Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 017

square of all solid imagination, and of all truth, was an absolute
conformity to Aristotle’s doctrine; and that all besides was nothing but
inanity and chimera; for that he had seen all, and said all.” A position,
that for having been a little too injuriously and broadly interpreted,
brought him once and long kept him in great danger of the Inquisition at
Rome.
Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift everything he reads, and
lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust.
Aristotle’s principles will then be no more principles to him, than those
of Epicurus and the Stoics: let this diversity of opinions be propounded
to, and laid before him; he will himself choose, if he be able; if not,
he will remain in doubt.
“Che non men the saver, dubbiar m’ aggrata.”
[“I love to doubt, as well as to know.”--Dante, Inferno, xi. 93]
for, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his own reason,
they will no more be theirs, but become his own. Who follows another,
follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is inquisitive after nothing.
“Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se vindicet.”
[“We are under no king; let each vindicate himself.”
--Seneca, Ep.,33]
Let him, at least, know that he knows. It will be necessary that he
imbibe their knowledge, not that he be corrupted with their precepts;
and no matter if he forget where he had his learning, provided he know
how to apply it to his own use. Truth and reason are common to every
one, and are no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them
after: ‘tis no more according to Plato, than according to me, since both
he and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull their several sweets
from this flower and that blossom, here and there where they find them,
but themselves afterwards make the honey, which is all and purely their
own, and no more thyme and marjoram: so the several fragments he borrows
from others, he will transform and shuffle together to compile a work
that shall be absolutely his own; that is to say, his judgment:
his instruction, labour and study, tend to nothing else but to form that.
He is not obliged to discover whence he got the materials that have
assisted him, but only to produce what he has himself done with them.
Men that live upon pillage and borrowing, expose their purchases and
buildings to every one’s view: but do not proclaim how they came by the
money. We do not see the fees and perquisites of a gentleman of the long
robe; but we see the alliances wherewith he fortifies himself and his
family, and the titles and honours he has obtained for him and his. No
man divulges his revenue; or, at least, which way it comes in but every
one publishes his acquisitions. The advantages of our study are to
become better and more wise. ‘Tis, says Epicharmus, the understanding
that sees and hears, ‘tis the understanding that improves everything,
that orders everything, and that acts, rules, and reigns: all other
faculties are blind, and deaf, and without soul. And certainly we render
it timorous and servile, in not allowing it the liberty and privilege to
do anything of itself. Whoever asked his pupil what he thought of
grammar and rhetoric, or of such and such a sentence of Cicero? Our
masters stick them, full feathered, in our memories, and there establish
them like oracles, of which the letters and syllables are of the
substance of the thing. To know by rote, is no knowledge, and signifies
no more but only to retain what one has intrusted to our memory. That
which a man rightly knows and understands, he is the free disposer of at
his own full liberty, without any regard to the author from whence he had
it, or fumbling over the leaves of his book. A mere bookish learning is
a poor, paltry learning; it may serve for ornament, but there is yet no
foundation for any superstructure to be built upon it, according to the
opinion of Plato, who says, that constancy, faith, and sincerity, are the
true philosophy, and the other sciences, that are directed to other ends;
mere adulterate paint. I could wish that Paluel or Pompey, those two
noted dancers of my time, could have taught us to cut capers, by only
seeing them do it, without stirring from our places, as these men pretend
to inform the understanding without ever setting it to work, or that we
could learn to ride, handle a pike, touch a lute, or sing without the
trouble of practice, as these attempt to make us judge and speak well,
without exercising us in judging or speaking. Now in this initiation of
our studies in their progress, whatsoever presents itself before us is
book sufficient; a roguish trick of a page, a sottish mistake of a
servant, a jest at the table, are so many new subjects.
And for this reason, conversation with men is of very great use and
travel into foreign countries; not to bring back (as most of our young
monsieurs do) an account only of how many paces Santa Rotonda--[The
Pantheon of Agrippa.]--is in circuit; or of the richness of Signora
Livia’s petticoats; or, as some others, how much Nero’s face, in a statue
in such an old ruin, is longer and broader than that made for him on some
medal; but to be able chiefly to give an account of the humours, manners,
customs, and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we may
whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others. I
would that a boy should be sent abroad very young, and first, so as to
kill two birds with one stone, into those neighbouring nations whose
language is most differing from our own, and to which, if it be not
formed betimes, the tongue will grow too stiff to bend.
And also ‘tis the general opinion of all, that a child should not be
brought up in his mother’s lap. Mothers are too tender, and their
natural affection is apt to make the most discreet of them all so
overfond, that they can neither find in their hearts to give them due
correction for the faults they may commit, nor suffer them to be inured
to hardships and hazards, as they ought to be. They will not endure to
see them return all dust and sweat from their exercise, to drink cold
drink when they are hot, nor see them mount an unruly horse, nor take a
foil in hand against a rude fencer, or so much as to discharge a carbine.
And yet there is no remedy; whoever will breed a boy to be good for
anything when he comes to be a man, must by no means spare him when
young, and must very often transgress the rules of physic:
“Vitamque sub dio, et trepidis agat
In rebus.”
[“Let him live in open air, and ever in movement about something.”
--Horace, Od. ii., 3, 5.]
It is not enough to fortify his soul; you are also to make his sinews
strong; for the soul will be oppressed if not assisted by the members,
and would have too hard a task to discharge two offices alone. I know
very well to my cost, how much mine groans under the burden, from being
accommodated with a body so tender and indisposed, as eternally leans and
presses upon her; and often in my reading perceive that our masters, in
their writings, make examples pass for magnanimity and fortitude of mind,
which really are rather toughness of skin and hardness of bones; for I
have seen men, women, and children, naturally born of so hard and
insensible a constitution of body, that a sound cudgelling has been less
to them than a flirt with a finger would have been to me, and that would
neither cry out, wince, nor shrink, for a good swinging beating; and when
wrestlers counterfeit the philosophers in patience, ‘tis rather strength
of nerves than stoutness of heart. Now to be inured to undergo labour,
is to be accustomed to endure pain:
“Labor callum obducit dolori.”
[“Labour hardens us against pain.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 15.]
A boy is to be broken in to the toil and roughness of exercise, so as to
be trained up to the pain and suffering of dislocations, cholics,
cauteries, and even imprisonment and the rack itself; for he may come by
misfortune to be reduced to the worst of these, which (as this world
goes) is sometimes inflicted on the good as well as the bad. As for
proof, in our present civil war whoever draws his sword against the laws,
threatens the honestest men with the whip and the halter.
And, moreover, by living at home, the authority of this governor, which
ought to be sovereign over the boy he has received into his charge, is
often checked and hindered by the presence of parents; to which may also
be added, that the respect the whole family pay him, as their master’s
son, and the knowledge he has of the estate and greatness he is heir to,
are, in my opinion, no small inconveniences in these tender years.
And yet, even in this conversing with men I spoke of but now, I have
observed this vice, that instead of gathering observations from others,
we make it our whole business to lay ourselves open to them, and are more
concerned how to expose and set out our own commodities, than how to
increase our stock by acquiring new. Silence, therefore, and modesty are
very advantageous qualities in conversation. One should, therefore,
train up this boy to be sparing and an husband of his knowledge when he
has acquired it; and to forbear taking exceptions at or reproving every
idle saying or ridiculous story that is said or told in his presence; for
it is a very unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything that is not
agreeable to our own palate. Let him be satisfied with correcting
himself, and not seem to condemn everything in another he would not do
himself, nor dispute it as against common customs.
“Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia.”
[“Let us be wise without ostentation, without envy.”
--Seneca, Ep., 103.]
Let him avoid these vain and uncivil images of authority, this childish
ambition of coveting to appear better bred and more accomplished, than he
really will, by such carriage, discover himself to be. And, as if
opportunities of interrupting and reprehending were not to be omitted, to
desire thence to derive the reputation of something more than ordinary.
For as it becomes none but great poets to make use of the poetical
licence, so it is intolerable for any but men of great and illustrious
souls to assume privilege above the authority of custom:
“Si quid Socrates ant Aristippus contra morem et consuetudinem
fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur licere: magnis enim illi et
divinis bonis hanc licentiam assequebantur.”
[“If Socrates and Aristippus have committed any act against manners
and custom, let him not think that he is allowed to do the same; for
it was by great and divine benefits that they obtained this
privilege.”--Cicero, De Offic., i. 41.]
Let him be instructed not to engage in discourse or dispute but with a
champion worthy of him, and, even there, not to make use of all the
little subtleties that may seem pat for his purpose, but only such
arguments as may best serve him. Let him be taught to be curious in the
election and choice of his reasons, to abominate impertinence, and
consequently, to affect brevity; but, above all, let him be lessoned to
acquiesce and submit to truth so soon as ever he shall discover it,
whether in his opponent’s argument, or upon better consideration of his
own; for he shall never be preferred to the chair for a mere clatter of
words and syllogisms, and is no further engaged to any argument whatever,
than as he shall in his own judgment approve it: nor yet is arguing a
trade, where the liberty of recantation and getting off upon better
thoughts, are to be sold for ready money:
“Neque, ut omnia, qux praescripta et imperata sint,
defendat, necessitate ulla cogitur.”
[“Neither is their any necessity upon him, that he should defend
all things that are prescribed and enjoined him.”
--Cicero, Acad., ii. 3.]
If his governor be of my humour, he will form his will to be a very good
and loyal subject to his prince, very affectionate to his person, and
very stout in his quarrel; but withal he will cool in him the desire of
having any other tie to his service than public duty. Besides several
other inconveniences that are inconsistent with the liberty every honest
man ought to have, a man’s judgment, being bribed and prepossessed by
these particular obligations, is either blinded and less free to exercise
its function, or is blemished with ingratitude and indiscretion. A man
that is purely a courtier, can neither have power nor will to speak or
think otherwise than favourably and well of a master, who, amongst so
many millions of other subjects, has picked out him with his own hand to
nourish and advance; this favour, and the profit flowing from it, must
needs, and not without some show of reason, corrupt his freedom and
dazzle him; and we commonly see these people speak in another kind of
phrase than is ordinarily spoken by others of the same nation, though
what they say in that courtly language is not much to be believed.
Let his conscience and virtue be eminently manifest in his speaking, and
have only reason for their guide. Make him understand, that to
acknowledge the error he shall discover in his own argument, though only
found out by himself, is an effect of judgment and sincerity, which are
the principal things he is to seek after; that obstinacy and contention
are common qualities, most appearing in mean souls; that to revise and
correct himself, to forsake an unjust argument in the height and heat of
dispute, are rare, great, and philosophical qualities.
Let him be advised, being in company, to have his eye and ear in every
corner; for I find that the places of greatest honour are commonly seized
upon by men that have least in them, and that the greatest fortunes are
seldom accompanied with the ablest parts. I have been present when,
whilst they at the upper end of the chamber have been only commenting the
beauty of the arras, or the flavour of the wine, many things that have
been very finely said at the lower end of the table have been lost and
thrown away. Let him examine every man’s talent; a peasant, a
bricklayer, a passenger: one may learn something from every one of these
in their several capacities, and something will be picked out of their
discourse whereof some use may be made at one time or another; nay, even
the folly and impertinence of others will contribute to his instruction.
By observing the graces and manners of all he sees, he will create to
himself an emulation of the good, and a contempt of the bad.
Let an honest curiosity be suggested to his fancy of being inquisitive
after everything; whatever there is singular and rare near the place
where he is, let him go and see it; a fine house, a noble fountain, an
eminent man, the place where a battle has been anciently fought, the
passages of Caesar and Charlemagne:
“Qux tellus sit lenta gelu, quae putris ab aestu,
Ventus in Italiam quis bene vela ferat.”
[“What country is bound in frost, what land is friable with heat,
what wind serves fairest for Italy.”--Propertius, iv. 3, 39.]
Let him inquire into the manners, revenues, and alliances of princes,
things in themselves very pleasant to learn, and very useful to know.
In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those who only
live in the records of history; he shall, by reading those books,
converse with the great and heroic souls of the best ages. ‘Tis an idle
and vain study to those who make it so by doing it after a negligent
manner, but to those who do it with care and observation, ‘tis a study of
inestimable fruit and value; and the only study, as Plato reports, that
the Lacedaemonians reserved to themselves. What profit shall he not reap
as to the business of men, by reading the Lives of Plutarch? But,
withal, let my governor remember to what end his instructions are
principally directed, and that he do not so much imprint in his pupil’s
memory the date of the ruin of Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and
Scipio; nor so much where Marcellus died, as why it was unworthy of his
duty that he died there. Let him not teach him so much the narrative
parts of history as to judge them; the reading of them, in my opinion,
is a thing that of all others we apply ourselves unto with the most
differing measure. I have read a hundred things in Livy that another has
not, or not taken notice of at least; and Plutarch has read a hundred
more there than ever I could find, or than, peradventure, that author
ever wrote; to some it is merely a grammar study, to others the very
anatomy of philosophy, by which the most abstruse parts of our human
nature penetrate. There are in Plutarch many long discourses very worthy
to be carefully read and observed, for he is, in my opinion, of all
others the greatest master in that kind of writing; but there are a
thousand others which he has only touched and glanced upon, where he only
points with his finger to direct us which way we may go if we will, and
contents himself sometimes with giving only one brisk hit in the nicest
article of the question, whence we are to grope out the rest. As, for
example, where he says’--[In the Essay on False Shame.]--that the
inhabitants of Asia came to be vassals to one only, for not having been
able to pronounce one syllable, which is No. Which saying of his gave
perhaps matter and occasion to La Boetie to write his “Voluntary
Servitude.” Only to see him pick out a light action in a man’s life, or
a mere word that does not seem to amount even to that, is itself a whole
discourse. ‘Tis to our prejudice that men of understanding should so
immoderately affect brevity; no doubt their reputation is the better by
it, but in the meantime we are the worse. Plutarch had rather we should
applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather leave us
with an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have already
read. He knew very well, that a man may say too much even upon the best
subjects, and that Alexandridas justly reproached him who made very good.
but too long speeches to the Ephori, when he said: “O stranger! thou
speakest the things thou shouldst speak, but not as thou shouldst speak
them.”--[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedamonians.]--Such as have lean
and spare bodies stuff themselves out with clothes; so they who are
defective in matter endeavour to make amends with words.
Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation
with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves,
and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses. One asking
Socrates of what country he was, he did not make answer, of Athens, but
of the world;--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 37; Plutarch, On Exile, c. 4.]--
he whose imagination was fuller and wider, embraced the whole world for
his country, and extended his society and friendship to all mankind;
not as we do, who look no further than our feet. When the vines of my
village are nipped with the frost, my parish priest presently concludes,
that the indignation of God has gone out against all the human race, and
that the cannibals have already got the pip. Who is it that, seeing the
havoc of these civil wars of ours, does not cry out, that the machine of
the world is near dissolution, and that the day of judgment is at hand;
without considering, that many worse things have been seen, and that in
the meantime, people are very merry in a thousand other parts of the
earth for all this? For my part, considering the licence and impunity
that always attend such commotions, I wonder they are so moderate, and
that there is no more mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones
patter about his ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in storm and
tempest; like the ridiculous Savoyard, who said very gravely, that if
that simple king of France could have managed his fortune as he should
have done, he might in time have come to have been steward of the
household to the duke his master: the fellow could not, in his shallow
imagination, conceive that there could be anything greater than a Duke of
Savoy. And, in truth, we are all of us, insensibly, in this error, an
error of a very great weight and very pernicious consequence. But
whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great image
of our mother nature, in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in her face
shall read so general and so constant a variety, whoever shall observe
himself in that figure, and not himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger
than the least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole,
that man alone is able to value things according to their true estimate
and grandeur.
This great world which some do yet multiply as several species under one
genus, is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves, to be able to
know ourselves as we ought to do in the true bias. In short, I would
have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most
attention. So many humours, so many sects, so many judgments, opinions,
laws, and customs, teach us to judge aright of our own, and inform our
understanding to discover its imperfection and natural infirmity, which
is no trivial speculation. So many mutations of states and kingdoms, and
so many turns and revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise enough
to make no great wonder of our own. So many great names, so many famous
victories and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our
hopes ridiculous of eternising our names by the taking of half-a-score of
light horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its ruin.
The pride and arrogance of so many foreign pomps, the inflated majesty of
so many courts and grandeurs, accustom and fortify our sight without
closing our eyes to behold the lustre of our own; so many trillions of
men, buried before us, encourage us not to fear to go seek such good
company in the other world: and so of the rest Pythagoras was want to
say,--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 3.]--that our life resembles the great
and populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the
body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize: others bring
merchandise to sell for profit: there are also some (and those none of
the worst sort) who pursue no other advantage than only to look on, and
consider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of the
lives of other men, thereby the better to judge of and regulate their
own.
To examples may fitly be applied all the profitable discourses of
philosophy, to which all human actions, as to their best rule, ought to
be especially directed: a scholar shall be taught to know--
“Quid fas optare: quid asper
Utile nummus habet: patrix carisque propinquis
Quantum elargiri deceat: quern te Deus esse
Jussit, et humana qua parte locatus es in re;
Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur.”
[“Learn what it is right to wish; what is the true use of coined
money; how much it becomes us to give in liberality to our country
and our dear relations; whom and what the Deity commanded thee to
be; and in what part of the human system thou art placed; what we
are ant to what purpose engendered.”--Persius, iii. 69]
what it is to know, and what to be ignorant; what ought to be the end and
design of study; what valour, temperance, and justice are; the difference
betwixt ambition and avarice, servitude and subjection, licence and
liberty; by what token a man may know true and solid contentment; how far
death, affliction, and disgrace are to be apprehended;
“Et quo quemque modo fugiatque feratque laborem.”
[“And how you may shun or sustain every hardship.”
--Virgil, AEneid, iii. 459.]
by what secret springs we move, and the reason of our various agitations
and irresolutions: for, methinks the first doctrine with which one should
season his understanding, ought to be that which regulates his manners
and his sense; that teaches him to know himself, and how both well to dig
and well to live. Amongst the liberal sciences, let us begin with that
which makes us free; not that they do not all serve in some measure to
the instruction and use of life, as all other things in some sort also
do; but let us make choice of that which directly and professedly serves
to that end. If we are once able to restrain the offices of human life
within their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of the
sciences in use are of no great use to us, and even in those that are,
that there are many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which we
had better let alone, and, following Socrates’ direction, limit the
course of our studies to those things only where is a true and real
utility:
“Sapere aude;
Incipe; Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam,
Rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis oevum.”
[“Dare to be wise; begin! he who defers the hour of living well is
like the clown, waiting till the river shall have flowed out: but
the river still flows, and will run on, with constant course, to
ages without end.”--Horace, Ep., i. 2.]
‘Tis a great foolery to teach our children:
“Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis,
Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua,”
[“What influence Pisces have, or the sign of angry Leo, or
Capricorn, washed by the Hesperian wave.”--Propertius, iv. I, 89.]
the knowledge of the stars and the motion of the eighth sphere before
their own:
[“What care I about the Pleiades or the stars of Taurus?”
--Anacreon, Ode, xvii. 10.]
Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, “To what purpose,” said he, “should I
trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or
slavery continually before my eyes?” for the kings of Persia were at that
time preparing to invade his country. Every one ought to say thus,
“Being assaulted, as I am by ambition, avarice, temerity, superstition,
and having within so many other enemies of life, shall I go ponder over
the world’s changes?”
After having taught him what will make him more wise and good, you may
then entertain him with the elements of logic, physics, geometry,
rhetoric, and the science which he shall then himself most incline to,
his judgment being beforehand formed and fit to choose, he will quickly
make his own. The way of instructing him ought to be sometimes by
discourse, and sometimes by reading; sometimes his governor shall put the
author himself, which he shall think most proper for him, into his hands,
and sometimes only the marrow and substance of it; and if himself be not
conversant enough in books to turn to all the fine discourses the books
contain for his purpose, there may some man of learning be joined to him,
that upon every occasion shall supply him with what he stands in need of,
to furnish it to his pupil. And who can doubt but that this way of
teaching is much more easy and natural than that of Gaza,--[Theodore
Gaza, rector of the Academy of Ferrara.]--in which the precepts are so
intricate, and so harsh, and the words so vain, lean; and insignificant,
that there is no hold to be taken of them, nothing that quickens and
elevates the wit and fancy, whereas here the mind has what to feed upon
and to digest. This fruit, therefore, is not only without comparison,
much more fair and beautiful; but will also be much more early ripe.
‘Tis a thousand pities that matters should be at such a pass in this age
of ours, that philosophy, even with men of understanding, should be,
looked upon as a vain and fantastic name, a thing of no use, no value,
either in opinion or effect, of which I think those ergotisms and petty
sophistries, by prepossessing the avenues to it, are the cause. And