Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 101

does not so much make one as difference makes another. Nature has
obliged herself to make nothing other that was not unlike.
And yet I am not much pleased with his opinion, who thought by the
multitude of laws to curb the authority of judges in cutting out for them
their several parcels; he was not aware that there is as much liberty and
latitude in the interpretation of laws as in their form; and they but
fool themselves, who think to lessen and stop our disputes by recalling
us to the express words of the Bible: forasmuch as our mind does not find
the field less spacious wherein to controvert the sense of another than
to deliver his own; and as if there were less animosity and tartness in
commentary than in invention. We see how much he was mistaken, for we
have more laws in France than all the rest of the world put together, and
more than would be necessary for the government of all the worlds of
Epicurus:
“Ut olim flagitiis, sic nunc legibus, laboramus.”
[“As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by
laws.”--Tacitus, Annal., iii. 25.]
and yet we have left so much to the opinions and decisions of our judges
that there never was so full a liberty or so full a license. What have
our legislators gained by culling out a hundred thousand particular
cases, and by applying to these a hundred thousand laws? This number
holds no manner of proportion with the infinite diversity of human
actions; the multiplication of our inventions will never arrive at the
variety of examples; add to these a hundred times as many more, it will
still not happen that, of events to come, there shall one be found that,
in this vast number of millions of events so chosen and recorded, shall
so tally with any other one, and be so exactly coupled and matched with
it that there will not remain some circumstance and diversity which will
require a diverse judgment. There is little relation betwixt our
actions, which are in perpetual mutation, and fixed and immutable laws;
the most to be desired are those that are the most rare, the most simple
and general; and I am even of opinion that we had better have none at all
than to have them in so prodigious a number as we have.
Nature always gives them better and happier than those we make ourselves;
witness the picture of the Golden Age of the Poets and the state wherein
we see nations live who have no other. Some there are, who for their
only judge take the first passer-by that travels along their mountains,
to determine their cause; and others who, on their market day, choose out
some one amongst them upon the spot to decide their controversies. What
danger would there be that the wisest amongst us should so determine
ours, according to occurrences and at sight, without obligation of
example and consequence? For every foot its own shoe. King Ferdinand,
sending colonies to the Indies, wisely provided that they should not
carry along with them any students of jurisprudence, for fear lest suits
should get footing in that new world, as being a science in its own
nature, breeder of altercation and division; judging with Plato, “that
lawyers and physicians are bad institutions of a country.”
Whence does it come to pass that our common language, so easy for all
other uses, becomes obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts?
and that he who so clearly expresses himself in whatever else he speaks
or writes, cannot find in these any way of declaring himself that does
not fall into doubt and contradiction? if it be not that the princes of
that art, applying themselves with a peculiar attention to cull out
portentous words and to contrive artificial sentences, have so weighed
every syllable, and so thoroughly sifted every sort of quirking
connection that they are now confounded and entangled in the infinity of
figures and minute divisions, and can no more fall within any rule or
prescription, nor any certain intelligence:
“Confusum est, quidquid usque in pulverem sectum est.”
[“Whatever is beaten into powder is undistinguishable (confused).”
--Seneca, Ep., 89.]
As you see children trying to bring a mass of quicksilver to a certain
number of parts, the more they press and work it and endeavour to reduce
it to their own will, the more they irritate the liberty of this generous
metal; it evades their endeavour and sprinkles itself into so many
separate bodies as frustrate all reckoning; so is it here, for in
subdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doubts; they
put us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties, and
lengthen and disperse them. In sowing and retailing questions they make
the world fructify and increase in uncertainties and disputes, as the
earth is made fertile by being crumbled and dug deep.
“Difficultatem facit doctrina.”
[“Learning (Doctrine) begets difficulty.”
--Quintilian, Insat. Orat., x. 3.]
We doubted of Ulpian, and are still now more perplexed with Bartolus and
Baldus. We should efface the trace of this innumerable diversity of
opinions; not adorn ourselves with it, and fill posterity with crotchets.
I know not what to say to it; but experience makes it manifest, that so
many interpretations dissipate truth and break it. Aristotle wrote to be
understood; if he could not do this, much less will another that is not
so good at it; and a third than he, who expressed his own thoughts. We
open the matter, and spill it in pouring out: of one subject we make a
thousand, and in multiplying and subdividing them, fall again into the
infinity of atoms of Epicurus. Never did two men make the same judgment
of the same thing; and ‘tis impossible to find two opinions exactly
alike, not only in several men, but in the same man, at diverse hours.
I often find matter of doubt in things of which the commentary has
disdained to take notice; I am most apt to stumble in an even country,
like some horses that I have known, that make most trips in the smoothest
way.
Who will not say that glosses augment doubts and ignorance, since there’s
no book to be found, either human or divine, which the world busies
itself about, whereof the difficulties are cleared by interpretation.
The hundredth commentator passes it on to the next, still more knotty and
perplexed than he found it. When were we ever agreed amongst ourselves:
“This book has enough; there is now no more to be said about it”? This
is most apparent in the law; we give the authority of law to infinite
doctors, infinite decrees, and as many interpretations; yet do we find
any end of the need of interpretating? is there, for all that, any
progress or advancement towards peace, or do we stand in need of any
fewer advocates and judges than when this great mass of law was yet in
its first infancy? On the contrary, we darken and bury intelligence; we
can no longer discover it, but at the mercy of so many fences and
barriers. Men do not know the natural disease of the mind; it does
nothing but ferret and inquire, and is eternally wheeling, juggling, and
perplexing itself like silkworms, and then suffocates itself in its work;
“Mus in pice.”--[“A mouse in a pitch barrel.”]--It thinks it discovers
at a great distance, I know not what glimpses of light and imaginary
truth: but whilst running to it, so many difficulties, hindrances, and
new inquisitions cross it, that it loses its way, and is made drunk with
the motion: not much unlike AEsop’s dogs, that seeing something like a
dead body floating in the sea, and not being able to approach it, set to
work to drink the water and lay the passage dry, and so choked
themselves. To which what one Crates’ said of the writings of Heraclitus
falls pat enough, “that they required a reader who could swim well,” so
that the depth and weight of his learning might not overwhelm and stifle
him. ‘Tis nothing but particular weakness that makes us content with
what others or ourselves have found out in this chase after knowledge:
one of better understanding will not rest so content; there is always
room for one to follow, nay, even for ourselves; and another road; there
is no end of our inquisitions; our end is in the other world. ‘Tis a
sign either that the mind has grown shortsighted when it is satisfied, or
that it has got weary. No generous mind can stop in itself; it will
still tend further and beyond its power; it has sallies beyond its
effects; if it do not advance and press forward, and retire, and rush and
wheel about, ‘tis but half alive; its pursuits are without bound or
method; its aliment is admiration, the chase, ambiguity, which Apollo
sufficiently declared in always speaking to us in a double, obscure, and
oblique sense: not feeding, but amusing and puzzling us. ‘Tis an
irregular and perpetual motion, without model and without aim; its
inventions heat, pursue, and interproduce one another:
Estienne de la Boetie; thus translated by Cotton:
“So in a running stream one wave we see
After another roll incessantly,
And as they glide, each does successively
Pursue the other, each the other fly
By this that’s evermore pushed on, and this
By that continually preceded is:
The water still does into water swill,
Still the same brook, but different water still.”
There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things,
and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but
comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of
authors there is great scarcity. Is it not the principal and most
reputed knowledge of our later ages to understand the learned? Is it not
the common and final end of all studies? Our opinions are grafted upon
one another; the first serves as a stock to the second, the second to the
third, and so forth; thus step by step we climb the ladder; whence it
comes to pass that he who is mounted highest has often more honour than
merit, for he is got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, but
one.
How often, and, peradventure, how foolishly, have I extended my book to
make it speak of itself; foolishly, if for no other reason but this, that
it should remind me of what I say of others who do the same: that the
frequent amorous glances they cast upon their work witness that their
hearts pant with self-love, and that even the disdainful severity
wherewith they scourge them are but the dandlings and caressings of
maternal love; as Aristotle, whose valuing and undervaluing himself often
spring from the same air of arrogance. My own excuse is, that I ought in
this to have more liberty than others, forasmuch as I write specifically
of myself and of my writings, as I do of my other actions; that my theme
turns upon itself; but I know not whether others will accept this excuse.
I observed in Germany that Luther has left as many divisions and disputes
about the doubt of his opinions, and more, than he himself raised upon
the Holy Scriptures. Our contest is verbal: I ask what nature is, what
pleasure, circle, and substitution are? the question is about words, and
is answered accordingly. A stone is a body; but if a man should further
urge: “And what is a body?”--“Substance”; “And what is substance?” and
so on, he would drive the respondent to the end of his Calepin.
[Calepin (Ambrogio da Calepio), a famous lexicographer of the
fifteenth century. His Polyglot Dictionary became so famous, that
Calepin became a common appellation for a lexicon]
We exchange one word for another, and often for one less understood.
I better know what man is than I know what Animal is, or Mortal, or
Rational. To satisfy one doubt, they give me three; ‘tis the Hydra’s
head. Socrates asked Menon, “What virtue was.” “There is,” says Menon,
“the virtue of a man and of a woman, of a magistrate and of a private
person, of an old man and of a child.” “Very fine,” cried Socrates,
“we were in quest of one virtue, and thou hast brought us a whole
swarm.” We put one question, and they return us a whole hive. As no
event, no face, entirely resembles another, so do they not entirely
differ: an ingenious mixture of nature. If our faces were not alike, we
could not distinguish man from beast; if they were not unlike, we could
not distinguish one man from another; all things hold by some similitude;
every example halts, and the relation which is drawn from experience is
always faulty and imperfect. Comparisons are ever-coupled at one end or
other: so do the laws serve, and are fitted to every one of our affairs,
by some wrested, biassed, and forced interpretation.
Since the ethic laws, that concern the particular duty of every one in
himself, are so hard to be framed, as we see they are, ‘tis no wonder if
those which govern so many particulars are much more so. Do but consider
the form of this justice that governs us; ‘tis a true testimony of human
weakness, so full is it of error and contradiction. What we find to be
favour and severity in justice--and we find so much of them both, that I
know not whether the medium is as often met with are sickly and unjust
members of the very body and essence of justice. Some country people
have just brought me news in great haste, that they presently left in a
forest of mine a man with a hundred wounds upon him, who was yet
breathing, and begged of them water for pity’s sake, and help to carry
him to some place of relief; they tell me they durst not go near him, but
have run away, lest the officers of justice should catch them there; and
as happens to those who are found near a murdered person, they should be
called in question about this accident, to their utter ruin, having
neither money nor friends to defend their innocence. What could I have
said to these people? ‘Tis certain that this office of humanity would
have brought them into trouble.
How many innocent people have we known that have been punished, and this
without the judge’s fault; and how many that have not arrived at our
knowledge? This happened in my time: certain men were condemned to die
for a murder committed; their sentence, if not pronounced, at least
determined and concluded on. The judges, just in the nick, are informed
by the officers of an inferior court hard by, that they have some men in
custody, who have directly confessed the murder, and made an indubitable
discovery of all the particulars of the fact. Yet it was gravely
deliberated whether or not they ought to suspend the execution of the
sentence already passed upon the first accused: they considered the
novelty of the example judicially, and the consequence of reversing
judgments; that the sentence was passed, and the judges deprived of
repentance; and in the result, these poor devils were sacrificed by the
forms of justice. Philip, or some other, provided against a like
inconvenience after this manner. He had condemned a man in a great fine
towards another by an absolute judgment. The truth some time after being
discovered, he found that he had passed an unjust sentence. On one side
was the reason of the cause; on the other side, the reason of the
judicial forms: he in some sort satisfied both, leaving the sentence in
the state it was, and out of his own purse recompensing the condemned
party. But he had to do with a reparable affair; my men were irreparably
hanged. How many condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimes
themselves?
All which makes me remember the ancient opinions, “That ‘tis of necessity
a man must do wrong by retail who will do right in gross; and injustice
in little things, who would come to do justice in great: that human
justice is formed after the model of physic, according to which, all that
is useful is also just and honest: and of what is held by the Stoics,
that Nature herself proceeds contrary to justice in most of her works:
and of what is received by the Cyrenaics, that there is nothing just of
itself, but that customs and laws make justice: and what the Theodorians
held that theft, sacrilege, and all sorts of uncleanness, are just in a
sage, if he knows them to be profitable to him.” There is no remedy: I
am in the same case that Alcibiades was, that I will never, if I can help
it, put myself into the hands of a man who may determine as to my head,
where my life and honour shall more depend upon the skill and diligence
of my attorney than on my own innocence. I would venture myself with
such justice as would take notice of my good deeds, as well as my ill;
where I had as much to hope as to fear: indemnity is not sufficient pay
to a man who does better than not to do amiss. Our justice presents to
us but one hand, and that the left hand, too; let him be who he may, he
shall be sure to come off with loss.
In China, of which kingdom the government and arts, without commerce with
or knowledge of ours, surpass our examples in several excellent features,
and of which the history teaches me how much greater and more various the
world is than either the ancients or we have been able to penetrate, the
officers deputed by the prince to visit the state of his provinces, as
they punish those who behave themselves ill in their charge, so do they
liberally reward those who have conducted themselves better than the
common sort, and beyond the necessity of their duty; these there present
themselves, not only to be approved but to get; not simply to be paid,
but to have a present made to them.
No judge, thank God, has ever yet spoken to me in the quality of a judge,
upon any account whatever, whether my own or that of a third party,
whether criminal or civil; nor no prison has ever received me, not even
to walk there. Imagination renders the very outside of a jail
displeasing to me; I am so enamoured of liberty, that should I be
interdicted the access to some corner of the Indies, I should live a
little less at my ease; and whilst I can find earth or air open
elsewhere, I shall never lurk in any place where I must hide myself.
My God! how ill should I endure the condition wherein I see so many
people, nailed to a corner of the kingdom, deprived of the right to enter
the principal cities and courts, and the liberty of the public roads,
for having quarrelled with our laws. If those under which I live should
shake a finger at me by way of menace, I would immediately go seek out
others, let them be where they would. All my little prudence in the
civil wars wherein we are now engaged is employed that they may not
hinder my liberty of going and coming.
Now, the laws keep up their credit, not for being just, but because they
are laws; ‘tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no
other, and it well answers their purpose. They are often made by fools,
still oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity, but
always by men, vain and irresolute authors. There is nothing so much,
nor so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty, as the laws. Whoever obeys
them because they are just, does not justly obey them as he ought. Our
French laws, by their irregularity and deformity, lend, in some sort, a
helping hand to the disorder and corruption that all manifest in their
dispensation and execution: the command is so perplexed and inconstant,
that it in some sort excuses alike disobedience and defect in the
interpretation, the administration and the observation of it. What fruit
then soever we may extract from experience, that will little advantage
our institution, which we draw from foreign examples, if we make so
little profit of that we have of our own, which is more familiar to us,
and, doubtless, sufficient to instruct us in that whereof we have need.
I study myself more than any other subject; ‘tis my metaphysic, my
physic:
“Quis deus hanc mundi temperet arte domum:
Qua venit exoriens, qua deficit: unde coactis
Cornibus in plenum menstrua luna redit
Unde salo superant venti, quid flamine captet
Eurus, et in nubes unde perennis aqua;
Sit ventura dies mundi quae subruat arces....”

[“What god may govern with skill this dwelling of the world? whence
rises the monthly moon, whither wanes she? how is it that her horns
are contracted and reopen? whence do winds prevail on the main?
what does the east wind court with its blasts? and whence are the
clouds perpetually supplied with water? is a day to come which may
undermine the world?”--Propertius, iii. 5, 26.]
“Quaerite, quos agitat mundi labor.”
[“Ask whom the cares of the world trouble”--Lucan, i. 417.]
In this universality, I suffer myself to be ignorantly and negligently
led by the general law of the world: I shall know it well enough when I
feel it; my learning cannot make it alter its course; it will not change
itself for me; ‘tis folly to hope it, and a greater folly to concern
one’s self about it, seeing it is necessarily alike public and common.
The goodness and capacity of the governor ought absolutely to discharge
us of all care of the government: philosophical inquisitions and
contemplations serve for no other use but to increase our curiosity.
The philosophers; with great reason, send us back to the rules of nature;
but they have nothing to do with so sublime a knowledge; they falsify
them, and present us her face painted with too high and too adulterate a
complexion, whence spring so many different pictures of so uniform a
subject. As she has given us feet to walk with, so has she given us
prudence to guide us in life: not so ingenious, robust, and pompous a
prudence as that of their invention; but yet one that is easy, quiet, and
salutary, and that very well performs what the other promises, in him who
has the good luck to know how to employ it sincerely and regularly, that
is to say, according to nature. The most simply to commit one’s self to
nature is to do it most wisely. Oh, what a soft, easy, and wholesome
pillow is ignorance and incuriosity, whereon to repose a well-ordered
head!
I had rather understand myself well in myself, than in Cicero. Of the
experience I have of myself, I find enough to make me wise, if I were but
a good scholar: whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger,
and to what a degree that fever transported him, will see the deformity
of this passion better than in Aristotle, and conceive a more just hatred
against it; whoever will remember the ills he has undergone, those that
have threatened him, and the light occasions that have removed him from
one state to another, will by that prepare himself for future changes,
and the knowledge of his condition. The life of Caesar has no greater
example for us than our own: though popular and of command, ‘tis still a
life subject to all human accidents. Let us but listen to it; we apply
to ourselves all whereof we have principal need; whoever shall call to
memory how many and many times he has been mistaken in his own judgment,
is he not a great fool if he does not ever after suspect it? When I find
myself convinced, by the reason of another, of a false opinion, I do not
so much learn what he has said to me that is new and the particular
ignorance--that would be no great acquisition--as, in general, I learn my
own debility and the treachery of my understanding, whence I extract the
reformation of the whole mass. In all my other errors I do the same, and
find from this rule great utility to life; I regard not the species and
individual as a stone that I have stumbled at; I learn to suspect my
steps throughout, and am careful to place them right. To learn that a
man has said or done a foolish thing is nothing: a man must learn that he
is nothing but a fool, a much more ample, and important instruction. The
false steps that my memory has so often made, even then when it was most
secure and confident of itself, are not idly thrown away; it vainly
swears and assures me I shake my ears; the first opposition that is made
to its testimony puts me into suspense, and I durst not rely upon it in
anything of moment, nor warrant it in another person’s concerns: and were
it not that what I do for want of memory, others do more often for want
of good faith, I should always, in matter of fact, rather choose to take
the truth from another’s mouth than from my own. If every one would pry
into the effects and circumstances of the passions that sway him, as I
have done into those which I am most subject to, he would see them
coming, and would a little break their impetuosity and career; they do
not always seize us on a sudden; there is threatening and degrees
“Fluctus uti primo coepit cum albescere vento,
Paulatim sese tollit mare, et altius undas
Erigit, inde imo consurgit ad aethera fundo.”
[“As with the first wind the sea begins to foam, and swells, thence
higher swells, and higher raises the waves, till the ocean rises
from its depths to the sky.”--AEneid, vii. 528.]
Judgment holds in me a magisterial seat; at least it carefully endeavours
to make it so: it leaves my appetites to take their own course, hatred
and friendship, nay, even that I bear to myself, without change or
corruption; if it cannot reform the other parts according to its own
model, at least it suffers not itself to be corrupted by them, but plays
its game apart.
The advice to every one, “to know themselves,” should be of important
effect, since that god of wisdom and light’ caused it to be written on
the front of his temple,--[At Delphi]--as comprehending all he had to
advise us. Plato says also, that prudence is no other thing than the
execution of this ordinance; and Socrates minutely verifies it in
Xenophon. The difficulties and obscurity are not discerned in any
science but by those who are got into it; for a certain degree of
intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not, and we
must push against a door to know whether it be bolted against us or no:
whence this Platonic subtlety springs, that “neither they who know are to
enquire, forasmuch as they know; nor they who do not know, forasmuch as
to inquire they must know what they inquire of.” So in this, “of knowing
a man’s self,” that every man is seen so resolved and satisfied with
himself, that every man thinks himself sufficiently intelligent,
signifies that every one knows nothing about the matter; as Socrates
gives Euthydemus to understand. I, who profess nothing else, therein
find so infinite a depth and variety, that all the fruit I have reaped
from my learning serves only to make me sensible how much I have to
learn. To my weakness, so often confessed, I owe the propension I have
to modesty, to the obedience of belief prescribed me, to a constant
coldness and moderation of opinions, and a hatred of that troublesome and
wrangling arrogance, wholly believing and trusting in itself, the capital
enemy of discipline and truth. Do but hear them domineer; the first
fopperies they utter, ‘tis in the style wherewith men establish religions
and laws:
“Nihil est turpius, quam cognitioni et perceptions
assertionem approbationemque praecurrere.”
[“Nothing is worse than that assertion and decision should precede
knowledge and perception.”--Cicero, Acad., i. 13.]
Aristarchus said that anciently there were scarce seven sages to be found
in the world, and in his time scarce so many fools: have not we more
reason than he to say so in this age of ours? Affirmation and obstinacy
are express signs of want of wit. This fellow may have knocked his nose
against the ground a hundred times in a day, yet he will be at his Ergo’s
as resolute and sturdy as before. You would say he had had some new soul
and vigour of understanding infused into him since, and that it happened
to him, as to that ancient son of the earth, who took fresh courage and
vigour by his fall;
“Cui cum tetigere parentem,
jam defecta vigent renovata robore membra:”