Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 090

I utter in mishap are words of anger: my courage sets up its bristles,
instead of letting them down; and, contrary to others, I am more devout
in good than in evil fortune, according to the precept of Xenophon, if
not according to his reason; and am more ready to turn up my eyes to
heaven to return thanks, than to crave. I am more solicitous to improve
my health, when I am well, than to restore it when I am sick;
prosperities are the same discipline and instruction to me that
adversities and rods are to others. As if good fortune were a thing
inconsistent with good conscience, men never grow good but in evil
fortune. Good fortune is to me a singular spur to modesty and
moderation: an entreaty wins, a threat checks me; favour makes me bend,
fear stiffens me.
Amongst human conditions this is common enough: to be better pleased with
foreign things than with our own, and to love innovation and change:
“Ipsa dies ideo nos grato perluit haustu,
Quod permutatis hora recurrit equis:”
[“The light of day itself shines more pleasantly upon us because it
changes its horses every hour.” Spoke of a water hour-glass,
adds Cotton.]
I have my share. Those who follow the other extreme, of being quite
satisfied and pleased with and in themselves, of valuing what they have
above all the rest, and of concluding no beauty can be greater than what
they see, if they are not wiser than we, are really more happy; I do not
envy their wisdom, but their good fortune.
This greedy humour of new and unknown things helps to nourish in me the
desire of travel; but a great many more circumstances contribute to it;
I am very willing to quit the government of my house. There is, I
confess, a kind of convenience in commanding, though it were but in a
barn, and in being obeyed by one’s people; but ‘tis too uniform and
languid a pleasure, and is, moreover, of necessity mixed with a thousand
vexatious thoughts: one while the poverty and the oppression of your
tenants: another, quarrels amongst neighbours: another, the trespasses
they make upon you afflict you;
“Aut verberatae grandine vineae,
Fundusque mendax, arbore nunc aquas
Culpante, nunc torrentia agros
Sidera, nunc hyemes iniquas.”
[“Or hail-smitten vines and the deceptive farm; now trees damaged
by the rains, or years of dearth, now summer’s heat burning up the
petals, now destructive winters.”--Horatius, Od., iii. I, 29.]
and that God scarce in six months sends a season wherein your bailiff can
do his business as he should; but that if it serves the vines, it spoils
the meadows:
“Aut nimiis torret fervoribus aetherius sol,
Aut subiti perimunt imbres, gelidoeque pruinae,
Flabraque ventorum violento turbine vexant;”
[“Either the scorching sun burns up your fields, or sudden rains or
frosts destroy your harvests, or a violent wind carries away all
before it.”--Lucretius, V. 216.]
to which may be added the new and neat-made shoe of the man of old, that
hurts your foot,
[Leclerc maliciously suggests that this is a sly hit at Montaigne’s
wife, the man of old being the person mentioned in Plutarch’s Life
of Paulus Emilius, c. 3, who, when his friends reproached him for
repudiating his wife, whose various merits they extolled, pointed to
his shoe, and said, “That looks a nice well-made shoe to you; but I
alone know where it pinches.”]
and that a stranger does not understand how much it costs you, and what
you contribute to maintain that show of order that is seen in your
family, and that peradventure you buy too dear.
I came late to the government of a house: they whom nature sent into the
world before me long eased me of that trouble; so that I had already
taken another bent more suitable to my humour. Yet, for so much as I
have seen, ‘tis an employment more troublesome than hard; whoever is
capable of anything else, will easily do this. Had I a mind to be rich,
that way would seem too long; I had served my kings, a more profitable
traffic than any other. Since I pretend to nothing but the reputation of
having got nothing or dissipated nothing, conformably to the rest of my
life, improper either to do good or ill of any moment, and that I only
desire to pass on, I can do it, thanks be to God, without any great
endeavour. At the worst, evermore prevent poverty by lessening your
expense; ‘tis that which I make my great concern, and doubt not but to do
it before I shall be compelled. As to the rest, I have sufficiently
settled my thoughts to live upon less than I have, and live contentedly:
“Non aestimatione census, verum victu atque cultu,
terminantur pecunix modus.”
[“‘Tis not by the value of possessions, but by our daily subsistence
and tillage, that our riches are truly estimated.”
--Cicero, Paradox, vi. 3.]
My real need does not so wholly take up all I have, that Fortune has not
whereon to fasten her teeth without biting to the quick. My presence,
heedless and ignorant as it is, does me great service in my domestic
affairs; I employ myself in them, but it goes against the hair, finding
that I have this in my house, that though I burn my candle at one end by
myself, the other is not spared.
Journeys do me no harm but only by their expense, which is great, and
more than I am well able to bear, being always wont to travel with not
only a necessary, but a handsome equipage; I must make them so much
shorter and fewer; I spend therein but the froth, and what I have
reserved for such uses, delaying and deferring my motion till that be
ready. I will not that the pleasure of going abroad spoil the pleasure
of being retired at home; on the contrary, I intend they shall nourish
and favour one another. Fortune has assisted me in this, that since my
principal profession in this life was to live at ease, and rather idly
than busily, she has deprived me of the necessity of growing rich to
provide for the multitude of my heirs. If there be not enough for one,
of that whereof I had so plentifully enough, at his peril be it: his
imprudence will not deserve that I should wish him any more. And every
one, according to the example of Phocion, provides sufficiently for his
children who so provides for them as to leave them as much as was left
him. I should by no means like Crates’ way. He left his money in the
hands of a banker with this condition--that if his children were fools,
he should then give it to them; if wise, he should then distribute it to
the most foolish of the people; as if fools, for being less capable of
living without riches, were more capable of using them.
At all events, the damage occasioned by my absence seems not to deserve,
so long as I am able to support it, that I should waive the occasions of
diverting myself by that troublesome assistance.
There is always something that goes amiss. The affairs, one while of one
house, and then of another, tear you to pieces; you pry into everything
too near; your perspicacity hurts you here, as well as in other things.
I steal away from occasions of vexing myself, and turn from the knowledge
of things that go amiss; and yet I cannot so order it, but that every
hour I jostle against something or other that displeases me; and the
tricks that they most conceal from me, are those that I the soonest come
to know; some there are that, not to make matters worse, a man must
himself help to conceal. Vain vexations; vain sometimes, but always
vexations. The smallest and slightest impediments are the most piercing:
and as little letters most tire the eyes, so do little affairs most
disturb us. The rout of little ills more offend than one, how great
soever. By how much domestic thorns are numerous and slight, by so much
they prick deeper and without warning, easily surprising us when least we
suspect them.
[Now Homer shews us clearly enough how surprise gives the advantage;
who represents Ulysses weeping at the death of his dog; and not
weeping at the tears of his mother; the first accident, trivial as
it was, got the better of him, coming upon him quite unexpectedly;
he sustained the second, though more potent, because he was prepared
for it. ‘Tis light occasions that humble our lives. ]
I am no philosopher; evils oppress me according to their weight, and they
weigh as much according to the form as the matter, and very often more.
If I have therein more perspicacity than the vulgar, I have also more
patience; in short, they weigh with me, if they do not hurt me. Life is
a tender thing, and easily molested. Since my age has made me grow more
pensive and morose,
“Nemo enim resistit sibi, cum caeperit impelli,”
[“For no man resists himself when he has begun to be driven
forward.”--Seneca, Ep., 13.]
for the most trivial cause imaginable, I irritate that humour, which
afterwards nourishes and exasperates itself of its own motion; attracting
and heaping up matter upon matter whereon to feed:
“Stillicidi casus lapidem cavat:”
[“The ever falling drop hollows out a stone.”--Lucretius, i. 314.]
these continual tricklings consume and ulcerate me. Ordinary
inconveniences are never light; they are continual and inseparable,
especially when they spring from the members of a family, continual and
inseparable. When I consider my affairs at distance and in gross, I
find, because perhaps my memory is none of the best, that they have gone
on hitherto improving beyond my reason or expectation; my revenue seems
greater than it is; its prosperity betrays me: but when I pry more
narrowly into the business, and see how all things go:
“Tum vero in curas animum diducimus omnes;”
[“Indeed we lead the mind into all sorts of cares.”
--AEneid, v. 720.]
I have a thousand things to desire and to fear. To give them quite over,
is very easy for me to do: but to look after them without trouble, is
very hard. ‘Tis a miserable thing to be in a place where everything you
see employs and concerns you; and I fancy that I more cheerfully enjoy
the pleasures of another man’s house, and with greater and a purer
relish, than those of my own. Diogenes answered according to my humour
him who asked him what sort of wine he liked the best: “That of another,”
said he.--[Diogenes Laertius, vi. 54.]
My father took a delight in building at Montaigne, where he was born; and
in all the government of domestic affairs I love to follow his example
and rules, and I shall engage those who are to succeed me, as much as in
me lies, to do the same. Could I do better for him, I would; and am
proud that his will is still performing and acting by me. God forbid
that in my hands I should ever suffer any image of life, that I am able
to render to so good a father, to fail. And wherever I have taken in
hand to strengthen some old foundations of walls, and to repair some
ruinous buildings, in earnest I have done it more out of respect to his
design, than my own satisfaction; and am angry at myself that I have not
proceeded further to finish the beginnings he left in his house, and so
much the more because I am very likely to be the last possessor of my
race, and to give the last hand to it. For, as to my own particular
application, neither the pleasure of building, which they say is so
bewitching, nor hunting, nor gardens, nor the other pleasures of a
retired life, can much amuse me. And ‘tis what I am angry at myself for,
as I am for all other opinions that are incommodious to me; which I would
not so much care to have vigorous and learned, as I would have them easy
and convenient for life, they are true and sound enough, if they are
useful and pleasing. Such as hear me declare my ignorance in husbandry,
whisper in my ear that it is disdain, and that I neglect to know its
instruments, its seasons, its order, how they dress my vines, how they
graft, and to know the names and forms of herbs and fruits, and the
preparing the meat on which I live, the names and prices of the stuffs I
wear, because, say they; I have set my heart upon some higher knowledge;
they kill me in saying so. It is not disdain; it is folly, and rather
stupidity than glory; I had rather be a good horseman than a good
logician:
“Quin to aliquid saltem potius, quorum indiget usus,
Viminibus mollique paras detexere junco.”
[“‘Dost thou not rather do something which is required, and make
osier and reed basket.”--Virgil, Eclog., ii. 71.]
We occupy our thoughts about the general, and about universal causes and
conducts, which will very well carry on themselves without our care; and
leave our own business at random, and Michael much more our concern than
man. Now I am, indeed, for the most part at home; but I would be there
better pleased than anywhere else:
“Sit meae sedes utinam senectae,
Sit modus lasso maris, et viarum,
Militiaeque.”
[“Let my old age have a fixed seat; let there be a limit to fatigues
from the sea, journeys, warfare.”--Horace, Od., ii. 6, 6.]
I know not whether or no I shall bring it about. I could wish that,
instead of some other member of his succession, my father had resigned to
me the passionate affection he had in his old age to his household
affairs; he was happy in that he could accommodate his desires to his
fortune, and satisfy himself with what he had; political philosophy may
to much purpose condemn the meanness and sterility of my employment, if I
can once come to relish it, as he did. I am of opinion that the most
honourable calling is to serve the public, and to be useful to many,
“Fructus enim ingenii et virtutis, omnisque praestantiae,
tum maximus capitur, quum in proximum quemque confertur:”
[“For the greatest enjoyment of evil and virtue, and of all
excellence, is experienced when they are conferred on some one
nearest.”--Cicero, De Amicil., c.]
for myself, I disclaim it; partly out of conscience (for where I see the
weight that lies upon such employments, I perceive also the little means
I have to supply it; and Plato, a master in all political government
himself, nevertheless took care to abstain from it), and partly out of
cowardice. I content myself with enjoying the world without bustle;
only-to live an excusable life, and such as may neither be a burden to
myself nor to any other.
Never did any man more fully and feebly suffer himself to be governed by
a third person than I should do, had I any one to whom to entrust myself.
One of my wishes at this time should be, to have a son-in-law that knew
handsomely how to cherish my old age, and to rock it asleep; into whose
hands I might deposit, in full sovereignty, the management and use of all
my goods, that he might dispose of them as I do, and get by them what I
get, provided that he on his part were truly acknowledging, and a friend.
But we live in a world where loyalty of one’s own children is unknown.
He who has the charge of my purse in his travels, has it purely and
without control; he could cheat me thoroughly, if he came to reckoning;
and, if he is not a devil, I oblige him to deal faithfully with me by so
entire a trust:
“Multi fallere do cuerunt, dum timent falli;
et aliis jus peccandi suspicando fecerunt.”
[“Many have taught others to deceive, while they fear to be
deceived, and, by suspecting them, have given them a title to do
ill.”--Seneca, Epist., 3.]
The most common security I take of my people is ignorance; I never
presume any to be vicious till I have first found them so; and repose the
most confidence in the younger sort, that I think are least spoiled by
ill example. I had rather be told at two months’ end that I have spent
four hundred crowns, than to have my ears battered every night with
three, five, seven: and I have been, in this way, as little robbed as
another. It is true, I am willing enough not to see it; I, in some sort,
purposely, harbour a kind of perplexed, uncertain knowledge of my money:
up to a certain point, I am content to doubt. One must leave a little
room for the infidelity or indiscretion of a servant; if you have left
enough, in gross, to do your business, let the overplus of Fortune’s
liberality run a little more freely at her mercy; ‘tis the gleaner’s
portion. After all, I do not so much value the fidelity of my people as
I contemn their injury. What a mean and ridiculous thing it is for a man
to study his money, to delight in handling and telling it over and over
again! ‘Tis by this avarice makes its approaches.
In eighteen years that I have had my estate in my, own hands, I could
never prevail with myself either to read over my deeds or examine my
principal affairs, which ought, of necessity, to pass under my knowledge
and inspection. ‘Tis not a philosophical disdain of worldly and
transitory things; my taste is not purified to that degree, and I value
them at as great a rate, at least, as they are worth; but ‘tis, in truth,
an inexcusable and childish laziness and negligence. What would I not
rather do than read a contract? or than, as a slave to my own business,
tumble over those dusty writings? or, which is worse, those of another
man, as so many do nowadays, to get money? I grudge nothing but care and
trouble, and endeavour nothing so much, as to be careless and at ease.
I had been much fitter, I believe, could it have been without obligation
and servitude, to have lived upon another man’s fortune than my own: and,
indeed, I do not know, when I examine it nearer, whether, according to my
humour, what I have to suffer from my affairs and servants, has not in it
something more abject, troublesome, and tormenting than there would be in
serving a man better born than myself, who would govern me with a gentle
rein, and a little at my own case:
“Servitus obedientia est fracti animi et abjecti,
arbitrio carentis suo.”
[“Servitude is the obedience of a subdued and abject mind, wanting
its own free will.”--Cicero, Paradox, V. I.]
Crates did worse, who threw himself into the liberty of poverty, only to
rid himself of the inconveniences and cares of his house. This is what I
would not do; I hate poverty equally with pain; but I could be content to
change the kind of life I live for another that was humbler and less
chargeable.
When absent from home, I divest myself of all these thoughts, and should
be less concerned for the ruin of a tower, than I am, when present, at
the fall of a tile. My mind is easily composed at distance, but suffers
as much as that of the meanest peasant when I am at home; the reins of my
bridle being wrongly put on, or a strap flapping against my leg, will
keep me out of humour a day together. I raise my courage, well enough
against inconveniences: lift up my eyes I cannot:
“Sensus, o superi, sensus.”
[“The senses, O ye gods, the senses.”]
I am at home responsible for whatever goes amiss. Few masters (I speak
of those of medium condition such as mine), and if there be any such,
they are more happy, can rely so much upon another, but that the greatest
part of the burden will lie upon their own shoulders. This takes much
from my grace in entertaining visitors, so that I have, peradventure,
detained some rather out of expectation of a good dinner, than by my own
behaviour; and lose much of the pleasure I ought to reap at my own house
from the visitation and assembling of my friends. The most ridiculous
carriage of a gentleman in his own house, is to see him bustling about
the business of the place, whispering one servant, and looking an angry
look at another: it ought insensibly to slide along, and to represent an
ordinary current; and I think it unhandsome to talk much to our guests of
their entertainment, whether by way of bragging or excuse. I love order
and cleanliness--
“Et cantharus et lanx
Ostendunt mihi me”--
[“The dishes and the glasses shew me my own reflection.”
--Horace, Ep., i. 5, 23]
more than abundance; and at home have an exact regard to necessity,
little to outward show. If a footman falls to cuffs at another man’s
house, or stumble and throw a dish before him as he is carrying it up,
you only laugh and make a jest on’t; you sleep whilst the master of the
house is arranging a bill of fare with his steward for your morrow’s
entertainment. I speak according as I do myself; quite appreciating,
nevertheless, good husbandry in general, and how pleasant quiet and
prosperous household management, carried regularly on, is to some
natures; and not wishing to fasten my own errors and inconveniences to
the thing; nor to give Plato the lie, who looks upon it as the most
pleasant employment to every one to do his particular affairs without
wrong to another.
When I travel I have nothing to care for but myself, and the laying out
my money; which is disposed of by one single precept; too many things are
required to the raking it together; in that I understand nothing; in
spending, I understand a little, and how to give some show to my expense,
which is indeed its principal use; but I rely too ambitiously upon it,
which renders it unequal and difform, and, moreover, immoderate in both
the one and the other aspect; if it makes a show, if it serve the turn,
I indiscreetly let it run; and as indiscreetly tie up my purse-strings,
if it does not shine, and does not please me. Whatever it be, whether
art or nature, that imprints in us the condition of living by reference
to others, it does us much more harm than good; we deprive ourselves of
our own utilities, to accommodate appearances to the common opinion:
we care not so much what our being is, as to us and in reality, as what
it is to the public observation. Even the properties of the mind, and
wisdom itself, seem fruitless to us, if only enjoyed by ourselves, and if
it produce not itself to the view and approbation of others. There is a
sort of men whose gold runs in streams underground imperceptibly; others
expose it all in plates and branches; so that to the one a liard is worth
a crown, and to the others the inverse: the world esteeming its use and
value, according to the show. All over-nice solicitude about riches
smells of avarice: even the very disposing of it, with a too systematic
and artificial liberality, is not worth a painful superintendence and
solicitude: he, that will order his expense to just so much, makes it too
pinched and narrow. The keeping or spending are, of themselves,
indifferent things, and receive no colour of good or ill, but according
to the application of the will.
The other cause that tempts me out to these journeys is, inaptitude for
the present manners in our state. I could easily console myself for this
corruption in regard to the public interest:
“Pejoraque saecula ferri
Temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo;”
[“And, worse than the iron ages, for whose crimes there is no
similitude in any of Nature’s metals.”--Juvenal, xiii. 28.]
but not to my own. I am, in particular, too much oppressed by them: for,
in my neighbourhood, we are, of late, by the long licence of our civil
wars, grown old in so riotous a form of state,
“Quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas,”
[“Where wrong and right have changed places.”
--Virgil, Georg., i. 504.]
that in earnest, ‘tis a wonder how it can subsist:
“Armati terram exercent, semperque recentes
Convectare juvat praedas; et vivere rapto.”
[“Men plough, girt with arms; ever delighting in fresh robberies,
and living by rapine.”--AEneid, vii. 748.]
In fine, I see by our example, that the society of men is maintained and
held together, at what price soever; in what condition soever they are
placed, they still close and stick together, both moving and in heaps; as
ill united bodies, that, shuffled together without order, find of
themselves a means to unite and settle, often better than they could have
been disposed by art. King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most
wicked and incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them all
together into a city he had caused to be built for that purpose, which
bore their name: I believe that they, even from vices themselves, erected
a government amongst them, and a commodious and just society. I see, not
one action, or three, or a hundred, but manners, in common and received
use, so ferocious, especially in inhumanity and treachery, which are to
me the worst of all vices, that I have not the heart to think of them
without horror; and almost as much admire as I detest them: the exercise
of these signal villainies carries with it as great signs of vigour and
force of soul, as of error and disorder. Necessity reconciles and brings
men together; and this accidental connection afterwards forms itself into
laws: for there have been such, as savage as any human opinion could
conceive, who, nevertheless, have maintained their body with as much
health and length of life as any Plato or Aristotle could invent. And
certainly, all these descriptions of polities, feigned by art, are found
to be ridiculous and unfit to be put in practice.
These great and tedious debates about the best form of society, and the
most commodious rules to bind us, are debates only proper for the
exercise of our wits; as in the arts there are several subjects which
have their being in agitation and controversy, and have no life but
there. Such an idea of government might be of some value in a new world;
but we take a world already made, and formed to certain customs; we do
not beget it, as Pyrrha or Cadmus did. By what means soever we may have
the privilege to redress and reform it anew, we can hardly writhe it from
its wonted bent, but we shall break all. Solon being asked whether he
had established the best laws he could for the Athenians; “Yes,” said he,
“of those they would have received.” Varro excuses himself after the
same manner: “that if he were to begin to write of religion, he would say
what he believed; but seeing it was already received, he would write
rather according to use than nature.”
Not according to opinion, but in truth and reality, the best and most
excellent government for every nation is that under which it is
maintained: its form and essential convenience depend upon custom.
We are apt to be displeased at the present condition; but I,
nevertheless, maintain that to desire command in a few--[an oligarchy.]--
in a republic, or another sort of government in monarchy than that
already established, is both vice and folly:
“Ayme l’estat, tel que to le veois estre
S’il est royal ayme la royaute;
S’il est de peu, ou biers communaute,
Ayme l’aussi; car Dieu t’y a faict naistre.”
[“Love the government, such as you see it to be. If it be royal,
love royalty; if it is a republic of any sort, still love it; for
God himself created thee therein.”]
So wrote the good Monsieur de Pibrac, whom we have lately lost, a man of
so excellent a wit, such sound opinions, and such gentle manners. This
loss, and that at the same time we have had of Monsieur de Foix, are of
so great importance to the crown, that I do not know whether there is
another couple in France worthy to supply the places of these two Gascons
in sincerity and wisdom in the council of our kings. They were both
variously great men, and certainly, according to the age, rare and great,
each of them in his kind: but what destiny was it that placed them in