Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 091

these times, men so remote from and so disproportioned to our corruption
and intestine tumults?
Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation: change only gives
form to injustice and tyranny. When any piece is loosened, it may be
proper to stay it; one may take care that the alteration and corruption
natural to all things do not carry us too far from our beginnings and
principles: but to undertake to found so great a mass anew, and to change
the foundations of so vast a building, is for them to do, who to make
clean, efface; who reform particular defects by an universal confusion,
and cure diseases by death:
“Non tam commutandarum quam evertendarum rerum cupidi.”
[“Not so desirous of changing as of overthrowing things.”
--Cicero, De Offic., ii. i.]
The world is unapt to be cured; and so impatient of anything that presses
it, that it thinks of nothing but disengaging itself at what price
soever. We see by a thousand examples, that it ordinarily cures itself
to its cost. The discharge of a present evil is no cure, if there be not
a general amendment of condition. The surgeon’s end is not only to cut
away the dead flesh; that is but the progress of his cure; he has a care,
over and above, to fill up the wound with better and more natural flesh,
and to restore the member to its due state. Whoever only proposes to
himself to remove that which offends him, falls short: for good does not
necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, and a worse, as it
happened to Caesar’s murderers, who brought the republic to such a pass,
that they had reason to repent the meddling with the matter. The same
has since happened to several others, even down to our own times: the
French, my contemporaries, know it well enough. All great mutations
shake and disorder a state.
Whoever would look direct at a cure, and well consider of it before he
began, would be very willing to withdraw his hands from meddling in it.
Pacuvius Calavius corrected the vice of this proceeding by a notable
example. His fellow-citizens were in mutiny against their magistrates;
he being a man of great authority in the city of Capua, found means one
day to shut up the Senators in the palace; and calling the people
together in the market-place, there told them that the day was now come
wherein at full liberty they might revenge themselves on the tyrants by
whom they had been so long oppressed, and whom he had now, all alone and
unarmed, at his mercy. He then advised that they should call these out,
one by one, by lot, and should individually determine as to each, causing
whatever should be decreed to be immediately executed; with this proviso,
that they should, at the same time, depute some honest man in the place
of him who was condemned, to the end there might be no vacancy in the
Senate. They had no sooner heard the name of one senator but a great cry
of universal dislike was raised up against him. “I see,” says Pacuvius,
“that we must put him out; he is a wicked fellow; let us look out a good
one in his room.” Immediately there was a profound silence, every one
being at a stand whom to choose. But one, more impudent than the rest,
having named his man, there arose yet a greater consent of voices against
him, an hundred imperfections being laid to his charge, and as many just
reasons why he should not stand. These contradictory humours growing
hot, it fared worse with the second senator and the third, there being as
much disagreement in the election of the new, as consent in the putting
out of the old. In the end, growing weary of this bustle to no purpose,
they began, some one way and some another, to steal out of the assembly:
every one carrying back this resolution in his mind, that the oldest and
best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was, new and
untried.
Seeing how miserably we are agitated (for what have we not done!)
“Eheu! cicatricum, et sceleris pudet,
Fratrumque: quid nos dura refugimus
AEtas? quid intactum nefasti
Liquimus? Unde manus inventus
Metu Deorum continuit? quibus
Pepercit aris.”
[“Alas! our crimes and our fratricides are a shame to us! What
crime does this bad age shrink from? What wickedness have we left
undone? What youth is restrained from evil by the fear of the gods?
What altar is spared?”--Horace, Od., i. 33, 35]
I do not presently conclude,
“Ipsa si velit Salus,
Servare prorsus non potest hanc familiam;”
[“If the goddess Salus herself wish to save this family, she
absolutely cannot”--Terence, Adelph., iv. 7, 43.]
we are not, peradventure, at our last gasp. The conservation of states
is a thing that, in all likelihood, surpasses our understanding;--a civil
government is, as Plato says, a mighty and puissant thing, and hard to be
dissolved; it often continues against mortal and intestine diseases,
against the injury of unjust laws, against tyranny, the corruption and
ignorance of magistrates, the licence and sedition of the people. In all
our fortunes, we compare ourselves to what is above us, and still look
towards those who are better: but let us measure ourselves with what is
below us: there is no condition so miserable wherein a man may not find a
thousand examples that will administer consolation. ‘Tis our vice that
we more unwillingly look upon what is above, than willingly upon what is
below; and Solon was used to say, that “whoever would make a heap of all
the ills together, there is no one who would not rather choose to bear
away the ills he has than to come to an equal division with all other men
from that heap, and take his share.” Our government is, indeed, very
sick, but there have been others more sick without dying. The gods play
at ball with us and bandy us every way:
“Enimvero Dii nos homines quasi pilas habent.”
The stars fatally destined the state of Rome for an example of what they
could do in this kind: in it are comprised all the forms and adventures
that concern a state: all that order or disorder, good or evil fortune,
can do. Who, then, can despair of his condition, seeing the shocks and
commotions wherewith Rome was tumbled and tossed, and yet withstood them
all? If the extent of dominion be the health of a state (which I by no
means think it is, and Isocrates pleases me when he instructs Nicocles
not to envy princes who have large dominions, but those who know how to
preserve those which have fallen into their hands), that of Rome was
never so sound, as when it was most sick. The worst of her forms was the
most fortunate; one can hardly discern any image of government under the
first emperors; it is the most horrible and tumultuous confusion that can
be imagined; it endured it, notwithstanding, and therein continued,
preserving not a monarchy limited within its own bounds, but so many
nations so differing, so remote, so disaffected, so confusedly commanded,
and so unjustly conquered:
“Nec gentibus ullis
Commodat in populum, terra pelagique potentem,
Invidiam fortuna suam.”
[“Fortune never gave it to any nation to satisfy its hatred against
the people, masters of the seas and of the earth.”--Lucan, i. 32.]
Everything that totters does not fall. The contexture of so great a body
holds by more nails than one; it holds even by its antiquity, like old
buildings, from which the foundations are worn away by time, without
rough-cast or mortar, which yet live and support themselves by their own
weight:
“Nec jam validis radicibus haerens,
Pondere tuta suo est.”
Moreover, it is not rightly to go to work, to examine only the flank and
the foss, to judge of the security of a place; we must observe which way
approaches can be made to it, and in what condition the assailant is: few
vessels sink with their own weight, and without some exterior violence.
Now, let us everyway cast our eyes; everything about us totters; in all
the great states, both of Christendom and elsewhere, that are known to
us, if you will but look, you will there see evident menace of alteration
and ruin:
“Et sua sunt illis incommoda; parque per omnes
Tempestas.”
[“They all share in the mischief; the tempest rages
everywhere.”--AEneid, ii.]
Astrologers may very well, as they do, warn us of great revolutions and
imminent mutations: their prophecies are present and palpable, they need
not go to heaven to foretell this. There is not only consolation to be
extracted from this universal combination of ills and menaces, but,
moreover, some hopes of the continuation of our state, forasmuch as,
naturally, nothing falls where all falls: universal sickness is
particular health: conformity is antagonistic to dissolution. For my
part, I despair not, and fancy that I discover ways to save us:
“Deus haec fortasse benigna
Reducet in sedem vice.”
[“The deity will perchance by a favourable turn restore us to our
former position.”--Horace, Epod., xiii. 7.]
Who knows but that God will have it happen, as in human bodies that purge
and restore themselves to a better state by long and grievous maladies,
which render them more entire and perfect health than that they took from
them? That which weighs the most with me is, that in reckoning the
symptoms of our ill, I see as many natural ones, and that Heaven sends
us, and properly its own, as of those that our disorder and human
imprudence contribute to it. The very stars seem to declare that we have
already continued long enough, and beyond the ordinary term. This also
afflicts me, that the mischief which nearest threatens us, is not an
alteration in the entire and solid mass, but its dissipation and
divulsion, which is the most extreme of our fears.
I, moreover, fear, in these fantasies of mine, the treachery of my
memory, lest, by inadvertence, it should make me write the same thing
twice. I hate to examine myself, and never review, but very unwillingly,
what has once escaped my pen. I here set down nothing new. These are
common thoughts, and having, peradventure, conceived them an hundred
times, I am afraid I have set them down somewhere else already.
Repetition is everywhere troublesome, though it were in Homer; but ‘tis
ruinous in things that have only a superficial and transitory show. I do
not love over-insisting, even in the most profitable things, as in
Seneca; and the usage of his stoical school displeases me, to repeat,
upon every subject, at full length and width the principles and
presuppositions that serve in general, and always to realledge anew
common and universal reasons.
My memory grows cruelly worse every day:
“Pocula Lethaeos ut si ducentia somnos,
Arente fauce traxerim;”
[“As if my dry throat had drunk seducing cups of Lethaean
oblivion.”--Horace, Epod., xiv. 3.]
I must be fain for the time to come (for hitherto, thanks be to God,
nothing has happened much amiss), whereas others seek time and
opportunity to think of what they have to say, to avoid all preparation,
for fear of tying myself to some obligation upon which I must insist. To
be tied and bound to a thing puts me quite out, and to depend upon so
weak an instrument as my memory. I never read this following story that
I am not offended at it with a personal and natural resentment:
Lyncestes, accused of conspiracy against Alexander, the day that he was
brought out before the army, according to the custom, to be heard as to
what he could say for himself, had learned a studied speech, of which,
hesitating and stammering, he pronounced some words. Whilst growing more
and more perplexed, whilst struggling with his memory, and trying to
recollect what he had to say, the soldiers nearest to him charged their
pikes against him and killed him, looking upon him as convict; his
confusion and silence served them for a confession; for having had so
much leisure to prepare himself in prison, they concluded that it was not
his memory that failed him, but that his conscience tied up his tongue
and stopped his mouth. And, truly, well said; the place, the assembly,
the expectation, astound a man, even when he has but the ambition to
speak well; what can a man do when ‘tis an harangue upon which his life
depends?
For my part, the very being tied to what I am to say is enough to loose
me from it. When I wholly commit and refer myself to my memory, I lay so
much stress upon it that it sinks under me: it grows dismayed with the
burden. So much as I trust to it, so much do I put myself out of my own
power, even to the finding it difficult to keep my own countenance; and
have been sometimes very much put to it to conceal the slavery wherein I
was engaged; whereas my design is to manifest, in speaking, a perfect
calmness both of face and accent, and casual and unpremeditated motions,
as rising from present occasions, choosing rather to say nothing to
purpose than to show that I came prepared to speak well, a thing
especially unbecoming a man of my profession, and of too great obligation
on him who cannot retain much. The preparation begets a great deal more
expectation than it will satisfy. A man often strips himself to his
doublet to leap no farther than he would have done in his gown:
“Nihil est his, qui placere volunt, turn adversarium,
quam expectatio.”
[“Nothing is so adverse to those who make it their business to
please as expectation”--Cicero, Acad., ii. 4]
It is recorded of the orator Curio, that when he proposed the division of
his oration into three or four parts, or three or four arguments or
reasons, it often happened either that he forgot some one, or added one
or two more. I have always avoided falling into this inconvenience,
having ever hated these promises and prescriptions, not only out of
distrust of my memory, but also because this method relishes too much of
the artist:
“Simpliciora militares decent.”
[“Simplicity becomes warriors.”--Quintilian, Instit. Orat., xi. I.]
‘Tis enough that I have promised to myself never again to take upon me
to speak in a place of respect, for as to speaking, when a man reads his
speech, besides that it is very absurd, it is a mighty disadvantage to
those who naturally could give it a grace by action; and to rely upon the
mercy of my present invention, I would much less do it; ‘tis heavy and
perplexed, and such as would never furnish me in sudden and important
necessities.
Permit, reader, this essay its course also, and this third sitting to
finish the rest of my picture: I add, but I correct not. First, because
I conceive that a man having once parted with his labours to the world,
he has no further right to them; let him do better if he can, in some new
undertaking, but not adulterate what he has already sold. Of such
dealers nothing should be bought till after they are dead. Let them well
consider what they do before they, produce it to the light who hastens
them? My book is always the same, saving that upon every new edition
(that the buyer may not go away quite empty) I take the liberty to add
(as ‘tis but an ill jointed marqueterie) some supernumerary emblem; it is
but overweight, that does not disfigure the primitive form of the essays,
but, by a little artful subtlety, gives a kind of particular value to
every one of those that follow. Thence, however, will easily happen some
transposition of chronology, my stories taking place according to their
opportuneness, not always according to their age.
Secondly, because as to what concerns myself, I fear to lose by change:
my understanding does not always go forward, it goes backward too. I do
not much less suspect my fancies for being the second or the third, than
for being the first, or present, or past; we often correct ourselves as
foolishly as we do others. I am grown older by a great many years since
my first publications, which were in the year 1580; but I very much doubt
whether I am grown an inch the wiser. I now, and I anon, are two several
persons; but whether better, I cannot determine. It were a fine thing to
be old, if we only travelled towards improvement; but ‘tis a drunken,
stumbling, reeling, infirm motion: like that of reeds, which the air
casually waves to and fro at pleasure. Antiochus had in his youth
strongly written in favour of the Academy; in his old age he wrote as
much against it; would not, which of these two soever I should follow, be
still Antiochus? After having established the uncertainty, to go about
to establish the certainty of human opinions, was it not to establish
doubt, and not certainty, and to promise, that had he had yet another age
to live, he would be always upon terms of altering his judgment, not so
much for the better, as for something else?
The public favour has given me a little more confidence than I expected;
but what I ‘most fear is, lest I should glut the world with my writings;
I had rather, of the two, pique my reader than tire him, as a learned man
of my time has done. Praise is always pleasing, let it come from whom,
or upon what account it will; yet ought a man to understand why he is
commended, that he may know how to keep up the same reputation still:
imperfections themselves may get commendation. The vulgar and common
estimation is seldom happy in hitting; and I am much mistaken if, amongst
the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained
the popular applause. For my part, I return my thanks to those
good-natured men who are pleased to take my weak endeavours in good part;
the faults of the workmanship are nowhere so apparent as in a matter
which of itself has no recommendation. Blame not me, reader, for those
that slip in here by the fancy or inadvertency of others; every hand,
every artisan, contribute their own materials; I neither concern myself
with orthography (and only care to have it after the old way) nor
pointing, being very inexpert both in the one and the other. Where they
wholly break the sense, I am very little concerned, for they at least
discharge me; but where they substitute a false one, as they so often do,
and wrest me to their conception, they ruin me. When the sentence,
nevertheless, is not strong enough for my proportion, a civil person
ought to reject it as spurious, and none of mine. Whoever shall know how
lazy I am, and how indulgent to my own humour, will easily believe that I
had rather write as many more essays, than be tied to revise these over
again for so childish a correction.
I said elsewhere, that being planted in the very centre of this new
religion, I am not only deprived of any great familiarity with men of
other kind of manners than my own, and of other opinions, by which they
hold together, as by a tie that supersedes all other obligations; but
moreover I do not live without danger, amongst men to whom all things are
equally lawful, and of whom the most part cannot offend the laws more
than they have already done; from which the extremist degree of licence
proceeds. All the particular being summed up together, I do not find one
man of my country, who pays so dear for the defence of our laws both in
loss and damages (as the lawyers say) as myself; and some there are who
vapour and brag of their zeal and constancy, that if things were justly
weighed, do much less than I. My house, as one that has ever been open
and free to all comers, and civil to all (for I could never persuade
myself to make it a garrison of war, war being a thing that I prefer to
see as remote as may be), has sufficiently merited popular kindness, and
so that it would be a hard matter justly to insult over me upon my own
dunghill; and I look upon it as a wonderful and exemplary thing that it
yet continues a virgin from blood and plunder during so long a storm, and
so many neighbouring revolutions and tumults. For to confess the truth,
it had been possible enough for a man of my complexion to have shaken
hands with any one constant and continued form whatever; but the contrary
invasions and incursions, alternations and vicissitudes of fortune round
about me, have hitherto more exasperated than calmed and mollified the
temper of the country, and involved me, over and over again, with
invincible difficulties and dangers.
I escape, ‘tis true, but am troubled that it is more by chance, and
something of my own prudence, than by justice; and am not satisfied to be
out of the protection of the laws, and under any other safeguard than
theirs. As matters stand, I live, above one half, by the favour of
others, which is an untoward obligation. I do not like to owe my safety
either to the generosity or affection of great persons, who allow me my
legality and my liberty, or to the obliging manners of my predecessors,
or my own: for what if I were another kind of man? If my deportment, and
the frankness of my conversation or relationship, oblige my neighbours,
‘tis that that they should acquit themselves of obligation in only
permitting me to live, and they may say, “We allow him the free liberty
of having divine service read in his own private chapel, when it is
interdicted in all churches round about, and allow him the use of his
goods and his life, as one who protects our wives and cattle in time of
need.” For my house has for many descents shared in the reputation of
Lycurgus the Athenian, who was the general depository and guardian of the
purses of his fellow-citizens. Now I am clearly of opinion that a man
should live by right and by authority, and not either by recompense or
favour. How many gallant men have rather chosen to lose their lives than
to be debtors for them? I hate to subject myself to any sort of
obligation, but above all, to that which binds me by the duty of honour.
I think nothing so dear as what has been given me, and this because my
will lies at pawn under the title of gratitude, and more willingly accept
of services that are to be sold; I feel that for the last I give nothing
but money, but for the other I give myself.
The knot that binds me by the laws of courtesy binds me more than that of
civil constraint; I am much more at ease when bound by a scrivener, than
by myself. Is it not reason that my conscience should be much more
engaged when men simply rely upon it? In a bond, my faith owes nothing,
because it has nothing lent it; let them trust to the security they have
taken without me. I had much rather break the wall of a prison and the
laws themselves than my own word. I am nice, even to superstition, in
keeping my promises, and, therefore, upon all occasions have a care to
make them uncertain and conditional. To those of no great moment, I add
the jealousy of my own rule, to make them weight; it wracks and oppresses
me with its own interest. Even in actions wholly my own and free, if I
once say a thing, I conceive that I have bound myself, and that
delivering it to the knowledge of another, I have positively enjoined it
my own performance. Methinks I promise it, if I but say it: and
therefore am not apt to say much of that kind. The sentence that I pass
upon myself is more severe than that of a judge, who only considers the
common obligation; but my conscience looks upon it with a more severe and
penetrating eye. I lag in those duties to which I should be compelled if
I did not go:
“Hoc ipsum ita justum est, quod recte fit, si est voluntarium.”
[“This itself is so far just, that it is rightly done, if it is
voluntary.”--Cicero, De Offic., i. 9.]
If the action has not some splendour of liberty, it has neither grace nor
honour:
“Quod vos jus cogit, vix voluntate impetrent:”
[“That which the laws compel us to do, we scarcely do with a will.”
--Terence, Adelph., iii. 3, 44.]
where necessity draws me, I love to let my will take its own course:
“Quia quicquid imperio cogitur, exigenti magis,
quam praestanti, acceptum refertur.”
[“For whatever is compelled by power, is more imputed to him that
exacts than to him that performs.”--Valerius Maximus, ii. 2, 6.]
I know some who follow this rule, even to injustice; who will sooner give
than restore, sooner lend than pay, and will do them the least good to
whom they are most obliged. I don’t go so far as that, but I’m not far
off.
I so much love to disengage and disobligate myself, that I have sometimes
looked upon ingratitudes, affronts, and indignities which I have received
from those to whom either by nature or accident I was bound in some way
of friendship, as an advantage to me; taking this occasion of their
ill-usage, for an acquaintance and discharge of so much of my debt. And
though I still continue to pay them all the external offices of public
reason, I, notwithstanding, find a great saving in doing that upon the
account of justice which I did upon the score of affection, and am a
little eased of the attention and solicitude of my inward will:
“Est prudentis sustinere, ut currum, sic impetum benevolentia;”
[“‘Tis the part of a wise man to keep a curbing hand upon the
impetus of friendship, as upon that of his horse.”
--Cicero, De Amicit., c. 17.]
‘tis in me, too urging and pressing where I take; at least, for a man who
loves not to be strained at all. And this husbanding my friendship
serves me for a sort of consolation in the imperfections of those in whom
I am concerned. I am very sorry they are not such as I could wish they
were, but then I also am spared somewhat of my application and engagement
towards them. I approve of a man who is the less fond of his child for
having a scald head, or for being crooked; and not only when he is
ill-conditioned, but also when he is of unhappy disposition, and imperfect
in his limbs (God himself has abated so much from his value and natural
estimation), provided he carry himself in this coldness of affection with
moderation and exact justice: proximity, with me, lessens not defects,
but rather aggravates them.
After all, according to what I understand in the science of benefit and
acknowledgment, which is a subtle science, and of great use, I know no
person whatever more free and less indebted than I am at this hour. What
I do owe is simply to foreign obligations and benefits; as to anything
else, no man is more absolutely clear:
“Nec sunt mihi nota potentum
Munera.”
[“The gifts of great men are unknown to me.”--AEneid, xii. 529.]
Princes give me a great deal if they take nothing from me; and do me good
enough if they do me no harm; that’s all I ask from them. O how am I
obliged to God, that he has been pleased I should immediately receive
from his bounty all I have, and specially reserved all my obligation to
himself. How earnestly do I beg of his holy compassion that I may never
owe essential thanks to any one. O happy liberty wherein I have thus far
lived. May it continue with me to the last. I endeavour to have no
express need of any one:
“In me omnis spec est mihi.”
[“All my hope is in myself.”--Terence, Adelph., iii. 5, 9.]
‘Tis what every one may do in himself, but more easily they whom God has
placed in a condition exempt from natural and urgent necessities. It is
a wretched and dangerous thing to depend upon others; we ourselves, in
whom is ever the most just and safest dependence, are not sufficiently
sure.
I have nothing mine but myself, and yet the possession is, in part,
defective and borrowed. I fortify myself both in courage, which is the
strongest assistant, and also in fortune, therein wherewith to satisfy
myself, though everything else should forsake me. Hippias of Elis not
only furnished himself with knowledge, that he might, at need, cheerfully