men, and where
your talent of administration, like that of preachers, principally
addresses itself to the people, no very exact judge, easy to deceive, and
easily content. There are few things wherein we can give a sincere
judgment, by reason that there are few wherein we have not, in some sort,
a private interest. Superiority and inferiority, dominion and subjection
are bound to a natural envy and contest, and must of necessity
perpetually intrench upon one another. I believe neither the one nor the
other touching the rights of the other party; let reason therefore, which
is inflexible and without passion, determine when we can avail ourselves
of it. ‘Tis not above a month ago that I read over, two Scottish authors
contending upon this subject, of whom he who stands for the people makes
the king to be in a worse condition than a carter; he who writes for
monarchy places him some degrees above God in power and sovereignty.
Now, the incommodity of greatness that I have taken to remark in this
place, upon some occasion that has lately put it into my head, is this:
there is not, peradventure, anything more pleasant in the commerce of
many than the trials that we make against one another, out of emulation
of honour and worth, whether in the exercises of the body or in those of
the mind, wherein sovereign greatness can have no true part. And, in
earnest, I have often thought that by force of respect itself men use
princes disdainfully and injuriously in that particular; for the thing I
was infinitely offended at in my childhood, that they who exercised with
me forbore to do their best because they found me unworthy of their
utmost endeavour, is what we see happen to them daily, every one finding
himself unworthy to contend with them. If we discover that they have the
least desire to get the better of us, there is no one who will not make
it his business to give it them, and who will not rather betray his own
glory than offend theirs; and will therein employ so much force only as
is necessary to save their honour. What share have they, then, in the
engagement, where every one is on their side? Methinks I see those
paladins of ancient times presenting themselves to jousts and battle with
enchanted arms and bodies. Brisson,
[Plutarch, On Satisfaction or Tranquillity of the Mind. But in his
essay, How a Man may Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend, he calls
him Chriso.]
running against Alexander, purposely missed his blow, and made a fault in
his career; Alexander chid him for it, but he ought to have had him
whipped. Upon this consideration Carneades said, that “the sons of
princes learned nothing right but to manage horses; by reason that, in
all their other exercises, every one bends and yields to them; but a
horse, that is neither a flatterer nor a courtier, throws the son of a
king with no more ceremony than he would throw that of a porter.”
Homer was fain to consent that Venus, so sweet and delicate a goddess as
she was, should be wounded at the battle of Troy, thereby to ascribe
courage and boldness to her qualities that cannot possibly be in those
who are exempt from danger. The gods are made to be angry, to fear, to
run away, to be jealous, to grieve, to be transported with passions, to
honour them with the virtues that, amongst us, are built upon these
imperfections. Who does not participate in the hazard and difficulty, can
claim no interest in the honour and pleasure that are the consequents of
hazardous actions. ‘Tis pity a man should be so potent that all things
must give way to him; fortune therein sets you too remote from society,
and places you in too great a solitude. This easiness and mean facility
of making all things bow under you, is an enemy to all sorts of pleasure:
‘tis to slide, not to go; ‘tis to sleep, and not to live. Conceive man
accompanied with omnipotence: you overwhelm him; he must beg disturbance
and opposition as an alms: his being and his good are in indigence. Evil
to man is in its turn good, and good evil. Neither is pain always to be
shunned, nor pleasure always to be pursued.
Their good qualities are dead and lost; for they can only be perceived by
comparison, and we put them out of this: they have little knowledge of
true praise, having their ears deafened with so continual and uniform an
approbation. Have they to do with the stupidest of all their subjects?
they have no means to take any advantage of him; if he but say: “‘Tis
because he is my king,” he thinks he has said enough to express that he
therefore suffered himself to be overcome. This quality stifles and
consumes the other true and essential qualities: they are sunk in the
royalty, and leave them nothing to recommend themselves with but actions
that directly concern and serve the function of their place; ‘tis so much
to be a king, that this alone remains to them. The outer glare that
environs him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there
repelled and dissipated, being filled and stopped by this prevailing
light. The senate awarded the prize of eloquence to Tiberius; he refused
it, esteeming that though it had been just, he could derive no advantage
from a judgment so partial, and that was so little free to judge.
As we give them all advantages of honour, so do we soothe and authorise
all their vices and defects, not only by approbation, but by imitation
also. Every one of Alexander’s followers carried his head on one side,
as he did; and the flatterers of Dionysius ran against one another in his
presence, and stumbled at and overturned whatever was under foot, to shew
they were as purblind as he. Hernia itself has also served to recommend
a man to favour; I have seen deafness affected; and because the master
hated his wife, Plutarch--[who, however, only gives one instance; and in
this he tells us that the man visited his wife privately.]--has seen his
courtiers repudiate theirs, whom they loved; and, which is yet more,
uncleanliness and all manner of dissoluteness have so been in fashion; as
also disloyalty, blasphemy, cruelty, heresy, superstition, irreligion,
effeminacy, and worse, if worse there be; and by an example yet more
dangerous than that of Mithridates’ flatterers, who, as their master
pretended to the honour of a good physician, came to him to have
incisions and cauteries made in their limbs; for these others suffered
the soul, a more delicate and noble part, to be cauterised.
But to end where I began: the Emperor Adrian, disputing with the
philosopher Favorinus about the interpretation of some word, Favorinus
soon yielded him the victory; for which his friends rebuking him, “You
talk simply,” said he; “would you not have him wiser than I, who commands
thirty legions?” Augustus wrote verses against Asinius Pollio, and “I,”
said Pollio, “say nothing, for it is not prudence to write in contest
with him who has power to proscribe.” And they were right. For
Dionysius, because he could not equal Philoxenus in poesy and Plato in
discourse, condemned the one to the quarries, and sent the other to be
sold for a slave into the island of AEgina.


CHAPTER VIII
OF THE ART OF CONFERENCE
‘Tis a custom of our justice to condemn some for a warning to others. To
condemn them for having done amiss, were folly, as Plato says,
[Diogenes Laertius, however, in his Life of Plato, iii. 181, says
that Plato’s offence was the speaking too freely to the tyrant.]
for what is done can never be undone; but ‘tis to the end they may offend
no more, and that others may avoid the example of their offence: we do
not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him. I do the same; my
errors are sometimes natural, incorrigible, and irremediable: but the
good which virtuous men do to the public, in making themselves imitated,
I, peradventure, may do in making my manners avoided:
“Nonne vides, Albi ut male vivat filius? utque
Barrus inops? magnum documentum, ne patriam rein
Perdere guis velit;”
[“Dost thou not see how ill the son of Albus lives? and how the
indigent Barrus? a great warning lest any one should incline to
dissipate his patrimony.”--Horace, Sat., i. 4, 109.]
publishing and accusing my own imperfections, some one will learn to be
afraid of them. The parts that I most esteem in myself, derive more
honour from decrying, than for commending myself which is the reason why
I so often fall into, and so much insist upon that strain. But, when all
is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; a man’s
accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never: There may,
peradventure, be some of my own complexion who better instruct myself by
contrariety than by similitude, and by avoiding than by imitation. The
elder Cato was regarding this sort of discipline, when he said, “that the
wise may learn more of fools, than fools can of the wise”; and Pausanias
tells us of an ancient player upon the harp, who was wont to make his
scholars go to hear one who played very ill, who lived over against him,
that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures. The
horror of cruelty more inclines me to clemency, than any example of
clemency could possibly do. A good rider does not so much mend my seat,
as an awkward attorney or a Venetian, on horseback; and a clownish way of
speaking more reforms mine than the most correct. The ridiculous and
simple look of another always warns and advises me; that which pricks,
rouses and incites much better than that which tickles. The time is now
proper for us to reform backward; more by dissenting than by agreeing; by
differing more than by consent. Profiting little by good examples, I
make use of those that are ill, which are everywhere to be found: I
endeavour to render myself as agreeable as I see others offensive; as
constant as I see others fickle; as affable as I see others rough; as
good as I see others evil: but I propose to myself impracticable
measures.
The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, in my opinion, is
conversation; I find the use of it more sweet than of any other action of
life; and for that reason it is that, if I were now compelled to choose,
I should sooner, I think, consent to lose my sight, than my hearing and
speech. The Athenians, and also the Romans, kept this exercise in great
honour in their academies; the Italians retain some traces of it to this
day, to their great advantage, as is manifest by the comparison of our
understandings with theirs. The study of books is a languishing and
feeble motion that heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises
at once. If I converse with a strong mind and a rough disputant, he
presses upon my flanks, and pricks me right and left; his imaginations
stir up mine; jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up
to something above myself; and acquiescence is a quality altogether
tedious in discourse. But, as our mind fortifies itself by the
communication of vigorous and regular understandings, ‘tis not to be
expressed how much it loses and degenerates by the continual commerce and
familiarity we have with mean and weak spirits; there is no contagion
that spreads like that; I know sufficiently by experience what ‘tis worth
a yard. I love to discourse and dispute, but it is with but few men, and
for myself; for to do it as a spectacle and entertainment to great
persons, and to make of a man’s wit and words competitive parade is, in
my opinion, very unbecoming a man of honour.
Folly is a bad quality; but not to be able to endure it, to fret and vex
at it, as I do, is another sort of disease little less troublesome than
folly itself; and is the thing that I will now accuse in myself. I enter
into conference, and dispute with great liberty and facility, forasmuch
as opinion meets in me with a soil very unfit for penetration, and
wherein to take any deep root; no propositions astonish me, no belief
offends me, though never so contrary to my own; there is no so frivolous
and extravagant fancy that does not seem to me suitable to the production
of human wit. We, who deprive our judgment of the right of determining,
look indifferently upon the diverse opinions, and if we incline not our
judgment to them, yet we easily give them the hearing: Where one scale is
totally empty, I let the other waver under an old wife’s dreams; and I
think myself excusable, if I prefer the odd number; Thursday rather than
Friday; if I had rather be the twelfth or fourteenth than the thirteenth
at table; if I had rather, on a journey, see a hare run by me than cross
my way, and rather give my man my left foot than my right, when he comes
to put on my stockings. All such reveries as are in credit around us,
deserve at least a hearing: for my part, they only with me import
inanity, but they import that. Moreover, vulgar and casual opinions are
something more than nothing in nature; and he who will not suffer himself
to proceed so far, falls, peradventure, into the vice of obstinacy, to
avoid that of superstition.
The contradictions of judgments, then, neither offend nor alter, they
only rouse and exercise, me. We evade correction, whereas we ought to
offer and present ourselves to it, especially when it appears in the form
of conference, and not of authority. At every opposition, we do not
consider whether or no it be dust, but, right or wrong, how to disengage
ourselves: instead of extending the arms, we thrust out our claws. I
could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friend, so much as to tell
me that I am a fool, and talk I know not of what. I love stout
expressions amongst gentle men, and to have them speak as they think; we
must fortify and harden our hearing against this tenderness of the
ceremonious sound of words. I love a strong and manly familiarity and
conversation: a friendship that pleases itself in the sharpness and
vigour of its communication, like love in biting and scratching: it is
not vigorous and generous enough, if it be not quarrelsome, if it be
civilised and artificial, if it treads nicely and fears the shock:
“Neque enim disputari sine reprehensione potest.”
[“Neither can a man dispute, but he must contradict.”
(Or:) “Nor can people dispute without reprehension.”
--Cicero, De Finib., i. 8.]
When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger: I
advance towards him who controverts, who instructs me; the cause of truth
ought to be the common cause both of the one and the other. What will
the angry man answer? Passion has already confounded his judgment;
agitation has usurped the place of reason. It were not amiss that the
decision of our disputes should pass by wager: that there might be a
material mark of our losses, to the end we might the better remember
them; and that my man might tell me: “Your ignorance and obstinacy cost
you last year, at several times, a hundred crowns.” I hail and caress
truth in what quarter soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself,
and open my conquered arms as far off as I can discover it; and, provided
it be not too imperiously, take a pleasure in being reproved, and
accommodate myself to my accusers, very often more by reason of civility
than amendment, loving to gratify and nourish the liberty of admonition
by my facility of submitting to it, and this even at my own expense.
Nevertheless, it is hard to bring the men of my time to it: they have not
the courage to correct, because they have not the courage to suffer
themselves to be corrected; and speak always with dissimulation in the
presence of one another: I take so great a pleasure in being judged and
known, that it is almost indifferent to me in which of the two forms I am
so: my imagination so often contradicts and condemns itself, that ‘tis
all one to me if another do it, especially considering that I give his
reprehension no greater authority than I choose; but I break with him,
who carries himself so high, as I know of one who repents his advice,
if not believed, and takes it for an affront if it be not immediately
followed. That Socrates always received smilingly the contradictions
offered to his arguments, a man may say arose from his strength of
reason; and that, the advantage being certain to fall on his side, he
accepted them as a matter of new victory. But we see, on the contrary,
that nothing in argument renders our sentiment so delicate, as the
opinion of pre-eminence, and disdain of the adversary; and that, in
reason, ‘tis rather for the weaker to take in good part the oppositions
that correct him and set him right. In earnest, I rather choose the
company of those who ruffle me than of those who fear me; ‘tis a dull and
hurtful pleasure to have to do with people who admire us and approve of
all we say. Antisthenes commanded his children never to take it kindly
or for a favour, when any man commended them. I find I am much prouder
of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardour of dispute,
I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased
with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness. In fine, I
receive and admit of all manner of attacks that are direct, how weak
soever; but I am too impatient of those that are made out of form. I
care not what the subject is, the opinions are to me all one, and I am
almost indifferent whether I get the better or the worse. I can
peaceably argue a whole day together, if the argument be carried on with
method; I do not so much require force and subtlety as order; I mean the
order which we every day observe in the wranglings of shepherds and
shop-boys, but never amongst us: if they start from their subject, ‘tis
out of incivility, and so ‘tis with us; but their tumult and impatience
never put them out of their theme; their argument still continues its
course; if they interrupt, and do not stay for one another, they at least
understand one another. Any one answers too well for me, if he answers
what I say: when the dispute is irregular and disordered, I leave the
thing itself, and insist upon the form with anger and indiscretion;
falling into wilful, malicious, and imperious way of disputation, of
which I am afterwards ashamed. ‘Tis impossible to deal fairly with a
fool: my judgment is not only corrupted under the hand of so impetuous a
master, but my conscience also.
Our disputes ought to be interdicted and punished as well as other verbal
crimes: what vice do they not raise and heap up, being always governed
and commanded by passion? We first quarrel with their reasons, and then
with the men. We only learn to dispute that we may contradict; and so,