Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 084

Ore reluctanti fulminis ire modo”:
[“I saw, the other day, a horse struggling against his bit,
rush like a thunderbolt.”--Ovid, Amor., iii. 4, 13.]
the desire of company is allayed by giving it a little liberty. We are
pretty much in the same case they are extreme in constraint, we in
licence. ‘Tis a good custom we have in France that our sons are received
into the best families, there to be entertained and bred up pages, as in
a school of nobility; and ‘tis looked upon as a discourtesy and an
affront to refuse this to a gentleman. I have taken notice (for, so many
families, so many differing forms) that the ladies who have been
strictest with their maids have had no better luck than those who allowed
them a greater liberty. There should be moderation in these things; one
must leave a great deal of their conduct to their own discretion; for,
when all comes to all, no discipline can curb them throughout. But it is
true withal that she who comes off with flying colours from a school of
liberty, brings with her whereon to repose more confidence than she who
comes away sound from a severe and strict school.
Our fathers dressed up their daughters’ looks in bashfulness and fear
(their courage and desires being the same); we ours in confidence and
assurance; we understand nothing of the matter; we must leave it to the
Sarmatian women, who may not lie with a man till with their own hands
they have first killed another in battle. For me, who have no other
title left me to these things but by the ears, ‘tis sufficient if,
according to the privilege of my age, they retain me for one of their
counsel. I advise them then, and us men too, to abstinence; but if the
age we live in will not endure it, at least modesty and discretion. For,
as in the story of Aristippus, who, speaking to some young men who
blushed to see him go into a scandalous house, said “the vice is in not
coming out, not in going in,” let her who has no care of her conscience
have yet some regard to her reputation; and though she be rotten within,
let her carry a fair outside at least.
I commend a gradation and delay in bestowing their favours: Plato
‘declares that, in all sorts of love, facility and promptness are
forbidden to the defendant. ‘Tis a sign of eagerness which they
ought to disguise with all the art they have, so rashly, wholly, and
hand-over-hand to surrender themselves. In carrying themselves orderly
and measuredly in the granting their last favours, they much more allure
our desires and hide their own. Let them still fly before us, even those
who have most mind to be overtaken: they better conquer us by flying, as
the Scythians did. To say the truth, according to the law that nature
has imposed upon them, it is not properly for them either to will or
desire; their part is to suffer, obey, and consent and for this it is
that nature has given them a perpetual capacity, which in us is but at
times and uncertain; they are always fit for the encounter, that they may
be always ready when we are so “Pati natee.”-[“Born to suffer.”-Seneca,
Ep., 95.]--And whereas she has ordered that our appetites shall be
manifest by a prominent demonstration, she would have theirs to be hidden
and concealed within, and has furnished them with parts improper for
ostentation, and simply defensive. Such proceedings as this that follows
must be left to the Amazonian licence: Alexander marching his army
through Hyrcania, Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, came with three
hundred light horse of her own-sex, well mounted, and armed, having left
the remainder of a very great, army that followed her behind the
neighbouring mountains to give him a visit; where she publicly and in
plain terms told him that the fame of his valour and victories had
brought her thither to see him, and to make him an offer of her forces to
assist him in the pursuit of his enterprises; and that, finding him so
handsome, young, and vigorous, she, who was also perfect in all those
qualities, advised that they might lie together, to the end that from the
most valiant woman of the world and the bravest man then living, there
might spring some great and wonderful issue for the time to come.
Alexander returned her thanks for all the rest; but, to give leisure for
the accomplishment of her last demand, he detained her thirteen days in
that place, which were spent in royal feasting and jollity, for the
welcome of so courageous a princess.
We are, almost throughout, unjust judges of their actions, as they are of
ours. I confess the truth when it makes against me, as well as when ‘tis
on my side. ‘Tis an abominable intemperance that pushes them on so often
to change, and that will not let them limit their affection to any one
person whatever; as is evident in that goddess to whom are attributed so
many changes and so many lovers. But ‘tis true withal that ‘tis contrary
to the nature of love if it be, not violent; and contrary to the nature
of violence if it be constant. And they who wonder, exclaim, and keep
such a clutter to find out the causes of this frailty of theirs, as
unnatural and not to be believed, how comes it to pass they do not
discern how often they are themselves guilty of the same, without any
astonishment or miracle at all? It would, peradventure, be more strange
to see the passion fixed; ‘tis not a simply corporeal passion. If there
be no end to avarice and ambition, there is doubtless no more in desire;
it still lives after satiety; and ‘tis impossible to prescribe either
constant satisfaction or end; it ever goes beyond its possession. And by
that means inconstancy, peradventure, is in some sort more pardonable in
them than in us: they may plead, as well as we, the inclination to
variety and novelty common to us both; and secondly, without us, that
they buy a cat in a sack: Joanna, queen of Naples, caused her first
husband, Andrews, to be hanged at the bars of her window in a halter of
gold and silk woven with her own hand, because in matrimonial
performances she neither found his parts nor abilities answer the
expectation she had conceived from his stature, beauty, youth, and
activity, by which she had been caught and deceived. They may say there
is more pains required in doing than in suffering; and so they are on
their part always at least provided for necessity, whereas on our part it
may fall out otherwise. For this reason it was, that Plato wisely made a
law that before marriage, to determine of the fitness of persons, the
judges should see the young men who pretended to it stripped stark naked,
and the women but to the girdle only. When they come to try us they do
not, perhaps, find us worthy of their choice:
“Experta latus, madidoque simillima loro
Inguina, nec lassa stare coacta manu,
Deserit imbelles thalamos.”
[“After using every endeavour to arouse him to action,
she quits the barren couch.”--Martial, vii. 58.]
‘Tis not enough that a man’s will be good; weakness and insufficiency
lawfully break a marriage,
“Et quaerendum aliunde foret nervosius illud,
Quod posset zonam solvere virgineam:”
[“And seeks a more vigorous lover to undo her virgin zone.”
--Catullus, lxvii. 27.]
why not? and according to her own standard, an amorous intelligence,
more licentious and active,
“Si blando nequeat superesse labori.”
[“If his strength be unequal to the pleasant task.”
--Virgil, Georg., iii. 127.]
But is it not great impudence to offer our imperfections and
imbecilities, where we desire to please and leave a good opinion and
esteem of ourselves? For the little that I am able to do now:
“Ad unum
Mollis opus.”
[“Fit but for once.”--Horace, Epod., xii. 15.]
I would not trouble a woman, that I am to reverence and fear:
“Fuge suspicari,
Cujus undenum trepidavit aetas
Claudere lustrum.”
[“Fear not him whose eleventh lustrum is closed.”
--Horace, Od., ii. 4, 12, limits it to the eighth.]
Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable,
without rendering it ridiculous too. I hate to see it, for one poor inch
of pitiful vigour which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and set
itself out with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a true
flame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and bubble and then in a
moment so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertain
only to the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that
indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardour you think in you, for
it will certainly leave you in a pretty corner; but rather transfer it to
some tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod, and
blushes:
“Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro
Si quis ebur, vel mista rubent ubi lilia multa
Alba rosa.”
[“As Indian ivory streaked with crimson, or white lilies mixed
with the damask rose.”--AEneid, xii. 67.]
Who can stay till the morning without dying for shame to behold the
disdain of the fair eyes of her who knows so well his fumbling
impertinence,
“Et taciti fecere tamen convicia vultus,”
[“Though she nothing say, her looks betray her anger.”
--Ovid, Amor., i. 7, 21.]
has never had the satisfaction and the glory of having cudgelled them
till they were weary, with the vigorous performance of one heroic night.
When I have observed any one to be vexed with me, I have not presently
accused her levity, but have been in doubt, if I had not reason rather to
complain of nature; she has doubtless used me very uncivilly and
unkindly:
“Si non longa satis, si non bene mentula crassa
Nimirum sapiunt, videntque parvam
Matronae quoque mentulam illibenter:”
[The first of these verses is the commencement of an epigram of the
Veterum Poetayurra Catalecta, and the two others are from an epigram
in the same collection (Ad Matrones). They describe untranslatably
Montaigne’s charge against nature, indicated in the previous
passage.]
and done me a most enormous injury. Every member I have, as much one as
another, is equally my own, and no other more properly makes me a man
than this.
I universally owe my entire picture to the public. The wisdom of my
instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining to
introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the
catalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant,
of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate.
We are sure to have the vices of appearance, when we shall have had those
of essence: when we have done with these, we run full drive upon the
others, if we find it must be so; for there is danger that we shall fancy
new offices, to excuse our negligence towards the natural ones, and to
confound them: and to manifest this, is it not seen that in places where
faults are crimes, crimes are but faults; that in nations where the laws
of decency are most rare and most remiss, the primitive laws of common
reason are better observed: the innumerable multitude of so many duties
stifling and dissipating our care. The application of ourselves to light
and trivial things diverts us from those that are necessary and just.
Oh, how these superficial men take an easy and plausible way in
comparison of ours! These are shadows wherewith we palliate and pay one
another; but we do not pay, but inflame the reckoning towards that great
judge, who tucks up our rags and tatters above our shameful parts, and
suckles not to view us all over, even to our inmost and most secret
ordures: it were a useful decency of our maidenly modesty, could it keep
him from this discovery. In fine, whoever could reclaim man from so
scrupulous a verbal superstition, would do the world no great disservice.
Our life is divided betwixt folly and prudence: whoever will write of it
but what is reverend and canonical, will leave above the one-half behind.
I do not excuse myself to myself; and if I did, it should rather be for
my excuses that I would excuse myself than for any other fault; I excuse
myself of certain humours, which I think more strong in number than those
that are on my side. In consideration of which, I will further say this
(for I desire to please every one, though it will be hard to do):
“Esse unum hominem accommodatum ad tantam morum
ac sermonum et voluntatum varietatem,”
[“For a man to conform to such a variety of manners,
discourses, and will.”--Q. Cicero, De Pet. Consul, c. 14.]
that they ought not to condemn me for what I make authorities, received
and approved by so many ages, to utter: and that there is no reason that
for want of rhyme they should refuse me the liberty they allow even to
churchmen of our nation and time, and these amongst the most notable, of
which here are two of their brisk verses:
“Rimula, dispeream, ni monogramma tua est.”
“Un vit d’amy la contente et bien traicte:”
[St. Gelais, (Euvres Poetiques), p. 99, ed. of Lyons, 1574.]
besides how many others. I love modesty; and ‘tis not out of judgment
that I have chosen this scandalous way of speaking; ‘tis nature that has
chosen it for me. I commend it not, no more than other forms that are
contrary to common use: but I excuse it, and by circumstances both
general and particular, alleviate its accusation.
But to proceed. Whence, too, can proceed that usurpation of sovereign
authority you take upon you over the women, who favour you at their own
expense,
“Si furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte,”
[“If, in the stealthy night, she has made strange gifts.”
--Catullus, lxviii. 145.]
so that you presently assume the interest, coldness, and authority of a
husband? ‘Tis a free contract why do you not then keep to it, as you
would have them do? there is no prescription upon voluntary things.
‘Tis against the form, but it is true withal, that I in my time have
conducted this bargain as much as the nature of it would permit, as
conscientiously and with as much colour of justice, as any other
contract; and that I never pretended other affection than what I really
had, and have truly acquainted them with its birth, vigour, and
declination, its fits and intermissions: a man does not always hold on
at the same rate. I have been so sparing of my promises, that I think
I have been better than my word. They have found me faithful even to
service of their inconstancy, a confessed and sometimes multiplied
inconstancy. I never broke with them, whilst I had any hold at all, and
what occasion soever they have given me, never broke with them to hatred
or contempt; for such privacies, though obtained upon never so scandalous
terms, do yet oblige to some good will: I have sometimes, upon their
tricks and evasions, discovered a little indiscreet anger and impatience;
for I am naturally subject to rash emotions, which, though light and
short, often spoil my market. At any time they have consulted my
judgment, I never stuck to give them sharp and paternal counsels, and to
pinch them to the quick. If I have left them any cause to complain of
me, ‘tis rather to have found in me, in comparison of the modern use, a
love foolishly conscientious than anything else. I have kept my, word in
things wherein I might easily have been dispensed; they sometimes
surrendered themselves with reputation, and upon articles that they were
willing enough should be broken by the conqueror: I have, more than once,
made pleasure in its greatest effort strike to the interest of their
honour; and where reason importuned me, have armed them against myself;
so that they ordered themselves more decorously and securely by my rules,
when they frankly referred themselves to them, than they would have done
by their own. I have ever, as much as I could, wholly taken upon myself
alone the hazard of our assignations, to acquit them; and have always
contrived our meetings after the hardest and most unusual manner, as less
suspected, and, moreover, in my opinion, more accessible. They are
chiefly more open, where they think they are most securely shut; things
least feared are least interdicted and observed; one may more boldly dare
what nobody thinks you dare, which by its difficulty becomes easy. Never
had any man his approaches more impertinently generative; this way of
loving is more according to discipline but how ridiculous it is to our
people, and how ineffectual, who better knows than I? yet I shall not
repent me of it; I have nothing there more to lose:
“Me tabula sacer
Votiva paries, indicat uvida
Suspendisse potenti
Vestimenta maris deo:”
[“The holy wall, by my votive table, shows that I have hanged up my
wet clothes in honour of the powerful god of the sea.”
--Horace, Od., i. 5, 13.]
‘tis now time to speak out. But as I might, per adventure, say to
another, “Thou talkest idly, my friend; the love of thy time has little
commerce with faith and integrity;”
“Haec si tu postules
Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas,
Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias:”
[“If you seek to make these things certain by reason, you will do no
more than if you should seek to be mad in your senses.”
--Terence, Eun., act i., sc. i, v. 16.]
on the contrary, also, if it were for me to begin again, certainly it
should be by the same method and the same progress, how fruitless soever
it might be to me; folly and insufficiency are commendable in an
incommendable action: the farther I go from their humour in this, I
approach so much nearer to my own. As to the rest, in this traffic, I
did not suffer myself to be totally carried away; I pleased myself in it,
but did not forget myself. I retained the little sense and discretion
that nature has given me, entire for their service and my own: a little
emotion, but no dotage. My conscience, also, was engaged in it, even to
debauch and licentiousness; but, as to ingratitude, treachery, malice,
and cruelty, never. I would not purchase the pleasure of this vice at
any price, but content myself with its proper and simple cost:
“Nullum intra se vitium est.”
[“Nothing is a vice in itself.”--Seneca, Ep., 95.]
I almost equally hate a stupid and slothful laziness, as I do a toilsome
and painful employment; this pinches, the other lays me asleep. I like
wounds as well as bruises, and cuts as well as dry blows. I found in
this commerce, when I was the most able for it, a just moderation betwixt
these extremes. Love is a sprightly, lively, and gay agitation; I was
neither troubled nor afflicted with it, but heated, and moreover,
disordered; a man must stop there; it hurts nobody but fools. A young
man asked the philosopher Panetius if it were becoming a wise man to be
in love? “Let the wise man look to that,” answered he, “but let not thou
and I, who are not so, engage ourselves in so stirring and violent an
affair, that enslaves us to others, and renders us contemptible to
ourselves.” He said true that we are not to intrust a thing so
precipitous in itself to a soul that has not wherewithal to withstand its
assaults and disprove practically the saying of Agesilaus, that prudence
and love cannot live together. ‘Tis a vain employment, ‘tis true,
unbecoming, shameful, and illegitimate; but carried on after this manner,
I look upon it as wholesome, and proper to enliven a drowsy soul and to
rouse up a heavy body; and, as an experienced physician, I would
prescribe it to a man of my form and condition, as soon as any other
recipe whatever, to rouse and keep him in vigour till well advanced in
years, and to defer the approaches of age. Whilst we are but in the
suburbs, and that the pulse yet beats:
“Dum nova canities, dum prima et recta senectus,
Dum superest lachesi quod torqueat, et pedibus me
Porto meis, nullo dextram subeunte bacillo,”
[“Whilst the white hair is new, whilst old age is still straight
shouldered, whilst there still remains something for Lachesis to
spin, whilst I walk on my own legs, and need no staff to lean upon.”
--Juvenal, iii. 26.]
we have need to be solicited and tickled by some such nipping incitation
as this. Do but observe what youth, vigour, and gaiety it inspired the
good Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking
of an amorous object:
“Leaning,” said he, “my shoulder to her shoulder, and my head to hers, as
we were reading together in a book, I felt, without dissembling, a sudden
sting in my shoulder like the biting of an insect, which I still felt
above five days after, and a continual itching crept into my heart.” So
that merely the accidental touch, and of a shoulder, heated and altered a
soul cooled and enerved by age, and the strictest liver of all mankind.
And, pray, why not? Socrates was a man, and would neither be, nor seem,
any other thing. Philosophy does not contend against natural pleasures,
provided they be moderate, and only preaches moderation, not a total
abstinence; the power of its resistance is employed against those that
are adulterate and strange. Philosophy says that the appetites of the
body ought not to be augmented by the mind, and ingeniously warns us not
to stir up hunger by saturity; not to stuff, instead of merely filling,
the belly; to avoid all enjoyments that may bring us to want; and all
meats and drinks that bring thirst and hunger: as, in the service of
love, she prescribes us to take such an object as may simply satisfy the
body’s need, and does not stir the soul, which ought only barely to
follow and assist the body, without mixing in the affair. But have I not
reason to hold that these precepts, which, indeed, in my opinion, are
somewhat over strict, only concern a body in its best plight; and that in
a body broken with age, as in a weak stomach, ‘tis excusable to warm and
support it by art, and by the mediation of the fancy to restore the
appetite and cheerfulness it has lost of itself.
May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison,
that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriously
break up a man alive; and that it seems but reasonable that we should
carry ourselves as favourably, at least, towards the use of pleasure as
we do towards that of pain! Pain was (for example) vehement even to
perfection in the souls of the saints by penitence: the body had there
naturally a sham by the right of union, and yet might have but little
part in the cause; and yet are they not contented that it should barely
follow and assist the afflicted soul: they have afflicted itself with
grievous and special torments, to the end that by emulation of one
another the soul and body might plunge man into misery by so much more
salutiferous as it is more severe. In like manner, is it not injustice,
in bodily pleasures, to subdue and keep under the soul, and say that it
must therein be dragged along as to some enforced and servile obligation
and necessity? ‘Tis rather her part to hatch and cherish them, there to
present herself, and to invite them, the authority of ruling belonging to
her; as it is also her part, in my opinion, in pleasures that are proper
to her, to inspire and infuse into the body all the sentiment it is
capable of, and to study how to make them sweet and useful to it. For it
is good reason, as they say, that the body should not pursue its
appetites to the prejudice of the mind; but why is it not also the reason
that the mind should not pursue hers to the prejudice of the body?
I have no other passion to keep me in breath. What avarice, ambition,
quarrels, lawsuits do for others who, like me, have no particular
vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me
vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure
my countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed and
dismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon
sound and wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved and
esteemed, clearing my mind of the despair of itself and of its use, and
redintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesome
thoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the ill
posture of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again,
in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up
the chin, and a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety of
life of that poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin. But I
very well understand that it is a commodity hard to recover: by weakness
and long experience our taste is become more delicate and nice; we ask
most when we bring least, and are harder to choose when we least deserve
to be accepted: and knowing ourselves for what we are, we are less
confident and more distrustful; nothing can assure us of being beloved,
considering our condition and theirs. I am out of countenance to see
myself in company with those young wanton creatures:
“Cujus in indomito constantior inguine nervus,
Quam nova collibus arbor inhaeret.”
[“In whose unbridled reins the vigour is more inherent than in the
young tree on the hills.”--Horace, Epod., xii. 19.]
To what end should we go insinuate our misery amid their gay and
sprightly humour?
“Possint ut juvenes visere fervidi.
Multo non sine risu,
Dilapsam in cineres facem.”
[“As the fervid youths may behold, not without laughter, a burning
torch worn to ashes.”--Horace, Od., iv. 13, 21.]
They have strength and reason on their side; let us give way; we have
nothing to do there: and these blossoms of springing beauty suffer not
themselves to be handled by such benumbed hands nor dealt with by mere
material means, for, as the old philosopher answered one who jeered him
because he could not gain the favour of a young girl he made love to:
“Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese.” It is a commerce
that requires relation and correspondence: the other pleasures we receive
may be acknowledged by recompenses of another nature, but this is not to
be paid but with the same kind of coin. In earnest, in this sport, the
pleasure I give more tickles my imagination than that they give me; now,
he has nothing of generosity in him who can receive pleasure where he
confers none--it must needs be a mean soul that will owe all, and can be
content to maintain relations with persons to whom he is a continual
charge; there is no beauty, grace, nor privacy so exquisite that a
gentleman ought to desire at this rate. If they can only be kind to us
out of pity, I had much rather die than live upon charity. I would have
right to ask, in the style wherein I heard them beg in Italy: “Fate ben
per voi,”--[“Do good for yourself.”]--or after the manner that Cyrus
exhorted his soldiers, “Who loves himself let him follow me.”--“Consort
yourself,” some one will say to me, “with women of your own condition,
whom like fortune will render more easy to your desire.” O ridiculous
and insipid composition!
“Nolo
Barbam vellere mortuo leoni.”
[“I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion.”--Martial]
Xenophon lays it for an objection and an accusation against Menon, that
he never made love to any but old women. For my part, I take more