Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 046

their lesson as privately to practice it by themselves, that they might
not be chidden nor beaten by their masters.
But this other story of the pie, of which we have Plutarch himself for a
warrant, is very strange. She lived in a barber’s shop at Rome, and did
wonders in imitating with her voice whatever she heard. It happened one
day that certain trumpeters stood a good while sounding before the
shop. After that, and all the next day, the pie was pensive, dumb, and
melancholic; which every body wondered at, and thought the noise of the
trumpets had so stupified and astonished her that her voice was
gone with her hearing. But they found at last that it was a profound
meditation and a retiring into herself, her thoughts exercising and
preparing her voice to imitate the sound of those trumpets, so that the
first voice she uttered was perfectly to imitate their strains, stops,
and changes; having by this new lesson quitted and taken in disdain all
she had learned before.
I will not omit this other example of a dog, also, which the same
Plutarch (I am sadly confounding all order, but I do not propose
arrangement here any more than elsewhere throughout my book) which
Plutarch says he saw on board a ship. This dog being puzzled how to get
the oil that was in the bottom of a jar, which he could not reach with
his tongue by reason of the narrow mouth of the vessel, went and fetched
stones and let them fall into the jar till he made the oil rise so high
that he could reach it. What is this but an effect of a very subtle
capacity! ‘Tis said that the ravens of Barbary do the same, when the
water they would drink is too low. This action is somewhat akin to what
Juba, a king of their nation relates of the elephants: “That when, by
the craft of the hunter, one of them is trapped in certain deep pits
prepared for them, and covered over with brush to deceive them, all the
rest, in great diligence, bring a great many stones and logs of wood to
raise the bottom so that he may get out.” But this animal, in
several other effects, comes so near to human capacity that, should I
particularly relate all that experience hath delivered to us, I should
easily have what I usually maintain granted: namely, that there is more
difference betwixt such and such a man than betwixt such a beast and
such a man. The keeper of an elephant in a private house of Syria robbed
him every meal of the half of his allowance. One day his master would
himself feed him, and poured the full measure of barley he had ordered
for his allowance into his manger which the elephant, casting an angry
look at the keeper, with his trunk separated the one-half from the
other, and thrust it aside, by that declaring the wrong was done him.
And another, having a keeper that mixed stones with his corn to make
up the measure, came to the pot where he was boiling meat for his own
dinner, and filled it with ashes. These are particular effects: but that
which all the world has seen, and all the world knows, that in all the
armies of the Levant one of the greatest force consisted in elephants,
with whom they did, without comparison, much greater execution than we
now do with our artillery; which takes, pretty nearly, their place in
a day of battle (as may easily be supposed by such as are well read in
ancient history);

“The sires of these huge animals were wont
The Carthaginian Hannibal to mount;
Our leaders also did these beasts bestride,
And mounted thus Pyrrhus his foes defied;
Nay, more, upon their backs they used to bear
Castles with armed cohorts to the war.”

They must necessarily have very confidently relied upon the fidelity and
understanding of these beasts when they entrusted them with the vanguard
of a battle, where the least stop they should have made, by reason of
the bulk and heaviness of their bodies, and the least fright that should
have made them face about upon their own people, had been enough to
spoil all: and there are but few examples where it has happened that
they have fallen foul upon their own troops, whereas we ourselves break
into our own battalions and rout one another. They had the charge not of
one simple movement only, but of many several things to be performed in
the battle: as the Spaniards did to their dogs in their new conquest of
the Indies, to whom they gave pay and allowed them a share in the spoil;
and those animals showed as much dexterity and judgment in pursuing the
victory and stopping the pursuit; in charging and retiring, as occasion
required; and in distinguishing their friends from their enemies, as
they did ardour and fierceness.
We more admire and value things that are unusual and strange than those
of ordinary observation. I had not else so long insisted upon these
examples: for I believe whoever shall strictly observe what we
ordinarily see in those animals we have amongst us may there find as
wonderful effects as those we seek in remote countries and ages. ‘Tis
one and the same nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has
sufficiently considered the present state of things, might certainly
conclude as to both the future ana the past. I have formerly seen men,
brought hither by sea from very distant countries, whose language not
being understood by us, and moreover their mien, countenance, and habit,
being quite differing from ours; which of us did not repute them savages
and brutes! Who did not attribute it to stupidity and want of common
sense to see them mute, ignorant of the French tongue, ignorant of our
salutations and cringes, our port and behaviour, from which all human
nature must by all means take its pattern and example. All that seems
strange to us, and that we do not understand, we condemn. The same
thing happens also in the judgments we make of beasts. They have several
conditions like to ours; from those we may, by comparison, draw some
conjecture: but by those qualities that are particular to themselves,
what know we what to make of them! The horses, dogs, oxen, sheep, birds,
and most of the animals that live amongst us, know our voices, and
suffer themselves to be governed by them: so did Crassus’s lamprey, and
came when he called it; as also do the eels that are found in the Lake
Arethusa; and I have seen several ponds where the fishes come to eat at
a certain call of those who use to feed them.

“They every one have names, and one and all
Straightway appear at their own master’s call:”

We may judge of that. We may also say that the elephants have some
participation of religion forasmuch as after several washings and
purifications they are observed to lift up their trunk like arms,
and, fixing their eyes towards the rising of the sun, continue long in
meditation and contemplation, at certain hours of the days, of their
own motion; without instruction or precept But because we do not see any
such signs in other animals, we cannot for that conclude that they are
without religion, nor make any judgment of what is concealed from us. As
we discern something in this action which the philosopher Cleanthes
took notice of, because it something resembles our own. He saw, he says,
“Ants go from their ant-hill, carrying the dead body of an ant towards
another ant-hill, whence several other ants came out to meet them, as if
to speak with them; where, after having been a while together, the last
returned to consult, you may suppose, with their fellow-citizens, and so
made two or three journeys, by reason of the difficulty of capitulation.
In the conclusion, the last comers brought the first a worm out of their
burrow, as it were for the ransom of the defunct, which the first laid
upon their backs and carried home, leaving the dead body to the others.”
This was the interpretation that Cleanthes gave of this transaction,
giving us by that to understand that those creatures that have no voice
are not, nevertheless, without intercourse and mutual communication,
whereof ‘tis through our own defect that we do not participate; and for
that reason foolishly take upon us to pass our censure. But they yet
produce either effects far beyond our capacity, to which we are so far
from being able to arrive by imitation that we cannot so much as by
imitation conceive it. Many are of opinion that in the great and last
naval engagement that Antony lost to Augustus, his admiral galley was
stayed in the middle of her course by the little fish the Latins call
_remora_, by reason of the property she has of staying all sorts of
vessels to which she fastens herself. And the Emperor Caligula, sailing
with a great navy upon the coast of Romania, his galley only was
suddenly stayed by the same fish, which, he caused to be taken, fastened
as it was to the keel of his ship, very angry that such a little animal
could resist both the sea, the wind, and the force of all his oars, by
being only fastened by the beak to his galley (for it is a shell-fish);
and was moreover, not without great reason, astonished that, being
brought to him in the vessel, it had no longer the strength it had
without. A citizen of Cyzicus formerly acquired the reputation of a good
mathematician for having learnt the quality of the hedge-hog: he has his
burrow open in divers places, and to several winds, and, foreseeing the
wind that is to come, stops the hole on that side, which that citizen
observing, gave the city certain predictions of the wind which was
presently to blow. The caméléon takes her colour from the place upon
which she is laid; but the polypus gives himself what colour he pleases,
according to occasion, either to conceal himself from what he fears, or
from what he has a design to seize: in the caméléon ‘tis a passive, but
in the polypus ‘tis an active, change. We have some changes of
colour, as in fear, anger, shame, and other passions, that alter our
complexions; but it is by the effect of suffering, as with the caméléon.
It is in the power of the jaundice, indeed, to make us turn yellow,
but ‘tis not in the power of our own will. Now these effects that we
discover in other animals, much greater than ours, seem to imply some
more excellent faculty in them unknown to us; as ‘tis to be presumed
there are several other qualities and abilities of theirs, of which no
appearances have arrived at us.
Amongst all the predictions of elder times, the most ancient and the
most certain were those taken from the flight of birds; we have nothing
certain like it, nor any thing to be so much admired. That rule and
order of the moving of the wing, whence they derived the consequences of
future things, must of necessity be guided by some excellent means to
so noble an operation: for to attribute this great effect to any natural
disposition, without the intelligence, consent, and meditation of him by
whom it is produced, is an opinion evidently false. That it is so, the
cramp-fish has this quality, not only to benumb all the members that
touch her, but even through the nets transmit a heavy dulness into the
hands of those that move and handle them; nay, it is further said that
if one pour water upon her, he will feel this numbness mount up the
water to the hand, and stupefy the feeling through the water. This is a
miraculous force; but ‘tis not useless to the cramp-fish; she knows it,
and makes use on’t; for, to catch the prey she desires, she will bury
herself in the mud, that other fishes swimming over her, struck and
benumbed with this coldness of hers, may fall into her power. Cranes,
swallows, and other birds of passage, by shifting their abode according
to the seasons, sufficiently manifest the knowledge they have of their
divining faculty, and put it in use. Huntsmen assure us that to cull out
from amongst a great many puppies that which ought to be preserved as
the best, the best way is to refer the choice to the mother; as thus,
take them and carry them out of the kennel, and the first she brings
back will certainly be the best; or if you make a show as if you would
environ the kennel with fire, that one she first catches up to save. By
which it appears they have a sort of prognostic which we have not; or
that they have some virtue in judging of their whelps other and more
certain than we have.
The manner of coming into the world, of engendering, nourishing, acting,
moving, living and dying of beasts, is so near to ours that whatever we
retrench from their moving causes, and add to our own condition above
theirs, can by no means proceed from any meditation of our own reason.
For the regimen of our health, physicians propose to us the example of
the beasts’ manners and way of living; for this saying (out of Plutarch)
has in all times been in the mouth of these people: “Keep warm thy feet
and head, as to the rest, live like a beast.”
The chief of all natural actions is generation; we have a certain
disposition of members which is the most proper for us to that end;
nevertheless, we are ordered by Lucretius to conform to the gesture and
posture of the brutes as the most effectual:--

More ferarum,
Quadrupedumque magis ritu, plerumque putantur
Concipere uxores:
Quia sic loca sumere possunt,
Pectoribus positis, sublatis semina lumbis;

and the same authority condemns, as hurtful, those indiscreet and
impudent motions which the women have added of their own invention, to
whom it proposes the more temperate and modest pattern and practice of
the beasts of their own sex:--

Nam mulier prohibet se concipere atque répugnât,
Clunibus ipsa viri Venerem si læta retractet,
Atque exossato ciet omni pectore fluctua.
Ejicit enim sulci recta regione viaque
Vomerem, atque locis avertit seminis ictum.

If it be justice to render to every one their due, the beasts that
serve, love, and defend their benefactors, and that pursue and fall upon
strangers and those who offend them, do in this represent a certain air
of our justice; as also in observing a very equitable equality in the
distribution of what they have to their young. And as to friendship,
they have it without comparison more lively and constant than men have.
King Lysimachus’s dog, Hyrcanus, master being dead, lay on his bed,
obstinately refusing either to eat or drink; and, the day that his
body was burnt, he took a run and leaped into the fire, where he was
consumed, As also did the dog of one Pyrrhus, for he would not stir from
off his master’s bed from the time he died; and when they carried him
away let himself be carried with him, and at last leaped into the pile
where they burnt his master’s body. There are inclinations of affection
which sometimes spring in us, without the consultation of reason; and by
a fortuitous temerity, which others call sympathy; of which beasts
are as capable as we. We see horses take such an acquaintance with
one another that we have much ado to make them eat or travel, when
separated; we observe them to fancy a particular colour in those of
their own kind, and, where they meet it, run to it with great joy and
demonstrations of good will, and have a dislike and hatred for some
other colour. Animals have choice, as well as we, in their amours, and
cull out their mistresses; neither are they exempt from our jealousies
and implacable malice.
Desires are either natural and necessary, as to eat and drink; or
natural and not necessary, as the coupling with females; or neither
natural nor necessary; of which last sort are almost all the desires of
men; they are all superfluous and artificial. For ‘tis marvellous how
little will satisfy nature, how little she has left us to desire; our
ragouts and kickshaws are not of her ordering. The Stoics say that a man
may live on an olive a day. The delicacy of our wines is no part of her
instruction, nor the refinements we introduce into the indulgence of our
amorous appetites:--

Neque ilia
Magno prognatum deposcit consule cunnum.
“Nature, in her pursuit of love, disclaims
The pride of titles, and the pomp of names.”

These irregular desires, that the ignorance of good and a false opinion
have infused into us, are so many that they almost exclude all the
natural; just as if there were so great a number of strangers in the
city as to thrust out the natural inhabitants, or, usurping upon their
ancient rights and privileges, should extinguish their authority and
introduce new laws and customs of their own. Animals are much more
regular than we, and keep themselves with greater moderation within the
limits nature has prescribed; but yet not so exactly that they have not
sometimes an analogy with our debauches. And as there have been furious
desires that have impelled men to the love of beasts, so there have been
examples of beasts that have fallen in love with us, and been seized
with monstrous affection betwixt kinds; witness the elephant who was
rival to Aristophanes the grammarian in the love of a young herb-wench
in the city of Alexandria, who was nothing behind him in all the offices
of a very passionate suitor; for going through the market where they
sold fruit, he would take some in his trunk and carry them to her.
He would as much as possible keep her always in his sight, and would
sometimes put his trunk under her handkerchief into her bosom, to feel
her breasts. They tell also of a dragon in love with a girl, and of a
goose enamoured of a child; of a ram that was suitor to the minstrelless
Glaucia, in the town of Asopus; and we see not unfrequently baboons
furiously in love with women. We see also certain male animals that
are fond of the males of their own kind. Oppian and others give us some
examples of the reverence that beasts have to their kindred in their
copulations; but experience often shows us the contrary:--

Nec habetur turpe juvencæ
Ferre patrem tergo; fit equo sua filia conjux;
Quasque creavit, init pecudes caper; ipsaque cujus
Semine concepta est, ex illo concipit ales.
“The heifer thinks it not a shame to take
Her lusty sire upon her willing back:
The horse his daughter leaps, goats scruple not
T’ increase the herd by those they have begot;
And birds of all sorts do in common live,
And by the seed they have conceived conceive.”

And for subtle cunning, can there be a more pregnant example than in the
philosopher Thales’s mule? who, fording a river, laden with salt, and
by accident stumbling there, so that the sacks he carried were all wet,
perceiving that by the melting of the salt his burden was something
lighter, he never failed, so oft as he came to any river, to lie down
with his load; till his master, discovering the knavery, ordered that he
should be laden with wood? wherein, finding himself mistaken, he ceased
to practise that device. There are several that very vividly represent
the true image of our avarice; for we see them infinitely solicitus to
get all they can, and hide it with that exceeding great care, though
they never make any use of it at all. As to thrift, they surpass us not
only in the foresight and laying up, and saving for the time to come,
but they have, moreover, a great deal of the science necessary thereto.
The ants bring abroad into the sun their grain and seed to air, refresh
and dry them when they perceive them to mould and grow musty, lest they
should decay and rot. But the caution and prevention they use in gnawing
their grains of wheat surpass all imagination of human prudence; for by
reason that the wheat does not always continue sound and dry, but grows
soft, thaws and dissolves as if it were steeped in milk, whilst hasting
to germination; for fear lest it should shoot and lose the nature and
property of a magazine for their subsistence, they nibble off the end by
which it should shoot and sprout.
As to what concerns war, which is the greatest and most magnificent of
human actions, I would very fain know whether we would use it for an
argument of some prerogative or, on contrary, for a testimony of our
weakness and imperfection; as, in truth, the science of undoing and
killing one another, and of ruining and destroying our own kind, has
nothing in it so tempting as to make it be coveted by beasts who have it
not.

Quando leoni Fortior eripuit vitam leo? quo nemore unquam
Expiravit aper majoris dentibus apri?
“No lion drinks a weaker lion’s gore,
No boar expires beneath a stronger boar.”

Yet are they not universally exempt; witness the furious encounters of
bees, and the enterprises of the princes of the contrary armies:--

Sæpe duobus Regibus incessit magno discordia motu;
Continuoque animos vulgi et trepidantia bello
Gorda licet longé præsciscere.
“But if contending factions arm the hive,
When rival kings in doubtful battle strive,
Tumultuous crowds the dread event prepare,
And palpitating hearts that beat to war.”

I never read this divine description but that, methinks, I there see
human folly and vanity represented in their true and lively colours. For
these warlike movements, that so ravish us with their astounding noise
and horror, this rattle of guns, drums, and cries,

Fulgur ibi ad coelum se tollit, totaque circum
Ære renidescit tellus, subterque virûm vi
Excitur pedibus sonitus, clamoreque montes
Icti rejectant voces ad sidera mundi;
“When burnish’d arms to heaven dart their rays,
And many a steely beam i’ th’ sunlight plays,
When trampled is the earth by horse and man,
Until the very centre groans again,
And that the rocks, struck by the various cries,
Reverberate the sound unto the skies;”

in the dreadful embattling of so many thousands of armed men, and so
great fury, ardour, and courage, ‘tis pleasant to consider by what idle
occasions they are excited, and by how light ones appeased:--

Paridis propter narratur amorem
Greciæ Barbariæ diro collisa duello:
“Of wanton Paris the illicit love
Did Greece and Troy to ten years’ warfare move:”

all Asia was ruined and destroyed for the lust of Paris; the envy of
one single man, a despite, a pleasure, a domestic jealousy, causes that
ought not to set two oyster-wenches by the ears, is the mover of all
this mighty bustle. Shall we believe those very men who are themselves
the principal authors of these mischiefs? Let us then hear the greatest,
the most powerful, the most victorious emperor that ever was, turning
into a jest, very pleasantly and ingeniously, several battles fought
both by sea and land, the blood and lives of five hundred thousand men
that followed his fortune, and the strength and riches of two parts of
the world drained for the expense of his expeditions:--

Quod futuit Glaphyran Antonius, hanc mihi poenam
Fulvia constituit, se quoqne uti futuam.
Fulviam ego ut futuam! quid, si me Manius oret
Podicem, faciam? Non puto, si sapiam.
Aut futue, aut pugnemus, ait
Quid, si mihi vitii
Charior est ipsâ mentula? Signa canant.
Qui? moi, que je serve Fulvie!
Sufflt-il quelle en ait envie?
A ce compte, on verrait se retirer von moi
Mille épouses mal satisfaites.
Aime-moi, me dit elle, ou combattons. Mais quoi?
Elle est bien laide! Allons, sonnes trompettes.
‘Cause Anthony is fired with Glaphire’s charms
Fain would his Fulvia tempt me to her arms.
If Anthony be false, what then? must I
Be slave to Fulvia’s lustful tyranny?
Then would a thousand wanton, waspish wives,

(I use my Latin with the liberty of conscience you are pleased to allow
me.) Now this great body, with so many fronts, and so many motions,
which seems to threaten heaven and earth:--

Quam multi Lybico volvuntur marmore fluctus,
Sævus ubi Orion hibemis conditur undis,
Vel quam solo novo densæ torrentur Aristæ,
Aut Hermi campo, aut Lyciæ flaventibus arvis;
Scuta sonant, pulsuque pedum tremit excita tellus:
“Not thicker billows beat the Lybian main,
When pale Orion sits in wintry rain;
Nor thicker harvests on rich Hermus rise,
Or Lycian fields, when Phobus burns the skies,
Than stand these troops: their bucklers ring around;
Their trampling turns the turf and shakes the solid ground:”

this furious monster, with so many heads and arms, is yet man--feeble,
calamitous, and miserable man! ‘Tis but an ant-hill disturbed and
provoked:--

It nigrum campis agmen:
“The black troop marches to the field:”

a contrary blast, the croaking of a flight of ravens, the stumble of
a horse, the casual passage of an eagle, a dream, a voice, a sign, a
morning mist, are any one of them sufficient to beat down and overturn
him. Dart but a sunbeam in his face, he is melted and vanished. Blow
but a little dust in his eyes, as our poet says of the bees, and all our
ensigns and legions, with the great Pompey himself at the head of them,
are routed and crushed to pieces; for it was he, as I take it, that
Sertorious beat in Spain with those fine arms, which also served Eumenes
against Antigonus, and Surena against Crassus:--

“Swarm to my bed like bees into their hives.
Declare for love, or war, she said; and frown’d:
No love I’ll grant: to arms bid trumpets sound.”

Hi motus animorum, atque hoc certamina tanta,
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent.
“Yet at thy will these dreadful conflicts cease,
Throw but a little dust and all is peace.”

Let us but slip our flies after them, and they will have the force and
courage to defeat them. Of fresh memory, the Portuguese having besieged
the city of Tamly, in the territory of Xiatine, the inhabitants of the
place brought a great many hives, of which are great plenty in that
place, upon the wall; and with fire drove the bees so furiously upon the
enemy that they gave over the enterprise, not being able to stand their
attacks and endure their stings; and so the citizens, by this new sort
of relief, gained liberty and the victory with so wonderful a fortune,
that at the return of their defenders from the battle they found they
had not lost so much as one. The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast
in the same mould; the weight and importance of the actions of princes
considered, we persuade ourselves that they must be produced by some as
weighty and important causes; but we are deceived; for they are pushed
on, and pulled back in their motions, by the same springs that we are
in our little undertakings. The same reason that makes us wrangle with
a neighbour causes a war betwixt princes; the same reason that makes us
whip a lackey, falling into the hands of a king makes him ruin a whole
province. They are as lightly moved as we, but they are able to do more.
In a gnat and an elephant the passion is the same.
As to fidelity, there is no animal in the world so treacherous as man.
Our histories have recorded the violent pursuits that dogs have made
after the murderers of their masters. King Pyrrhus observing a dog that
watched a dead man’s body, and understanding that he had for three
days together performed that office, commanded that the body should be
buried, and took the dog along with him. One day, as he was at a general
muster of his army, this dog, seeing his master’s murderers, with great
barking and extreme signs of anger flew upon them, and by this first
accusation awakened the revenge of this murder, which was soon after
perfected by form of justice. As much was done by the dog of the wise
Hesiod, who convicted the sons of Ganictor of Naupactus of the murder
committed on the person of his master. Another dog being to guard a
temple at Athens, having spied a sacrilegious thief carrying away
the finest jewels, fell to barking at him with all his force, but the
warders not awaking at the noise, he followed him, and day being broke,
kept off at a little distance, without losing sight of him; if he
offered him any thing to eat he would not take it, but would wag his
tail at all the passengers he met, and took whatever they gave him; and