Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 094

same time lessons in love and wantonness; Xenophon, in the very bosom of
Clinias, wrote against the Aristippic virtue. ‘Tis not that there is any
miraculous conversion in it that makes them thus wavering; ‘tis that
Solon represents himself, sometimes in his own person, and sometimes in
that of a legislator; one while he speaks for the crowd, and another for
himself; taking the free and natural rules for his own share, feeling
assured of a firm and entire health:
“Curentur dubii medicis majoribus aegri.”
[“Desperate maladies require the best doctors.”
--Juvenal, xiii. 124.]
Antisthenes allows a sage to love, and to do whatever he thinks
convenient, without regard to the laws, forasmuch as he is better advised
than they, and has a greater knowledge of virtue. His disciple Diogenes
said, that “men to perturbations were to oppose reason: to fortune,
courage: to the laws, nature.” For tender stomachs, constrained and
artificial recipes must be prescribed: good and strong stomachs serve
themselves simply with the prescriptions of their own natural appetite;
after this manner do our physicians proceed, who eat melons and drink
iced wines, whilst they confine their patients to syrups and sops.
“I know not,” said the courtezan Lais, “what they may talk of books,
wisdom, and philosophy; but these men knock as often at my door as any
others.” At the same rate that our licence carries us beyond what is
lawful and allowed, men have, often beyond universal reason, stretched
the precepts and rules of our life:
“Nemo satis credit tantum delinquere, quantum
Permittas.”
[“No one thinks he has done ill to the full extent of what he may.”
--Juvenal, xiv. 233.]
It were to be wished that there was more proportion betwixt the command
and the obedience; and the mark seems to be unjust to which one cannot
attain. There is no so good man, who so squares all his thoughts and
actions to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to deserve hanging ten
times in his life; and he may well be such a one, as it were great
injustice and great harm to punish and ruin:
“Ole, quid ad te
De cute quid faciat ille vel ille sua?”
[“Olus, what is it to thee what he or she does with their skin?”
--Martial, vii. 9, I.]
and such an one there may be, who has no way offended the laws, who,
nevertheless, would not deserve the character of a virtuous man, and whom
philosophy would justly condemn to be whipped; so unequal and perplexed
is this relation. We are so far from being good men, according to the
laws of God, that we cannot be so according to our own human wisdom never
yet arrived at the duties it had itself prescribed; and could it arrive
there, it would still prescribe to itself others beyond, to which it
would ever aspire and pretend; so great an enemy to consistency is our
human condition. Man enjoins himself to be necessarily in fault: he is
not very discreet to cut out his own duty by the measure of another being
than his own. To whom does he prescribe that which he does not expect
any one should perform? is he unjust in not doing what it is impossible
for him to do? The laws which condemn us not to be able, condemn us for
not being able.
At the worst, this difform liberty of presenting ourselves two several
ways, the actions after one manner and the reasoning after another, may
be allowed to those who only speak of things; but it cannot be allowed to
those who speak of themselves, as I do: I must march my pen as I do my
feet. Common life ought to have relation to the other lives: the virtue
of Cato was vigorous beyond the reason of the age he lived in; and for a
man who made it his business to govern others, a man dedicated to the
public service, it might be called a justice, if not unjust, at least
vain and out of season. Even my own manners, which differ not above an
inch from those current amongst us, render me, nevertheless, a little
rough and unsociable at my age. I know not whether it be without reason
that I am disgusted with the world I frequent; but I know very well that
it would be without reason, should I complain of its being disgusted with
me, seeing I am so with it. The virtue that is assigned to the affairs
of the world is a virtue of many wavings, corners, and elbows, to join
and adapt itself to human frailty, mixed and artificial, not straight,
clear, constant, nor purely innocent. Our annals to this very day
reproach one of our kings for suffering himself too simply to be carried
away by the conscientious persuasions of his confessor: affairs of state
have bolder precepts;
“Exeat aula,
Qui vult esse pius.”
[“Let him who will be pious retire from the court.”
--Lucan, viii. 493]
I formerly tried to employ in the service of public affairs opinions and
rules of living, as rough, new, unpolished or unpolluted, as they were
either born with me, or brought away from my education, and wherewith I
serve my own turn, if not so commodiously, at least securely, in my own
particular concerns: a scholastic and novice virtue; but I have found
them unapt and dangerous. He who goes into a crowd must now go one way
and then another, keep his elbows close, retire or advance, and quit the
straight way, according to what he encounters; and must live not so much
according to his own method as to that of others; not according to what
he proposes to himself, but according to what is proposed to him,
according to the time, according to the men, according to the occasions.
Plato says, that whoever escapes from the world’s handling with clean
breeches, escapes by miracle: and says withal, that when he appoints his
philosopher the head of a government, he does not mean a corrupt one like
that of Athens, and much less such a one as this of ours, wherein wisdom
itself would be to seek. A good herb, transplanted into a soil contrary
to its own nature, much sooner conforms itself to the soil than it
reforms the soil to it. I found that if I had wholly to apply myself to
such employments, it would require a great deal of change and new
modelling in me before I could be any way fit for it: And though I could
so far prevail upon myself (and why might I not with time and diligence
work such a feat), I would not do it. The little trial I have had of
public employment has been so much disgust to me; I feel at times
temptations toward ambition rising in my soul, but I obstinately oppose
them:
“At tu, Catulle, obstinatus obdura.”
[“But thou, Catullus, be obstinately firm.”--Catullus, viii. 19.]
I am seldom called to it, and as seldom offer myself uncalled; liberty
and laziness, the qualities most predominant in me, are qualities
diametrically contrary to that trade. We cannot well distinguish the
faculties of men; they have divisions and limits hard and delicate to
choose; to conclude from the discreet conduct of a private life a
capacity for the management of public affairs is to conclude ill; a man
may govern himself well who cannot govern others so, and compose Essays
who could not work effects: men there may be who can order a siege well,
who would ill marshal a battle; who can speak well in private, who would
ill harangue a people or a prince; nay, ‘tis peradventure rather a
testimony in him who can do the one that he cannot do the other, than
otherwise. I find that elevated souls are not much more proper for mean
things than mean souls are for high ones. Could it be imagined that
Socrates should have administered occasion of laughter, at the expense of
his own reputation, to the Athenians for: having never been able to sum
up the votes of his tribe, to deliver it to the council? Truly, the
veneration I have for the perfections of this great man deserves that his
fortune should furnish, for the excuse of my principal imperfections, so
magnificent an example. Our sufficiency is cut out into small parcels;
mine has no latitude, and is also very contemptible in number.
Saturninus, to those who had conferred upon him the command in chief:
“Companions,” said he, “you have lost a good captain, to make of him a
bad general.”
Whoever boasts, in so sick a time as this, to employ a true and sincere
virtue in the world’s service, either knows not what it is, opinions
growing corrupt with manners (and, in truth, to hear them describe it, to
hear the most of them glorify themselves in their deportments, and lay
down their rules; instead of painting virtue, they paint pure vice and
injustice, and so represent it false in the education of princes); or if
he does know it, boasts unjustly and let him say what he will, does a
thousand things of which his own conscience must necessarily accuse him.
I should willingly take Seneca’s word on the experience he made upon the
like occasion, provided he would deal sincerely with me. The most
honourable mark of goodness in such a necessity is freely to confess both
one’s own faults and those of others; with the power of its virtue to
stay one’s inclination towards evil; unwillingly to follow this
propension; to hope better, to desire better. I perceive that in these
divisions wherein we are involved in France, every one labours to defend
his cause; but even the very best of them with dissimulation and
disguise: he who would write roundly of the true state of the quarrel,
would write rashly and wrongly. The most just party is at best but a
member of a decayed and worm-eaten body; but of such a body, the member
that is least affected calls itself sound, and with good reason,
forasmuch as our qualities have no title but in comparison; civil
innocence is measured according to times and places. Imagine this in
Xenophon, related as a fine commendation of Agesilaus: that, being
entreated by a neighbouring prince with whom he had formerly had war, to
permit him to pass through his country, he granted his request, giving
him free passage through Peloponnesus; and not only did not imprison or
poison him, being at his mercy, but courteously received him according to
the obligation of his promise, without doing him the least injury or
offence. To such ideas as theirs this were an act of no especial note;
elsewhere and in another age, the frankness and unanimity of such an
action would be thought wonderful; our monkeyish capets
[Capets, so called from their short capes, were the students of
Montaigne College at Paris, and were held in great contempt.]
would have laughed at it, so little does the Spartan innocence resemble
that of France. We are not without virtuous men, but ‘tis according to
our notions of virtue. Whoever has his manners established in regularity
above the standard of the age he lives in, let him either wrest or blunt
his rules, or, which I would rather advise him to, let him retire, and
not meddle with us at all. What will he get by it?
“Egregium sanctumque virum si cerno, bimembri
Hoc monstrum puero, et miranti jam sub aratro
Piscibus inventis, et foetae comparo mulae.”
[“If I see an exemplary and good man, I liken it to a two-headed
boy, or a fish turned up by the plough, or a teeming mule.”
--Juvenal, xiii. 64.]
One may regret better times, but cannot fly from the present; we may wish
for other magistrates, but we must, notwithstanding, obey those we have;
and, peradventure, ‘tis more laudable to obey the bad than the good. So
long as the image of the ancient and received laws of this monarchy shall
shine in any corner of the kingdom, there will I be. If they
unfortunately happen to thwart and contradict one another, so as to
produce two parts, of doubtful and difficult choice, I will willingly
choose to withdraw and escape the tempest; in the meantime nature or the
hazards of war may lend me a helping hand. Betwixt Caesar and Pompey,
I should frankly have declared myself; but, as amongst the three robbers
who came after,--[Octavius, Mark Antony, and Lepidus.]--a man must have
been necessitated either to hide himself, or have gone along with the
current of the time, which I think one may fairly do when reason no
longer guides:
“Quo diversus abis?”
[“Whither dost thou run wandering?”--AEneid, v. 166.]
This medley is a little from my theme; I go out of my way; but ‘tis
rather by licence than oversight; my fancies follow one another, but
sometimes at a great distance, and look towards one another, but ‘tis
with an oblique glance. I have read a dialogue of Plato,--[The
Phaedrus.]--of the like motley and fantastic composition, the beginning
about love, and all the rest to the end about rhetoric; they fear not
these variations, and have a marvellous grace in letting themselves be
carried away at the pleasure of the wind, or at least to seem as if they
were. The titles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole
matter; they often denote it by some mark only, as these others, Andria,
Eunuchus; or these, Sylla, Cicero, Toyquatus. I love a poetic progress,
by leaps and skips; ‘tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble, demoniac.
There are pieces in Plutarch where he forgets his theme; where the
proposition of his argument is only found by incidence, stuffed and half
stifled in foreign matter. Observe his footsteps in the Daemon of
Socrates. O God! how beautiful are these frolicsome sallies, those
variations and digressions, and all the more when they seem most
fortuitous and careless. ‘Tis the indiligent reader who loses my
subject, and not I; there will always be found some word or other in a
corner that is to the purpose, though it lie very close. I ramble
indiscreetly and tumultuously; my style and my wit wander at the same
rate. He must fool it a little who would not be deemed wholly a fool,
say both the precepts, and, still more, the examples of our masters. A
thousand poets flag and languish after a prosaic manner; but the best old
prose (and I strew it here up and down indifferently for verse) shines
throughout with the lustre, vigour, and boldness of poetry, and not
without some air of its fury. And certainly prose ought to have the
pre-eminence in speaking. The poet, says Plato, seated upon the muses
tripod, pours out with fury whatever comes into his mouth, like the pipe
of a fountain, without considering and weighing it; and things escape him
of various colours, of contrary substance, and with an irregular torrent.
Plato himself is throughout poetical; and the old theology, as the
learned tell us, is all poetry; and the first philosophy is the original
language of the gods. I would have my matter distinguish itself; it
sufficiently shows where it changes, where it concludes, where it begins,
and where it rejoins, without interlacing it with words of connection
introduced for the relief of weak or negligent ears, and without
explaining myself. Who is he that had not rather not be read at all than
after a drowsy or cursory manner?
“Nihil est tam utile, quod intransitu prosit.”
[“Nothing is so useful as that which is cursorily so.”
--Seneca, Ep., 2.]
If to take books in hand were to learn them: to look upon them were to
consider them: and to run these slightly over were to grasp them, I were
then to blame to make myself out so ignorant as I say I am. Seeing I
cannot fix the attention of my reader by the weight of what I write,
‘manco male’, if I should chance to do it by my intricacies. “Nay, but
he will afterwards repent that he ever perplexed himself about it.”
‘Tis very true, but he will yet be there perplexed. And, besides, there
are some humours in which comprehension produces disdain; who will think
better of me for not understanding what I say, and will conclude the
depth of my sense by its obscurity; which, to speak in good sooth, I
mortally hate, and would avoid it if I could. Aristotle boasts somewhere
in his writings that he affected it: a vicious affectation. The frequent
breaks into chapters that I made my method in the beginning of my book,
having since seemed to me to dissolve the attention before it was raised,
as making it disdain to settle itself to so little, I, upon that account,
have made them longer, such as require proposition and assigned leisure.
In such an employment, to whom you will not give an hour you give
nothing; and you do nothing for him for whom you only do it whilst you
are doing something else. To which may be added that I have,
peradventure, some particular obligation to speak only by halves, to
speak confusedly and discordantly. I am therefore angry at this
trouble-feast reason, and its extravagant projects that worry one’s life,
and its opinions, so fine and subtle, though they be all true, I think
too dear bought and too inconvenient. On the contrary, I make it my
business to bring vanity itself in repute, and folly too, if it produce
me any pleasure; and let myself follow my own natural inclinations,
without carrying too strict a hand upon them.
I have seen elsewhere houses in ruins, and statues both of gods and men:
these are men still. ‘Tis all true; and yet, for all that, I cannot so
often revisit the tomb of that so great and so puissant city,--[Rome]--
that I do not admire and reverence it. The care of the dead is
recommended to us; now, I have been bred up from my infancy with these
dead; I had knowledge of the affairs of Rome long before I had any of
those of my own house; I knew the Capitol and its plan before I knew the
Louvre, and the Tiber before I knew the Seine. The qualities and
fortunes of Lucullus, Metellus, and Scipio have ever run more in my head
than those of any of my own country; they are all dead; so is my father
as absolutely dead as they, and is removed as far from me and life in
eighteen years as they are in sixteen hundred: whose memory,
nevertheless, friendship and society, I do not cease to embrace and
utilise with a perfect and lively union. Nay, of my own inclination, I
pay more service to the dead; they can no longer help themselves, and
therefore, methinks, the more require my assistance: ‘tis there that
gratitude appears in its full lustre. The benefit is not so generously
bestowed, where there is retrogradation and reflection. Arcesilaus,
going to visit Ctesibius, who was sick, and finding him in a very poor
condition, very finely conveyed some money under his pillow, and, by
concealing it from him, acquitted him, moreover, from the acknowledgment
due to such a benefit. Such as have merited from me friendship and
gratitude have never lost these by being no more; I have better and more
carefully paid them when gone and ignorant of what I did; I speak most
affectionately of my friends when they can no longer know it. I have had
a hundred quarrels in defending Pompey and for the cause of Brutus; this
acquaintance yet continues betwixt us; we have no other hold even on
present things but by fancy. Finding myself of no use to this age, I
throw myself back upon that other, and am so enamoured of it, that the
free, just, and flourishing state of that ancient Rome (for I neither
love it in its birth nor its old age) interests and impassionates me;
and therefore I cannot so often revisit the sites of their streets and
houses, and those ruins profound even to the Antipodes, that I am not
interested in them. Is it by nature, or through error of fancy, that the
sight of places which we know to have been frequented and inhabited by
persons whose memories are recommended in story, moves us in some sort
more than to hear a recital of their--acts or to read their writings?
“Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis....Et id quidem in hac urbe
infinitum; quacumque enim ingredimur, in aliquam historiam vestigium
ponimus.”
[“So great a power of reminiscence resides in places; and that truly
in this city infinite, for which way soever we go, we find the
traces of some story.”--Cicero, De Fin., v. I, 2.]
It pleases me to consider their face, bearing, and vestments: I pronounce
those great names betwixt my teeth, and make them ring in my ears:
“Ego illos veneror, et tantis nominibus semper assurgo.”
[“I reverence them, and always rise to so great names.”
--Seneca, Ep., 64.]
Of things that are in some part great and admirable, I admire even the
common parts: I could wish to see them in familiar relations, walk, and
sup. It were ingratitude to contemn the relics and images of so many
worthy and valiant men as I have seen live and die, and who, by their
example, give us so many good instructions, knew we how to follow them.
And, moreover, this very Rome that we now see, deserves to be beloved, so
long and by so many titles allied to our crown; the only common and
universal city; the sovereign magistrate that commands there is equally
acknowledged elsewhere ‘tis the metropolitan city of all the Christian
nations the Spaniard and Frenchman is there at home: to be a prince of
that state, there needs no more but to be of Christendom wheresoever.
There is no place upon earth that heaven has embraced with such an
influence and constancy of favour; her very ruins are grand and glorious,
“Laudandis pretiosior ruinis.”
[“More precious from her glorious ruins.”
--Sidonius Apollinaris, Carm., xxiii.; Narba, v. 62.]
she yet in her very tomb retains the marks and images of empire:
“Ut palam sit, uno in loco gaudentis opus esse naturx.”
[“That it may be manifest that there is in one place the work of
rejoicing nature.”--Pliny, Nat. Hist., iii. 5.]
Some would blame and be angry at themselves to perceive themselves
tickled with so vain a pleasure our humours are never too vain that are
pleasant let them be what they may, if they constantly content a man of
common understanding, I could not have the heart to blame him.
I am very much obliged to Fortune, in that, to this very hour, she has
offered me no outrage beyond what I was well able to bear. Is it not her
custom to let those live in quiet by whom she is not importuned?
“Quanto quisque sibi plum negaverit,
A diis plum feret: nil cupientium
Nudus castra peto . . . .
Multa petentibus
Desunt multa.”
[“The more each man denies himself, the more the gods give him.
Poor as I am, I seek the company of those who ask nothing; they who
desire much will be deficient in much.”
--Horace, Od., iii. 16,21,42.]
If she continue her favour, she will dismiss me very well satisfied:
“Nihil supra
Deos lacesso.”
[“I trouble the gods no farther.”--Horace, Od., ii. 18, 11.]
But beware a shock: there are a thousand who perish in the port.
I easily comfort myself for what shall here happen when I shall be gone,
present things trouble me enough:
“Fortunae caetera mando.”
[“I leave the rest to fortune.”--Ovid, Metam., ii. 140.]
Besides, I have not that strong obligation that they say ties men to the
future, by the issue that succeeds to their name and honour; and
peradventure, ought less to covet them, if they are to be so much
desired. I am but too much tied to the world, and to this life, of
myself: I am content to be in Fortune’s power by circumstances properly
necessary to my being, without otherwise enlarging her jurisdiction over
me; and have never thought that to be without children was a defect that
ought to render life less complete or less contented: a sterile vocation
has its conveniences too. Children are of the number of things that are
not so much to be desired, especially now that it would be so hard to
make them good:
“Bona jam nec nasci licet, ita corrupta Bunt semina;”
[“Nothing good can be born now, the seed is so corrupt.”
--Tertullian, De Pudicita.]
and yet they are justly to be lamented by such as lose them when they
have them.
He who left me my house in charge, foretold that I was like to ruin it,
considering my humour so little inclined to look after household affairs.
But he was mistaken; for I am in the same condition now as when I first
entered into it, or rather somewhat better; and yet without office or any
place of profit.
As to the rest, if Fortune has never done me any violent or extraordinary
injury, neither has she done me any particular favour; whatever we derive
from her bounty, was there above a hundred years before my time: I have,
as to my own particular, no essential and solid good, that I stand
indebted for to her liberality. She has, indeed, done me some airy
favours, honorary and titular favours, without substance, and those in
truth she has not granted, but offered me, who, God knows, am all
material, and who take nothing but what is real, and indeed massive too,
for current pay: and who, if I durst confess so much, should not think
avarice much less excusable than ambition: nor pain less to be avoided
than shame; nor health less to be coveted than learning, or riches than
nobility.
Amongst those empty favours of hers, there is none that so much pleases
vain humour natural to my country, as an authentic bull of a Roman
burgess-ship, that was granted me when I was last there, glorious in
seals and gilded letters, and granted with all gracious liberality. And
because ‘tis couched in a mixt style, more or less favourable, and that I
could have been glad to have seen a copy of it before it had passed the
seal.
Being before burgess of no city at all, I am glad to be created one of
the most noble that ever was or ever shall be. If other men would
consider themselves at the rate I do, they would, as I do, discover
themselves to be full of inanity and foppery; to rid myself of it, I
cannot, without making myself away. We are all steeped in it, as well
one as another; but they who are not aware on’t, have somewhat the better
bargain; and yet I know not whether they have or no.
This opinion and common usage to observe others more than ourselves has
very much relieved us that way: ‘tis a very displeasing object: we can
there see nothing but misery and vanity: nature, that we may not be
dejected with the sight of our own deformities, has wisely thrust the
action of seeing outward. We go forward with the current, but to turn
back towards ourselves is a painful motion; so is the sea moved and
troubled when the waves rush against one another. Observe, says every
one, the motions of the heavens, of public affairs; observe the quarrel
of such a person, take notice of such a one’s pulse, of such another’s
last will and testament; in sum, be always looking high or low, on one
side, before or behind you. It was a paradoxical command anciently given
us by that god of Delphos: “Look into yourself; discover yourself; keep
close to yourself; call back your mind and will, that elsewhere consume
themselves into yourself; you run out, you spill yourself; carry a more
steady hand: men betray you, men spill you, men steal you from yourself.
Dost thou not see that this world we live in keeps all its sight confined
within, and its eyes open to contemplate itself? ‘Tis always vanity for
thee, both within and without; but ‘tis less vanity when less extended.
Excepting thee, O man, said that god, everything studies itself first,
and has bounds to its labours and desires, according to its need. There
is nothing so empty and necessitous as thou, who embracest the universe;
thou art the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without
jurisdiction, and, after all, the fool of the farce.”


ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
A man may govern himself well who cannot govern others so
A man should diffuse joy, but, as much as he can, smother grief
A well-bred man is a compound man