Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 096

money to be got by it; a man must live by the world; and make his best of
it, such as it is. But the judgment of an emperor ought to be above his
empire, and see and consider it as a foreign accident; and he ought to
know how to enjoy himself apart from it, and to communicate himself as
James and Peter, to himself, at all events.
I cannot engage myself so deep and so entire; when my will gives me to
anything, ‘tis not with so violent an obligation that my judgment is
infected with it. In the present broils of this kingdom, my own interest
has not made me blind to the laudable qualities of our adversaries, nor
to those that are reproachable in those men of our party. Others adore
all of their own side; for my part, I do not so much as excuse most
things in those of mine: a good work has never the worst grace with me
for being made against me. The knot of the controversy excepted, I have
always kept myself in equanimity and pure indifference:
“Neque extra necessitates belli praecipuum odium gero;”
[“Nor bear particular hatred beyond the necessities of war.”]
for which I am pleased with myself; and the more because I see others
commonly fail in the contrary direction. Such as extend their anger and
hatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that they
spring from some other occasion and private cause; like one who, being
cured of an ulcer, has yet a fever remaining, by which it appears that
the ulcer had another more concealed beginning. The reason is that they
are not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to the
state and general interest; but are only nettled by reason of their
particular concern. This is why they are so especially animated, and to
a degree so far beyond justice and public reason:
“Non tam omnia universi, quam ea, quae ad quemque pertinent,
singuli carpebant.”
[“Every one was not so much angry against things in general, as
against those that particularly concern himself.”
--Livy, xxxiv. 36.]
I would have the advantage on our side; but if it be not, I shall not run
mad. I am heartily for the right party; but I do not want to be taken
notice of as an especial enemy to others, and beyond the general quarrel.
I marvellously challenge this vicious form of opinion: “He is of the
League because he admires the graciousness of Monsieur de Guise; he is
astonished at the King of Navarre’s energy, therefore he is a Huguenot;
he finds this to say of the manners of the king, he is therefore
seditious in his heart.” And I did not grant to the magistrate himself
that he did well in condemning a book because it had placed a heretic
--[Theodore de Beza.]--amongst the best poets of the time. Shall we not
dare to say of a thief that he has a handsome leg? If a woman be a
strumpet, must it needs follow that she has a foul smell? Did they in
the wisest ages revoke the proud title of Capitolinus they had before
conferred on Marcus Manlius as conservator of religion and the public
liberty, and stifle the memory of his liberality, his feats of arms, and
military recompenses granted to his valour, because he, afterwards
aspired to the sovereignty, to the prejudice of the laws of his country?
If we take a hatred against an advocate, he will not be allowed the next
day to be eloquent. I have elsewhere spoken of the zeal that pushed on
worthy men to the like faults. For my part, I can say, “Such an one does
this thing ill, and another thing virtuously and well.” So in the
prognostication or sinister events of affairs they would have every one
in his party blind or a blockhead, and that our persuasion and judgment
should subserve not truth, but to the project of our desires. I should
rather incline towards the other extreme; so much I fear being suborned
by my desire; to which may be added that I am a little tenderly
distrustful of things that I wish.
I have in my time seen wonders in the indiscreet and prodigious facility
of people in suffering their hopes and belief to be led and governed,
which way best pleased and served their leaders, despite a hundred
mistakes one upon another, despite mere dreams and phantasms. I no more
wonder at those who have been blinded and seduced by the fooleries of
Apollonius and Mahomet. Their sense and understanding are absolutely
taken away by their passion; their discretion has no more any other
choice than that which smiles upon them and encourages their cause.
I had principally observed this in the beginning of our intestine
distempers; that other, which has sprung up since, in imitating, has
surpassed it; by which I am satisfied that it is a quality inseparable
from popular errors; after the first, that rolls, opinions drive on one
another like waves with the wind: a man is not a member of the body, if
it be in his power to forsake it, and if he do not roll the common way.
But, doubtless, they wrong the just side when they go about to assist it
with fraud; I have ever been against that practice: ‘tis only fit to work
upon weak heads; for the sound, there are surer and more honest ways to
keep up their courage and to excuse adverse accidents.
Heaven never saw a greater animosity than that betwixt Caesar and Pompey,
nor ever shall; and yet I observe, methinks, in those brave souls,
a great moderation towards one another: it was a jealousy of honour and
command, which did not transport them to a furious and indiscreet hatred,
and was without malignity and detraction: in their hottest exploits upon
one another, I discover some remains of respect and good-will: and am
therefore of opinion that, had, it been possible, each of them would
rather have done his business without the ruin of the other than with it.
Take notice how much otherwise matters went with Marius and Sylla.
We must not precipitate ourselves so headlong after our affections and
interests. As, when I was young, I opposed myself to the progress of
love which I perceived to advance too fast upon me, and had a care lest
it should at last become so pleasing as to force, captivate, and wholly
reduce me to its mercy: so I do the same upon all other occasions where
my will is running on with too warm an appetite. I lean opposite to the
side it inclines to; as I find it going to plunge and make itself drunk
with its own wine; I evade nourishing its pleasure so far, that I cannot
recover it without infinite loss. Souls that, through their own
stupidity, only discern things by halves, have this happiness, that they
smart less with hurtful things: ‘tis a spiritual leprosy that has some
show of health, and such a health as philosophy does not altogether
contemn; but yet we have no reason to call it wisdom, as we often do.
And after this manner some one anciently mocked Diogeries, who, in the
depth of winter and quite naked, went embracing an image of snow for a
trial of his endurance: the other seeing him in this position, “Art thou
now very cold?” said he. “Not at all,” replied Diogenes. “Why, then,”
pursued the other, “what difficult and exemplary thing dost thou think
thou doest in embracing that snow?” To take a true measure of constancy,
one must necessarily know what the suffering is.
But souls that are to meet with adverse events and the injuries of
fortune, in their depth and sharpness, that are to weigh and taste them
according to their natural weight and bitterness, let such show their
skill in avoiding the causes and diverting the blow. What did King Cotys
do? He paid liberally for the rich and beautiful vessel that had been
presented to him, but, seeing it was exceedingly brittle, he immediately
broke it betimes, to prevent so easy a matter of displeasure against his
servants. In like manner, I have willingly avoided all confusion in my
affairs, and never coveted to have my estate contiguous to those of my
relations, and such with whom I coveted a strict friendship; for thence
matter of unkindness and falling out often proceeds. I formerly loved
hazardous games of cards and dice; but have long since left them off,
only for this reason that, with whatever good air I carried my losses,
I could not help feeling vexed within. A man of honour, who ought to be
touchily sensible of the lie or of an insult, and who is not to take a
scurvy excuse for satisfaction, should avoid occasions of dispute.
I shun melancholy, crabbed men, as I would the plague; and in matters I
cannot talk of without emotion and concern I never meddle, if not
compelled by my duty:
“Melius non incipient, quam desinent.”
[“They had better never to begin than to have to desist.”
--Seneca, Ep., 72.]
The surest way, therefore, is to prepare one’s self beforehand for
occasions.
I know very well that some wise men have taken another way, and have not
feared to grapple and engage to the utmost upon several subjects these
are confident of their own strength, under which they protect themselves
in all ill successes, making their patience wrestle and contend with
disaster:
“Velut rupes, vastum quae prodit in aequor,
Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto,
Vim cunctam atque minas perfert coelique marisque;
Ipsa immota manens.”
[“As a rock, which projects into the vast ocean, exposed to the
furious winds and the raging sea, defies the force and menaces of
sky and sea, itself unshaken.”--Virgil, AEneid, x. 693.]
Let us not attempt these examples; we shall never come up to them. They
set themselves resolutely, and without agitation, to behold the ruin of
their country, which possessed and commanded all their will: this is too
much, and too hard a task for our commoner souls. Cato gave up the
noblest life that ever was upon this account; we meaner spirits must fly
from the storm as far as we can; we must provide for sentiment, and not
for patience, and evade the blows we cannot meet. Zeno, seeing
Chremonides, a young man whom he loved, draw near to sit down by him,
suddenly started up; and Cleanthes demanding of him the reason why he did
so, “I hear,” said he, “that physicians especially order repose, and
forbid emotion in all tumours.” Socrates does not say: “Do not surrender
to the charms of beauty; stand your ground, and do your utmost to oppose
it.” “Fly it,” says he; “shun the fight and encounter of it, as of a
powerful poison that darts and wounds at a distance.” And his good
disciple, feigning or reciting, but, in my opinion, rather reciting than
feigning, the rare perfections of the great Cyrus, makes him distrustful
of his own strength to resist the charms of the divine beauty of that
illustrous Panthea, his captive, and committing the visiting and keeping
her to another, who could not have so much liberty as himself. And the
Holy Ghost in like manner:
“Ne nos inducas in tentationem.”
[“Lead us not into temptation.”--St. Matthew, vi. 13.]
We do not pray that our reason may not be combated and overcome by
concupiscence, but that it should not be so much as tried by it; that we
should not be brought into a state wherein we are so much as to suffer
the approaches, solicitations, and temptations of sin: and we beg of
Almighty God to keep our consciences quiet, fully and perfectly delivered
from all commerce of evil.
Such as say that they have reason for their revenging passion, or any
other sort of troublesome agitation of mind, often say true, as things
now are, but not as they were: they speak to us when the causes of their
error are by themselves nourished and advanced; but look backward--recall
these causes to their beginning--and there you will put them to a
nonplus. Will they have their faults less, for being of longer
continuance; and that of an unjust beginning, the sequel can be just?
Whoever shall desire the good of his country, as I do, without fretting
or pining himself, will be troubled, but will not swoon to see it
threatening either its own ruin, or a no less ruinous continuance; poor
vessel, that the waves, the winds, and the pilot toss and steer to so
contrary designs!
“In tam diversa magister
Ventus et unda trahunt.”
He who does not gape after the favour of princes, as after a thing he
cannot live without, does not much concern himself at the coldness of
their reception and countenance, nor at the inconstancy of their wills.
He who does not brood over his children or his honours with a slavish
propension, ceases not to live commodiously enough after their loss. He
who does good principally for his own satisfaction will not be much
troubled to see men judge of his actions contrary to his merit. A
quarter of an ounce of patience will provide sufficiently against such
inconveniences. I find ease in this receipt, redeeming myself in the
beginning as good cheap as I can; and find that by this means I have
escaped much trouble and many difficulties. With very little ado I stop
the first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to be
troublesome before it transports me. He who stops not the start will
never be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never,
get them out when they are once got in; and he who cannot arrive at the
beginning will never arrive at the end of all. Nor will he bear the fall
who cannot sustain the shock:
“Etenim ipsae se impellunt, ubi semel a ratione discessum est;
ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur
imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi.”
[“For they throw themselves headlong when once they lose their
reason; and infirmity so far indulges itself, and from want of
prudence is carried out into deep water, nor finds a place to
shelter it.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 18.]
I am betimes sensible of the little breezes that begin to sing and
whistle within, forerunners of the storm:
“Ceu flamina prima
Cum deprensa fremunt sylvis et caeca volutant
Murmura, venturos nautis prodentia ventos.”
[“As the breezes, pent in the woods, first send out dull murmurs,
announcing the approach of winds to mariners.”--AEneid, x. 97.]
How often have I done myself a manifest injustice to avoid the hazard of
having yet a worse done me by the judges, after an age of vexations,
dirty and vile practices, more enemies to my nature than fire or the
rack?
“Convenit a litibus, quantum licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam
quam licet, abhorrentem esse: est enim non modo liberale, paululum
nonnunquam de suo jure decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum.”
[“A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may, and I know not
whether not something more; for ‘tis not only liberal, but sometimes
also advantageous, too, a little to recede from one’s right.
--“Cicero, De Offic., ii. 18.]
Were we wise, we ought to rejoice and boast, as I one day heard a young
gentleman of a good family very innocently do, that his mother had lost
her cause, as if it had been a cough, a fever, or something very
troublesome to keep. Even the favours that fortune might have given me
through relationship or acquaintance with those who have sovereign
authority in those affairs, I have very conscientiously and very
carefully avoided employing them to the prejudice of others, and of
advancing my pretensions above their true right. In fine, I have so much
prevailed by my endeavours (and happily I may say it) that I am to this
day a virgin from all suits in law; though I have had very fair offers
made me, and with very just title, would I have hearkened to them, and a
virgin from quarrels too. I have almost passed over a long life without
any offence of moment, either active or passive, or without ever hearing
a worse word than my own name: a rare favour of Heaven.
Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes: what ruin did
our last Duke of Burgundy run into about a cartload of sheepskins!
And was not the graving of a seal the first and principal cause of the
greatest commotion that this machine of the world ever underwent?
--[The civil war between Marius and Sylla; see Plutarch’s Life of Marius,
c. 3.]--for Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of
the two others: and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in this
kingdom assembled with great ceremony, and at the public expense, about
treaties and agreements, of which the true decision, in the meantime,
absolutely depended upon the ladies’ cabinet council, and the inclination
of some bit of a woman.
The poets very well understood this when they put all Greece and Asia to
fire and sword about an apple. Look why that man hazards his life and
honour upon the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him acquaint you
with the occasion of the quarrel; he cannot do it without blushing: the
occasion is so idle and frivolous.
A little thing will engage you in it; but being once embarked, all the
cords draw; great provisions are then required, more hard and more
important. How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out?
Now we should proceed contrary to the reed, which, at its first
springing, produces a long and straight shoot, but afterwards, as if
tired and out of breath, it runs into thick and frequent joints and
knots, as so many pauses which demonstrate that it has no more its first
vigour and firmness; ‘twere better to begin gently and coldly, and to
keep one’s breath and vigorous efforts for the height and stress of the
business. We guide affairs in their beginnings, and have them in our own
power; but afterwards, when they are once at work, ‘tis they that guide
and govern us, and we are to follow them.
Yet do I not mean to say that this counsel has discharged me of all
difficulty, and that I have not often had enough to do to curb and
restrain my passions; they are not always to be governed according to the
measure of occasions, and often have their entries very sharp and
violent. But still good fruit and profit may thence be reaped; except
for those who in well-doing are not satisfied with any benefit, if
reputation be wanting; for, in truth, such an effect is not valued but by
every one to himself; you are better contented, but not more esteemed,
seeing you reformed yourself before you got into the whirl of the dance,
or that the provocative matter was in sight. Yet not in this only, but
in all other duties of life also, the way of those who aim at honour is
very different from that they proceed by, who propose to themselves order
and reason. I find some who rashly and furiously rush into the lists and
cool in the course. As Plutarch says, that those who, through false
shame, are soft and facile to grant whatever is desired of them, are
afterwards as facile to break their word and to recant; so he who enters
lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it. The same
difficulty that keeps me from entering into it, would, when once hot and
engaged in quarrel, incite me to maintain it with great obstinacy and
resolution. ‘Tis the tyranny of custom; when a man is once engaged; he
must go through with it, or die. “Undertake coolly,” said Bias,
“but pursue with ardour.” For want of prudence, men fall into want of
courage, which is still more intolerable.
Most accommodations of the quarrels of these days of ours are shameful
and false; we only seek to save appearances, and in the meantime betray
and disavow our true intentions; we salve over the fact. We know very
well how we said the thing, and in what sense we spoke it, and the
company know it, and our friends whom we have wished to make sensible of
our advantage, understand it well enough too: ‘tis at the expense of our
frankness and of the honour of our courage, that we disown our thoughts,
and seek refuge in falsities, to make matters up. We give ourselves the
lie, to excuse the lie we have given to another. You are not to consider
if your word or action may admit of another interpretation; ‘tis your own
true and sincere interpretation, your real meaning in what you said or
did, that you are thenceforward to maintain, whatever it cost you. Men
speak to your virtue and conscience, which are not things to be put under
a mask; let us leave these pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of
the law. The excuses and reparations that I see every day made and given
to repair indiscretion, seem to me more scandalous than the indiscretion
itself. It were better to affront your adversary a second time than to
offend yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction. You have braved
him in your heat and anger, and you would flatter and appease him in your
cooler and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at his
feet, whom before you pretended to overtop. I do not find anything a
gentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is
infamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him;
forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour than
pusillanimity. Passions are as easy for me to evade, as they are hard
for me to moderate:
“Exscinduntur facilius ammo, quam temperantur.”
[“They are more easily to be eradicated than governed.”]
He who cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him secure
himself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what they
performed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament. The middle
region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers
and peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness:
“Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!
Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!”
[“Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place
under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of
rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan,
and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs.”--Virgil, Georg., ii. 490.]
The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we should
have our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, the
danger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as little
to be found. I had every day encountered a million of crosses, harder to
digest in the progress of ambition, than it has been hard for me to curb
the natural propension that inclined me to it:
“Jure perhorrui
Lath conspicuum tollere verticem.”
[“I ever justly feared to raise my head too high.”
--Horace, Od.,iii. 16, 18.]
All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations;
for too many heads judge of them. Some say of this civic employment of
mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is
worth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that
I have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid
temperament; and they have some colour for what they say. I endeavoured
to keep my mind and my thoughts in repose;
“Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus;”
[“As being always quiet by nature, so also now by age.”
--Cicero, De Petit. Consul., c. 2.]
and if they sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression,
‘tis in truth without my advice. Yet from this natural heaviness of
mine, men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for want of care
and want of sense are two very different things), and much less any
unkindness or ingratitude towards that corporation who employed the
utmost means they had in their power to oblige me, both before they knew
me and after; and they did much more for me in choosing me anew than in
conferring that honour upon me at first. I wish them all imaginable
good; and assuredly had occasion been, there is nothing I would have
spared for their service; I did for them as I would have done for myself.
‘Tis a good, warlike, and generous people, but capable of obedience and
discipline, and of whom the best use may be made, if well guided. They
say also that my administration passed over without leaving any mark or
trace. Good! They moreover accuse my cessation in a time when everybody
almost was convicted of doing too much. I am impatient to be doing where
my will spurs me on; but this itself is an enemy to perseverance. Let
him who will make use of me according to my own way, employ me in affairs
where vigour and liberty are required, where a direct, short, and,
moreover, a hazardous conduct are necessary; I may do something; but if
it must be long, subtle, laborious, artificial and intricate, he had
better call in somebody else. All important offices are not necessarily
difficult: I came prepared to do somewhat rougher work, had there been
great occasion; for it is in my power to do something more than I do, or
than I love to do. I did not, to my knowledge, omit anything that my
duty really required. I easily forgot those offices that ambition mixes
with duty and palliates with its title; these are they that, for the most
part, fill the eyes and ears, and give men the most satisfaction; not the
thing but the appearance contents them; if they hear no noise, they think
men sleep. My humour is no friend to tumult; I could appease a commotion
without commotion, and chastise a disorder without being myself
disorderly; if I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it,
and put it on. My manners are languid, rather faint than sharp. I do
not condemn a magistrate who sleeps, provided the people under his charge
sleep as well as he: the laws in that case sleep too. For my part, I
commend a gliding, staid, and silent life:
“Neque submissam et abjectam, neque se efferentem;”
[“Neither subject and abject, nor obtrusive.”
--Cicero, De Offic., i. 34]
my fortune will have it so. I am descended from a family that has lived
without lustre or tumult, and, time out of mind, particularly ambitious
of a character for probity.
Our people nowadays are so bred up to bustle and ostentation, that good
nature, moderation, equability, constancy, and such like quiet and
obscure qualities, are no more thought on or regarded. Rough bodies make
themselves felt; the smooth are imperceptibly handled: sickness is felt,
health little or not at all; no more than the oils that foment us, in
comparison of the pains for which we are fomented. ‘Tis acting for one’s
particular reputation and profit, not for the public good, to refer that
to be done in the public squares which one may do in the council chamber;
and to noon day what might have been done the night before; and to be
jealous to do that himself which his colleague can do as well as he; so
were some surgeons of Greece wont to perform their operations upon
scaffolds in the sight of the people, to draw more practice and profit.
They think that good rules cannot be understood but by the sound of
trumpet. Ambition is not a vice of little people, nor of such modest
means as ours. One said to Alexander: “Your father will leave you a
great dominion, easy and pacific”; this youth was emulous of his father’s
victories and of the justice of his government; he would not have enjoyed
the empire of the world in ease and peace. Alcibiades, in Plato, had
rather die young, beautiful, rich, noble, and learned, and all this in
full excellence, than to stop short of such condition; this disease is,
peradventure, excusable in so strong and so full a soul. When wretched
and dwarfish little souls cajole and deceive themselves, and think to
spread their fame for having given right judgment in an affair, or
maintained the discipline of the guard of a gate of their city, the more
they think to exalt their heads the more they show their tails. This