Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 102

[“Whose broken limbs, when they touched his mother earth,
immediately new force acquired.”--Lucan, iv. 599.]
does not this incorrigible coxcomb think that he assumes a new
understanding by undertaking a new dispute? ‘Tis by my own experience
that I accuse human ignorance, which is, in my opinion, the surest part
of the world’s school. Such as will not conclude it in themselves, by so
vain an example as mine, or their own, let them believe it from Socrates,
the master of masters; for the philosopher Antisthenes said to his
disciples, “Let us go and hear Socrates; there I will be a pupil with you”;
and, maintaining this doctrine of the Stoic sect, “that virtue was
sufficient to make a life completely happy, having no need of any other
thing whatever”; except of the force of Socrates, added he.
That long attention that I employ in considering myself, also fits rile
to judge tolerably enough of others; and there are few things whereof I
speak better and with better excuse. I happen very often more exactly to
see and distinguish the qualities of my friends than they do themselves:
I have astonished some with the pertinence of my description, and have
given them warning of themselves. By having from my infancy been
accustomed to contemplate my own life in those of others, I have acquired
a complexion studious in that particular; and when I am once interit upon
it, I let few things about me, whether countenances, humours,
or discourses, that serve to that purpose, escape me. I study all,
both what I am to avoid and what I am to follow. Also in my friends,
I discover by their productions their inward inclinations; not by
arranging this infinite variety of so diverse and unconnected actions
into certain species and chapters, and distinctly distributing my parcels
and divisions under known heads and classes;
“Sed neque quam multae species, nec nomina quae sint,
Est numerus.”
[“But neither can we enumerate how many kinds there what are their
names.”--Virgil, Georg., ii. 103.]
The wise speak and deliver their fancies more specifically, and piece by
piece; I, who see no further into things than as use informs me, present
mine generally without rule and experimentally: I pronounce my opinion by
disjointed articles, as a thing that cannot be spoken at once and in
gross; relation and conformity are not to be found in such low and common
souls as ours. Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which every
piece keeps its place and bears its mark:
“Sola sapientia in se tota conversa est.”
[“Wisdom only is wholly within itself”--Cicero, De Fin., iii. 7.]
I leave it to artists, and I know not whether or no they will be able to
bring it about, in so perplexed, minute, and fortuitous a thing, to
marshal into distinct bodies this infinite diversity of faces, to settle
our inconstancy, and set it in order. I do not only find it hard to
piece our actions to one another, but I moreover find it hard properly to
design each by itself by any principal quality, so ambiguous and variform
they are with diverse lights. That which is remarked for rare in
Perseus, king of Macedon, “that his mind, fixing itself to no one
condition, wandered in all sorts of living, and represented manners so
wild and erratic that it was neither known to himself or any other what
kind of man he was,” seems almost to fit all the world; and, especially,
I have seen another of his make, to whom I think this conclusion might
more properly be applied; no moderate settledness, still running headlong
from one extreme to another, upon occasions not to be guessed at; no line
of path without traverse and wonderful contrariety: no one quality simple
and unmixed; so that the best guess men can one day make will be, that he
affected and studied to make himself known by being not to be known. A
man had need have sound ears to hear himself frankly criticised; and as
there are few who can endure to hear it without being nettled, those who
hazard the undertaking it to us manifest a singular effect of friendship;
for ‘tis to love sincerely indeed, to venture to wound and offend us, for
our own good. I think it harsh to judge a man whose ill qualities are
more than his good ones: Plato requires three things in him who will
examine the soul of another: knowledge, benevolence, boldness.
I was sometimes asked, what I should have thought myself fit for, had any
one designed to make use of me, while I was of suitable years:
“Dum melior vires sanguis dabat, aemula necdum
Temporibus geminis canebat sparsa senectus:”
[“Whilst better blood gave me vigour, and before envious old age
whitened and thinned my temples.”--AEneid, V. 415.]
“for nothing,” said I; and I willingly excuse myself from knowing
anything which enslaves me to others. But I had told the truth to my
master,--[Was this Henri VI.? D.W.]--and had regulated his manners, if
he had so pleased, not in gross, by scholastic lessons, which I
understand not, and from which I see no true reformation spring in those
that do; but by observing them by leisure, at all opportunities, and
simply and naturally judging them as an eye-witness, distinctly one by
one; giving him to understand upon what terms he was in the common
opinion, in opposition to his flatterers. There is none of us who would
not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with
that sort of canaille. How, if Alexander, that great king and
philosopher, cannot defend himself from them!
I should have had fidelity, judgment, and freedom enough for that
purpose. It would be a nameless office, otherwise it would lose its
grace and its effect; and ‘tis a part that is not indifferently fit for
all men; for truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times
and indiscriminately; its use, noble as it is, has its circumspections
and limits. It often falls out, as the world goes, that a man lets it
slip into the ear of a prince, not only to no purpose, but moreover
injuriously and unjustly; and no man shall make me believe that a
virtuous remonstrance may not be viciously applied, and that the interest
of the substance is not often to give way to that of the form.
For such a purpose, I would have a man who is content with his own
fortune:
“Quod sit, esse velit, nihilque malit,”
[“Who is pleased with what he is and desires nothing further.”
--Martial, x. ii, 18.]
and of moderate station; forasmuch as, on the one hand, he would not be
afraid to touch his master’s heart to the quick, for fear by that means
of losing his preferment: and, on the other hand, being of no high
quality, he would have more easy communication with all sorts of people.
I would have this office limited to only one person; for to allow the
privilege of his liberty and privacy to many, would beget an inconvenient
irreverence; and of that one, I would above all things require the
fidelity of silence.
A king is not to be believed when he brags of his constancy in standing
the shock of the enemy for his glory, if for his profit and amendment he
cannot stand the liberty of a friend’s advice, which has no other power
but to pinch his ear, the remainder of its effect being still in his own
hands. Now, there is no condition of men whatever who stand in so great
need of true and free advice and warning, as they do: they sustain a
public life, and have to satisfy the opinion of so many spectators, that,
as those about them conceal from them whatever should divert them from
their own way, they insensibly find themselves involved in the hatred and
detestation of their people, often upon occasions which they might have
avoided without any prejudice even of their pleasures themselves, had
they been advised and set right in time. Their favourites commonly have
more regard to themselves than to their master; and indeed it answers
with them, forasmuch as, in truth, most offices of real friendship, when
applied to the sovereign, are under a rude and dangerous hazard, so that
therein there is great need, not only of very great affection and
freedom, but of courage too.
In fine, all this hodge-podge which I scribble here, is nothing but a
register of the essays of my own life, which, for the internal soundness,
is exemplary enough to take instruction against the grain; but as to
bodily health, no man can furnish out more profitable experience than I,
who present it pure, and no way corrupted and changed by art or opinion.
Experience is properly upon its own dunghill in the subject of physic,
where reason wholly gives it place: Tiberius said that whoever had lived
twenty years ought to be responsible to himself for all things that were
hurtful or wholesome to him, and know how to order himself without
physic;
[All that Suetonius says in his Life of Tiberius is that this
emperor, after he was thirty years old, governed his health without
the aid of physicians; and what Plutarch tells us, in his essay on
the Rules and Precepts of Health, is that Tiberius said that the man
who, having attained sixty years, held out his pulse to a physician
was a fool.]
and he might have learned it of Socrates, who, advising his disciples to
be solicitous of their health as a chief study, added that it was hard if
a man of sense, having a care to his exercise and diet, did not better
know than any physician what was good or ill for him. And physic itself
professes always to have experience for the test of its operations: so
Plato had reason to say that, to be a right physician, it would be
necessary that he who would become such, should first himself have passed
through all the diseases he pretends to cure, and through all the
accidents and circumstances whereof he is to judge. ‘Tis but reason they
should get the pox, if they will know how to cure it; for my part,
I should put myself into such hands; the others but guide us, like him
who paints seas and rocks and ports sitting at table, and there makes the
model of a ship sailing in all security; but put him to the work itself,
he knows not at which end to begin. They make such a description of our
maladies as a town crier does of a lost horse or dog--such a color, such
a height, such an ear--but bring it to him and he knows it not, for all
that. If physic should one day give me some good and visible relief,
then truly I will cry out in good earnest:
“Tandem effcaci do manus scientiae.”
[“Show me and efficacious science, and I will take it by the hand.”
--Horace, xvii. I.]
The arts that promise to keep our bodies and souls in health promise a
great deal; but, withal, there are none that less keep their promise.
And, in our time, those who make profession of these arts amongst us,
less manifest the effects than any other sort of men; one may say of
them, at the most, that they sell medicinal drugs; but that they are
physicians, a man cannot say.
[The edition of 1588 adds: “Judging by themselves, and those
who are ruled by them.”]
I have lived long enough to be able to give an account of the custom that
has carried me so far; for him who has a mind to try it, as his taster,
I have made the experiment. Here are some of the articles, as my memory
shall supply me with them; I have no custom that has not varied according
to circumstances; but I only record those that I have been best
acquainted with, and that hitherto have had the greatest possession of
me.
My form of life is the same in sickness as in health; the same bed, the
same hours, the same meat, and even the same drink, serve me in both
conditions alike; I add nothing to them but the moderation of more or
less, according to my strength and appetite. My health is to maintain my
wonted state without disturbance. I see that sickness puts me off it on
one side, and if I will be ruled by the physicians, they will put me off
on the other; so that by fortune and by art I am out of my way.
I believe nothing more certainly than this, that I cannot be hurt by the
use of things to which I have been so long accustomed. ‘Tis for custom
to give a form to a man’s life, such as it pleases him; she is all in all
in that: ‘tis the potion of Circe, that varies our nature as she best
pleases. How many nations, and but three steps from us, think the fear
of the night-dew, that so manifestly is hurtful to us, a ridiculous
fancy; and our own watermen and peasants laugh at it. You make a German
sick if you lay him upon a mattress, as you do an Italian if you lay him
on a feather-bed, and a Frenchman, if without curtains or fire. A Spanish
stomach cannot hold out to eat as we can, nor ours to drink like the
Swiss. A German made me very merry at Augsburg, by finding fault with
our hearths, by the same arguments which we commonly make use of in
decrying their stoves: for, to say the truth, the smothered heat, and
then the smell of that heated matter of which the fire is composed, very
much offend such as are not used to them; not me; and, indeed, the heat
being always equal, constant, and universal, without flame, without
smoke, and without the wind that comes down our chimneys, they may many
ways sustain comparison with ours. Why do we not imitate the Roman
architecture? for they say that anciently fires were not made in the
houses, but on the outside, and at the foot of them, whence the heat was
conveyed to the whole fabric by pipes contrived in the wall, which were
drawn twining about the rooms that were to be warmed: which I have seen
plainly described somewhere in Seneca. This German hearing me commend
the conveniences and beauties of his city, which truly deserves it, began
to compassionate me that I had to leave it; and the first inconvenience
he alleged to me was, the heaviness of head that the chimneys elsewhere
would bring upon me. He had heard some one make this complaint, and
fixed it upon us, being by custom deprived of the means of perceiving it
at home. All heat that comes from the fire weakens and dulls me. Evenus
said that fire was the best condiment of life: I rather choose any other
way of making myself warm.
We are afraid to drink our wines, when toward the bottom of the cask; in
Portugal those fumes are reputed delicious, and it is the beverage of
princes. In short, every nation has many customs and usages that are not
only unknown to other nations, but savage and miraculous in their sight.
What should we do with those people who admit of no evidence that is not
in print, who believe not men if they are not in a book, nor truth if it
be not of competent age? we dignify our fopperies when we commit them to
the press: ‘tis of a great deal more weight to say, “I have read such a
thing,” than if you only say, “I have heard such a thing.” But I, who no
more disbelieve a man’s mouth than his pen, and who know that men write
as indiscreetly as they speak, and who look upon this age as one that is
past, as soon quote a friend as Aulus Gelliusor Macrobius; and what I
have seen, as what they have written. And, as ‘tis held of virtue, that
it is not greater for having continued longer, so do I hold of truth,
that for being older it is none the wiser. I often say, that it is mere
folly that makes us run after foreign and scholastic examples; their
fertility is the same now that it was in the time of Homer and Plato.
But is it not that we seek more honour from the quotation, than from the
truth of the matter in hand? As if it were more to the purpose to borrow
our proofs from the shops of Vascosan or Plantin, than from what is to be
seen in our own village; or else, indeed, that we have not the wit to
cull out and make useful what we see before us, and to judge of it
clearly enough to draw it into example: for if we say that we want
authority to give faith to our testimony, we speak from the purpose;
forasmuch as, in my opinion, of the most ordinary, common, and known
things, could we but find out their light, the greatest miracles of
nature might be formed, and the most wonderful examples, especially upon
the subject of human actions.
Now, upon this subject, setting aside the examples I have gathered from
books, and what Aristotle says of Andron the Argian, that he travelled
over the arid sands of Lybia without drinking: a gentleman, who has very
well behaved himself in several employments, said, in a place where I
was, that he had ridden from Madrid to Lisbon, in the heat of summer,
without any drink at all. He is very healthful and vigorous for his age,
and has nothing extraordinary in the use of his life, but this, to live
sometimes two or three months, nay, a whole year, as he has told me,
without drinking. He is sometimes thirsty, but he lets it pass over,
and he holds that it is an appetite which easily goes off of itself;
and he drinks more out of caprice than either for need or pleasure.
Here is another example: ‘tis not long ago that I found one of the
learnedest men in France, among those of not inconsiderable fortune,
studying in a corner of a hall that they had separated for him with
tapestry, and about him a rabble of his servants full of licence. He
told me, and Seneca almost says the same of himself, he made an
advantage of this hubbub; that, beaten with this noise, he so much
the more collected and retired himself into himself for contemplation,
and that this tempest of voices drove back his thoughts within himself.
Being a student at Padua, he had his study so long situated amid the
rattle of coaches and the tumult of the square, that he not only formed
himself to the contempt, but even to the use of noise, for the service of
his studies. Socrates answered Alcibiades, who was astonished how he
could endure the perpetual scolding of his wife, “Why,” said he, “as
those do who are accustomed to the ordinary noise of wheels drawing
water.” I am quite otherwise; I have a tender head and easily
discomposed; when ‘tis bent upon anything, the least buzzing of a fly
murders it.
Seneca in his youth having warmly espoused the example of Sextius, of
eating nothing that had died, for a whole year dispensed with such food,
and, as he said, with pleasure, and discontinued it that he might not be
suspected of taking up this rule from some new religion by which it was
prescribed: he adopted, in like manner, from the precepts of Attalus a
custom not to lie upon any sort of bedding that gave way under his
weight, and, even to his old age, made use of such as would not yield to
any pressure. What the usage of his time made him account roughness,
that of ours makes us look upon as effeminacy.
Do but observe the difference betwixt the way of living of my labourers
and my own; the Scythians and Indians have nothing more remote both from
my capacity and my form. I have picked up charity boys to serve me: who
soon after have quitted both my kitchen and livery, only that they might
return to their former course of life; and I found one afterwards,
picking mussels out of the sewer for his dinner, whom I could neither by
entreaties nor threats reclaim from the sweetness he found in indigence.
Beggars have their magnificences and delights, as well as the rich, and,
‘tis said, their dignities and polities. These are the effects of
custom; she can mould us, not only into what form she pleases (the sages
say we ought to apply ourselves to the best, which she will soon make
easy to us), but also to change and variation, which is the most noble
and most useful instruction of all she teaches us. The best of my bodily
conditions is that I am flexible and not very obstinate: I have
inclinations more my own and ordinary, and more agreeable than others;
but I am diverted from them with very little ado, and easily slip into a
contrary course. A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awaken his
vigour and to keep it from growing faint and rusty; and there is no
course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule
and discipline;
“Ad primum lapidem vectari quum placet, hora
Sumitur ex libro; si prurit frictus ocelli
Angulus, inspecta genesi, collyria quaerit;”
[“When he is pleased to have himself carried to the first milestone,
the hour is chosen from the almanac; if he but rub the corner of his
eye, his horoscope having been examined, he seeks the aid of
salves.”---Juvenal, vi. 576.]
he shall often throw himself even into excesses, if he will take my
advice; otherwise the least debauch will destroy him, and render him
troublesome and disagreeable in company. The worst quality in a
well-bred man is over-fastidiousness, and an obligation to a certain
particular way; and it is particular, if not pliable and supple. It is a
kind of reproach, not to be able, or not to dare, to do what we see those
about us do; let such as these stop at home. It is in every man
unbecoming, but in a soldier vicious and intolerable: who, as Philopcemen
said, ought to accustom himself to every variety and inequality of life.
Though I have been brought up, as much as was possible, to liberty and
independence, yet so it is that, growing old, and having by indifference
more settled upon certain forms (my age is now past instruction, and has
henceforward nothing to do but to keep itself up as well as it can),
custom has already, ere I was aware, so imprinted its character in me in
certain things, that I look upon it as a kind of excess to leave them
off; and, without a force upon myself, cannot sleep in the daytime, nor
eat between meals, nor breakfast, nor go to bed, without a great interval
betwixt eating and sleeping,--[Gastroesophogeal Reflux. D.W.]--as of
three hours after supper; nor get children but before I sleep, nor get
them standing; nor endure my own sweat; nor quench my thirst either with
pure water or pure wine; nor keep my head long bare, nor cut my hair
after dinner; and I should be as uneasy without my gloves as without my
shirt, or without washing when I rise from table or out of my bed; and I
could not lie without a canopy and curtains, as if they were essential
things. I could dine without a tablecloth, but without a clean napkin,
after the German fashion, very incommodiously; I foul them more than the
Germans or Italians do, and make but little use either of spoon or fork.
I complain that they did not keep up the fashion, begun after the example
of kings, to change our napkin at every service, as they do our plate.
We are told of that laborious soldier Marius that, growing old, he became
nice in his drink, and never drank but out of a particular cup of his own
I, in like manner, have suffered myself to fancy a certain form of
glasses, and not willingly to drink in common glasses, no more than from
a strange common hand: all metal offends me in comparison of a clear and
transparent matter: let my eyes taste, too, according to their capacity.
I owe several other such niceties to custom. Nature has also, on the
other side, helped me to some of hers: as not to be able to endure more
than two full meals in one day, without overcharging my stomach, nor a
total abstinence from one of those meals without filling myself with
wind, drying up my mouth, and dulling my appetite; the finding great
inconvenience from overmuch evening air; for of late years, in night
marches, which often happen to be all night long, after five or six hours
my stomach begins to be queasy, with a violent pain in my head, so that I
always vomit before the day can break. When the others go to breakfast,
I go to sleep; and when I rise, I am as brisk and gay as before. I had
always been told that the night dew never rises but in the beginning of
the night; but for some years past, long and familiar intercourse with
a lord, possessed with the opinion that the night dew is more sharp and
dangerous about the declining of the sun, an hour or two before it sets,
which he carefully avoids, and despises that of the night, he almost
impressed upon me, not so much his reasoning as his experiences. What,
shall mere doubt and inquiry strike our imagination, so as to change us?
Such as absolutely and on a sudden give way to these propensions, draw
total destruction upon themselves. I am sorry for several gentlemen who,
through the folly of their physicians, have in their youth and health
wholly shut themselves up: it were better to endure a cough, than, by
disuse, for ever to lose the commerce of common life in things of so
great utility. Malignant science, to interdict us the most pleasant
hours of the day! Let us keep our possession to the last; for the most
part, a man hardens himself by being obstinate, and corrects his
constitution, as Caesar did the falling sickness, by dint of contempt.
A man should addict himself to the best rules, but not enslave himself to
them, except to such, if there be any such, where obligation and
servitude are of profit.
Both kings and philosophers go to stool, and ladies too; public lives are
bound to ceremony; mine, that is obscure and private, enjoys all natural
dispensation; soldier and Gascon are also qualities a little subject to
indiscretion; wherefore I shall say of this act of relieving nature, that
it is desirable to refer it to certain prescribed and nocturnal hours,
and compel one’s self to this by custom, as I have done; but not to
subject one’s self, as I have done in my declining years, to a particular
convenience of place and seat for that purpose, and make it troublesome
by long sitting; and yet, in the fouler offices, is it not in some
measure excusable to require more care and cleanliness?
“Naturt homo mundum et elegans animal est.”
[“Man is by nature a clean and delicate creature.”--Seneca, Ep., 92.]
Of all the actions of nature, I am the most impatient of being
interrupted in that. I have seen many soldiers troubled with the
unruliness of their bellies; whereas mine and I never fail of our
punctual assignation, which is at leaping out of bed, if some
indispensable business or sickness does not molest us.
I think then, as I said before, that sick men cannot better place
themselves anywhere in more safety, than in sitting still in that course
of life wherein they have been bred and trained up; change, be it what it
will, distempers and puts one out. Do you believe that chestnuts can
hurt a Perigordin or a Lucchese, or milk and cheese the mountain people?
We enjoin them not only a new, but a contrary, method of life; a change
that the healthful cannot endure. Prescribe water to a Breton of
threescore and ten; shut a seaman up in a stove; forbid a Basque footman
to walk: you will deprive them of motion, and in the end of air and
light:
“An vivere tanti est?
Cogimur a suetis animum suspendere rebus,
Atque, ut vivamus, vivere desinimus. .
Hos superesse reor, quibus et spirabilis aer
Et lux, qua regimur, redditur ipsa gravis.”
[“Is life worth so much? We are compelled to withhold the mind
from things to which we are accustomed; and, that we may live, we
cease to live . . . . Do I conceive that they still live, to
whom the respirable air, and the light itself, by which we are
governed, is rendered oppressive?”
--Pseudo-Gallus, Eclog., i. 155, 247.]
If they do no other good, they do this at least, that they prepare
patients betimes for death, by little and little undermining and cutting
off the use of life.
Both well and sick, I have ever willingly suffered myself to obey the
appetites that pressed upon me. I give great rein to my desires and
propensities; I do not love to cure one disease by another; I hate
remedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself. To be
subject to the colic and subject to abstain from eating oysters are two
evils instead of one; the disease torments us on the one side, and the
remedy on the other. Since we are ever in danger of mistaking, let us
rather run the hazard of a mistake, after we have had the pleasure. The