Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 016

was thus brought up; after his birth he was delivered, not to women, but
to eunuchs of the greatest authority about their kings for their virtue,
whose charge it was to keep his body healthful and in good plight; and
after he came to seven years of age, to teach him to ride and to go
a-hunting. When he arrived at fourteen he was transferred into the hands
of four, the wisest, the most just, the most temperate, and most valiant
of the nation; of whom the first was to instruct him in religion, the
second to be always upright and sincere, the third to conquer his
appetites and desires, and the fourth to despise all danger.
It is a thing worthy of very great consideration, that in that excellent,
and, in truth, for its perfection, prodigious form of civil regimen set
down by Lycurgus, though so solicitous of the education of children,
as a thing of the greatest concern, and even in the very seat of the
Muses, he should make so little mention of learning; as if that generous
youth, disdaining all other subjection but that of virtue, ought to be
supplied, instead of tutors to read to them arts and sciences, with such
masters as should only instruct them in valour, prudence, and justice;
an example that Plato has followed in his laws. The manner of their
discipline was to propound to them questions in judgment upon men and
their actions; and if they commended or condemned this or that person or
fact, they were to give a reason for so doing; by which means they at
once sharpened their understanding, and learned what was right.
Astyages, in Xenophon, asks Cyrus to give an account of his last lesson;
and thus it was, “A great boy in our school, having a little short
cassock, by force took a longer from another that was not so tall as he,
and gave him his own in exchange: whereupon I, being appointed judge of
the controversy, gave judgment, that I thought it best each should keep
the coat he had, for that they both of them were better fitted with that
of one another than with their own: upon which my master told me, I had
done ill, in that I had only considered the fitness of the garments,
whereas I ought to have considered the justice of the thing, which
required that no one should have anything forcibly taken from him that is
his own.” And Cyrus adds that he was whipped for his pains, as we are in
our villages for forgetting the first aorist of------.
[Cotton’s version of this story commences differently, and includes
a passage which is not in any of the editions of the original before
me:
“Mandane, in Xenophon, asking Cyrus how he would do to learn
justice, and the other virtues amongst the Medes, having left all
his masters behind him in Persia? He made answer, that he had
learned those things long since; that his master had often made him
a judge of the differences amongst his schoolfellows, and had one
day whipped him for giving a wrong sentence.”--W.C.H.]
My pedant must make me a very learned oration, ‘in genere demonstrativo’,
before he can persuade me that his school is like unto that. They knew
how to go the readiest way to work; and seeing that science, when most
rightly applied and best understood, can do no more but teach us
prudence, moral honesty, and resolution, they thought fit, at first hand,
to initiate their children with the knowledge of effects, and to instruct
them, not by hearsay and rote, but by the experiment of action, in lively
forming and moulding them; not only by words and precepts, but chiefly by
works and examples; to the end it might not be a knowledge in the mind
only, but its complexion and habit: not an acquisition, but a natural
possession. One asking to this purpose, Agesilaus, what he thought most
proper for boys to learn? “What they ought to do when they come to be
men,” said he.--[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedamonians. Rousseau
adopts the expression in his Diswuys sur tes Lettres.]--It is no wonder,
if such an institution produced so admirable effects.
They used to go, it is said, to the other cities of Greece, to inquire
out rhetoricians, painters, and musicians; but to Lacedaemon for
legislators, magistrates, and generals of armies; at Athens they learned
to speak well: here to do well; there to disengage themselves from a
sophistical argument, and to unravel the imposture of captious
syllogisms; here to evade the baits and allurements of pleasure, and with
a noble courage and resolution to conquer the menaces of fortune and
death; those cudgelled their brains about words, these made it their
business to inquire into things; there was an eternal babble of the
tongue, here a continual exercise of the soul. And therefore it is
nothing strange if, when Antipater demanded of them fifty children for
hostages, they made answer, quite contrary to what we should do, that
they would rather give him twice as many full-grown men, so much did they
value the loss of their country’s education. When Agesilaus courted
Xenophon to send his children to Sparta to be bred, “it is not,” said he,
“there to learn logic or rhetoric, but to be instructed in the noblest of
all sciences, namely, the science to obey and to command.”--[Plutarch,
Life of Agesilaus, c. 7.]
It is very pleasant to see Socrates, after his manner, rallying Hippias,
--[Plato’s Dialogues: Hippias Major.]--who recounts to him what a world
of money he has got, especially in certain little villages of Sicily, by
teaching school, and that he made never a penny at Sparta: “What a
sottish and stupid people,” said Socrates, “are they, without sense or
understanding, that make no account either of grammar or poetry, and only
busy themselves in studying the genealogies and successions of their
kings, the foundations, rises, and declensions of states, and such tales
of a tub!” After which, having made Hippias from one step to another
acknowledge the excellency of their form of public administration, and
the felicity and virtue of their private life, he leaves him to guess at
the conclusion he makes of the inutilities of his pedantic arts.
Examples have demonstrated to us that in military affairs, and all others
of the like active nature, the study of sciences more softens and
untempers the courages of men than it in any way fortifies and excites
them. The most potent empire that at this day appears to be in the whole
world is that of the Turks, a people equally inured to the estimation of
arms and the contempt of letters. I find Rome was more valiant before
she grew so learned. The most warlike nations at this time in being are
the most rude and ignorant: the Scythians, the Parthians, Tamerlane,
serve for sufficient proof of this. When the Goths overran Greece, the
only thing that preserved all the libraries from the fire was, that some
one possessed them with an opinion that they were to leave this kind of
furniture entire to the enemy, as being most proper to divert them from
the exercise of arms, and to fix them to a lazy and sedentary life.
When our King Charles VIII., almost without striking a blow, saw himself
possessed of the kingdom of Naples and a considerable part of Tuscany,
the nobles about him attributed this unexpected facility of conquest to
this, that the princes and nobles of Italy, more studied to render
themselves ingenious and learned, than vigorous and warlike.


ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
A parrot would say as much as that
Agesilaus, what he thought most proper for boys to learn?
But it is not enough that our education does not spoil us
Conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature
Culling out of several books the sentences that best please me
“Custom,” replied Plato, “is no little thing”
Education
Examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned
Fear and distrust invite and draw on offence
Fortune will still be mistress of events
Fox, who found fault with what he could not obtain
Fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed
Gave them new and more plausible names for their excuse
Give me time to recover my strength and health
Great presumption to be so fond of one’s own opinions
Gross impostures of religions
Hoary head and rivelled face of ancient usage
Hold a stiff rein upon suspicion
I have a great aversion from a novelty
Knowledge is not so absolutely necessary as judgment
Laws do what they can, when they cannot do what they would
Man can never be wise but by his own wisdom
Memories are full enough, but the judgment totally void
Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature
Nothing noble can be performed without danger
Only set the humours they would purge more violently in work
Ought not to expect much either from his vigilance or power
Ought to withdraw and retire his soul from the crowd
Over-circumspect and wary prudence is a mortal enemy
Physic
Physician worse physicked
Plays of children are not performed in play
Present himself with a halter about his neck to the people
Rome was more valiant before she grew so learned
Study to declare what is justice, but never took care to do it.
Testimony of the truth from minds prepossessed by custom?
They neither instruct us to think well nor to do well
Think of physic as much good or ill as any one would have me
Use veils from us the true aspect of things
Victorious envied the conquered
We only labour to stuff the memory
We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust
Weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy
What they ought to do when they come to be men
Whosoever despises his own life, is always master
Worse endure an ill-contrived robe than an ill-contrived mind



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


CONTENTS OF VOLUME 5.
XXV. Of the education of children.
XXVI. That it is folly to measure truth and error by our own
capacity.


CHAPTER XXV
OF THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
TO MADAME DIANE DE FOIX, Comtesse de Gurson
I never yet saw that father, but let his son be never so decrepit or
deformed, would not, notwithstanding, own him: not, nevertheless, if he
were not totally besotted, and blinded with his paternal affection, that
he did not well enough discern his defects; but that with all defaults he
was still his. Just so, I see better than any other, that all I write
here are but the idle reveries of a man that has only nibbled upon the
outward crust of sciences in his nonage, and only retained a general and
formless image of them; who has got a little snatch of everything and
nothing of the whole, ‘a la Francoise’. For I know, in general, that
there is such a thing as physic, as jurisprudence: four parts in
mathematics, and, roughly, what all these aim and point at; and,
peradventure, I yet know farther, what sciences in general pretend unto,
in order to the service of our life: but to dive farther than that, and
to have cudgelled my brains in the study of Aristotle, the monarch of all
modern learning, or particularly addicted myself to any one science,
I have never done it; neither is there any one art of which I am able to
draw the first lineaments and dead colour; insomuch that there is not a
boy of the lowest form in a school, that may not pretend to be wiser than
I, who am not able to examine him in his first lesson, which, if I am at
any time forced upon, I am necessitated in my own defence, to ask him,
unaptly enough, some universal questions, such as may serve to try his
natural understanding; a lesson as strange and unknown to him, as his is
to me.
I never seriously settled myself to the reading any book of solid
learning but Plutarch and Seneca; and there, like the Danaides, I
eternally fill, and it as constantly runs out; something of which drops
upon this paper, but little or nothing stays with me. History is my
particular game as to matter of reading, or else poetry, for which I have
particular kindness and esteem: for, as Cleanthes said, as the voice,
forced through the narrow passage of a trumpet, comes out more forcible
and shrill: so, methinks, a sentence pressed within the harmony of verse
darts out more briskly upon the understanding, and strikes my ear and
apprehension with a smarter and more pleasing effect. As to the natural
parts I have, of which this is the essay, I find them to bow under the
burden; my fancy and judgment do but grope in the dark, tripping and
stumbling in the way; and when I have gone as far as I can, I am in no
degree satisfied; I discover still a new and greater extent of land
before me, with a troubled and imperfect sight and wrapped up in clouds,
that I am not able to penetrate. And taking upon me to write
indifferently of whatever comes into my head, and therein making use of
nothing but my own proper and natural means, if it befall me, as
oft-times it does, accidentally to meet in any good author, the same heads
and commonplaces upon which I have attempted to write (as I did but just
now in Plutarch’s “Discourse of the Force of Imagination”), to see myself
so weak and so forlorn, so heavy and so flat, in comparison of those
better writers, I at once pity or despise myself. Yet do I please myself
with this, that my opinions have often the honour and good fortune to
jump with theirs, and that I go in the same path, though at a very great
distance, and can say, “Ah, that is so.” I am farther satisfied to find
that I have a quality, which every one is not blessed withal, which is,
to discern the vast difference between them and me; and notwithstanding
all that, suffer my own inventions, low and feeble as they are, to run on
in their career, without mending or plastering up the defects that this
comparison has laid open to my own view. And, in plain truth, a man had
need of a good strong back to keep pace with these people. The
indiscreet scribblers of our times, who, amongst their laborious
nothings, insert whole sections and pages out of ancient authors, with a
design, by that means, to illustrate their own writings, do quite
contrary; for this infinite dissimilitude of ornaments renders the
complexion of their own compositions so sallow and deformed, that they
lose much more than they get.
The philosophers, Chrysippus and Epicurus, were in this of two quite
contrary humours: the first not only in his books mixed passages and
sayings of other authors, but entire pieces, and, in one, the whole Medea
of Euripides; which gave Apollodorus occasion to say, that should a man
pick out of his writings all that was none of his, he would leave him
nothing but blank paper: whereas the latter, quite on the contrary, in
three hundred volumes that he left behind him, has not so much as one
quotation.--[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Chyysippus, vii. 181, and
Epicurus, x. 26.]
I happened the other day upon this piece of fortune; I was reading a
French book, where after I had a long time run dreaming over a great many
words, so dull, so insipid, so void of all wit or common sense, that
indeed they were only French words: after a long and tedious travel, I
came at last to meet with a piece that was lofty, rich, and elevated to
the very clouds; of which, had I found either the declivity easy or the
ascent gradual, there had been some excuse; but it was so perpendicular
a precipice, and so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the
first six words, I found myself flying into the other world, and thence
discovered the vale whence I came so deep and low, that I have never had
since the heart to descend into it any more. If I should set out one of
my discourses with such rich spoils as these, it would but too evidently
manifest the imperfection of my own writing. To reprehend the fault in
others that I am guilty of myself, appears to me no more unreasonable,
than to condemn, as I often do, those of others in myself: they are to be
everywhere reproved, and ought to have no sanctuary allowed them. I know
very well how audaciously I myself, at every turn, attempt to equal
myself to my thefts, and to make my style go hand in hand with them, not
without a temerarious hope of deceiving the eyes of my reader from
discerning the difference; but withal it is as much by the benefit of my
application, that I hope to do it, as by that of my invention or any
force of my own. Besides, I do not offer to contend with the whole body
of these champions, nor hand to hand with anyone of them: ‘tis only by
flights and little light attempts that I engage them; I do not grapple
with them, but try their strength only, and never engage so far as I make
a show to do. If I could hold them in play, I were a brave fellow; for I
never attack them; but where they are most sinewy and strong. To cover a
man’s self (as I have seen some do) with another man’s armour, so as not
to discover so much as his fingers’ ends; to carry on a design (as it is
not hard for a man that has anything of a scholar in him, in an ordinary
subject to do) under old inventions patched up here and there with his
own trumpery, and then to endeavour to conceal the theft, and to make it
pass for his own, is first injustice and meanness of spirit in those who
do it, who having nothing in them of their own fit to procure them a
reputation, endeavour to do it by attempting to impose things upon the
world in their own name, which they have no manner of title to; and next,
a ridiculous folly to content themselves with acquiring the ignorant
approbation of the vulgar by such a pitiful cheat, at the price at the
same time of degrading themselves in the eyes of men of understanding,
who turn up their noses at all this borrowed incrustation, yet whose
praise alone is worth the having. For my own part, there is nothing I
would not sooner do than that, neither have I said so much of others, but
to get a better opportunity to explain myself. Nor in this do I glance
at the composers of centos, who declare themselves for such; of which
sort of writers I have in my time known many very ingenious, and
particularly one under the name of Capilupus, besides the ancients.
These are really men of wit, and that make it appear they are so, both by
that and other ways of writing; as for example, Lipsius, in that learned
and laborious contexture of his Politics.
But, be it how it will, and how inconsiderable soever these ineptitudes
may be, I will say I never intended to conceal them, no more than my old
bald grizzled likeness before them, where the painter has presented you
not with a perfect face, but with mine. For these are my own particular
opinions and fancies, and I deliver them as only what I myself believe,
and not for what is to be believed by others. I have no other end in
this writing, but only to discover myself, who, also shall, peradventure,
be another thing to-morrow, if I chance to meet any new instruction to
change me. I have no authority to be believed, neither do I desire it,
being too conscious of my own inerudition to be able to instruct others.
Some one, then, having seen the preceding chapter, the other day told me
at my house, that I should a little farther have extended my discourse on
the education of children.--[“Which, how fit I am to do, let my friends
flatter me if they please, I have in the meantime no such opinion of my
own talent, as to promise myself any very good success from my
endeavour.” This passage would appear to be an interpolation by Cotton.
At all events, I do not find it in the original editions before me, or in
Coste.]--
Now, madam, if I had any sufficiency in this subject, I could not
possibly better employ it, than to present my best instructions to the
little man that threatens you shortly with a happy birth (for you are too
generous to begin otherwise than with a male); for, having had so great a
hand in the treaty of your marriage, I have a certain particular right
and interest in the greatness and prosperity of the issue that shall
spring from it; beside that, your having had the best of my services so
long in possession, sufficiently obliges me to desire the honour and
advantage of all wherein you shall be concerned. But, in truth, all I
understand as to that particular is only this, that the greatest and most
important difficulty of human science is the education of children. For
as in agriculture, the husbandry that is to precede planting, as also
planting itself, is certain, plain, and well known; but after that which
is planted comes to life, there is a great deal more to be done, more art
to be used, more care to be taken, and much more difficulty to cultivate
and bring it to perfection so it is with men; it is no hard matter to get
children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude,
and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up. The symptoms of
their inclinations in that tender age are so obscure, and the promises so
uncertain and fallacious, that it is very hard to establish any solid
judgment or conjecture upon them. Look at Cimon, for example, and
Themistocles, and a thousand others, who very much deceived the
expectation men had of them. Cubs of bears and puppies readily discover
their natural inclination; but men, so soon as ever they are grownup,
applying themselves to certain habits, engaging themselves in certain
opinions, and conforming themselves to particular laws and customs,
easily alter, or at least disguise, their true and real disposition; and
yet it is hard to force the propension of nature. Whence it comes to
pass, that for not having chosen the right course, we often take very
great pains, and consume a good part of our time in training up children
to things, for which, by their natural constitution, they are totally
unfit. In this difficulty, nevertheless, I am clearly of opinion, that
they ought to be elemented in the best and most advantageous studies,
without taking too much notice of, or being too superstitious in those
light prognostics they give of themselves in their tender years, and to
which Plato, in his Republic, gives, methinks, too much authority.
Madam, science is a very great ornament, and a thing of marvellous use,
especially in persons raised to that degree of fortune in which you are.
And, in truth, in persons of mean and low condition, it cannot perform
its true and genuine office, being naturally more prompt to assist in the
conduct of war, in the government of peoples, in negotiating the leagues
and friendships of princes and foreign nations, than in forming a
syllogism in logic, in pleading a process in law, or in prescribing a
dose of pills in physic. Wherefore, madam, believing you will not omit
this so necessary feature in the education of your children, who yourself
have tasted its sweetness, and are of a learned extraction (for we yet
have the writings of the ancient Counts of Foix, from whom my lord, your
husband, and yourself, are both of you descended, and Monsieur de
Candale, your uncle, every day obliges the world with others, which will
extend the knowledge of this quality in your family for so many
succeeding ages), I will, upon this occasion, presume to acquaint your
ladyship with one particular fancy of my own, contrary to the common
method, which is all I am able to contribute to your service in this
affair.
The charge of the tutor you shall provide for your son, upon the choice
of whom depends the whole success of his education, has several other
great and considerable parts and duties required in so important a trust,
besides that of which I am about to speak: these, however, I shall not
mention, as being unable to add anything of moment to the common rules:
and in this, wherein I take upon me to advise, he may follow it so far
only as it shall appear advisable.
For a, boy of quality then, who pretends to letters not upon the account
of profit (for so mean an object is unworthy of the grace and favour
of the Muses, and moreover, in it a man directs his service to and
depends upon others), nor so much for outward ornament, as for his own
proper and peculiar use, and to furnish and enrich himself within, having
rather a desire to come out an accomplished cavalier than a mere scholar
or learned man; for such a one, I say, I would, also, have his friends
solicitous to find him out a tutor, who has rather a well-made than a
well-filled head;--[“‘Tete bien faite’, an expression created by
Montaigne, and which has remained a part of our language.”--Servan.]--
seeking, indeed, both the one and the other, but rather of the two to
prefer manners and judgment to mere learning, and that this man should
exercise his charge after a new method.
‘Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil’s
ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of the
pupil is only to repeat what the others have said: now I would have a
tutor to correct this error, and, that at the very first, he should
according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test,
permitting his pupil himself to taste things, and of himself to discern
and choose them, sometimes opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving
him to open it for himself; that is, I would not have him alone to invent
and speak, but that he should also hear his pupil speak in turn.
Socrates, and since him Arcesilaus, made first their scholars speak, and
then they spoke to them--[Diogenes Laertius, iv. 36.]
“Obest plerumque iis, qui discere volunt,
auctoritas eorum, qui docent.”
[“The authority of those who teach, is very often an impediment to
those who desire to learn.”--Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 5.]
It is good to make him, like a young horse, trot before him, that he may
judge of his going, and how much he is to abate of his own speed, to
accommodate himself to the vigour and capacity of the other. For want of
which due proportion we spoil all; which also to know how to adjust, and
to keep within an exact and due measure, is one of the hardest things I
know, and ‘tis the effect of a high and well-tempered soul, to know how
to condescend to such puerile motions and to govern and direct them.
I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.
Such as, according to our common way of teaching, undertake, with one and
the same lesson, and the same measure of direction, to instruct several
boys of differing and unequal capacities, are infinitely mistaken; and
‘tis no wonder, if in a whole multitude of scholars, there are not found
above two or three who bring away any good account of their time and
discipline. Let the master not only examine him about the grammatical
construction of the bare words of his lesson, but about the sense and let
him judge of the profit he has made, not by the testimony of his memory,
but by that of his life. Let him make him put what he has learned into a
hundred several forms, and accommodate it to so many several subjects, to
see if he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own, taking
instruction of his progress by the pedagogic institutions of Plato. ‘Tis
a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the same
condition it was swallowed; the stomach has not performed its office
unless it have altered the form and condition of what was committed to it
to concoct. Our minds work only upon trust, when bound and compelled to
follow the appetite of another’s fancy, enslaved and captivated under the
authority of another’s instruction; we have been so subjected to the
trammel, that we have no free, nor natural pace of our own; our own
vigour and liberty are extinct and gone:
“Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt.”
[“They are ever in wardship.”--Seneca, Ep., 33.]
I was privately carried at Pisa to see a very honest man, but so great an
Aristotelian, that his most usual thesis was: “That the touchstone and